Heroes wear Capes

Chapter 8 - Outrunning your problems like

"We're here to help, and it doesn't even matter who we are before we put on the masks because when we do put them on, it means we're here to help, no matter what."

~ Oliver Storm (White Lightning)

When Xander woke up the first thing he realized was that he wasn't sore at all. In fact, he felt absolutely great. He felt like he could take on the world with no problem, which wasn't a usual occurrence for a poor kid with no real talents.

It was then he remembered the events of the night before. He looked down at his bandaged arms. His mom was going to kill him.

He peeked under the bandage on his arm, one of the bigger, nastier wounds, but, to his surprise, found nothing there but a faint scar. Okay, that was weird. He checked under another Band-Aid and the same thing happened. There was nothing there, not even a scar.

Xander freaked, ripping off all the Band-Aids and bandages he had put on his body the night before. There were no healing wounds and not even any scars from the splintered wood and the broken glass except for the one scar where the biggest gash had been, but it was so faint that he could've been imagining it. Somehow the events from the night before hadn't happened.

But, that didn't make sense. Why else would he have put the bandages on? It wasn't like he was trying to dress up for Halloween as a mummy. Xander picked up one of the white wrappings and saw a faint red stain on the inside. It proved that there had been an injury where the bandage had been at one point, but somehow the injury was gone.

How long had he been asleep?

And then Xander remembered the warehouse. He recalled the man in the suit with the vial of blood describing his product to Paul Rossi. It was something that he had reverse engineered from the blood sample, but Xander couldn't remember what the product did. He had been too busy at the time freaking out over the situation, and there was no way he was going to remember what that man was saying, especially considering that he can't even remember what his teachers say in class twenty minutes after they say it.

But, one thing was certain. Xander had been hurt before, but now he was fine. No, more than fine. Xander was great. What kind of drug had Paul Rossi been buying? If it was good enough to heal patients and make them feel invincible, then why was it not available in every hospital? With this thing, even cancer would be cured, Xander was sure.

There was one place he could think of to go. Either Paul or Trevor Rossi had to know what it was that they were buying. They knew what was going on with him. They could help.

Xander walked into the kitchen and saw his mom drinking coffee by the counter. She had a late night, but she was always able to stop the sleepiness with some good old-fashioned coffee, as potent as it was amazing. Katy Mendez wouldn't let anything as small as only a few hours of sleep a night stop her.

"Hey, slugger. How'd you sleep? You didn't even wake up when I came home."

Yeah, it would've been hard for him to not crash when his body felt like it weighed a thousand tons because of the adrenaline rush last night. He had a feeling only a natural disaster could've awoken him.

"I slept well. How was work?"

His mom groaned and put her elbows on the counter. "Oh, you wouldn't believe it! The two bikers came back."

"The ones with the big beards and naked women tattoos?" Xander asked.

Katy nodded exuberantly, "Yeah, and don't even get me started on the smell. It was atrocious. For some reason those two can't get it through their heads that Super Burger is a family friendly place."