chapter 1

EPISODE ONE: RESCUE FROM RIVINGTON



CHAPTER ONE

It had been an...interesting summer for Ben, to say the least.

He was staying at his brother’s house, D’von having housed him for the last five years due to their parents freaking out about the emergence of his powers at age fourteen. (He had accidentally regurgitated a white-hot ball of electricity at the dinner table after his parents had a particularly heated argument, and his sudden outburst only made things worse.) D’von, for the record, was gifted as well, but much more capable of flying under the radar. He was so inconspicuous, in fact, that he had never been diagnosed with superpowers and thus, never received a formal education in using them, but he was doing fine on his own. Their parents still had no idea. His gift was mind control, and honestly, he could have brought about world peace if he was put in front of the right world leaders, but he was of the staunch opinion that he didn’t owe anything to the world, so he spent his days working as a bartender and using his power to finesse exuberant tips out of his guests, which was how the Taylor-Moore boys were able to afford their comfortable two-story house.

Ben, on the other hand, was much less adept at using his power.

For example: towards the end of summer, he was behind the counter of the convenience store where he worked, minding his own business, waiting for a customer at 3 AM, when a masked gunman barged in and stuck him up, demanding he open the register. So he did, and then the man demanded with a gun pressed to his temple that he open the safe, too.

The robber was so practiced at this, there was no emotional reading coming off of him. To him, Ben was just another splatter on the ground if he didn't open that safe.

Which he didn't know the combination to.

And he couldn't so much as muster a spark.

It was a good thing Bombshell showed up in the nick of time.

Go Fork Yourself had had a field day extracting the gunman from the building, and Ben probably should have been in counseling, but at least he wasn't dead.

***

"God, turn your blinker off, you fuckin' idiot!" Oriana swore at the car in front of her before swerving recklessly around it, shaking her head. In the passenger's seat of her silver sedan, Ben clutched the armrests.

His car was in the shop: he had accidentally fried the battery with a misfire of his powers. Luckily, his cousin was available to drive him to school for move-in day. "Slow down, Ori! Someone's gonna recognize your driving if you're not careful!"

"This far from Blackwater City? Nah. Especially not in my civvy car. Out here, I'm just a maniac in a Honda Accord." She hung a sharp left and weaved her way down the feeder road.

"Just try'n not kill us."

"Relax, I'm a great driver."

"But you're on edge. You're jumpy, you've lost sleep...wait. You aren't still e-stalking Big Tech, are you?"

"It's not stalking, it's research. Besides, newsflash: you agreed to help me!"

"I was along for the ride at first, but I don't think this level of obsession is healthy."

"I can't help it!" Oriana squirmed in her seat. "He's so...driven. So brazen, so...so 'fuck-the-system.' I see a lot of myself in him. Or maybe I see him in me, haha! It makes me want to just--"

"Cool it Oriana. I can taste your feelings, remember? And this...this is weird."

"Sorry. Hmm. Tax fraud. Swine flu. How to get rust out of bathroom grout."

"Better," he sighed. "Hey, can you still take me to the shop to get my car a week from now?"

"Barring any emergency. Why can't D'von take you?"

"He can't get out of work on a Friday."

"Yes he can! He's the most powerful compulse in the state that I'm aware of! He can mind control his way out of anything!"

"Yeah, but he thinks the restaurant will fall apart without him." It probably would. Antonio's Mex-Italian Cantina's menu was a mess. Without D'von there to keep the establishment's patrons in their seats, ordering and tipping, the place would have folded already.

She hung a right on West Main and finally, finally, dropped Ben and his suitcases off in front of the brick archways that served as the facade of the school. "You need help getting your stuff to your dorm?"

"I'll be fine," said Ben.

"Listen, any trouble and you call the hotline, okay?"

"Bet."

With that, she sped off.

***

Ben had mixed feelings about returning for his sophomore year at the Bellevue Academy for the Gifted. On the one hand, he might actually start the year right. He had lost twenty pounds over the summer, if only because he mostly only spoke to his brother and Oriana. D’von was pretty emotionally closed-off, and Oriana...well, let's just say she kept herself busy. He was still chubby, but some progress was better than none, right? On the other hand, classes were demanding, he had never been a great student, and every semester seemed to drive him further from his childhood best friend and longtime crush, who was clearly more talented than he could hope to be.

As he hauled his things into the dorm for the start of term, he was stopped by his friend Blake, another misfit who mostly kept to the on-campus LGBT club. “Sup, man? I heard you had a close encounter with Bombshell.”

Not wanting to seem uncool, Ben shrugged, leaned against the wall, and said, “Yeah. I had the mo'fucker on the ropes, but it was nice of her to come finish him off for me.”

He had never actually been in a single fight in his life, but ‘I’m secretly a take-no-names badass using the whole 'hapless' front to keep everyone off their guard’ was a much more appealing vibe than ‘I can still barely control this superpower thing,’ so since last year, he had been running with it.

"What was she like?"

"Well, she was wearing orange…"

"Cut the crap. Did you get her number, or what?" asked Blake. "Personally, she leaves a bit to be desired for me...namely the lack of something between the legs. But hey, you swing both ways, and you're totally her type."

Ben wanted to blurt out, 'That's my cousin!' But it wouldn't do to compromise Bombshell's identity like that. "Everyone has her number. It's posted in public on her Twitter. But it ain't like that, man. She likes someone else."

"Oh really? Anyone we've heard of?"

"She wouldn't give me many hints," Ben lied, "but it's someone on the super scene. And he works in Blackwater City. And don't quote me on this, but he might be self-made rather than born in."

"Don't tell me it's Big Tech," said Blake. "That would be so...unlike her. Then again...there's a conspiracy theory going around amongst the freshman that he only became a villain because he wants her to smack him. We're pretty sure Heather Greene started the rumor. And it's a far stretch, but...have you heard of feedism?"

"Have I? Maybe?" D'von and Oriana were both card-carrying members. Everyone knew Bombshell was a feeder; the way she used biomanipulation to whack crooks with the weight-gain stick to impede the progress of their crimes, how could they not? And D'von brought home a new pudgy paramour every week, sometimes more than one, sometimes more than one at a time. It was weird, having a cousin and a brother who were both of the opinion that fat was the most delightful substance on planet earth...meanwhile, for Ben, it was just part of his everyday reality.

And then...then, there she was.

Walking toward him, a vision in her summer dress with a sash tied around her waist, was the Felicity Cohen.

Every inch of her tall, slender frame exuded confidence from her golden blonde curls to the toes of her pink kitten heels, and really, why wouldn't she be confident? She was well-read, intelligent, and had a natural mastery over her enhanced physicality: endowed with the powers of flight, immense strength, and superhuman durability, she was a Goddess even among the gifted. She was also, by consensus of the student body, the most beautiful girl in school. Her talents with her powers had earned her instant popularity last year, and these days she was usually surrounded by a posse of rich kids and model students. He wondered how she had been able to shake off her clique to come and see him. "You cut your hair," he noted. It was long before the start of summer, but now fell just above her shoulders. "I like it."

"And you got held at gunpoint, so I heard!" said Felicity. She was worried. Her concern overwhelmed him. As she threw herself around him in a hug, it felt to him like being lovingly fed hot soup in bed...forcefully...through a beer bong.

He waved Blake along to allow them some privacy. He’d need to adjust to this much social interaction. “Aight, Lissy, lemme explain, but first, imma need you to dial it back a little bit. You know how I have trouble with these feelings things.”

He went around the corner, by the windows, after throwing his stuff past the entrance of his room, hoping she would follow. “Everything was fine. Bombshell came.”

"Good, good...she didn't accidentally hit you, did she?"

"What? No! Lissy, I been fat since ninth grade."

Since he came into his powers.

Electro-empathy: that was what the doctor had called his ability to turn others' emotions into electrical output. Only, for some reason, most of the time his body converted it into blood glucose instead. Between high school and the start of college, he'd gained eighty pounds, and not in any traditional way. The empathic energy he ran into every day sustained him so well, he didn't even have to eat anymore. He subsisted these days on multivitamins and grapefruit LaCroix.

"You told me. I'm just still getting used to the new you. Not that it should matter."