The Sunshine Boy and the Weaver King

Chapter Five

Maybe if he got on his knees and cried, his parents would forgive him. As it was, if he called his mother and by some miracle she picked up, she'd kill him for getting caught. And then his dad would find out, and Anthony would get dragged back up from the grave to get killed again. The process would probably repeat itself a few times before they ultimately laid Anthony's battered soul to rest and fed him to pigs or something so no one would be able to find his body. 

"Okay," Maddox sighed and shoved his laptop off his stomach. It tilted as it landed on the bed next to him, and Anthony saw that he'd been reading a news report on the destroyed wall. He could feel a little more of his soul leave his body. "Why are you being so mopey?"

Anthony turned his desolate expression onto his roommate. He was laying on his back, his hnds on his chest, straight as a rod. He'd been imagine his funeral. Or lack therof. "What?"

"Why," Maddox repeated slowly, "are you being so mopey?"

There were several reasons, so Anthony went with the most normal.

"I'm never going to be like Ryan," he said pitifully.

"Thank God," Maddox said.

The response wasn't surprising— Maddox and Ryan had been at each other's throats every time they'd met. They practically snarled as a greeting. Ryan had taken to cupping his hands around his mouth and yelling "SUCK MY DICK," followed by several vulgar gestures, whenever he spotted Maddox on campus.

"People like him." Anthony said, turning his head to stare at the ceiling. "He's funny. He's tall. He's strong. He's cool. I'm not cool. He's like a five-course meal at a five-star restaurant and I'm soggy french fries."

Maddox's nose wrinkled.

"Exactly."

"Well," Maddox said, "I'm not going to bother comforting you if you just want to wallow in your own depression. Ryan is mentally handicapped. If you want to be like him, you're dumber than I thought."

Anthony scowled. "Have you ever considered being nicer to people?"

"Yes," Maddox said, "I have. After I read an article on how treating people with basic human rights is the number one business strategy."

"You're so weird," Anthony sighed, rubbing his forehead.

"So I've been told."

Anthony shook his head, closing his eyes, and Maddox went back to staring at his laptop. The silence in the room was comfortable enough that Andrew nearly fell asleep, only kept awake by the way Jeremiah Burke's business card burned a hole in his pocket.

Finally, he swung himself into a sitting position and took his own laptop out of his backpack. He sat with his back to the wall so that Maddox wouldn't be able to see what he was looking at, and searched the top ten superheroes.

There were thousands of videos dedicated to intense debates over who was strongest. There were clips demonstrating the strength of heroes as they battled various villains. But over and over again, in the recommendations, there was a video about the Strongest Villains in History. Swallowing a surge of unreasonable fear, Anthony clicked.

The narrator talked about the earliest villains first, giving credit where credit was due, but by the end of the video the only name that came out of his mouth was the Weaver. Everyone knew who that was, regardless of whether or not they thought the name was ridiculous.

The Weaver was one of the strongest villains to exist. He had killed five superheroes in the past twenty years, all of them at one point beloved by all, and various other hero wannabes that were uncountable because a lot of them hadn't been registered under a hero school. A lot of cities paid him in the hopes that he'd stay out, but whenever he felt bored he'd go and wreck havoc anyway.

His power was an odd one. It was almost like he could shoot threads out of his fingers, but they weren't regular threads in that they were indestructible. Half the time he used them like paper-thin darts, stabbing whoever dared stand in his way. You couldn't cut them, you couldn't burn them, you couldn't do anything to them.

The narrator informed the viewers at the end of the video that the Weaver particularly liked going after those with 100% powered DNA, because those had the most potential to one day challenge him, and he liked to stop threats before they became, well, threats.

Anthony swallowed hard, feeling the heat rush back to the surface of his skin, and remembered the newscasters voice as she talked about the destruction of the bathroom, which appeared to be an accident. An accident.

No one who wasn't powerful made accidents that looked like that.

He searched Jeremiah Burke next, finding his home and work address. He memorized them quickly, closed the tabs, deleted his search history, and shut his laptop.

Andrew swallowed hard again, his throat suddenly dry, raked his hands through his hair, and swiped the business card out of his pocket.

He was stuck between a rock and a hard place, and he couldn't help but think that his parents might have refused to pick sides and been on the run for more reasons than just stubborn authorities.

He memorized the number, typed it into his phone, and found a pair of scissors to cut the business card into pieces.

Maddox flicked a bored glance over the top of his laptop at the sound of scissors, then, after a heartbeat pause, looked back down.

Anthony shut his computer and stepped into the hallway.

He waited as his phone rang, unsure if he was doing the right thing. The way Jeremiah sounded when he talked about helping him was dubious at best and completely sketchy at worse. He felt like he was signing his life away, then wondered if it was paranoia that was making him this way.

He knew a lot of his fears were unreasonable, and he'd never had to make a choice this important on his own before.

"Hello?"

Anthony squeezed his eyes shut. He could still end the call and pretend none of this happened and give himself a week or so to figure something out. Instead, he worked his mouth open and said, "It's me. I have time tomorrow to stop by your place. I'll be there at three."

Without giving Jeremiah a moment to respond, he ended the call and slid his phone back into his pocket, his heart hammering heavily in his chest.

It was his father, going by John at the time, who distractedly told Anthony once that if you were ever forced into a meeting, you had to set the time and place and you couldn't give yourself room for hesitation or weakness.

John had gone to a lot of meetings he hadn't wanted to go to, and he'd come away unscathed and on top each time.

Anthony went back into his room and started planning.

There were floorplans of Jeremiah's house online, since he'd boasted so much about it the day of its creation, saying it was a fortress that everyone should have. He'd considered it an act of generosity to tell people with what materials were used in the walls, floors, and ceilings. He'd told them what company he got his windows from, who did the plumbing and electric, and he'd done it all as if he was granting every poor, powerless person the ticket to eternal life.

Anthony thought it was more of a publicity thing, and possibly a challenge to anyone who wanted to test his theory that his house was indestructible.

If it was a challenge, props to Burke, because three villains had tried in the last two months alone, and not only had they failed, they'd also been caught by authorities.

His research of the house and all the materials took hours, but by the time he was done he knew exactly what he would do if he needed to escape, and he'd be able to do it in under two minutes. At least, he hoped. Jeremiah didn't seem like the kind of man who would tell the whole truth, and more likely than not, he had some surprises still tucked away.