escaped heroes joined, led by the scared-of-his-own-shadow shrinker boy.
"Come on, give us a challenge!" a rebel yelled as his pals joined him, immediately creating an army of rebels stronger and greater than the pathetic band marching towards them.
"He brings his doom upon himself," a resolute Ty said to Bella as they tramped onwards.
Undeterred, the hero students continued their ominous advance, eyes set, dead, on their target.
In the main entrance hall, the band of hero students stopped advancing and faced the rebel students. From corridors leading to the left and the right, two more groups of hero students, one led by the hologram, glasses-wearing kid and the other led by the notorious Dean Lightbody, joined the legion.
The band of hero students was still small, far smaller than the rebels' army, but their entrance, growth and advance had significantly aided in demoralizing their enemy.
"Go easy on us," Bella simply said, thus unleashing the chaos.
Janie and Sara Cover flew up into the air, leading the other flyers in a perfectly synchronized dive-bomb on the enemy. The manoeuvre had such accuracy, unity and grace, you would have sworn it was rehearsed and not the result of "winging it."
A High Hero jock the Gamma Accidents had met weeks earlier that day on the playing field with the duffel bag mission, froze every rebel that ran towards him into a block of solid ice.
"They'll thaw out by next week," he informed whoever bothered to listen in the midst of all the chaos.
Vines with little red flowers grew out the ground and wrapped around a group of rebels as they tried to attack one of the heroes. Petite, black-haired Lacey Smallwood smiled, satisfied with her work.
A rebel ran towards Ty, intent on tackling him. Ty jumped into the air, shrank and landed on the rebel's shoulder.
"So many ears, too little time," Ty told him as he grabbed his ear lobe, pinching it hard. "Leave now because you have just been spared the wrath of Tyrone Percival Black."
Ty leapt off the rebel's shoulders and returned to normal size, just in time to watch him turn tail and run down the corridor, clutching his ear.
A group of rebels surrounded Ty, their hands glowing with standby plasma blasts.
"Did you not just see what I did to your pal? Do I really have to maul your ear lobes, too?"
It was an exaggeration, but Ty seemed incapable of speaking without exaggerations.
He was about to become toast, quite literally. The plasma blasts would incinerate him.
Suddenly, the rebels started squirming. They danced on the spot, jumping up and down, as if they had ants in their pants.
"Lab rats," Dean clarified as he grabbed Ty by the shoulders and yanked him away. "You can thank Professor Darkins."
Every rebel that tried to tackle Bella was blinded by a sudden, dazzling, brightly coloured light. They staggered backwards, clutching their face.
In his hologram state, Ethan was impossible to hold. Firm arms wrapped around him from behind, he turned hologram and walked out the tightening grasp as if it weren't even there, because, to a hologram, it wasn't.
Flames illuminated the hall, ice blasts sent a chill through everyone in close range, vines crept along the walls and floor like live snakes, lab rats scurried here and there, a lion patrolled the perimeter, a dark black cloud hung over and rained continuously, and loud music played, (from where, no one knew.)
It was pure and utter chaos, the kind of insanity where you forget to blink because you think you're dreaming.
For a moment, it looked like the hero students had the upper hand. It seemed like they were going to beat the rebels.
That hope was dashed within the next minute, when the rebel legion grew in number and overpowered the heroes.
Suddenly, nothing the small band of heroes did mattered. The rebels worked in perfect sync, as if they had done this many times before. Stretchers elongated their elastic bodies and wrapped themselves, countless times, around whole groups of heroes, stopping them from even moving.
A rebel who could control plant-life destroyed Lacey Smallwood's hard work, overpowered her and managed to capture many hero students in a tangle of thorns.
"We need backup!" Bella yelled to her friends as she was unexpectedly grabbed from behind, her attacker pinning her arms behind her back. She struggled, fought back and lit up but this time they weren't letting go.
One hour. Jack had little less than an hour before the school blew up. It wouldn't be an explosion: it would an implosion, thanks to the total lockdown. Nothing outside of the school would be touched by as much as a spark.
"If I know what you're thinking," Wepaynar said, "you're probably contemplating disabling the bombs. Let me save you some time and tell you that is impossible. I put in a failsafe, just in case someone decided to change his or her mind at the last second and be a hero. There is no way to disarm that bomb."
"How do I know you're not bluffing?" Jack questioned, raising an eyebrow.
Wepaynar shrugged. "Does it matter? Even if it was possible to disarm that bomb, it's too complex for the offspring of John Painter to figure out."
Jack ignored the insult aimed at him and his late father: there were far more pressing matters to attend to, such as the explosive in his hands!
There was no way of getting the bombs out, there was no way (yet) of evacuating the students and who knew when (or, rather, if) reinforcements would ever show up.
"You know, we've only known each other for about ten minutes," Wepaynar said, "and already our relationship is pretty awkward."
"I'll say!" Jack agreed, rolling his eyes.
For a moment, grandfather and grandson gazed at each other. If someone else had been in that room, watching the odd scene play out like a movie, they would have been utterly confused. Sure, there were plenty of estranged grandparents and grandchildren in the world. This story, however, seemed very farfetched.
Plunging matters into a state of further unease, Wepaynar produced a gun and aimed it straight at Jack. "Why don't we go all the way and just make this even more awkward?"
Jack seemed undaunted by the presence of a firearm pointed directly at his chest.
"If you're like your father, then I know you're not invincible," Wepaynar said.
"Well, if you knew my father, than you'd know I'm too fast for bullets," Jack replied.
Wepaynar pulled the safety catch on his homemade gun. "Your father was just as cocky. See where that got him? Seven years ago, he was in this same position. Let's hope this isn't a 'Like father, like son,' situation, eh?"
In the instant Wepaynar pulled the trigger, Jack bolted like a streak of lightning to the other side of the gym.
"See? Faster than a dumb, old bullet," Jack said.
"Frankly, I'm not surprised: your ole dad said the exact same thing," Wepaynar replied, coolly taking aim again, his arm slightly shaking with age or anticipation, Jack wasn't sure which.
By the time the loud BANG had sounded, Jack was already a good five yards away from the bullet's target.
"You're not even trying!" Jack said. He realized his mistake in the next moment, when Wepaynar took aim, this time with purpose, like he meant it.
"You're right, I wasn't," he said in a low voice.
All he had to do was run, just like the two bullets before. There was no way the third would hit him.
"Go on, try run," Wepaynar called. "Your dad did. Who would have ever imagined a simple bullet could take down the greatest hero of our generation? Didn't take me too much imagination..."
Jack remembered the day his dad didn't come home. He remembered some official from the superhero community telling his mom there had been a colossal fire and John had died saving an entire town from destruction. He remembered little Rosie sobbing and curling up close to him, trying to hide.
"Did you start that fire?" Jack questioned.
Wepaynar held back the shot. "Well, I doubt your dad would have come if I had called and asked him out for a day of fishing on the lake. Yes, I st
arted the fire. He stopped the fire. Then we ended up in a situation remarkably similar to this. I taunted him with a few blank shots, building his confidence. The truth is: he could easily outrun any bullet, that much I'll admit. But a little bit of calculation and timing was obviously too much for him."
The revelation struck Jack hard. This story was getting further complicated by the second.
He stood there, trying to piece things together while trying to be ready to beat Wepaynar's last bullet. He could only try and beat it, he was fast and a bullet was no match for his speed. But would his grandfather get lucky?
He had no other option but to run. He was about to do just that when the sound of metal shutters retracting echoed around the gymnasium, startling both grandfather and grandson.
They looked up and watched in dumbstruck awe as the impenetrable metal dome encasing Hero High retracted. Stars shone through the hole Wepaynar blasted in the gym roof.
A figure fell down, tackled Wepaynar and pinned him to the ground, striking out with his foot to kick the gun across the dust covered gym floor.
Jack's eyes widened. "Rust? Shouldn't you be in, like, Turkey or something by now?"
"Two things," Rust said. "One, why Turkey? And two, you kids need backup."
"Right, so why are you really back?" Jack asked, crossing his arms and waiting for a better answer.
Rust got to his feet and yanked Wepaynar up with him, restraining the history teacher's arms behind his back, making sure he couldn't escape.
"So he's the one that's been training bad guys?" Rust said, ignoring Jack's question.
"He's also my