Dial H for Heroics

Jack Lee checked his watch as he jogged from one tree to another. Something was following him, but he didn’t know what it was. It looked like a bear of some kind. The ready light wasn’t lit on his dial, so he couldn’t change up to deal with his problem.

He had a few ideas on what he could use to get around. If he was right, he could fly to the city and look around for Josie as soon as his watch was ready. He just had to stay away from the bear until then.

He couldn’t count on anything like the Whizzer, or Quicksilver, to be a movement specialist. Their names weren’t specific enough. Falcon, American Eagle, and Wasp should get him some kind of flight from the way the watches worked.

He grimaced the Phoenix might not get him a master telekinetic and telepath. Instead, he might get a bird that burned itself up to be reborn out of the ashes. That wasn’t useful unless he caught someone in a closed space and set them on fire with him.

He nodded as the watch dinged. He could head for the city and try to find Josie. He had some ideas about that, but if he was wrong, he wanted cover to keep people from trying to mob him because he was some kind of witch.

He picked Falcon and turned into a bird. He took to the air. He heard the bear crash behind him, but he was climbing away from the predator before it could stop him.

He knew that he would have been grounded if the thing had managed to claw him while he was in a smaller body. The next thing would have been some kind of bite to the neck.

Jack climbed until he saw the castle in the distance. He climbed some more and glided down. He hoped Josie had stayed out of trouble. The last thing they needed was to add on to the amount of work they had to do.

He admitted that he was lazy and didn’t want to do more than he needed to get out of the spot he was in.

He expected she knew everything about every hero on her watch with the minutes it had taken him to recharge from the Angel.

He spotted Josie laying on a roof. She looked like she was taking a nap. He landed on the roof and hopped around for a second. He switched his hero off so he could return to normal.

He noted his flight barely used any energy from the watch. He could fly as the Falcon for a long time. He didn’t know what good that did him, but he filed the facts away. He could fly for a long distance before having to rest, or go to Angel for a minute and dump on anything not as tough as he was.

He needed some midrange fighters in case he didn’t want to run, or just wreck a whole city block.

“Hey, Josie,” he said.

“I’m okay, Jack,” said Josie. She didn’t open her eyes. “I just need something to eat, and some place to sleep. Then we need to find someone who can help us with our quests. I just don’t know how to get started, so I’m having some kind of existential crisis for some reason.”

“I think we can look around at ground level,” said Jack. “Sitting up here isn’t going to get us anything.”

“I guess you’re right,” said Josie. “Do you think Mister Warner put his watch on?”

“No shot,” said Jack. “That watch went into some storage thing in the back of the store. Mister Warner had absolutely no interest in putting it on. Maybe he’ll try it out in a couple days when we don’t show up. That doesn’t mean he will come here.”

“You’re not making me feel better,” said Josie. She sat up. “How do we find this things we have to look for? I have no idea how to tame a bog hound.”

“Bog hound?,” said Jack. “I don’t know about that.”

“Didn’t you get that as a quest?,” asked Josie.

“Nope,” said Jack. “I’m supposed to save some village. I don’t know how I’m

supposed to do that when I don’t know where the village is.”

“So we didn’t get the exact same quests?,” said Josie. “I wonder why.”

“Why did we get them in the first place?,” asked Jack. “I thought you were supposed to get hit by a truck for this kind of stuff.”

“Truck-kun strikes again,” said Josie. “How do we find someone who will tell us what we need to know?”

“That part’s easy,” said Jack. “We just need to find a saloon and have some money to work with as our capital. We can just sit and listen while we eat the local slop.”

“And how do we do that?,” said Josie. “I doubt either of us have any local money.”

“But we both have guys who can make gold,” said Jack. “I have the Molecule Man, and any Eternal on my list of heroes.”

“The powers won’t be the same,” said Josie. “But there’s a chance that Doctor

Alchemy can make gold, or Element Lad. I think I would prefer to test with Alchemy. Element Lad probably just changes his body to match elements which won’t do us a lot of good.”

“How do we test it?,” Jack asked.

“I just need a rock,” said Josie. “I’ll see if Alchemy is on my list. Then I’ll try to turn the rock to gold. Hopefully, I won’t need the Philosopher’s Stone to do it.”

“All right,” said Jack. “I’ll be right back.”

He went over the side. She worked the watch. She nodded when the name lit up. It looked like the watch didn’t care which side of the fence the name was on.

She thought that Alchemy might qualify as a hero since he had two identities and went straight. He was one of the few Rogues that had got his life together and got out of being a villain. His namesake showing up and taking over the villain gig was an evil twin plot of the Cary Bates kind.

She waited for Jack to return with whatever they were going to use as a test subject. At the very least, the Doc might get them some kind of alchemical knowledge that would help them if they had the right ingredients.

How much juice would he take to use? That would let her know how long she had to write any kind of exotic equation for their transformation sequence.

Jack climbed back up on the roof. He put several scavenged rocks down next to each other. He stepped back.

“This might not work,” warned Josie.

“If it doesn’t, I’ll turn into the Angel and see if I can do it with him,” said Jack.

“Don’t worry. We’re just testing what you can do.”

“You might want to get behind me, or move to the next roof,” said Josie. She placed her hand on the watch button. “You don’t want to be gold if I miss.”

“Good point.” Jack moved to stand directly behind Josie. It was still risky. What if the power worked like an aura. Still he didn’t want to move to another roof to watch the action.

“Here we go,” said Josie. She pushed the button and transformed into a woman wearing a hooded tunic in dark blue, blue pants, and boots. She raised her hands. Writing surrounded the smallest rock. It transformed with a snap. The rest followed as soon as the circle of letters closed around them. She released the hero and returned to her smaller body and Mage shirt. “I think it worked.”

“That looked cool,” said Jack.

“It looked kind of like the runes from Eff Eme Ay,” said Josie. “I actually didn’t think it would work. Doctor Alchemy needed a rock to do his transformations. I was worried I would have to make one of those before I could do the rest.”

“It worked,” said Jack. “Now we have money to get rooms and look at things without being considered beggars.”

“We’re going to need to blend in,” said Josie. She waved her hands at her outlandish clothes.

“Just transform them,” said Jack. He picked up the gold. “Duh.”

“Okay,” said Josie. “I didn’t think of that.”

She paused.

“I can’t change them while I’m wearing them,” she said.

“Then take them off, transform them, put them back on,” said Jack.

“We talked about this sexual harassment,” said Josie.

“You are making things too complicated,” said Jack. “Look around us. We’re in a fairy tale trying to get out. I bet you half of these buildings don’t have indoor plumbing. Think about that.”

Josie looked around, examining the sprawl around them. She had realized there was no modern conveniences to be had, but somehow she had thought there would be plumbing. She didn’t want to use a chamber pot.

“I’m holding it until we get home,” said Josie.

“Don’t drink any of the water,” said Jack. “You might get a taste of whatever they call Montezuma’s Revenge here.”

“I hate you,” said Josie. “Why are you so happy?”

“Because I don’t have to worry about the real world until I get home, and we don’t know what the time difference is,” said Jack. “I might be able to save gold from here to retire there when we do go back.”

“We still need someone to ask directions from,” said Josie.

“No problem,” said Jack. He changed into a green thing with bones sticking out of its skin, too much jaw, and patches of hair. He crushed the gold into plates. He dropped the hero form. “We’ll need a bank to change our gold into something spendable.”

“All right,” said Josie. “Where do we find the guy who’ll help us?”

“On the street,” said Jack. “Just follow me, and keep your eyes open for pickpockets.”

He descended a trellis to land in an alley between their building and the next one. He waved for her to come down. She climbed down with the speed of a sloth. She realized she could have just flown down when she was close enough to drop the rest of the distance without hurting herself.

“Why are we climbing around?,” she complained. “We could have flown.”

“That uses up power,” said Jack. “We don’t want to wait for the charge to fill up because we’re lazy.”

“I’m not lazy,” said Josie. “I just procrastinate.”

“All right,” said Jack. He led the way through the crowd. “We’re looking for a spot where someone will talk to us without asking a lot of questions.”

“There were some women in the square,” said Josie. “They might be friendly enough to point us in the right direction.”

“All right,” said Jack. He kept his hands in his pockets as he walked. “If we can’t find a place to live, we could probably build one that no one would notice in this. Maybe turn it into a fort until we find the princess.”

“We’re probably going to have to travel around,” said Josie.

“I have the Falcon to fly,” said Jack. “I don’t know what the others can do, and I don’t want to find out in the middle of a town. I might knock over buildings just trying to move around in a hero body.”

“It looks like you were right about the animal names,” said Josie. “I wonder where that puts me for Animal Man, and Beast Boy.”

“Maybe you’ll be able to change into any animal you want,” said Jack. “That would be an improvement over only being able to change into one animal.”

“Maybe,” said Josie. “Do you have an idea where we’re going?”

“Not really,” said Jack. “I’m moving with the crowd so all they see is the clothes so we don’t have to do something stupid in the middle of a panic.”

Josie thought that she could fry a bunch of the people around them with some of the firebased heroes that must be on the list in her watch.