Unlikely Heroes

Cal wasn’t completely sure that he wanted to even go to a beach party, but since Leon and Brett could only get in with him, he decided a little beach trip with Mikaela could have been fun. Living in the outskirts of a city right on the line between New York and New Jersey, taking a trip to the Jersey Shore every now and then for fun. It was a little strange going to a party that Sadie was throwing, but somehow they were on their merry way to the beach, with Leon sticking his head out the window of the car to flip off motorcyclists who drive like maniacs, Brett begging him to come back in before a motorcycle gang turned on them, and Mikaela laughing her head off at the two of them.

Leon finally sat back down in his seat when Brett grabbed the back collar of his shirt and yanked hard, Leon’s insults cut off mid-word by a choking sound. He glared at Brett and punched his arm, and it would have become an all out fight if Mikaela didn’t reach back there and hit them both.

“I will turn this car around,” Cal warned, “If you two don’t behave.”

“He’s not bluffing,” Mikaela added.

“Okay, I get that you two are some weird couple out of the blue, but you’re not our parents,” Brett said, rolling his eyes.

Cal suddenly jerked the wheel and both boys in the back yelped as he suddenly shifted four lanes, as if he was actually going to make a u-turn in the middle of the highway.

“Okay, okay! We’ll behave!” Leon yelled.

Mikaela laughed again, and Cal grinned and winked at her as Brett and Leon were silent for the rest of the trip. Cal could hear the bass pumping from the parking lot, and Leon and Brett had bolted out before he’d even come to a complete stop. Mikaela, however, hesitated. Cal looked over at her, noticing she was a little tense.

“You don’t have to go if you don’t want to,” he said softly, reaching over to take her hand. “We could go somewhere else. We could go see a movie or something.”

“No, I’ll go,” she said quickly, shaking her head. “Brett and Leon are already gone. You know we have to babysit hamster boy, or he’s going to fuck shit up.”

“You’re probably right,” he smirked. “Are you sure?”

“Yeah, I’m sure.”

Cal took her by the hand and walked her to the beach, where a huge crowd of their classmates were drunkenly stumbling around. Few people really had an interest of swimming. Most of them just wanted an excuse to be mostly naked and wasted, so no one would question the way they were tangled up with each other. Leon already had a drink in his hand and his shirt was missing, and Brett was chatting with some girl who for once, seemed to show some slight interest in what he had to say.

“Well, they’re occupied,” Mikaela smirked. “And look who Sadie brought along.”

Cal leaned against one of the posts of the dock and pulled Mikaela in close by her waist, looking over her shoulder at where Sadie was very obviously hanging off of Derek and laughing unnaturally loud, just in case, heaven forbid, somebody didn't know she had Derek there as her date. He caught her glancing at him every now and then, but he couldn't care less, shrugging and looking back at Mikaela.

"They deserve each other," he murmured, kissing her forehead. "Who cares? You've got me here. Unless you'd rather go hang out with Derek-"

Mikaela touched a finger to his lips to shut him up, warning him not to even go there. He smirked and pulled her hand out of the way, bending down to kiss her and holding tightly on to her so she couldn’t get away no matter how much she giggled and squirmed when he tickled her sides. They eventually caught the attention of Sadie, who looked devastated with seeing them together. Even though Derek was trying to get handsy with her, her eyes were glued to Cal. Without warning, she suddenly stalked over, with Derek following closely behind her in confusion.

“What does she have that I don’t?” Sadie demanded, glaring at Cal.

He frowned and glanced at her, then looked around at the people around them, who were now watching. Mikaela turned around to look too, but Cal kept an arm around her waist, just in case anyone tried to pounce on her.

“Look, Sadie, it didn’t work out between us, okay?” Cal sighed. “I’ve been telling you this often, but you’ve been telling everyone else that everything between us is fine. Things worked out between me and Mikaela. It’s as simple as that.”

Sadie blushed as some whispers started up around them, about Sadie lying about Cal being her boyfriend. She glanced over at them, then glared at Mikaela.

“So you think you’re so smart and so pretty,” she grumbled.

“No, but you seem to think that for me,” Mikaela said cooly. “It’s over, Sadie. Just go away.”

Sadie was so furious she was practically shaking. She suddenly tried lunging at Mikaela, but Derek yanked her back, just as Cal held Mikaela back to keep her from attacking.

“Easy, girl,” Cal whispered to her. “Don’t let her get to you.”

While he could still feel that Mikaela was tense, she drew back slightly. Sadie, however, was still kicking and screaming in Derek’s grip.

“I thought you said you’ve been dying to go out with me,” he grunted, holding onto Sadie.

“Don’t be stupid!” she snapped at him. “I don’t give two shits about half the things you have to say, you’re just the next best thing after Cal. This wouldn’t have been an issue if Mikaela wasn’t such a back-stabbing whore!”

“Hold the fuck up,” Derek said, yanking her back so she was still. “So Cal Bennett had you, and now he has Mikaela? This isn’t about Mikaela, Sadie, this is about this motherfucker right here.”

“Excuse me?” Cal asked, raising an eyebrow.

Derek let go of Sadie as Cal let go of Mikaela, right before Derek got in his face and shoved him back.

“You think you can have both my girlfriends, huh?” Derek accused.

“I think we just established that neither of them were into you in the first place,” Cal laughed.

He didn’t laugh for long, being cut off by a punch in the face that made his vision go in and out for a minute. He heard both Sadie and Mikaela shriek his name, glancing over at them for a moment.

“Will you get your own fucking life?” Mikaela snapped at her.

“This is my life, you’re the one who stole it!” Sadie accused.

Next thing he knew, Sadie was clawing at Mikaela with manicured fingernails as Mikaela tugged hard on a handful of her blonde hair, and Cal couldn’t do anything about it because Derek was swinging his fist at him again. This time, Cal wasn’t going to get hit, especially in front of the crowd that had formed around them. At least he had one thing he could thank his father for: Being forced to train in hand-to-hand combat. He blocked the punch and brought his knee up hard to Derek’s gut, knocking the air out of him. While he was caught in a daze, Cal twisted his arm and turned him around, shoving him down into the sand. While Derek was down, he turned back to Mikaela and Sadie, prying them off of each other. Thankfully, neither one of them looked like they were hurt. Just very, very angry.

Mikaela clung to Cal like he was her property, while Sadie adjusted her swimsuit top and denim shorts so nothing accidentally popped out, like most of the crowd was hoping for.

“Come on, we’re leaving,” Cal said, taking Mikaela’s hand and leading her away.

“I hope you enjoy yourself, Mikaela, because soon he’ll shake you off as some lame hook up, just like everyone else!” Sadie yelled at the back of their heads as they walked away. “So you enjoy the champagne and the yacht and the expensive stuff! It’s not going to last for long! He’ll get sick of you like every other girl he’s ever been with and kick you to the curb!”

Cal’s jaw clenched as they got out of there, slamming his car door a little too hard, considering how sensitive he was about other people slamming it. Mikaela was tense too, but eyed him as she combed her hair back into place with her fingers. Cal wasn’t sure exactly where they were going, but he started driving towards home, both him and Mikaela completely silent until she finally spoke up in a gentle voice.

“What about Brett and Leon?” she asked.

“They’ll find another way to get home,” Cal grumbled.

Mikaela went silent for a little while longer, reaching into her bag to change back into normal clothes instead of beachy ones while Cal drove. When she was dressed, she spoke again.

“Why did we think going over there would be a good idea?”

“I guess, in a perfect world, we could have gotten away with being together without Derek and Sadie interfering,” Cal shrugged. “But this isn’t a perfect world. Far from it.”

Mikaela shifted in her seat to turn and face him, gingerly touching a spot under his right eye that looked a little bit swollen.

“Derek really hit you, didn’t he?” she said softly, taking her cold water bottle and giving it to Cal to hold it there and hopefully decrease the swelling.

“Not as hard as I hit him,” Cal smirked.

“Can I ask you something?”

“Of course.”

“What did Sadie mean? About the yachts and champagne and stuff?”

Cal grimaced, shaking his head lightly. “I’d rather not talk about it. Not right now, at least. But on that note, I hope you know that you’re different to me than anyone else I’ve ever been with. I’ll never give you the boot, like Sadie said I would.”

“I know,” Mikaela said with a slight smile.

Cal smiled back, and they were fairly silent the rest of the way until they got closer to home, though they had to drive through the more urban parts of the city to get to their suburban neighborhoods. Cal frowned as traffic got thicker, where police officers had blocked it off up ahead. He rolled down his window as a cop came over.

“What’s going on up there?” Cal asked.

“Hostage situation,” the cop told him. “There’s a detour around that way. We’ve closed off the street ahead.”

Cal nodded and followed the traffic towards the detour, until they were on the other side and could move again. Mikaela frowned as Cal pulled into an empty alley and parked his car there, glancing over at him in confusion.

“Cal, are you going to kill me and dump my body here?” she asked him.

“Did you hear that? Hostage situation,” he reminded her.

“Yeah, it sucks. What do you want to do about it?” she said, rolling her eyes. “You’re going to go there in your striped swim trunks and bro tank?

“Even better. Guess what I’ve been keeping in he trunk of my car,” he grinned, getting out of the car and opening the back.

“Oh, Cal, right now?” Mikaela said, following him out and looking down at the outfits they’d made together not too long ago.

“What better time than now?” Cal said. “Come on, we’re both pissed the hell off. Consider it anger management.”

She gave him a look, then cracked a smile and took her clothes, getting into the back of Cal’s car to change. There was nothing graceful and heroic about them squeezing into tight pants, but when they got out of there, Cal had to admit that they looked pretty damn cool. Especially with the masks.

“Let’s go shove some justice down their throats,” he grinned, running out of there with Mikaela.

“Hold on, we can’t just stroll in there,” Mikaela whispered, pulling him back.

Cal thought for a moment, then took her hand and turned invisible, feeling the static spread over his body. He’d never tried it on another living being, but how hard could it have been? If he could do it with bricks, he could do it with Mikaela. She flinched when the static spread over her, making her hair stick out slightly.

“What?” she frowned as Cal laughed at her.

“Nothing,” he chuckled. “Come on, before someone gets shot.”

As expected, they managed to get through traffic and all the way to the crime scene without anyone paying them any attention, even when Cal was making faces at the same cops that had escorted him home more than once or twice.

“Hey, there’s Vito,” Cal whispered, pointing to one officer in particular.

“That’s Leon’s cousin?” Mikaela whispered back.

“Yeah.”

“He’s pretty cute.”

Cal frowned and looked at her, shrugging. “Yeah, I guess if you’re into the tall, dark, uniformed type…”

“I’m into you, Cal. You’re my type,” she said, rolling her eyes. “Now come on, we have to get in there.”

Cal nodded and led Mikaela around back, where they easily snuck in without any of the cops noticing. The hostages were being kept by a robber in a pawn shop, who had them all sitting on the floor in the center of the shop with a gun pointed at him and the store’s phone in his hand.

“Food? You’re offering me food?” the robber spat into the phone at the cop who was clearly on the other end of the line. “Come on, that’s the oldest trick in the book. No sir, I want you guys to step aside as I take what I need and go. Or one of these young people will die. Which will be a shame. I hear he’s a law school student. He has so much potential.”

He tapped one hostage in particular with the gun, who was trembling with terror. Cal and Mikaela ducked behind a counter, watching and listening. They nodded to each other before leaping over the counter behind the robber, who turned around and just stared at them in confusion, lowering the gun with an amused smile.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” he laughed. “Okay, I’m not even going to kill you. Superheroes? Reall? Who sent you, the cops? Or are you some kind of singing christmas-grams that didn’t realize it’s not Christmas?”

“Don’t worry about who we are,” Cal snapped, surprising the robber. “Worry about how you’re about to become someone’s prison bitch.”

“Okay, now that was dumb,” the robber smirked, raising his gun.

“I wouldn’t underestimate us,” Mikaela added. “What are you going to do without your gun in your hand?”

“What?” the robber said, furrowing his brow in confusion.

Everyone gasped when the gun suddenly flew out of his hand and floated above his head, pointed at him. His eyes widened as he looked back at Mikaela, head snapping over and realizing that Cal wasn’t next to her anymore. Cal reappeared right behind the guy, snatching the gun out of the air and holding it to his back.

“Boo,” he said, laughing as the robber jumped in surprise.

“D-did you just teleport from one side of the room to another?” he stammered. “And the girl took my gun?”

“You know, I think we totally just did,” Mikaela grinned.

“Alright, buddy, on the ground,” Cal said.

The robber was quick to get on the ground, mostly because Mikaela had used her power to rip the rug out from beneath his feet, causing him to hit the ground hard. He scrambled to get to his hands and knees at least, looking up at Cal as he let go of the gun and it just stayed there in mid-air, until Mikaela stepped beside him and it floated to gently sit on the counter.

“Now, tell everyone you’re sorry,” she said, like talking to a small child.

“I-I’m s-sorry,” he muttered.

“For?”

“F-for taking you h-hostage,” he finished.

“Now tell the law student that you’ll pay his tuition before you go to prison,” Cal added.

“I don’t have that kind of money!” he frowned.

“Say it,” Cal pushed. “And look at him.”

The robber looked to the young law student he’d been threatening, who also looked scared out of his mind.

“I’ll p-pay your t-tuition,” he said.

Cal grinned and glanced out the window at the police officers who were watching everything happen in awe, seemingly waiting to see who’s side Cal and Mikaela were on.

“Who are you people?” one of the hostages asked.

“Psionica and Spectro,” Cal answered confidently. “Remember the motherfuckin’ name.”

“Spectro, huh?” Mikaela smirked, raising an eyebrow. “I thought Spectro was a ‘stupid’ name?”

“We’ll discuss it later,” Cal mumbled awkwardly, walking over to the counter and opening a drawer, digging through it until he found some zipties.

He used two large zipties to bind the robber’s ankles and hands behind his back, saluting the cops before taking Mikaela’s hand and turning invisible once more, so they could sneak out the back undetected as the police force spilled into the room to free everyone and take the robber into custody.



“Well hello, handsome.”

Cal turned around just as Mikaela pulled him down into a kiss, ignoring the seemingly annoyed looks the other students were giving them as they tried to move around them to get to class.

“You’re in a good mood,” Cal smirked.

“I am. I haven’t stopped thinking about last night, and how amazing it felt,” she said, lowering her voice.

“Which part, the robbery, or what we did afterwards?” Cal asked.

“I meant the robbery, but that other part was pretty great too,” she said, laughing lightly. “But that feeling of doing something good. I mean, we saved those people. All of them survived, without a scratch. Who knows if the cops could have done that on their own?”

“Alright, Wonder Woman, don’t get too ahead of yourself,” Cal chuckled.

“You two!”

Cal and Mikaela both frowned and looked over as a voice acknowledged them, expecting it to be Derek from the tone of infuriation, but both surprised to find that it was Leon. Cal had seen Leon angry maybe once or twice in his whole life, and it wasn’t a pretty sight. He was usually a happy, goofy, non-threatening guy, but when he was irritated enough to be that mad, it was a whole other story. Mikaela was just in shock, not having known that Leon was even capable of being this way.

“Look, I’m sorry for ditching you at the party,” Cal started, “But obviously you found another way home, so-”

“Forget about the party,” Leon growled, shoving Cal back against the lockers. “You have something else to explain to me.”

Cal looked at him in confusion as he reached into his backpack and pulled out a crumpled piece of paper, smoothing it out before handing it over to him. Cal frowned when he realized it was a somewhat blurry photo of him and Mikaela in the pawn shop, taking down the robber. Blurry enough so they couldn’t see their facial features, but clear enough to see everything else.

“What of it?” Cal asked.

“Don’t play stupid, Calvin,” Leon said, lowering the volume of his voice. “You remember back when we promised each other we’d never lie, and that we’d always tell each other everything? Like the ‘brothers we needed but never had’, you said. You said that, Cal. I hear lies every day. I hear lies about how my parents didn’t suffer when they died, lies about how this bullshit medication is going to fix my brain, and lies about how the ‘nice doctor’ is going to make everything okay. You said you’d never lie. And if you’re going to tell me that this isn’t you, you’re breaking that promise.”

Cal could see the hurt in Leon’s eyes. He was well aware that like he said, nothing was okay in that head of his, and having a best friend he could trust was one of the only things keeping him well-enough to function. He glanced over at Mikaela, who gave him a slight nod.

“How did you figure it out?” Cal asked quietly.

“I sit behind Mikaela in class,” Leon answered, tapping Mikaela’s back on the photo. “I know the back of her head pretty well. And you’re wearing the same dumb shoes you wear to school every single day. The ones you doodled all over.”

He tapped Cal’s shoes in the picture, which were blurry, but had some black spots on it which were the doodles Cal had drawn while he was bored in class. He looked down at the shoes he was wearing at that moment, too.

“Explain,” Leon demanded.

“Fine. But listen closely, and keep an open mind, okay?”