“You’re late,” Knighthawk said.

Mike settled into a seat on the flying car and turned off his light. “I was busy,” he said. Pretty soon he would tell the big K to stick his rules and schedules up his metal ass.

The flying car cruised the night over the city. The lights spread across the L.A. valley seemed to go on forever.

“You have your phone? I called a couple of times.”

“I was flying, I guess I didn’t hear it.”

Mike couldn’t see any expression on that metal face, lit only by the instrument panel, but he bet the Knight was pissed. Good.

Mike would be Sun Man again soon. He would fulfill his destiny. And Knighthawk was going down.

*****

“You’re late,” Marcus said.

Mike sat in the car and turned his light off, revealing the Light Man costume. He was supposed to meet Marcus at the car half an hour earlier. He hadn’t answered calls to his Neighborhood Heroes cell phone.

When Mike didn’t say anything, Marcus said, “You have your phone? I called a couple of times.”

“I was flying, I guess I didn’t hear it.”

Marcus knew a lie when he heard it. He and Randall were worried about Mike. He was showing up at meetings late, and his attitude of superiority to everyone else in the group was getting worse.

Mike put his arms together and rubbed his right hand on his left arm. “Cold up here,” he said.

“Your powers don’t keep you warm?”

“When the light’s on,” Mike said. “Can I turn it on?”

“You’ll be a star in the sky, everyone will see us.”

Mike looked sullen. His mask covered his face, but his shoulders slumped and he turned away.

Randall did some research over the last few days. “Mike’s Society for Civic Duty does exist,” he told Randall when they met in the Knighthawk warehouse. “It’s a Not for Profit, with a board of directors. I can’t find out what they do exactly.”

“They own a building downtown?” Marcus asked.

“No, they’re very small. I wish I knew which building he goes to.”

“I tried to follow him,” Marcus said. “He flies way faster than the car does.”

*****

Knighthawk actually tried to follow Mike a few nights ago. He blew the flying car away. He could fly to New York and back in the time it took the car to cover L.A.

He actually did that, fly to New York and back. Tom was helping him figure out his powers. He could do so much more than he thought. Tom thought he could hear from far away as well as see. It wasn’t happening yet, but Tom said it made sense.

“Someone made your amulet,” Tom said when he started training Mike. “Whether it was aliens or ancient magicians or scientists from Atlantis, they made it for a reason. They wanted to give powers to a human being. If they put in super seeing, why would they leave out super hearing?”

Tom even figured he must have an offensive weapon. A ray or beam of some kind.

Mike was still unsure about telling anyone that he could sense other people with powers. He kept that to himself, it was the ace up his sleeve.

*****

“We’re trying to spot the escaped villains,” Marcus said. “You cover the city in the same sweep pattern we used before. I’ll do what I can in the car.”

Some of the villains who trashed the shopping district of Beverly Hills were caught, but others disappeared. There had been no sign of them since. Someone was hiding them.

“This is a waste of time,” Mike said.

“We have to try,” Marcus said.

Mike didn’t move.

“With his powers,” Randall told Marcus at the warehouse, “he can be an enormous force for good. But he needs to grow up. If he decides to use his powers for selfish reasons...” Randall didn’t have to finish that sentence. Whether he called himself Light Man or Sun Man, a superhero wasn’t a costume and a name, it was discipline that came from within. Mike didn’t have it.

*****

“Well?” Knighthawk asked. Mike hated that robot voice. Someday he would see the face and hear the real voice.

“Look, you’ll find the villains when you find Tesseract,” Mike said. “He must have popped them out of prison, maybe he popped them into Beverly Hills.”

“We try everything,” Knighthawk said. “It’s called legwork.”

Strangely, Mike couldn’t find Tesseract when he tried. The teleporting fat guy had enormous power, but Mike never sensed it. Tess broke out of prison the old fashioned way, seemingly he couldn’t teleport himself. After that he disappeared.

“We’re not going to find anything just by flying around,” Mike said.

*****

Randall didn’t have much time for Knighthawk business these days. Just a couple of months ago, the Secretary of the Treasury came out of obscurity into the glare of the world media, and declared that the US economy was about to collapse. In a four page document he demanded the power to do whatever he wanted with no oversight and with no one able to challenge him.

Congress, a body that Marcus had no respect for, was just smart enough to turn the Secretary down. Instead they gave enough money to feed and house every poor person in the US for the foreseeable future to the people that caused the problem in the first place.

Even the election of a brother, or a half-brother as Randall joked, to the White House didn’t look like it was going to solve much. Marcus was sure that no one even runs for President on a serious level without the backing of big money.

Randall was busy plugging holes in his business. Mossoft had cash reserves that were keeping it running, but no one was buying video games. He left Knighthawk activities mostly to Marcus.

“Kid, being a superhero is work, like it or not,” Marcus told Mike.

*****

Mike hated being called Kid. No one would call him kid when Sun Man was famous. Mr. Bromgren said the Society was going to make him huge. The first step was the movie. It was opening the day before Thanksgiving. Mike thought he wasn’t in it at all, until Mr. Bromgren showed him some footage.

“We were able to get a camera crew to that little skirmish in Beverly Hills, and we got some great footage,” Jeremy said. He said Mike could call him Jeremy. He showed Mike the footage. The best shot showed him nailing that Helga chick into the ground.

Fortunately with his light on no one could see he was wearing the cheap Light Man costume, not the real Sun Man costume. He also saw some footage of the actor they got to play him. Some muscle bound type who couldn’t act. He wished he could play himself, but of course they couldn’t show the world who he really was. Mike was just happy that he was in the movie at all.

They were going to pay him. They said he would be a star. What could the Neighborhood Heroes offer compared to that?

Mike didn’t feel like flying around the city for no good reason. He couldn’t just tell off the Knight and go back to the Society yet. They asked him to stay with the Nabe Heroes for a while.

He changed the subject. “So Anthony’s getting a Walters,” he said.

“Wasting his money,” the Knight said.

“I assumed you gave him the money.”

“He says he saved it up.”

*****

Marcus told Anthony to save his money, but the young man said he wanted the best when he returned from his injury. He designed the thing himself and Marcus admitted it looked good. Silver and grey, the colors of metal.

Walters said they could deliver without learning the identities of their customers. Marcus wondered. He would have to ask Randall about it when Randall came up for air.

He knew Mike was stalling, but he didn’t want to push him. He needed to know everything about this Society, who and what they were, before he confronted Mike. Mike said they just wanted to help superheroes. How could a Not for Profit, a charity for supers, do all the things that Mike talked about? They might even be connected to the Sun Man movie that was coming out.

Sun Man was making personal appearances to support the movie. Marcus and Randall planned to go to one soon to see if Mike was appearing as Sun Man without telling them.

*****

Jeremy told Mike he didn’t have to do the personal Sun Man appearances. “We need you to keep up your training,” he said. “Become the best Sun Man you can be. When you’re ready, you’ll have a coming out party that will make you a legend.”

Today, just before meeting Knighthawk, Mike signed the contract. Sun Man belonged to the Society, and now so did Mike. After he put the pen down, Jeremy asked one personal favor.

“Mike, we need you to stay with the Neighborhood Heroes for a while.”

“But,” Mike said.

“I know, I know,” Jeremy said. “You’re looking forward to your new life. I get it. But you’re a hero, and sometimes heroes put aside what they want for the greater good.”

Mike settled down. “What do you need?” he asked.

“Keep an eye on Knighthawk. We, like you, don’t completely trust him. If you find out anything, if he’s really a villain, we’ll forward it to the FBI.”

“So I’ll be undercover. Cool.”

Jeremy shook Mike’s hand. Tom slapped him on the shoulder. Missy kissed him on the lips. “You’ll do great things, Mike,” she said.

He had one regret. Mireya. Missy was nice but he wished he could convince Mireya to come with him. She might come around when she saw him turn into a real, shining, world famous hero.

*****

Mike stood up and said, “All right, I’m going.”

“Answer your phone when I call,” Marcus said.

“Aye aye, cap’n,” Mike said. He became a ball of light and flew away. Marcus was left in the dark car.

Randall asked him to keep an eye on Mike. “We can’t trust him,” he said. “We need to know more about the people he’s talking to. If he turns, I have no idea how we’re going to stop him.”

Marcus flew the car through the night sky, thinking.