Chapter 03

“We are sorry!” David and Richard said in unison.

“Sorry doesn’t make us look cool.” I replied.

“Are you guys done?” Asked William.

The three bickering men didn’t respond verbally but nodded their assent.

“Good. would you like to hear about this job?” the former villain asked, sounding slightly annoyed.

Again, we only nodded.

“We were tasked with delivering to a couple gas stations.”

“You have got to be kidding me!” I started, “I just left that job, next you’re gonna tell me that we are delivering to Earl’s Place!”

“Well…”

I gave William my best evil eye.

“You never really retired from being a villain, did you?” I asked.

“I became something worse,” he paused for dramatic effect, “a businessman.”

This elicited a slight chuckle from Mr. Edison. Thinking on it, that was the first time I had ever seen any emotion from the callus man. Shivering a bit at his display I just had to comment.

“That was just downright weird.”

“Agreed.” Said the three other men.

“That was weird, you four agreeing.” Mr. Edison said.

“Whatever let’s get going,” David said trying to get out of the conversation.

“Right,” William started, “We will have all three of you go. Ray you know him, and can help unload in person, we’ll have you do this from time to time.”

Nodding my agreement, I realized something.

“Wait a freaking minute,” I was angry at this point, “You’re the reason I lost my job.”

A furious round of coughing came over William, before he continued brushing my anger away.

“Right. David, you will be leading the truck when it gets to the warehouse and unloading when it gets there.”

“Right.” David responded.

“Lastly, Richard, you will be in charge of checking in and working out the contract for future deliveries.”

“And enforcing them with my ability I guess?” Richard half asked.

“Obviously.”

“And what will you be doing?” I asked Mastermind.

“Seeing as the new trade laws have made shipping a neutral aligned business, I will be shipping some stuff you may not be comfortable with yet.”

“Wait are we shipping for criminals?” I asked trying, and failing, not to yell.

“We have three trucks to pay off, so we are doing anything and everything we can get.”

“This might affect our decision to work here, you know that, right?” I asked him.

“I am aware, but I surmised that not telling you the truth would have even more dire consequences. Now if we are done you three need to suit up.”

Acknowledging that lying to us would have made me walk out of the door when I found out. I decided to at least try this out. It had nothing to do with being unemployed at all. Wait why am I lying to myself? I straight up need the money.

Opening the backpack, I brought with me, my suit was inside. At one point I had stored it in a ring, but that was a pain to get back in, so after the first couple of times, I stopped using it. After reminiscing for a few moments, I put on the suit and looked myself over in the mirror. The mask covered everything but around the mouth, it was golden from the top down to my cheekbones, where it faded into white. My torso followed the white coloring, accented with the same gold color from the helmet. Following down the arms were white until the elbow where it faded back into gold at the gloves. The pants followed the same pattern as the arms, fading back into gold at the boots.

Enjoying the increased stats from my gear, I just had to move. I took off, running at my top speed bobbing and weaving through traffic, until I reached the beach, steeling myself and focusing my mind, I ran onto the water. A trail of water shot up behind me causing small waves in my footsteps, the water slowed me a little, but before long I was on land again. Forests, cars, animals, people, and cities were some things I managed to pick out as I was running by so fast that everyone looked to be sitting still. Soon enough I was back to water, then back to land, I returned to Axiscore about a minute after I left.

“Woo!”, I exclaimed, “I haven’t done that in a bit.” My heart beating in a way that I missed, fast for a normal person but normal for me, I remembered just how good it felt to let loose.

“Where did you go?” Asked David.

“Ran around the world, I haven’t done that since we retired.”

“Sooner we leave the sooner we get back.” Richard commented sounding bored.

We walked out to the truck in full gear. Right before we were about to get in William stopped us.

“I forgot to tell you Ray, this can be driven normally, but it can also do something else. Open the door.”

Putting my hand on the door handle I heard a slight humming.

Celerity recognized.

Starting Manual mode C1.

The driver side seat receded into the wall and a treadmill came out of the floor.

“Wow!” I feigned excitement.

“It is amazing right.” William agreed, a bit of pride in his voice.

“Yeah… What am I looking at?”

A sigh came from the retired villain.

“It allows you to use your speed to power the truck, letting the truck go as fast as you do. There is also this.”

As he talked a helmet came lowered from the ceiling, not only from the driver’s side but above all possible seats.

“This allows you to maneuver the truck with your mind, so not only does the truck move as fast as you, it reacts like you do. The other ones allow passengers to do the same”

“Ok, that is kind of awesome.” I said, not wanting to give him the satisfaction he wanted.

“Kind of?”, he questioned, “Never mind you have work to do. Get going, the course has been uploaded into the headset.”

“Right.”

Getting into the driver side I felt a little awkward standing where a seat should be. Putting the helmet on a H.U.D appeared in my sight, as I turned my head to the right, I could see everything to the right of the truck, the same happened when I looked to the left and above the truck.

Seeing that, both Richard and David had gotten into their seats and put their own helmets on.

“Alright ladies and gentlemen, please remain seated for the entire ride, keep all arms and legs inside the ride at all times. Make sure to note the emergency exits on both sides of the vehicle.”

I was full on prepared to go stewardess on these two for the joke, but an angry look from both let me know that they didn’t want to hear it.

“Right, here we go.”

I started to jog at a normal non-super pace, the truck started to roll forward slowly. Speeding up to a above normal run, the truck picked up speed. Feeling I had a good sense of how it worked I opened it up even more. At my standard run speed, roughly 300 miles per hour, the truck took off, I was a little afraid at first realizing I wasn’t told how to turn. I turned as if I normally would when running and the truck did exactly what I wanted it to.

“Oh yeah, let’s do this.” I said getting excited.

Accelerating to about three quarters of my top speed, we took off. Following the route in the display. I was a little worried when the route took us over a small pond, but the speed we were moving allowed the truck to drive right over the water. After a couple of turns from the pond, we were at the warehouse.

“Is that what it is always like for you?” David asked, red in the face from his increased heartbeat.

“Yeah pretty much.”

Richard didn’t look so good. He rushed out of the truck and threw up on the ground.

“Hey buddy you alright?” I asked.

Not responding with more than a wave to get away, Orbital Force and I went to the confused looking warehouse manager.

“Hey there, we are here for a pickup.” Orbital Force stated.

The stunned woman pointed to a handful of pallets sitting in a loading bay.

“Thanks.” We said in unison.

“Oh, we can do it when we don’t plan it, but when we do, we screw up. How does that work?”, I complained.

Orbital Force didn’t even give me a response as he lifted his hand with very little effort and the pallets moved to the back of the truck, putting my hand on the handle of the trailer door, it opened by itself.

“Neat.”, was the only thing I said.

The loading done we went back to the manager. The Author had recovered and was there talking to her.

“So just sign this? That’s it?”

“Y…Yeah that’s it.” She said coming out of her stun, “Are you guys really from ‘The Honor Guard’?”

“Yeah we are, they don’t need us for the hero thing anymore, so we had to find a way to feed ourselves.” I said.

She looked like she wanted to ask us something but was too embarrassed to do so.

“Was there anything else we could help with?” I asked her.

“Um… could… could I get a picture with you guys?”

“Of course,” I said as she took out her phone, “stand with your backs to the truck, and I’ll take the picture.”

“Then how will you be in it?”, she asked.

Smiling I stood where I could get a good photo, pushed the button to take it, and in the same moment ran in to the picture, then raced back to grab the phone.

“Here you go…,” I stopped realizing I didn’t know her name.

“Abbigail, you can call me Abby.”

“Here you go Abby.” I finished, handing her phone back to her, “We gotta go but we’ll be seeing you.”

As everyone got settled in the truck, Richard a little hesitantly I couldn’t help myself.

“Please keep all stomach contents inside your body until we come to a complete stop.”

I sped towards Earl’s Place without any further warning.