The Paladin: A Teenage Superhero Story

Chapter 2

Saturday

November 20th

Not much had happened in between Friday night and Saturday night after I got home. I slept until about ten, two hours past my mom's acceptable wake-up time, got chewed out by said mother for oversleeping, then hit the forge. My house was located on a large plot of land, which was surprising considering my family's lack of money. It was my grandfather's in truth; my dad's dad. He bought the land when he moved to Tar City fifty years ago. My grandfather and I always got along, regularly bonding over how annoying my dad could be. He was a historian who specialized in warfare and the one who initially taught me how to handle a sword (along with a few other things). Regaling to me stories of medieval knights and the code of Chivalry, I was awed by his bounty of knowledge. Anyway, he owned the land and helped me build a forge deep in the thickly wooded acreage surrounding our house that ended at the Peat river. It wasn't fancy and didn't have all the bells and whistles, but I made it work. Next to the forge was a shed where I kept all the completed weapons and armor. I never had to worry about people discovering my things because no one had any interest.

I sat on a bench near the forge with my extendable shield, repairing the bullet dings. The damage was minimal, and fixing them was more for aesthetics and personal pleasure than necessity. Heating up the titanium with a torch then flattening out the metal dings using a hammer was the best solution I had found. My ears twitched at the sound of leaves crunching as I saw my dad walking towards me with a plastic bag in his hands. I was interested, albeit a little worried. He never came out to the forge. I dropped the shield and booted it off to the side so he wouldn't see the bullet marks.

"Hey, dad, what's up?" I asked. He smiled and took a seat next to me placing his arm around my shoulder.

"Not much kiddo. Look, I'm sorry about last night. You gotta understand, I'm just trying to protect you. Even though it seems like I'm micromanaging... I really don't mean to be an asshole. I only want what's best for you, but I can see how I've been coming across lately. Lemme make it up to you. Step one, I have a surprise for you. Remember how you always liked helping me solve cases back in the day?" he asked. I did. For a large part of my childhood and even my teen years, I wanted to be a cop. One day, I didn't and my dad took it pretty harshly. He unraveled the bag and inside I saw one of my throwing knives with blood on the tip. I thought he had caught me. I looked at his face but his expression stayed the same; no disappointment, no anger. Just curiosity at the knife. "I know my knives. Shanks, cleavers, kitchen knives, switchblades, butterfly knives, bowie knives. Hell, I've even seen somebody stuck with an ice pick before. Can't crack what this one is though. Can you help out your old man? You're so much smarter than I am when it comes to this stuff," he informed. It was a hybrid design that I'd come up with myself for the most part. Had a similar weight distribution to a typical kunai or any other throwing knife, but it had the crossguard and handle of a Celtic dagger. "We got it from that vigilante that's all over the news, the Paladin. We thought we had a lead with a tranquilizer that he uses to coat all the blades, cause every bottle of that stuff is tracked by the FDA, but it turns out he stole them from the zoo," he explained.

"Stole them?" I questioned. Please, I didn't steal those tranquilizers.

"I shouldn't say that. He took them and left an equivalent amount of money in their place," he corrected. That's more like it. "That's beside the point. If we knew where to start looking on this knife it'd blow this case wide open. Now Johnson and Quinn think it's some sort of military knife, but I think that's bullshit."

"It looks like a mix of a couple of cultures, Irish and Japanese from what I can tell. Probably custom made, you should start with some custom knife shops and maybe some custom knife websites that deliver to Tar City," I offered, subtly steering him off course.