The handles of the wheelbarrow hurt his hands. Mike was sure that blisters were forming. He pushed the wheelbarrow across a sandy area, then up a wooden plank onto the cement floor that had been poured the day before.

Every muscle in Mike’s body told him to quit. You’re a superhero, not a day laborer, they said. You don’t need to wake up so sore you can barely walk, then go right into another endless day of shoveling, lifting and carrying. Go to Hector and tell him what he could do with this job, making sure to use every swear word he knew, plus all the Spanish ones he had learned by listening to the mostly Mexican crew around him.

It was less than a week since he left the Society for Civic Duty building clothed only in his light. He knew that no one could see more than a human-shaped light when he turned his powers on, but he still felt horribly exposed as he flew away from the Society building.

Flew away from Sun Man. They took Sun Man away from him. They said they owned the rights to the name and could hire anyone they want to “play” the hero.

I wasn’t “playing” Sun Man, Mike thought for the millionth time. I was Sun Man. I AM Sun Man. I have the powers. They can’t take those away from me. Screw them, I’ll think of a new name, a better name.

Mike stopped the wheelbarrow next to the pile where they were dumping the sandy soil, to one side of the construction site. He pushed it up and added more sand to the pile.

Damn them. Damn them all. And damn Hector. He really would tell Hector off. Really. Except he couldn’t. Hector would tell Mireya and she wouldn’t like Mike if he insulted her brother.

When he flew away from the Society, naked under his light, Mike went to the top of a nearby building and found a structure, probably the top of an elevator shaft. He sat there trying not to cry. Superheroes don’t cry.

He left his light on so that no one would see him naked. Even the top of a skyscraper wasn’t safe from prying eyes and cameras. Not in L.A. with so many helicopters in the air.

He didn’t know where to go. Even if he decided to go back to Mireya and her gang of third rate heroes, he didn’t know how to find them. And how could he show up there with no clothes on? It would be humiliating.

Hunger finally made Mike move from his lofty hiding place. His powers didn’t feed him. He had to do something. Go somewhere. The Society didn’t want him, so Mireya was his only choice. He didn’t know anyone else in the city.

A memory fell into place. When he was lifting a storage container full of bread to give to the homeless, Mireya and Hector had already driven away in their van. Mike didn’t know where they were, but he realized he could sense them. He could fly right towards them.

Was this a power? Was it a link to Mireya? He liked that idea, maybe he was meant to be with her.

Mike closed his eyes and tried to shut out everything. The wind on the high rooftop, the faint sounds of traffic from far below. He blocked his hunger and thirst.

Like pinpricks of light, but in his mind, he began to sense them. There were a lot of them. More than he would have imagined. He knew where they were, which direction to fly to find them.

They were people with powers. They stood out from the formless mass of normal people. Some of them were wearing colorful costumes and showing off their powers, but many were doing jobs. They were office workers, cops, construction workers, and bus drivers. There was also a woman in a wheelchair who had just put a tea pot on the stove, and a fat man watching a judge show on TV.

This ability to find powered people didn’t tell Mike if they were heroes or villains. It just showed him a mental map. When he concentrated on one of the points of light he could see the individual and what he or she was doing.

This was a pretty cool power, one he had never heard of before.

He hoped it would help him find Mireya. He thought about her, and looked in the downtown areas of the map. That’s where she usually was, helping the homeless or taking a stroll up a skyscraper.

Mike’s mind flashed on people faster and faster, none of them Mireya.

He never knew there were so many people with super powers in L.A. A lot of them seemed to skip the hero/villain stereotype completely. They used their powers for work or play, just living slightly enhanced ordinary lives.

He saw an internationally famous movie star getting out of a limousine, but couldn’t sense what power the man had. He saw a fry cook, a homeless woman, and a mid level manager in an office cubicle. No Mireya.

Then this new sense tugged at Mike, took his mental view away from downtown. He followed the ten freeway, then went north on LaBrea. He saw a small construction site, where it looked like a three story apartment or condo building was going up. What the hell? Why was it showing him this?

The sense led him to a young man who was working with electrical cabling. The sense told him that this was who Mike was looking for. It was definitely not Mireya. The young construction worker turned his head and Mike could see -

The sense snapped back and Mike found himself still on the high roof of the downtown building. He was cold and uncomfortable sitting naked on a hard floor.

The construction worker was Hector, Mireya’s brother. Did this mean that Hector has powers? He had never mentioned them. He never talked much at all, actually. Maybe Mike was led to Hector just because he was related to Mireya. Mike needed to learn more about how this power worked.

In the meantime, it looked like Hector was Mike’s best bet for finding Mireya and a place to stay. Not to mention some clothing.

*****

“Hector!” Mike said from behind a low brick wall. He had waited for over an hour after finding the construction site. He didn’t want to fly up with his light on and attract the attention of the whole crew. Finally Hector walked alone near the back of the site.

“¿Que?” Hector asked. He stopped and looked around.

“Over here!”

Hector followed his voice and looked down as he rounded the end of the wall. “Oh, it’s you. Sun Boy. What do you want?”

“I need to find Mireya.”

Hector did not look happy at that. “Can you turn that light off, homes?”

“Uh,” Mike had to think fast. “No, I, um, can’t.” Way to sound stupid, Mike thought. “Can you tell me where Mireya is?”

“Our abuela, grandma, got sick and she went to help her.”

“She went to Mexico?” Mike started to panic. He might be the first homeless superhero, if he hadn’t seen another one, at least a person with powers, with his new sense.

“Tucson. Why is the mighty Hombre del Sol hiding behind a wall?”

“Hector! Venga aca!” Another construction worker called from the work site.

“Momento!” Hector yelled back. “Gotta go,” he said to Mike. He turned away.

“No! Hector!” Mike said.

“WHAT?” Hector looked back.

“I...have nowhere to go,” Mike said. “And...” he covered his crotch with his hands and let his light go.

When Hector stopped laughing, he fetched a key out of his pocket and tossed it to Mike. “I’m doing this for her, comprendes?” he said. “I don’t know what she sees in you.” He rattled off an address and apartment number and walked away.

“She said something about me?” Mike almost stood up and exposed himself to the construction crew. Really? he thought. She really sees something in me?

Hector’s place turned out to be a single, one room with a kitchen in another small room. There was hardly any furniture. One folding chair, a neatly made bed, a card table, and a small TV on a stand.

As the sky turned pink and the city fell into night, there was a pounding on the door. Mike was startled awake. He jumped up from the bed and opened the door.

Hector took one look at the t-shirt and jeans that Mike had found in a closet. “We make a list of everything you take, and you will pay me back,” he said. He went into his kitchen.

“You ate the pizza?” Hector came back into the larger room. “That’s on the list too.”

“I can pay you back,” Mike said. “When I get a new costume, and think of a new hero name...”

“You pay me back next Friday,” Hector said. He sat in his one and only chair. “That’s payday.”

“What?” Mike asked. “What payday?”

“At the job site, where you meet me today.”

Mike was confused. “I’m not a construction worker.”

“You’re welcome,” Hector said. “I get you a job over a thousand guys fresh from Mexico who would work for centavos - pennies. My boss says I’m crazy, he says gringos are lazy and soft.”

“But—”

“But nothing, man.” Hector said, not smiling. “You work or you’re out the door, right now. And you leave my clothes here.”

Mike spent the night on Hector’s floor, wrapped in a blanket and with no pillow. He didn’t sleep well.

*****

Today was the promised payday, but Mike already owed Hector more than he had earned. He had to borrow from Hector for all his food and some more clothing.

At least the food he had eaten that week was good. Every day a taco truck pulled up to the work site and all the workers bought their lunches. A taco truck was something new to Mike. He had seen trucks before that carried pre-packaged sandwiches and drinks and stuff, but this truck had a cook who made real, fresh Mexican food. He had quickly learned to ask for no salsa, though. The only salsa the truck carried was for Mexican tastes, and it burned his mouth until his eyes watered.

The crew laughed heartily at the gringo’s distress as Mike tried to recover from the first bite of his burrito on his first day. He chugged his Coke until his mouth felt a little less painful. Then he couldn’t eat the rest of the meal and he was hungry all afternoon.

He took the wheelbarrow back to the big pile of sand and started to fill it again with a shovel. The handle of the shovel hurt his hands too. When would Mireya come back? She would take him in again and not let her brother abuse him anymore.

But he couldn’t be dependent on Mireya either. He had to get his superhero career going again. He needed a new name, and he needed to make some public rescues or fight some villains to get onto the news.

Name first. The Society said they owned Sun Man. They could have it. That wasn’t his first choice anyway. He could go back to Starman. Who remembered some stupid old movie anyway?

The movie company might still own the name and the trademark. He didn’t want to have lawyers after him. Villains he could face, but not lawyers.

Let’s see, he had super powers, and it was traditional to put “man” on superhero names...

Mike froze as he lifted a shovel full of dirt. It was perfect. It was so simple, the most basic name possible for a superhero. No one had thought of this before? He had never heard of anyone using it.

He couldn’t wait to announce his new name to the world.

*****

“You’re kidding, right?” Anthony said.

Mike was at Mireya’s house, or her mom’s house, whatever. Hector had dropped him there after work. “My girlfriend is coming over,” he said. “I don’t need you.” When Mike got out, Hector drove his van away faster than strictly necessary, or legal.

That was fine with Mike. The couch in the sewing room would seem like paradise compared to Hector’s cold floor.

Much to his surprise, Mireya’s mother gave him a big hug. He was just in time for dinner, lasagna and refried beans. Despite the mixed countries of origin, everything was delicious.

Anthony, or Lodestone, the old lady with the pink costume, though she was in normal clothes now, and Dennis Man all chattered away. Well, Dennis didn’t chatter so much, he gobbled his food like someone was trying to take it away from him.

When everyone was almost finished, Mike couldn’t stop himself. “I thought of a great new superhero name,” he said. “It’s so simple, like the proto-superhero. From now on, I am—” and he told them the name.

That’s when Anthony dropped a bucket of crap on him. “No...” Mike said. “Please don’t tell me it has been used before.”

“You’ve really never heard of him?” Anthony asked, like he couldn’t believe his ears.

Mike shook his head, dreading what Anthony would say.

“In nineteen thirty eight, the first superhero comic book came out, Action Comics. It was written and drawn by two teenagers named Jerry Siegal and Joe Shuster. It’s star had the same name you just told us.”

Mike deflated. He had been so sure he had a great name.

“In the next few years, a lot more superheroes came out, like Blue Beetle, Batman...”

“Batman?” Mike asked. “What did he do, suck blood?”

“No, he...never mind,” Anthony said. “The point is, your new name IS the proto-superhero name. No one else can use it. National Comics maintains the copyright to this day.”

“But nineteen thirty eight was like a hundred years ago. He must be long dead,” Mike said. “I could make a new deal with the comics company.”

“He never existed, Mike.” Anthony explained like he was talking to a dim five year old. “All those heroes I mentioned were fictional, made up.”

“But,” Mike said. That was just stupid, he thought. “Why make up superheroes when there are so many real ones?”

“There weren’t any real ones until the early nineteen forties. The started appearing and based themselves, down to the dramatic names and skin tight costumes, on the comic books.”

Mike landed, hard, back in the familiar land of disappointment. “So I can’t be...?”

“No.”

Shoving his plate away, Mike stood up.

“Maybe some action would cheer you up,” the pink costume lady said. “Lodestone and I are going to try to take down a drug dealer near my house tonight. You could be a big help.”

“I don’t feel like it,” Mike mumbled.

“We’ll get you a name,” Anthony said. “In the meantime, you have powers way above our league. You could take on the supervillains that always show up out of nowhere when we do something.”

“No!” Mike shouted. “I don’t want to!” He felt hot tears coming and tried to blink them back. He ran out of the room and out of the house.

The night was cool and the stars called out to Mike. He turned on his light and flung himself towards them. He didn’t want to talk to anybody or help anybody. He was useless, a super powered idiot. He would be pushing a wheelbarrow forever, that’s all he was good for.

Stupidman flew high, very high, where no one could see him cry.