Red Alert/Red Notice (The "Super Jerk" Prequel)

3 - Oblivious

^^Chapter title credit: Song by Aztec Camera, above.^^

{Geoffrey}

Stupid super-sense. Just when I thought I'd have a relaxing night and get to know Raina a little more, it had to act up. Once I'm in my suit, I hover in the air above the city, trying to feel out the threat. Among all my newfound powers, that turned out to be the hardest thing to perfect. Sometimes it was clear, like a compass pointing me in a certain direction. But other times, like this, it was just a headache and then a feeling that something was wrong.

It takes a a good twenty minutes before I finally feel it: a tug in my stomach, like a rope attached to my spine. I sink down towards the waterfront, and it gets stronger as I get lower. Then it changes, pulling me towards the opposite bank. There's an abandoned factory there, and as I finally land on the roof, I know this is where the threat is. It's rumbling under my feet.

I creep to the edge, where part of it's crumbled away, and I can peek inside. I see a lone figure, standing in the middle of the floor, while a dark shadow spreads from the corner. No, not a shadow. A black ooze, with tentacles.

"So you came when I called this time," says the figure, through a voice moderator.

"You think I wouldn't?" answers the ooze. It's grating and raspy, exactly what I expected ooze to sound like.

"Well, you didn't seem like you wanted to last time."

"I had other things to do," says the ooze. "You think I'm always at your beck and call?"

"If you want to work with me, then yeah." The figure crosses his arms. That gesture seems awfully familiar, but right this second I can't place where I've seen it before.

"Is there a problem here?" says a voice above me, startling me so much I nearly tumble off the roof.

When I recover, hovering in midair, I'm surprised to see another super there, in a stretchy shiny suit, a bright blue color. His mask covers everything but his mouth and part of his jaw, but just by that, I can't tell who he is.

"You nearly gave me a heart attack!" I hiss, because I know most supers have highly enhanced hearing, and I don't want the two inside to know we're here.

"Sorry." He shrugs. "I'm Sky Scraper, by the way."

"I'm the Red Knight," I reply, resigned. I can't get rid of him, at least not right now. Who knows, maybe I'll need backup.

"Funny, you don't look like a knight," he says, crossing his arms.

"Well, you don't look like a skyscraper, but I wasn't going to say anything." I mimic his motion. I don't tell him that I wasn't creative enough to come up with my own super name, and adopted the one that the media gave me. Maybe it was because of my suit — plates that fit together like armor — or because of what knights did — saved people and everything. Either way, that was how it happened.

He grins. "You've got a sense of humor. I like that."

"But to answer your original question, there's a problem in there." I nod towards the hole in the roof. "Looks like we have a meeting of the two evils."

He kneels down and sticks his head through the hole. I wait until he's pulled it back out, his mouth turned down at one corner. "Well, I proclaim us in some deep sh*t, man."

I roll my eyes, glad he can't see my face. "No kidding."

After that, we both drop off the edge of the roof and instead keep our heads poking just above the rim of the hole. The ooze spread while we were talking, now a roughly circular patch on the floor in front of the other super. Tentacles flick out of it, and now I can see the top half of a human body poking up out of the center.