Free Forced Retirement by Robert T. Jeschonek Page B

menacing to her.
    The red fabric of Epitome’s costume, which once had stretched tightly over bulging muscles, rippled in the wind over his shrunken, old man’s body.
    Shrunken, but nearly as powerful as ever. Nearly as deadly.
    And his own daughter did not see even the faintest flicker of recognition in his eyes as he glared down at her.
    *****
    Hericane soon realized that there was a positive side to Epitome’s not remembering anything about her. Thanks to his memory gap, he was not prepared for the super-powered trick or two that she had up her sleeve.
    Like the one that she called “the big breakup,” which is what saved her life this time.
    Fifty feet or so above the ground, Hericane had the presence of mind to trigger “the big breakup.” In mid-fall, at the flip of a mental switch, she blew her entire body apart into its component cells. A fountain of red and pink leaped upward, streaming around and past plunging Epitome as he howled in surprise and anger.
    Epitome was blinded for an instant, which was just long enough for him to crash into the street pavement below. Before he could rocket back out of the impact crater, Hericane’s cells rushed back together, coalescing in their original form, and she bolted off toward Paratown.
    As Hericane flashed across Isosceles City, she wondered yet again if Mardi was all right...and she dug deep for ideas on how to deal with Epitome. The only idea that kept coming back to her again and again was that Epitome would be impossible to deal with this time.
    Not that that would be any different from any other time.
    Hericane had only ever known him to be distant. Cold and remote. At best, he had been an unreadable, occasional presence in her life, unable or unwilling to make any but the most perfunctory connection with her.
    She had guessed that it was because of her sexual preference for women, though that would only have applied to her in an obvious way since her teenage years. She did not have a similarly logical reason for why he had acted ambivalently toward her as a child.
    Then again, he had not exactly been willing to make connections with anyone else, either. He had always been known as the greatest super-powered hero in the world, but he likewise had a reputation--especially in the hero community--as the unfriendliest guy in the business. He had never gone out of his way to socialize with colleagues or try to improve his image, and he had never seemed to care what anyone thought of him.
    The truth was, he had never had to care. He was the mightiest man alive. No one could tell him how to act or what to do.
    That was why, at first, Hericane had almost been grateful for the Alzheimer’s. The intermittent memory loss of the disease’s early stages had softened Epitome’s sharp edges, even occasionally made him seem vulnerable. For the first time in years, he had phoned Hericane out of the blue and shown up at her apartment unexpectedly; though he had done so by mistake and had not seemed entirely certain whom he was talking to or visiting, Hericane’s heart had still quickened at the sound and sight of the father who was finally turning to her in his hour of need.
    Hericane had not been the only one to notice and appreciate the difference in Epitome. His super-heroic peers had noticed changes in him as well: overt friendliness; eagerness to partner with other heroes for adventures; and an unprecedented (for Epitome) willingness to let others take the lead in dangerous situations. None of this had been characteristic of the old Epitome. Behind his back, people had even joked that they had liked the new Epitome better than the old one...though some had not seen his changes as a laughing matter. Some heroes had realized early on that Alzheimer’s and the mightiest man alive would be a volatile combination.
    And they had turned out to be right.
    Epitome had begun to have outbursts of anger in public. He had said and done inappropriate things without explanation or