The Too-Hot Tot (A City of Heroes fan-fiction story) Part 4 posted

[BlueBard]

The Too-Hot Tot
By Bluebard

Bystanders scattered when a red-orange figure cannonballed out of the sky and impacted the ground hard enough to shake half the block.  The citizens of Paragon City were used to scattering; the elementary schools even had emergency drills so the kids could practice getting out of the line of fire of the latest superhuman battle scene.

They relaxed when they recognized the figure.  A little.

GeoFire couldn't help grinning.  "Sorry 'bout that, folks!  Hot Stuff, coming through!" he called out as he launched himself high into the air in another parabolic arc. 

The bystanders shook their heads as they watched the rocky-skinned hero go.  They were visibly more relaxed when they saw him continue on his way.  GeoFire wasn't the most colorful, the most powerful, or the most imposing hero on the streets, but he still managed to leave an impression.  Especially in the sidewalk.

"Ya-Hoo!" he crowed at the top of his arc.  Being a mutant who could transmute himself into superheated minerals and harness the geothermal forces of the Earth itself was okay, but he really got a rush out of leaping over small buildings as he made his way across the city.  Even with the wind whistling past, however, he still heard the insistent pulse tone of his City-issued communicator.

He slammed down to earth feet first in the middle of a small park.  Sighing, he hauled the communicator out of the waistband of his tights, looked at the caller ID, and answered it.

"Gino's Pizza.  Carry out, or delivery?"

"I'm not laughing, GeoFire," the female voice on the other end responded irritably.  The woman was Antoinette "Toni" Sheridan, from the city's Superhuman Affairs department, and she was responsible for keeping a few dozen super-powered vigilantes in line and out of trouble.  GeoFire was one of her charges.  Toni kept the city attorneys from going after GeoFire for the collateral damage that nearly always resulted from his crime-fighting escapades and in return he did her favors on occasion.  "Are you coming, or what?"

"Okay then, delivery."  He paused for effect, then replied, "I'm almost there now."

"Make it snappy.  I've got a situation and I need you to handle it," she grumbled as she hung up on him.

Within a few minutes he had bounded his way to S.H.A. headquarters.  The Longbow agents at the security desk recognized him and waved him through to the back offices.  GeoFire presented himself in front of Toni's cubicle.  "Ta-Daa!"

Toni was a statuesque brunette with tired green eyes, not much older than GeoFire himself.  For the hundredth time he was tempted to ask her out, and for the hundredth time he remembered the brutal tongue-lashing the last ego-tripper who'd asked her out had gotten.  He also remembered what happened when the so-called Magnificent Man had given her a 'friendly' pat where his hand hadn't belonged.  Rumor was the guy was still in physical therapy.  Toni was one lady nobody in their right minds messed around with, not even the average superhero.

The annoyed glare he was getting from her now did nothing to encourage him along those lines.

"I'm here.  What's the score?  Who am I busting today?  Hellions?  Outcast?"

"None of the above," she shook her head.  "I've got a special assignment for you, Hot-Shot."  Toni favored him with a predatory grin.

"Ah, maybe I'll just go out and round up a few muggers, okay?"  Geo-Fire turned to leave.

"Uh-uh!  Get back here!  You owe me."

"Give me one good reason," he shot back over his shoulder.

"Does the Icey-Queen on Third and Western ring a bell?"

GeoFire's shoulder's slumped as he stopped in his tracks.  "Aw, come on!  That wasn't even my fault!" he protested as he turned around.  "I thought that was one of the Winter Lord's frostlings.  The guy should have known better than to run around in a snowman costume."

"He was promoting Icey-Queen's new flavor.  And then a certain individual crashed through their window and melted their inventory.  An individual who will, thanks to my efforts, not have his blue tights and flaming boots sued off by Icey-Queen."

"Okay, okay.  You got me.  What am I doing this time?"

"Nothing too hazardous for you, GeoFire.  I just want you to find somebody and bring him back here.  Follow me."

GeoFire followed the S.H.A. agent into a briefing room.  Toni picked up a remote and turned on the video wall.  It was playing news footage from WPAC TV showing a bald, muscular, four-foot tall man wearing what appeared to be a baby blue top with a heart on the front and huge diapers.  The man was whacking a car with what appeared to be a giant baby rattle made out of metal.

"You've got to be kidding me.  What kind of a supervillain dresses like that?"

"That's not a supervillain, GeoFire," Toni replied emphatically.  "That's... Billy."

"Who the heck is Billy?  And why is he destroying a car if he's not a bad guy?"

Toni sat on the edge of the conference table and sighed as she straightened her skirt.  "It's a long story.  Let me give you the short version.  Patriot City PD found an infant abandoned on the streets and brought him in to Child Protective Services.  Shortly thereafter, they discovered he was growing abnormally fast.  Then other things started happening.  Way out of CPS's league.  They brought him to S.H.A. and we've been taking care of Billy and keeping him out of the hands of over-eager scientists wanting to test his DNA ever since.  He's about three years old now... we think.  Mentally, he's a slightly above-average three year old boy... with an occasionally cranky disposition to match and enough power to do a whole lot of damage.  The media's dubbed him 'The Angry Infant'.  That's really unfair; Billy can be very sweet and funny when he wants to be.  But given the mindset of a superhuman toddler, I can understand it.

"Anyway," she continued, "Billy has a talent for getting away from us.  Normally we get him back here safe and sound before he can do too much damage.  Preferably before nap time."

"And this time?" GeoFire prompted her.

"Billy's, well... impressionable.  We try to be careful about what TV shows we let him watch, but yesterday he accidentally saw a news special about a superhuman fighting a large Clockwork robot and... he decided that he wanted to 'play superhero'."

"Why me?" GeoFire complained.

"One," Toni held up a finger, "He's strong, he has a rattle that hits like a mace, and you've got your rocky hide to protect you if he gets mad at you."

"Two," she counted her next point on another finger, "Billy can generate enough heat from his body to give most people third-degree burns and heat prostration.  You – are pretty much fireproof."

"C'mon, Toni!  There are lots of invulnerable, fireproof guys in this town!"

"Three," Toni looked directly at him, "Guess which superhero Billy decided to be?"

# # #

[konbiz]

I enjoyed this read... keep it up! I look forward to future installments  :thumbup:

[wickerman]

Good stuff - very entertaining.

[DireWolf]

Fun stuff, lot's of good details and touchs. Keep it up BB!

[BlueBard]

"This stinks," GeoFire muttered to himself later as he hopped over a Donut Heaven shop.  Toni set him up.  He knew she'd set him up.  If he accidentally used force to bring Billy in, well, no matter what the kid looked like he was a toddler.  Protective Services would nail him to the wall.  Fail to bring Billy in before he got hurt or did too much damage, and the media footage would make GeoFire look incompetent.  Either way, he got the bad PR.  But, thanks to a little misunderstanding, he was on the hook with Superhuman Affairs and Toni.

"Just for that, I'm not going to ask her out," he resolved. 

GeoFire's brooding was interrupted by the pulse from his communicator.  He landed heavily on a rooftop, startling a flock of roosting pigeons into the air.  He ignored the feathers floating down as he glanced at the Caller ID and took the call.

"What?" he rumbled, running his stony fingers through his wild, spikey hair in frustration.

"My, not our usual happy-go-lucky self today, are we?" Toni chided him.

"If I wanted to chase kids all day, I'd work at a day care."

"I take it that means you haven't found him yet."

"Ding, ding, ding.  Correct."

"Then you'll be glad I called.  Billy's been spotted.  Get over to the BestGear store in Galaxy City, on the double before he leaves."

"On my way," GeoFire replied, shoving his communicator back into his waistband as he leapt off the rooftop.  Fortunately for him, he was already near the Galaxy City tunnel in King's Row and didn't have to double back to a train station.  The trains could be notoriously slow at times, but unless you were a super-speedster or belonged to a prestigious supergroup with a teleport pad it was usually faster than trying to run across the city.  You couldn't just go from place to place in Paragon City; you had to navigate the interzone tunnels that ran through the city's defensive walls while avoiding or tangling with one of the city's notorious street gangs.

Also fortunately, he didn't spot any muggings that weren't already being handled by another street vigilante, so he didn't have to stop cannonballing his way across Galaxy until he finally reached BestGear.  He landed on a rooftop across the street from the store and surveyed the scene.

There was a crowd, of course, well away from the store behind yellow tape.  There were a couple of squad cars out front with their red and blues flashing, along with a handful of Paragon City's finest in riot gear.  (Cops in Paragon never went anywhere without it, just to be on the safe side.)

Billy wasn't hard to spot.  He was happily sitting on the curb surrounded by shiny toys that obviously used to be Clockwork robots, playing.  GeoFire hopped over the crowd and slammed down next to the cops, startling them.

"Hi, Guys!  Nice party!  You need a DJ, though.  You can't have a really good party without a DJ."

"Geez!  Don't do that!" snapped a female police officer.  "You're GeoFire, right?"

"That's what it says on my nametag," GeoFire responded, pointing to his bare, rocky chest.  He looked down, following the officer's confused gaze.  "Oh, shoot!  I forgot my nametag!"

"You always this much of a pain in the butt, hero?" she frowned.

"Only when I'm awake," he grinned.  "So what happened here?"

The officer waved toward the store.  "A bunch of Clockwork robbing BestGear.  They were carrying out all of the electronics they could get their claws on when he showed up."  The officer pointed at the focus of the crowd's attention.  GeoFire turned to look.

Billy was pretty impressive looking for a toddler, even from this distance.  His shoulders were nearly half as wide as he was tall and huge muscles bulged where chubby baby fat should have been.  GeoFire would have mistaken him for a very short muscular man except for two things: his clothes and his face.  Most men wouldn't be caught dead wearing a baby-blue top with a heart on it, let alone diapers.  And most men didn't have Billy's smooth, cherubic face.  It was about the only part of him that looked like a little kid.

Billy had a battered Clockwork dangling from one meaty fist and his oversized metal rattle in the other.

"I bad kok-werk," Billy mouthed in a deep throaty tone, shaking the copper-skinned robot as if it were moving.  "Grrr!"

"I Gee-O-Fryer," Billy told the lifeless automaton happily in a child's voice.  Then he dropped the Clockwork and smashed it with his rattle, scattering small gears and springs.  "Ha! Ha! Ha!" he chuckled huskily.  Then he reached for another damaged Clockwork.

"Okay, I'll handle this," GeoFire told the officers.  Billy looked up as GeoFire walked over.

"Playtime's over, kid.  Time to go back home," he told him.

Billy's eyes grew wide, then his brow furrowed and he scowled up at GeoFire.  "No!-No!-No!" he shouted, bashing the sidewalk with his rattle for emphasis.  "I no wanna go!  I still pwaying!"  The air around Billy shimmered and heated up as he continued to shout and the glass in the doors and windows nearby began to warp from the heat.

"Whoa! Whoa!" GeoFire held up his hands and frantically tried to calm the boy.  Not until GeoFire backed away did Billy stop shouting, the scowl still on his face and his bottom lip set in a defiant pout.  The red haze surrounding Billy began to subside.

"Don't know much about kids, do you, hero?" the police officer commented evenly.

"They're short people who take naps, right?"  GeoFire and Billy watched each other warily as GeoFire continued to back up all the way to where the police waited.  "Got any ideas?"

"I've got two at home who weren't much different at that age than he is," she replied softly.  "Well, except for the super strength and heat thing, obviously.  You can't just walk up to a little boy and start bossing him around and not expect that he'll throw a fit.  It'll be easier if you treat him like you want to play with him.  Act like a kid; that shouldn't be too hard for you," she added.

"Your confidence in me is touching," GeoFire replied.  "Play with him.  Okay.  I can do that.  I think."

GeoFire stepped forward again, waving cheerily and trying to look as friendly as he could.  "Hi there, Billy!  Do you know who I am?"

Billy stared up at him.  "You're Gee-O-Fryer."

"Uh, that's Geo-Fire."

"Gee-O-Fyrer," Billy tried.

"Close enough.  Your Auntie Toni sent me to find you.  She thought you and I might have fun playing together."

Billy looked up at him with innocent blue eyes.  "You pway wif me?"

"Sure!" GeoFire smiled.

"Yay!" Billy shouted happily.  He bounded to his feet, clutching his oversized rattle.  The Clockwork he'd been holding dropped to the ground, all but forgotten.  GeoFire felt relieved; this wasn't going to be hard at all.

"Okay," Billy told him.  "We pway game.  We pway sooper-hewo.  We gonna beat up bad guys like Kok-werk."

"No, bad idea," GeoFire shook his head.  "Let's play follow-the-leader, and I'll be the leader, okay?"

"No," Billy said firmly.  "Sooper-hewoes.  I'm the sooper-hewo, and you're my sidekick.  Wets go!"  Before GeoFire's objection could roll off his tongue Billy raced off, ducking under the yellow crime scene tape and charging off down the street.  Bystanders scrambled out of his way.

"Wait!" GeoFire shouted after him, his eyes wide with panic and frustration.  He leapt up into the air in a high, long arc.  Billy sprinted down the street below him as fast as his short legs would carry him, which was surprisingly fast.  But GeoFire's leap would carry him out in front where he could cut Billy off.  He landed several yards away from the speeding toddler and spread out his arms wide to catch him.

Billy, however, had other ideas.  Scooting low under GeoFire's reaching grasp, he scrambled through GeoFire's legs with a giggle and kept running.

GeoFire spun around and leapt after Billy again.  "Great!" he muttered in mid-leap.  "Find the kid, bring him back... what could be easier than that?"

# # #

[konbiz]

Good job again! interesting to see where this will go next  :D

[Uncle Yuan]

I'm glad I stopped in to read this.  Great stuff, as always, BB!

[BlueBard]

The room was dark, save for the glare of the large viewscreen set into the wall.  The glow outlined the shadowy figures that inhabited the room in a ghostly blue.  They watched a replay of the same video footage of Billy smashing a car that GeoFire had been shown earlier that day.

"Here is our chance," grumbled the only figure standing.  "We must seize the boy while he is no longer under the protection of those oafs at the Agency."

"It won't be easy," said a woman's voice.  "They're sure to have half the vigilantes in the city out looking for him.  There will be interference."

"Intel suggests there is only one so-called hero who has been sent out.  They don't want to traumatize him."  The man chuckled.

"Any name I might recognize?"

"Doubtful.  He is relatively unknown outside of the areas he frequents.  The name is GeoFire.  We have a dossier on him.  Mutant.  Able to absorb and integrate minerals into his body and create localized geothermal effects.  He's strictly Minor League."

"Good," the woman said approvingly.  "Bring in the hired help on this job; we need to be able to disassociate ourselves if something doesn't go according to plan."

"Already in motion, Ma'am."

# # #

The room was dark, save for the glare of the large viewscreen set into the wall.  The glow outlined the shadowy figures that inhabited the room in a ghostly blue.  They watched a replay of the same video footage of Billy smashing a car that GeoFire had been shown earlier that day.

"Ha!" crowed a brooding figure in the middle of the group.  "Those fools at the Agency have allowed the boy to slip from their grasp!  And now he will belong to Me!"

"They have sent a hero to retrieve him, Master.  GeoFire."

"Never heard of him."

[BlueBard]

(Sorry for the delayed update folks...)

"Come on, Billy!" shouted GeoFire, "Will you stop running away from me, for crying out loud?!"

To his surprise, Billy actually stopped.  GeoFire warily approached him, expecting the oversized toddler to dash off again.  Billy had a worried look on his face.

"Hey, Billy," said GeoFire in concern, "Are you okay?"

"I gotta go potty," he informed GeoFire.

"Oh!  Well, uh, let me take you back home and you can go there... okay?"

"I gotta go NOW," Billy insisted.  GeoFire could see the boy was hopping from one leg to the other, in an increasingly urgent manner.  It was clear there was no way he was getting Billy back to the Agency before the dam broke, so to speak.

"Okay, Billy... Uncle GeoFire's gonna find you a bathroom."  He looked around.  The two of them had wound up in front of a construction site in King's Row.  There wasn't much around.  Run-down warehouses mostly.  "Great.  There's no bathroom."

"I gotta GO!"

"Okay, okay!  Geez, you'd think a construction site would at least have a port-a-potty."  His eyes fell on a manhole cover in the street.  "Plan B, kid."  He grabbed Billy by the hand and began to lead him into the street.

"No-no-no!" Billy shouted, dragging his heels.  "Wook both ways!"

"Argh!" GeoFire grumbled in frustration.  "Like anything could run either of us over."  He whipped his head left and right.  "There.  Happy?"  GeoFire led Billy out into the street to the manhole cover.  He grabbed it with his free hand and flipped it over.  "You can go down there."

"It dark.  You go wif me?"

"Sure," he sighed in resignation.  "It's not like this would be my first visit to the sewers.  I think half the weirdo crooks in this town live in 'em."  GeoFire carefully climbed down the steel ladder that led into the sewer, trying to ignore the fetid stench of the slimy muck running below.  He stepped down onto a concrete ledge and looked around to make sure there weren't any monsters lurking nearby.  "It's okay, Billy," he called up.  "Come on down."

The mutant toddler carefully climbed down the ladder.  GeoFire turned away discretely as Billy dropped his drawers and waited impatiently for him to finish.

"Awl done.  I went number one," Billy announced brightly.

"That's nice," GeoFire remarked, fighting to keep the sarcasm out of his voice.  "Now let's..."

GeoFire was interrupted as three shadowy figures tackled him from behind, pulling him down into the river of muck.  Despite his surprise, he had enough presence of mind to gasp a breath of air before he went under.  Billy screamed in fright as more men streamed into the sewer tunnel from either direction, some of them joining the pile pressing GeoFire down.

A large, misshapen figure wearing a football helmet and bearing a massive Rikti energy sword bellowed orders.  "Get the boy!"

All at once, the muck began to boil from below.  Howling with pain, the attackers fell back as GeoFire erupted, superheated slime steaming, then burning away.

"Billy!" he shouted as he formed a glowing sword of molten iron from his body, "Go hot!"

"Pway time!" the toddler crowed as he darted out of the misfits' grasping hands.  The air around Billy began to shimmer and glow with heat, and the Lost gang fell away shrieking as their skin reddened with third-degree burns.

The Lost swordsman bulled his way through to GeoFire with a roar of rage, chopping downward.  GeoFire barely managed to parry the blow with his own Fire Sword, then reached out with his mind to draw from the geological force of the surrounding earth and add its' power to his own.  Concrete was absorbed from the sewer tunnel and formed into a rocky sheath around him.  He now outmassed the attacking swordsman.  Lashing out with a powerful kick, he knocked the mutated gang leader backward.  Sparing a glance in Billy's direction, he saw the boy smack a gang member away with a swing from his mace-like toy rattle then turned back to the swordsman who had climbed to his feet.

"Hot stuff comin' through!" he shouted, charging forward as quickly as his added mass would allow.  It wasn't very fast, but it was fast enough to meet the swordsman's own charge.  The energy blade cut right through GeoFire's own Fire Sword, but glanced off his rocky hide.  GeoFire burned with a red glow as he poured on the heat.  The Lost leader screamed as his skin blistered.  GeoFire reached out with a superheated hand and grabbed the mutant's sword arm.  The swordsman howled in agony, dropping the sword as he wrenched free from GeoFire's grasp and backpedaled.

"Retreat!" the Lost swordsman cried.  The other gang members needed no extra urging to flee from the blistering heat generated by the oddly-matched defenders, and sloshed away as fast as they could go deeper into the dark, cool sewers.

"Hey!" GeoFire called after them with a smirk on his face, "Maybe next time you get a 'treatment' you should have 'em mutate you some brains!"

"Yeah!" Billy cried out, jumping up and down.  "Mootate some bwains!"  He stopped jumping and looked up at the rocky hero with a grin.  "Dat was fun!"

GeoFire chuckled.  "If that's your idea of fun, Heaven help the bad guys."

# # #