and others valiantly. A swarm of oranges came her way and she batted them away with the flimsy chair.
Jack couldn't help but watch his mother for a few seconds. His father was the legendary hero, but his mother was just as brave.
"I see a bomb!" Bella suddenly interrupted, not wasting a second in peeling away from the team and going after the explosive device.
In theory, her plan to just run up and grab it would have worked out perfectly. In reality, it failed as the frenzied crowd pressed in all around her, blocking her off from her team and leaving her totally isolated.
It happened so fast, she didn't even have time to turn back as she was caught up in the middle of a showdown between rebels and heroes.
Someone blasted lava above her head and she screamed, unthinkingly, raising her arms to cover her head.
She curled up, hoping to wait out the storm of chaos. She was just a small, curled up girl in the middle of the floor, no one would have noticed her.
Someone did, though. A rebel whose arms grew sharp, rotating blades advanced on her. One look at the sinister, spinning blades brought her back to that day on the obstacle course, the day she failed, the day she was left all alone. If it hadn't been for Jack rescuing her, she couldn't say what might have happened. Maybe she would have made it through, maybe she would have become minced-meat, maybe she would have had to yell for help.
Jack had bigger issues to deal with now, a voice in the back of her mind told her. He couldn't drop everything and save her this time, and she didn't want him to risk the lives of everyone in the room just for her. In all the frenzy, he probably hadn't noticed she was in trouble.
She attempted her blinding light trick, creating a blast of pale blue light that dazzled quite a few, unprepared rebels and heroes. However, the rebel with the bladed arms simply held up an arm, shielding his eyes from the bright flash.
There was nowhere to run and nowhere to hide, she needed someone to save her.
As the bladed teenager loomed over her, she caught her reflection in the rotating metal.
Just the girl next door, just a dutiful daughter and big sister, just a good friend, just the girl who slept in late and couldn't whistle, just the girl who wore jewellery out of a cereal box and hung out on the beach all day. Just a glower. Nothing more. In saving the day, of what use could she really ever be, other than illuminating dark rooms when her little brothers and sisters were frightened of the imaginary monsters hiding under their beds?
She had failed that day on the obstacle course. Even if Mr Hilton hadn't marked it on the report, she knew she had failed. She couldn't save herself, she couldn't save anyone else, and she could never be a hero.
It's moments like these, when our backs are pressed against the wall, the enemy is advancing, we're doubting ourselves and we have no means of escape, that we discover our true power.
That was Bella's moment.
For years to come, she would remember this moment.
Noise, frenzy and confusion circling her like sharks; a bladed threat standing right in front of her, taunting her, and no foreseeable way out, Bella blindly struck out.
Maybe she actively thought about it, maybe it was something in those weeks of training from Rust that groomed her for this but, truth be told, she really could only credit it to sheer accident.
Story of her life.
Somehow, and she had no idea how, Bella managed to concentrate the frightened pale blue glow encompassing her entire body into a stream of intense, hard light discharging from her hands.
Not knowing how to aim the hard light, it struck the bladed teenager in the knees, sending him falling over.
Comprehending what just happened, Bella quickly balled up her hands and held them close to her as if she had touched something hot. "Whoa," she said.
As much as she wanted to play around and attempt creating another hard light beam, she had a mission.
Find that bomb.
She stood on tiptoe, battling to see over the mob of heroes and villains. Eventually her eyes located a bomb, flying through the air as rebels tossed it to and fro.
She had found the bomb, now she had to get to it.
For lack of a better option, Bella tilted her head back, as if there would be a vine or something hanging from the roof she could swing with.
No such luck. Instead, she saw Janie and Sara Cover hovering above the chaos a bit uncertainly.
"I'd rather chew my own arm," Bella mumbled to herself. Nevertheless, being a hero sometimes means doing things you don't like with people you like even less.
Wishing she knew how to whistle, Bella waved her arms, jumped up and down on the spot and called for their attention.
Sara and Janie turned their heads to the girl next door and flew over to see what she wanted.
"I know how much you'd love to drop me from a height," Bella said, aiming the comment more at Sara than to Janie. "I guess today is your lucky day."
She hurriedly explained and the Cover twins snapped to action. Clearly, saving the day was more important than petty rivalry.
Sara lifted Bella underneath the arms and carried her above the crowd, dropping her directly at the spot where the bomb would land in the hands of another waiting rebel.
Bella landed, squarely, on the rebel's shoulders and snatched the bomb out of the air. "Thanks," she said, politely, to the surprised rebel.
She held the bomb up and Janie Cover snatched it right out of her hands, flying off to dispose of the explosive, safely.
36
The heroes were gaining the upper hand. The rebels were losing this time.
This time it was the rebels frozen in blocks of ice, entangled in unbreakable vines, or simply knocked unconscious.
There were still a lot of them and everyone was getting tired out as the battle wore on.
Jack knew the bombs had all been taken care of. Dean and Lacey had slipped away to take care of one, he saw Ty and Ethan team up to snatch another away and Jack saw janitor Darren grab the third and final one, bolt out of the cafeteria and he hadn't returned yet.
Jack checked his watch. They couldn't have had better timing. It was only ten minutes until the bombs blew Hero High sky high.
Now they could focus on the rebels. They just had to restrain them until officials from the superhero community came and sorted the problem out.
Jack, for once, was not mission control. He was just another hero among heroes. It was a feeling he had wanted since he was a small child, dreaming as all children do about being a superhero.
Someone came at him and Jack zipped out the way, causing the rebel to stumble and tackle air in vain.
He saw, across the room, a rebel advancing on a fellow student. With his lazer vision, Jack heated the floor beneath the rebel student's sneakers, causing him to back off as he nursed his overcooked toes.
With all his zipping here and there, Jack somehow ended up back to back with Rust.
"Haven't really gotten a chance to talk to you all evening," Jack said, ducking as a cafeteria table hurtled straight at him.
Rust caught the table as if it were a paper Mache prop. He threw it into the crazy crowd and didn't see what became of it. "What with your grandfather trying to kill you, rebels blowing up the school and lunch-ladies mistaking me for a bad guy," Rust said, "yeah, it's been nuts, to put it mildly."
Rust was loving the chaos of saving the day under strange circumstances. It reminded him of his glory days.
He could almost laugh at that. Glory days. He never once before called nor thought of them as that.
"Where did Wepaynar go?" Jack asked, his eyes searching the room frantically.
In the frenzy, the kids Rust had ordered to keep an eye on Wepaynar probably joined the fight, leaving their prisoner to escape.
"Uh oh," Rust said, simply. "Sorry, I haven't got a better explanation to give you."
"I gotta go," Jack said, running to the exit. "Would you give me some backup?" he called over his shoulder as he ran.
"No problem!" Rust replied.
Jack reached the exit doors just in time to see Wepaynar, still shaking off his broken bonds, fading into the night.
The grass suddenly flattened as a strong wind kicked up. Jack looked up to see Wepaynar's helicopter hovering, awaiting its pilot for a grand escape. Wepaynar pressed a button on his ever-useful remote and a stepladder lowered from his self-piloting helicopter.
Jack dashed forward and grabbed onto a rung of the stepladder as his grandfather climbed, unaware of his pursuer.
Wepaynar made it into the cockpit just as Jack decided to reveal himself.
Wepaynar heard the sound of someone else boarding and immediately used the controls to tilt the helicopter.
The sudden action threw Jack out the open hatch. He was not that easy to get rid of, though. Barely a few feet out the door, he flew straight back into the cockpit.
"I don't have time for your heroics, boy," Wepaynar said, plainly.
"What heroics? You used to be a hero, all I want is to reach that," Jack replied, honestly.
"I'm still a hero," his grandfather retorted, not looking Jack in the eye.
"You don't even believe that anymore," Jack said. "This," he spread his arms wide, "escaping? Blowing up a school? Killing-"
"I'm not a villain," Wepaynar insisted.
Jack saw through his denial. "Why?" he asked, simply.
"Why what?"
"Why did you do everything you've done? Why do you hate so much? Why do you hold a grudge against an injustice that never was? Your daughter is down there," Jack pointed down, indicating the cafeteria, "defending herself and others for all she's worth because even though you forgot what we're fighting