The Outsiders
School Days
by Immortalwildcat
As the sun descended toward the horizon on a late August Sunday evening, a lone car prowled the streets of a Cincinnati neighborhood. The driver, a well-built African American, studied the streets as he moved up and down the streets, familiarizing himself with the area. Occasionally, he stopped to watch a group of teenagers caught up in a game of basketball or hanging out on the steps of one of the many row houses. At one of these stops, he was noticed. A group of a half-dozen young men and women moved toward his car. Rather than drive off, he switched off the car’s air conditioning and lowered the window.
“What’re you doing, man? I seen you over on Hawthorne, now you’re hanging around here. You some kinda cop or somethin’?” asked the tallest of the boys.
“Not me, guys. I’m just getting to know the neighborhood. I’m a new teacher at Carver High School.” He smiled, and watched the small crowd.
“New teacher, huh? Whaddaya teach?” The girl who asked was short and heavy, with clothes that stretched tightly across her chest and backside. Heavy makeup stood out in stark contrast against her coffee-colored skin.
“English and Phys Ed. I’ll be coaching the track team as well.”
“No shit.” A small, wiry boy with a heavy Latin accent moved forward. “I was on the track team last year.”
“Really. What events?”
“High jump, pole vault, and cross country.” He stood up straighter, his chest puffing up. “M’name’s Carlos. Carlos Montenero.”
The car door opened, and the driver stepped out. He stood nearly a foot taller than the runner, and was just a bit taller than the boy who had first spoken. “Good to meet you, Carlos.” He extended a hand. “I’m Jeff Pierce.”
“Oh, man, you got to be kidding me! Jefferson Pierce? From the Olympics? Man, I remember watching you run! You were great, man!” Carlos grabbed the older man’s hand and pumped it enthusiastically.
“Wow, it’s nice to be remembered.” Jefferson grinned; he wasn’t used to being remembered for his Olympic accomplishments.
The others introduced themselves. Winston Rollins, the tall leader of the group; Tonya Beville, the short, heavy girl; Katie Ingram, a thin blonde girl who looked like she’d spent most of the summer with a bad case of sunburn; Marcus Powell, a short, muscular African American; and Angelo Marsala, a chunky, swarthy youth who kept a protective arm around Katie. “We all grew up here together,” explained Winston. “All except Carlos. He just moved here a couple years ago.”
Jeff leaned back against the fender of the car and crossed his arms. “Let me guess: you all keep an eye out for each other, and for the neighborhood. Right?”
Marcus eyed him warily. “Yeah. You got a problem with that?”
Casting his eyes up and down the street, Jeff turned back toward Marcus and looked at him intently. “If you’re really watching out for the folks around here, no. I don’t have a problem with that. It’s what my pals and I did, back in Suicide Slum in Metropolis.”
“Hey, don’t mind Marcus. He gets kinda, what do you call it, defensive? Yeah, I guess that’s it. He’s sensitive about strangers coming in here, aintcha, Marcus?” The smaller boy nodded back at Winston.
“Yeah, especially after those creeps tried to rough up Tonya last month.” Marcus put an arm around the shorter girl. “She spotted them passing some weed to a couple of kids down the block, and called it in. Cops picked them up, and the next day they were back out on the street. Came by here, ready for a little payback. But me and my buds, here, we chased ‘em off.”
“Hey, guys, I understand. And I’m glad you guys are looking after things. In fact, if you have any trouble around here or you see those guys back here, I want you to know, you can call me anytime.” Reaching into his shirt pocket, Jeff pulled out a small flat case. He flipped it open, and passed out cards to each of them with his name and phone number. Putting the case away again, he looked at Carlos. “Now, if you’re going to be running on my track team, I need to know how well you run. Care to give me a little demonstration?”
“Like, what kind of demonstration?”
“Let’s see, I think I passed a sign back there for a Lincoln Park. There was a fountain there, as I recall. How about we race to the fountain?”
“A race? Two miles? You still got it in you, old timer?” This was said with a big smile.
“You want me to drive your car over there?” asked Angelo.
“Might be a good idea. I don’t know that Carlos will be up for the trip back.” Jeff fished the keys out of his pocket and tossed them to the Italian teen. He hoped it wasn’t a mistake letting the youth drive.
“I’ll lead the way, just so’s you don’t get lost.” Carlos dropped into a starting crouch. Jefferson did the same. “Wanna call it, Tonya?”
***
On the first day of school, Jefferson found that he had Tonya, Carlos and Marcus in his homeroom, and Winston in his last period English Literature class. George Washington Carver High School was like a lot of inner-city schools. The classes were crowded, the ethnic mix was varied, with higher proportions of blacks and Latinos. His two Physical Education classes both expressed disappointment that they wouldn’t be able to spend most of their classes playing basketball. When he told them that three weeks during the year would be spent learning archery, some of the students laughed out loud.
“What are you, crazy man? Putting a bow and arrows in the hands of guys like Mario Ortega?” asked one girl. Mario was in the class, standing off to one side with another youth. Both were tall, heavy young men, and both wore frowns on their faces that deepened when they heard the laughter at Mario’s expense.
“Look, I don’t know what you got away with last year around here, and I really don’t care. The state says we have to cover certain areas, and it’s my job to make sure nobody kills them self or anybody else in the process.” He directed the class to run five laps around the gym. A few of the students took off at a good pace, while most of them started half-jogging, half-walking around the large open space. Mario and his friend were at the back of the pack, lumbering along. Jefferson noted that Mario seemed to be having trouble, breathing very heavily. He was just about to tell the young man to stop when he collapsed to the floor. Jefferson dashed over and gently pushed Mario’s friend aside.
“Hot! So damn hot!” muttered the stricken teenager, his head swinging from side to side. “Feel like I’m in a damn oven!”
“Someone go soak some paper towels in the sink and bring ‘em over here, quick!” shouted Jeff, pointing at a pair of boys near the door to the locker room. Seeing another teen near the hallway door, he directed her to fetch the school nurse. He pointed at a girl who had stopped to see what was happening. “You! Go grab a couple of cups of water!” As she ran off to comply, he checked Mario’s forehead and wrists. Oddly enough, they didn’t feel particularly warm. “Hang on there, kid, we’ll get you taken care of.”
“Turn down the heat, would ya Coach?” Jeff looked down at Mario’s face. Sweat had beaded up on his forehead, but it looked odd somehow. He reached out a finger to touch one of the beads, and it was solid. Before he could figure out why, the girl he had sent for water returned.
“Here, sit up a little, Mario.” Jeff helped the boy to a sitting position and reached for one of the cups. He held it up to the boy’s lips. As Mario drank, Jefferson noticed wisps of water vapor wafting over the surface of the water. Mario reached up to hold the cup himself. When he did, Jeff felt a wave of cold brush over his hand. He looked down, and saw the water in the cup was frozen solid.
***
In the nurse’s office, Mario Ortega lay on a cot, fans blowing over him. Jefferson Pierce and Melinda Denley conversed as they watched him.
“Luisa Ortega called me this morning and asked me to watch out for him,” said Melinda, a portly middle-aged woman in a starched white nurse’s uniform. “She told me that he was among the people kidnapped by the space aliens this summer. He didn’t know where they took him, but he’s apparently been having nightmares ever since he returned.”
“From what I gather, he has a reputation as a troublemaker and a tough guy.” Jefferson flipped through a file provided by the school office, while thinking that he had thought the boy looked familiar. As Black Lightning, Jefferson had been on the rescue mission that freed Mario and thousands of other captives on Pluto. “Looks like he’s had his share of trouble, all right.”
“So, what happened out there, Pierce?”
“Heck if I know. He was running, and started showing signs of heat exhaustion. He collapsed and said that he felt warm, though his skin was cool to the touch. He was sweating, but if I didn’t know better I’d say the sweat was freezing on him. Then he reaches for the water, and it freezes in his hand.” Jefferson glanced at a bowl on the desk, in which the frozen cup of water was now thawing.
“You don’t suppose those aliens did something to him, do you?” asked Melinda. “You know, like they talk about in the Inquisitor?”
“You read that thing, Mel? That’s the paper that’s been printing stories about Superman having a love child with Goldie O’Neal, isn’t it? The one that tried getting Child Services to go after Batman because they said he was -”
“Yeah, that one. Still, they were right about the Atom leaving the US and going to live in South America with some little fairy princess.”
Shaking his head, Jefferson went over to the cot. Mario’s eyes fluttered open, and he looked at his gym teacher. “Hey, Mr. Pierce. What happened out there?”
“That’s the magic question, Mario. What do you remember?”
“I was out there running.” He looked down as Jefferson cocked his head. “OK, I was out there, schlepping along, and it started getting hot in the gym. Really hot, like when my mom took us to Baja over spring break. Next thing I know, I’m waking up in here.”
“You don’t remember talking to me out there, then? Or when I gave you that cup of water?”
“No, man. Just, like, nothing.” The teenager shuddered.
Jefferson reached for a cub of water on a table near the cot, and handed it to Mario. “Here, take this.”
Mario wrapped his fingers around the glass. Immediately, the water started to freeze. “What the-?!”
“This happened in the gym, Mario. Somehow, your body temperature is so low that normal air feels hot, and your touch is like ice.” Jefferson turned to the school nurse. “Miss Denley, you don’t happen to have any of those forehead thermometers, do you?”
“In the cabinet. Here.” She opened a door and pulled out a small, paper-wrapped item. Tearing it open, she handed a strip of plastic to Jefferson. He placed it on Mario’s forehead.
“See. The temperature-sensitive strip should glow somewhere in the 95-to-100 degree range, but the glow is at the bottom of the scale, around 88 degrees. That’s as low as it goes, but I’d bet the actual reading is even lower than that.”
“So, what do I do about this?” Mario was trying not to panic. Jefferson gave him credit for showing courage in the situation.
“If you don’t mind, I know someone who might be able to help.”
***
Black Lightning stood outside of a run-down brownstone, checking the number on the door against the slip of paper in his hand. “Looks like the place. Hey, I appreciate your doing this.”
The tall, dusky-skinned woman standing next to him reached out and laid a hand on his arm. “It is no inconvenience, my friend. From your words, I understand that this young man may be greatly troubled, both by the events of the past few months and of his life. Any help I may offer is of little consequence to me.” Arani Caulder, better known to the world as Celsius, tossed her head. A great fan of long, black hair splayed out behind her. “Shall we?”
They went up to the door. Before they could knock, they heard a loud crash from inside, followed by a high-pitched scream. Black Lightning grabbed the doorknob and, finding it unlocked, opened the door. Inside, they found a surreal sight. The living room was like an ice cave, with gleaming stalactites hanging from the ceiling and several inches of ice coating the floor and the few pieces of broken-down furniture. In one corner, a slender, dark-skinned woman crouched, still screaming. At the other end of the room, Mario Ortega stood, sheathed in ice that moved with him.
“That’s him, Celsius. He’s more powerful than he was this afternoon.”
“I think I can handle him, Black Lightning, if you wish to see to the woman.” One of the Indian woman’s hands emitted a reddish glow, as wisps of vapor appeared around the other. She spoke louder as she turned to face the young man. “Mario, listen to me. I think I know how you are feeling. Please, calm down and let me help you.”
“What are you, nuts? How the hell can you know what I’m feeling?” Mario brought his hands up to his head, as if there was pain at his temples. Ice formed around his hands, as he massaged the sides of his head. “Just want to cool down, man, it’s so hot in here.”
“A shame, that you don’t know of me, but not surprising.” Reaching out with one hand, Celsius focused her inner energy and channeled the cold feelings of despair that lay deep in her spirit. Just as she had been taught by a wise woman of her native land, she let that feeling flow. A swirling cone of cold erupted form her splayed fingers, channeled by her will into a hollow cylinder of ice around Mario. “You see, we are much alike, you and I.”
That’s right, Arani, keep talking, keep him focused on you, thought Black Lightning. Moving to the woman in the corner, he reached for her hand. “Let me get you out to the other room, ma’am, so we can talk.”
“But my son, what is she doing to him? What is happening to him?” asked the woman, even as she rose and followed the hero.
“She’s here to help, ma’am. Don’t worry, she’s very good at what she does.” As they exited the room, Black Lightning looked back and saw the cylinder shrinking, closing in tighter around Mario Ortega.
After they left, the cylinder continued to shrink, until Mario was caught in a rounded block of ice not much larger then himself. “I’m not here to hurt you, Mario. Do you understand that?” asked Celsius.
“Yeah. Yeah. How, how do you do that?” asked Mario as Celsius gestured with her other hand and the ice throughout the living room melted and dissolved into water vapor under a swath of controlled flame.
“My powers come from within, a channeling of spirit,” replied the Indian woman. “Your power, however, was induced in you by somebody else. Somebody, I think, who did not have a proper understanding of human physiology.”
“Huh? What do you mean?”
“You will notice, young man, that you are no longer feeling warm. So long as you do not feel overly warm, your body does not generate the waves of cold. When you feel warm, your body reacts by producing cold and ice to combat it, like another person might perspire when warm.”
“You mean I sweat ice?”
“Yes, you might say that. And, you should be able to control it.” Celsius let the ice around Mario dissipate. “If you feel warm, focus on producing the cold, as an aura around yourself. Picture it in your mind’s eye, like a shell of frigid air around your body. Do you think you can do that?”
“I, yeah, I think I know what you mean.”
“Excellent. Begin now.” Flame erupted from Celsius’ hand, low intensity flame encircling the younger man. “Focus, Mario, focus.”
Sweat beaded on Mario’s forehead, but he withstood the waves of heat washing over him. To the trained eye of the heroine, the air around him shimmered faintly as the heat met the aura of cold around him, but he appeared otherwise normal.
***
The following day, Mario was walking home from school. He was feeling pretty good, he had made it through the whole day without any problems. Nobody even noticed the layer of cold air next to his skin, perhaps because he never came in contact with anyone.
As he walked, he saw that Tonya Beville, Katie Ingram and Parcus Powell were just up ahead of him. He was debating whether or not to let them know he was there when he saw the car. It was old, and beat-up looking, but it was quiet. Too quiet. A car that old didn’t run that quiet, unless someone put a lot of work in the car. It was coming up the street toward him. Mario saw it start to veer over toward his side of the street, then he saw the glint of sunlight reflecting off of steel. Without thinking, he stretched out his hands let the ice just flow out of him. It streamed at the car, fifty feet away. First it struck the windshield, shattering the glass. Then he directed the ice downward, to lock the car in place. He let it build up into an impenetrable wall around the car.
“What the hey?” asked Marcus, as he realized what was going on. “You do that, Ortega?”
“Uh, yeah, I guess I did,” said the young man, wisps of vapor curling around his hands.
“Damn, that was cool!” said Marcus. “Um, I mean, ah..”
“Yeah, I get it, man.” Mario Ortega smiled. “Figured I was just a freak now, but, hey, maybe I can do something good with it.”
“It’s worth looking into.” Mario turned and found Black Lightning and Celsius standing behind him. “You’ve got the instincts for it.”
“But, like, I can’t do something like this all on my own.”
“Hay, man, don’t you get it? The Outsiders are right here in Cinci now.” Tonya put her hand on Mario’s shoulder, then withdrew it when she realized it felt like putting her hand in the freezer. “”You could be like a Junior Outsider, or something.” She looked up at the heroes. “Right?”
“Or something, yes,” said Celsius with a smile.
“So, whatcha gonna call yourself?” asked Katie.
“I don’t know, Iceman or Polar Kid sound kind of lame, you know, and Captain Cold is already taken.” Mario saw Tonya rubbing her hand. “What’s the matter?”
“Like to freeze my hand off, when you gave me the cold shoulder there.”
Mario’s head cocked to one side. “Hey, there’s an idea. Cold Shoulder. Yeah, I can handle that.” He turned back to Black Lightning and Celsius. “What do you think?”
They looked at each other and smiled. “Works for me!” said Black Lightning.
