Chapter 4 — Testing the Waters

"Hey, Grandpa, have you ever heard of Tartarus?"

The question came as my grandfather and I sat watching football together. While I didn't quite enjoy watching football, I did it to humor him, since he loved it. He'd make up a big old bowl of mixed Tostito's and pretzels, with a little jar of home-made salsa for the chips, and every touchdown the team playing against the Giants scored, he'd groan and whine, while every touchdown the Giants made, he'd leap to his feet and pump his fist. Seeing JJJ get so worked up over football amused me more than the actual game itself.

My grandfather almost choked on a salsa-covered chip he was chewing.

"Tartaru—" He paused and looked at me funny. "You mean that place in the Greek underworld, right?" The expression he wore seemed like he was pleading for me to be talking about that.

"Er, no," I said, coughing awkwardly into my fist. "I mean, do you know if there's a group called that here in New York City?"

As a journalist who loved covering anything superhero or supervillain-related, I figured he'd be more likely to know than most other people. Judging from the way he frowned at the TV, it certainly seemed like he did. "...JJ, where did you hear about that?"

"Uh—" Shit. "I, uh, was walking by a police officer near a crime scene and overheard him mention something like it to his friend?" It wasn't even a lie, not entirely, anyway.

"Never mix up with those people, you hear me, JJ?" he murmured, tapping his fingers against the armrest. "They're… dangerous people. I only know about them because of my investigative journalism, but from what I've found out… it's not anything good. Seems like they used to be a small-time drug gang in the Bronx. Weren't anything out of the ordinary back then, just the average, you know? Then the Incident happened, those aliens invaded, and… of course, a bunch of their technology got left scattered around the city after they were destroyed. You know all that. Well, apparently, these people got their hands on some alien tech, and somehow, started making leaps and bounds in the weaponry department. Who knows how they've been doing it, but they've been mass producing super powerful street weapons like no one's business and bringing in large amounts of money promising criminals powerful armor and weapons. Apparently, they hit a dry period where production just… halted recently, but they still have enough of the stuff that they themselves are… a force to be reckoned with. So don't mix up with them."

My mouth opened, then closed.

That… actually answered a lot of things.

Charlie aced anything technological. He could fix a car, troubleshoot your laptop, build an iPad, assemble a 4K TV in his sleep (yes, they had those this early in this version of Earth), and pleeenty more. There's a reason he had his own tech shop.

One of those police officers had mentioned that Charlie had gotten mixed up with Tartarus. While I'd assumed until now he'd just been talking about the attack on the apartment, I now wondered if it wasn't something deeper. With Charlie's deep understanding of technology, it could easily be the case that they roped him into building their tech. I could definitely see him being able to understand alien technology. And maybe he decided, at last, that he wanted nothing to do with them any longer, and because of that, they attacked his apartment and kidnapped him… or killed him to silence him.

...Ohhh God.

I felt like I was gonna be sick. Poor Nick. Poor Charlie.

But what could I possibly do? Without a lead as to where Tartarus was, other than the Bronx, I didn't know how I could find him. And it sounded as though the group's been paying off the police, so I couldn't expect help from them.

...Then again, despite the negative public perception thanks to the anti-super hero propaganda spouted out by my grandfather's paper, in the journalism world, JJJ was considered pretty influential. He'd exposed his fair number of criminal organizations in the day, and had done a lot of honest journalism work that not a lot of people gave him credit for. Because of this, Grandpa had a lot of contacts I could potentially use… or maybe I could potentially do some snooping around in the police office as a fly or something…?

Hmmm…

Narrowing my eyes, I got up and headed to my room. Either way, regardless of what I decided to do, I needed to get some street practice under my belt. I'd never been in actual fights before outside of muay thai tournaments.

Nervousness settled in my bones. Was I doing this? Was I setting my life on the line, purposefully bringing myself closer to brushing with death a second time?

My legs throbbed with ghost pain, and I quickly shoved the memory of what had happened to me aside for now. I had enough on my plate at the moment; my trauma could take a rest for a while. I walked past my desk and open, sleeping laptop, past my bed, and to my northern window. I pushed it open, took a breath, and closed my eyes.

I'd come up with an idea to hide my identity even without a mask while working on the design for my suit. It was time to utilize it. I closed my eyes, took a deep breath, and, concentrating, used my new powers to turn my head more apeish than human. I also thickened out my main body by giving myself gorilla muscles to make it harder for anyone to recognize my body structure, and applied spider stickiness to my skin, which would hopefully mean I could stick to walls like Spider-Man. Remaining as calm as I could, I reached out, touched the walls, and tried pulling my hand off of it; my hand remained stuck. I sucked in another deep breath, and managed to pull away.

This could be useful.

Swallowing, I carefully got out onto my balcony, climbed up the side of my apartment building's wall using my stickiness, scooted over so that I was hanging above space instead of a balcony, and, ignoring that tiny rational part of me that screamed how bad of an idea this was at the insane part, and kicked off the building.

For a moment, I simply hung in space, arms flailing instinctively as my heart jumped a hundred feet.

Then it plunged into the center of the Earth, and a terrified scream tore out of my lungs as gravity snatched me up and yanked me downwards.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!" I shouted, mouth dry from yelling so loud and so hoarsely. The wind immediately ripped the sound out of my mouth the nanosecond it escaped my lips, and I could hardly even hear myself make it. Panic rose in my chest as quickly as the ground rose to meet me. Memories of the last time I'd been in free fall came crashing through my head. Panting, crying, I twisted in midair, and saw the ground only a handful of feet away—

Not. Like. This.

Too similar.

I fucking refused.

Throwing my arms out, my scream turned from pure fear to pure defiance. For some reason, my mind jumped to flying squirrels, and flying squirrel-like patagium stretched over my wrist and ankle. I began gliding, my descent slowing down as my momentum changed from mostly vertical to horizontal. Blinking rapidly (it was kinda weird that I'd chosen that transformation, after all), since my panic started dying down and I had more rational control, I quickly transformed the patagium into eagle wings, and, in relief, discovered that my wings changed size in accordance with the size of my body.

They tore a hole in my pink California shirt, the one with the palm trees and sunset on it, but it was a small price to pay to, you know, not die. Again.

I caught a draft and it propelled me up into the air, over a brick building. The momentum from my fall carried me clear over the block, petering out as I dipped over the sidewalk towards a McDonald's. My arc curved downward, and I flapped my wings in a panic, but no drafts presented themselves.

Uh-oh.

Bonk.

I slammed face-first into the golden arches billboard, and stuck to it all spread-eagled for a moment. Funny, since I had eagle wings, the insane part of me observed.

Then I peeled off it like a cartoon character and fell hard onto the ground.

An old lady eeped and backed away quickly, one hand over her heart.

"Owww… everything hurts…" I complained, cold sweat hanging off my skin. Soreness ached under my skin, throbbing dully throughout my nervous system. It didn't feel like I'd broken anything, which if I'd believed in a God, I would've considered a miracle. (And no, Thor didn't count. He wasn't supernatural, he was a natural, living being. An alien.) I didn't believe in God, so I recognized it for the simple luck it was.

Still.

Owwwww.

"A little help, anybody?" I groaned out, rubbing my poor head, and only succeeded in scaring the old lady I'd almost fell upon even more and making her run off as fast as her little old legs could carry her. It wasn't every day a buff-looking person with a California shirt, eagle wings, and an ape head spoke to you in the young voice of a fifteen year old kid, after all.

And that brought me to another realization; I could still speak like this. Probably because I still had a human vocal box. Hmm. Interesting idea.

Despite my weary plea, any pedestrians carefully scooted around me.

"Neat, thanks, America. Great country."

Little shits.

Tenderly, painfully, I picked myself up off the sidewalk. I shook myself a little, stretched, tensed, and took off running down the sidewalk, then jumped and flapped my wings. This time I managed to take off. I heard people shout in surprise as they watched, and I thought I heard a few snaps of phone cameras.

You know, flying would a lot more fun if every part of me wasn't screaming bloody murder.

I soared through the skies of New York, flapping over the cars below me and between the majestic buildings of the city. I turned my eyes to eagle eyes so I could see further; with how illuminated the city was, I didn't exactly need extra night vision right now. I flew around for around five, ten minutes with nothing forthcoming, but as my pain died down thanks to some convenient purring, I pondered how useful my power was for navigating New York City. It was about as useful as Spider-Man', if not moresos; speaking of, I didn't need his stickiness anymore, so I transformed back.

...Huh, I was beginning to feel kinda tired, and it wasn't because of the physical activity or the pain.

Weird…

As I considered the strangeness of that, I finally happened to spot a crime.

Several people in black ski masks and leather jackets were trying to break into the Abercombie & Fitch across from Trump Tower.

...Ew. Trump Tower. Just the name rang horrid on my tongue ever since my past life. I shuddered a little. Why couldn't they be trying to break into Trump Tower? Then at least I could turn a blind eye. Just kidding. I wouldn't… but I might have considered it.

I lowered myself carefully by gliding down, then, only fifteen feet above them, fell the rest of the way and landed in the classic superhero pose. "Sorry, fellas," I said as casually as a guy who'd almost fallen to his (second) death twenty minutes earlier could. "Just… dropping in!"

"What the hell, a kid?" one of them muttered, turning… only to pause and gape at me. "What the—who are… what are you!?"

"New hero on the block," I said with a light shrug, cracking my knuckles. "Call me Pan."

"...Pan?" They glanced at each other, baffled. "...Like for cooking?"

"...No, man," I sighed, slumping over and palming my face. "Like—the god of animals, you know? Pan?"

The robbers froze.

"Shit, we got a new god on the block!?" another of them yelped. "Aw, nah, nah, man, I did not sign up for this!"

"Wha—? No, I'm not an actual—" I began protesting, blinking rapidly, before shaking my head and sliding into a fighting stance. "Know what? Just… let's just get this over with, okay? You boys picked the wrong night to try to rob an A&F."

Realizing they weren't getting out of this except through me, they got in formation, and several of the group pulled out guns. My senses went haywire, screaming at me in warning, and in a sudden fright, I threw myself to the side, rolling over hard cement to avoid the bullets that streamed past me. My heart pounded; I'd just been two seconds away from death by gun.

Quickly getting back up to my feet, I leaped into the air, twisted, and slammed my foot into the side of the nearest robber's head. I held back a lot, since I knew I was stronger, but a satisfying crunch still rose up into the city. I dodged to the side as my senses warned me of oncoming danger, and a taller robber's fist flew at my big ol' monkey head. Like a dancer, I spun away, and I smacked my open palm up to knock his arm away and knock him off-balance, then connected three rapid punches against him; one on his belly, another on his right chest, and a third on his left shoulder. He tumbled backwards, out cold.

More gunfire had me ducking, but one bullet clipped through my wings. I let out a cry of pain, the appendage bending tenderly, and I swung my arms back loosely before kicking off the ground and launching myself forward. Trapping the shooter's head between all four of my limbs, I bent forward, and slammed my knees and elbows into the sides of his face. He stumbled backwards, and I landed easily. Adrenaline flowing through me from having been shot at multiple times, I spun and roundhouse kicked him unconscious.

The fifth and final robber backed away from me slowly, fear swelling in his eyes. The thought of joining his friends on the ground must not have sat too well with him, because instead of shooting at me more, he dropped his gun, turned, and fled.

"Oh, no you don't," I muttered, and sprinted after him.

He may have been older and taller, but my powers made me completely outpace him. In seconds, I'd caught up to him, grabbed the back of his jacket, and elbowed him in the face.

K.O.

The poor guy crumpled like a sack of potatoes. I winced sympathetically. That had to hurt. Bet he'd be feeling that one in the morning.

...I needed to do something about my shot wing. Wincing from the pain that I could now feel stronger thanks to the adrenaline wearing off, I transformed my wings away. When the pain went away, it brought me pause. I did stumble a little, and brought a hand up to my head. God, why was I tired? And why was I hungry? I turned around, gazed at the five robbers laying knocked out on the ground, and just kinda… stared.

Whoa. I'd done this.

Maybe I was more cut out for this kinda job than I'd thought, after all.

A disbelieving laugh bubbling out of me, I swallowed, rubbed my face, and quickly ran. I grew wings again, noting with some surprise that these ones weren't injured, and flew back to my apartment. When I landed on the balcony, I canceled my transformations and stumbled back in, dizzy. Whoa. I was tired and hungry as hell.

I headed to the kitchen first, my exhaustion causing me to stumble into the wall and drawers a few times, and wondered what I should eat. My eyes landed on a fresh loaf of bread in a plastic bag.

...I paused, shrugged, and tore off some.

The entire thing was gone before I knew it, but damn if I didn't feel better already. I narrowed my eyes. Was there some sort of connection there? ...How exactly was I able to transform, anyway? What did it do to me each time I did so? How did the transformations gain the energy they needed to work? Was the exhaustion and how starving I'd felt directly caused by how many transformations I'd used today in comparison to other times?

It made some sense, anyway. I didn't have any actual experimenting done, so I couldn't be sure, but it sounded reasonable enough. I figured I'd have to watch that and be sure to eat enough.

Still… mulling over the night's events, I felt pretty happy with myself, for like, the first time in a long time. I'd actually managed to stop a crime, which was… well, more than the average person could say. And I'd gotten my name out there. When those robbers were interviewed my name would be known. And the only real injury I'd gotten was a shot wing, which my powers seemed to negate. (I wondered how far this extended to. I couldn't see it allowing me to completely regrow a torn-off wing, for example.)

Smiling, I stretched, yawned, and went off to bed… and of course, my good mood couldn't carry over.

I dreamed of falling.