Prism Academy- Shadows Fall Chapter 3 (Patreon)

Chapter 3- Better than Sparkling Vampires?

A second later though and what his intentions had been didn’t really matter. There was a loud ear-popping burst of sound followed by a streak of red, orange and yellow which materialized into a man in spandex.

A bioluminescence practically glowed off of the man. It was practically brighter than the sparkles on those supposed vampires on that old movie that was still played sometimes at 2 am, not that I had ever been up that late watching the Liv Stream and definitely not that I had ever gotten addicted to it until I had to watch all the movies.

I had been so intent on what I expected to happen that I jumped backwards at the suddenness of all. At first one would have thought that the man teleported but after taking in everything that was happening, I realized that wasn’t the case.  It was simply that the man had flown down so fast that it was almost as if he had only just then appeared.

There was no mistaking who this was. Anyone who had seen a vid screen in the past two or three decades knew who this shiny was. Actually, I’d never expected to be standing this close to him. I needed to make sure I didn’t actually call him a shiny to his face. That was a slang term for heroes who generally preferred to be called supers or just plain heroes. That was when they weren’t waiting for us peons to fall at their feet in worship. Yeah, maybe I was a bit bitter, but if I was, then so were the rest of the slummers who felt abandoned by the so called heroes.

He was the hero known as Supreme. It was a lame name, but the guy behind it was anything but lame. He was one of the vaunted heroes from Prism Academy. The ones who were supposed to save what was left of mankind and push back the monsters. He stood a full two inches taller than me and had a barrel chest. Probably never had to work out a day in his life, let alone actually work for a living. Everyone knew that something about becoming a shiny made them specimens of human perfection.

I didn’t know exactly what they were supposed to be saving us from. If it was just monsters, that should have been handled decades ago. Many in the slums felt like the shinies were just the face of a system meant to keep them down for cheap labor. Who know if the history books could be trusted at all when we already knew that news stories were full of shit.

Yeah, maybe when I was younger I had been a fan boy, but dreams die hard and leave a bitter taste in your mouth. That Aden Samuels might as well have ended up dead alongside my parents. I still knew a little bit about the supers.  Supreme for all that he had a lame comic book name wasn’t just any hero either. He was alpha rank which put him in the top one percent of all heroes for power rating and more than that he was a tri-star.

Not a member of the gang that had controlled this portion of the slums until recently, but rather the group they took their name from. Tri-stars were heroes who could harness three of the six different prism rays. If Supreme’s costume was anything to go by that was clearly red, orange, and yellow. Although to be fair the colors of a costume didn’t necessarily mean anything.

The more I thought about that concept the more I realized it would be idiotic to broadcast what your abilities were if you didn’t have to. I only had the publicly available information to go off of, but that would mean that besides an enhanced body he had super powers in bright energy, movement, and senses. In fact, if I looked at him for very long, I was pretty sure that I could see auras of those colors dancing around him.

The thug leader fired his P-gun point blank at Supreme but all that happened was a bright red aura flared to life around the hero with each shot. The other gang members saw this and started making a run for it. Not that it would help them very much. Supreme flew forward, once again faster than Aden’s eyes could follow.

What I could see was the results. Supreme paused just long enough for Aden’s eyes to catch up. The hero’s fist was all the way through Dog’s head which had exploded in a burst of gore, none of which seemed to have landed on Supreme. So much or taking prisoners or questioning anyone. It must be nice to be so assured of yourself, so impervious to anything bad that you can kill several men without a second thought. It wasn’t like I wanted to go around killing people, like the telemarketer who wouldn’t shut up on my vid phone or the clerk who was too busy talking to her boyfriend to ring me up. Those were just little annoyances and even if the thought crossed my mind, I didn’t actually mean it, not even for the guy who pissed himself on the mag-train.

Then the hero was again a blur of colors as he moved amongst the hostages and chopped down each of the gang members till not a single one was left alive. So scratch killing a few guys. He ended up downing over twenty guys before it was over. I didn’t notice at first but he was so good that when he killed one of the gang members he did it in such a way that the spray from their insides didn’t land on any of the hostages. That was some real precision there, morbid, but precise.

After that he walked over slowly to check on the guys that I had put down. The one had been shot so there was nothing to do but he stared at the others for a second before finishing them off too. By this time though, I was no longer paying any attention to Supreme. It wasn’t that I had grown hardened to the bloody massacre happening right in front of me, but rather how could he be expected to, when four women came floating down from the sky to land amongst the milling slummers, apparently checking to make sure they were okay.

These weren’t just any women. They were Supreme’s rays. Well at least three of them were. I didn’t pay enough attention anymore to know all the latest drama. All anyone knew for sure was that refractors or male heroes had to bond with rays or female heroes to gain their powers. Beyond that the information was kept a secret which the Prism Academy guarded closely, at least from the likes of slummers.

More than that they were each gorgeous. I’d seen them on Liv stream  before but that simply didn’t do justice to how their skin tight uniforms showed off their figures. It was easy to see the appeal of super heroes when they physical perfection defined. As if being jealous about their powers wasn’t enough, normal people could never measure up to them. Thus the reasoning for why so many super heroes ended up also acting as models.

I was struggling to remember their names when one of them looked up at me. She was dressed mostly in a deep midnight blue. Her hair was jet black and her eyes felt like they pierced into my soul. She was a perfect image of a woman and I was pretty sure that I wasn’t just staring at her chest because it was impressive, but rather because her eyes were freaking me out.

A deep voice broke whatever unease I felt , but it took a second for me to focus and switch back to big brain thinking. “Did you maybe get hit in the head?” Supreme asked me again.

“What… oh… know I’m fine. I was just…”

“Ah, yeah. Staring at the rays. You know what they say kid, stare at the sun too long and you’ll go blind, but trust me. I get the appeal,” Supreme said smiling. “So you aren’t hurt?”

“No, they never managed to hit me. Well maybe one of the P-gun blasts went through that guy. I was holding him as a shield to keep from getting shot,” I answered while pointing to the man who was dead on the ground, his face covered in bloody froth. As I spoke, I couldn’t help but notice the idea of all four of the rays were on me as they had left the apartment dwellers and moved over to just a few feet from me and Supreme.

Supreme stared at the gun on the ground and then said, “Not likely, but you will probably want to be checked over by a doctor. Those are low grade particle guns. They are particularly nasty to get hit by as you can see but don’t have much penetrating power.”

“Oh, that’s good to know,” I said as the rays one by one came over to stand near Supreme. One of them, with a red sash on her spandex uniform wrapped her arm around the hero’s and pressed herself up against him. The message couldn’t have been clearer and even then it was a challenge to pull my eyes off of her ample cleavage which the uniform only served to highlight. The faint red aura I saw around her didn’t do anything to keep my eyes off of her. Unlike Supreme, her aura flickered in and out of my sight.

“You seriously took out those four even with a P-gun and weapons? And none of them laid a hand on you?” Supreme asked.

“Yeah, I mean that is, Yes Sir.” I hated that the old surge of fan boy emotions went through me. I wasn’t twelve anymore and had a much better understanding of how the world works. Heroes like these were a problem as much as a solution.

The woman in red chuckled as she said, “You must be quite the fighter. Maybe you should be the hero.”

“That was a childhood fantasy, but I had to give it up when my parents died. Life in the slums doesn’t leave much room for dreams.

“Life’s goal? What are you twenty?” Another of the women asked. This one had yellow gloved hands and a uniform that while still skin tight covered up her skin from neck to toe. The aura around her matched her gloves. I couldn’t help but notice how she cocked her head after speaking to me, like she was listening for something.

“Um, twenty-five actually. When I was a kid, I dreamed of taking the entrance exam. I wanted to be a hero like Prism.”

The woman in orange spandex snickered, “Most guys do.”

Yellow gloves said, “Shh… I want to hearwhat he has to say.”

The emphasis she put on the word ‘hear’ made me certain she had some type of sensory super power. Maybe she was listening for the truth of my words. Bitterness continued to fight to bubble to the surface, but I realized that was ridiculous. I didn’t need to worship the supers but they had saved my life. It would be rude to not acknowledge that.

“Now I just want to scape together enough to buy a small shop in the burbs and maybe eventually work my way completely out of the slums. That’s why I wouldn’t give them the money they asked for. Well, that, and it just pissed me off. Which reminds me, I should have said this sooner, but thank you.”

Yellow glove’s head straightened up and she looked at the woman in blue with the piercing gaze, “Are you sure?”

Blue didn’t say anything but the others including Supreme all nodded like someone had spoken and if anything seemed to stare at me harder. After a moment of awkward silence, Supreme said, “You’re welcome and I get it. You have to stand up for what you believe in.”

Blue finally spoke. “It isn’t that easy for norms, especially not in the slums.”

“Not that again,” Red said. She was really a striking blond even she couldn’t be taller than five feet. She looked petite next to Supreme who she was still pressing herself up again and still drew eyes with a glow around her, but as she spoke the sneer on her face made her look like the stereotypical heroine bitch which slummers hated.

Blue turned on Red with her own sneer. “Oh she speaks. You should probably leave figuring things out to those of us with brains. You’ve probably had so much cock in your face that what little brains you were born with got pushed out your ears.”