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It was a rare calm Saturday. Not that Jordan minded the busy ones. He had been doing a lot of Superboy appearances lately: hospital visits and charity drives and stuff. With all that practice, he was getting to the point where they didn’t make him crazy anxious anymore, and it was nice to be able to help out in that way. Even if he could do without being called ‘Superboy’.
But the entire world knew that the ‘Superboys’ were high school students, so all those events were always on the weekends, and Jordan was glad he finally got a free day to just be lazy and hang out at home.
His dad must have felt the same because he had whisked Jordan’s mom off for a romantic day trip, spouting off coordinates for a family dinner later that night just before they took to the skies. Without anyone lecturing him about using his powers in the house, it took Jordan exactly thirty-seven seconds to blitz through his chores for the day, so then he really did have the entire morning open.
And he knew who he’d end up spending time with.
He could hear Jon messing around in the barn, so he threw on a hoodie for comfort and went outside. By the time he reached the barn, though, his brother was already on his way out.
And even weirder, Jon visibly started when he caught sight of Jordan.
“Hey! What’s, uh, what’s going on?” He shuffled backwards, leaning against the side of the barn for support.
“Nothing. You, uh… okay?”
He blinked. His shoulders twitched. “Totally.”
He held his arms behind his back, obviously hiding something which was so stupid because of, you know, x-ray vision. And Jordan was almost gonna be nice and let his brother get away with it, but then Jon’s eye cut sideways in the most telling way possible.
So what was Jordan supposed to do? He twisted around and followed the giveaway gaze towards… Jon’s truck.
Huh.
“What, are you gonna go for a drive?” Jordan asked.
Jon had been doing less and less with his truck ever since his powers had come in, and now that everyone knew they could fly, none of them bothered with driving much at all. They actually got more stares stepping out of a pickup onto main street than if they landed behind the theater like they usually did.
And Jon was still looking shifty.
“Not a drive,” he said. “I’m, uh, actually thinking of selling it.”
“Oh. Wow. The end of an era, huh?”
“Yeah, well…” Jon shrugged, still staring at his beloved pickup truck. Then he gave his head a shake. “Feels right. I just need to, uh, do a few things to get it ready to sell.”
“Like, cleaning or…” But Jordan could already see that he was wrong because Jon was finally pulling out the thing he had been hiding behind his back.
It was a wrench.
“I did some, like, upgrades,” Jon said. “But there’s no way I can sell it like that, so…” Finally, he pushed off the wall and headed towards the truck.
It took Jordan a second to catch up, both mentally and physically. “You mean, like, a new stereo or something?”
“Not exactly…”
And Jordan recognized that look on his brother’s face.
It was the exact same one he got when they were tiny and he was trying to open the baby gate. The one that wasn’t for their safety, but so their mom could get some work done for ten minutes while their dad was off lifting submarines out of the ocean or whatever.
That same look had also been there when they were six and Jon snuck an iPad into their bedroom for when they were supposed to be sleeping, and then again when they were eleven and he tried to get Jordan to back up his story that their teacher never assigned homework.
Everyone said that Jon was the easy one, but that’s just because he did all his troublemaking when no one was looking.
“So, what kind of upgrades?” Jordan asked.
“Some… really unique ones.” With that same annoying look on his face, Jon slotted his fingers under the hood of his truck and lifted it up.
And Jordan felt his jaw drop.
There was something alive in Jon’s truck.
Okay, maybe not exactly alive. It wasn’t an animal or a bug or even a plant. It was weirder than all of that: a weblike network of glowing tendrils that wove in between all the usual stuff you’d expect to find under the hood of a vehicle. They twisted around each other and filled in every little gap you could see. The glow pulsed slow and steady, like some kind of strange heartbeat, and, like the roots of a tree, you could see that they all connected up to one solid, bright mass that was tucked right against the engine.
“Bro, what the hell.”
“It looks weirder than it is.”
“It— What the hell!”
“Grandma helped me with it.”
Oh. Okay, that actually… made sense. The… the thing sitting under the hood looked like it belonged in outer space more than anywhere else on earth.
“So, yeah,” Jon said, “I’ve been working on it ever since that first trip to the fortress.”
“Wait, what? When did—”
He blew out a sigh. “Dad said grandma had Kryptonian technology she was going to show me, remember?”
“Yeah, but…”
“But, what, you thought he’d say something like that and then nothing would ever come of it? How dumb would that be?”
“Pretty dumb,” Jordan agreed. “I just didn’t realize she was… teaching you or… whatever that year.”
Jon shifted his weight. “Well, she wasn’t exactly… I mean, I had the crystal generation matrix and the programming construct. The rest was sorta playing around and figuring stuff out.”
Jordan stared again at the glowing truck innards. It was totally weird. And he had a high tolerance for weird.
But weirdness aside, it also looked really cool. And complex. Definitely something Jon would have had to put a lot of thought into.
“Yeah, uh,” Jon scratched the back of his neck. “I had a lot of time to myself sophomore year after everything, uh… I mean, it’s not like I was actually taking hours to walk Candice home, you know?”
“No. I guess not.”
“But there’s no way I can sell the truck with this thing attached.”
Jordan smirked. “You could probably get an awesome price if you did.”
“And Dad would kill me. He doesn’t know about any of this.”
The ‘and he better not ever find out’ was unspoken, but crystal clear. Jordan shrugged his agreement. Of course he wasn’t gonna tell their dad. It was, like, twin code or something.
“So, what does it all do?” he asked.
“Uh, well, there’s the basic stuff: full autopilot, increased horsepower, and internet literally wherever.”
Jordan snorted. “What, you turned your truck into Knight Rider?”
“And there’s other stuff, too,” Jon continued, pointedly ignoring Jordan’s amazing joke. “Sonic guns, EMP cannons, and a set of red solar blasters.”
“What?!” Jordan took a step back and angled himself into the sun. Just in case. “Bro, why would you need that?”
“Uh, because a few months ago I didn’t have any powers? And you remember that we used a truck to save Dad’s life once, right?”
“Yeah, from the guy who ended up being, like, his best friend.”
“But we had no idea who he was back then! For all we knew, it could have been, like, an alternate universe Lex Luthor or something.”
Rolling his eyes, Jordan focused back on the truck. “So, how are you gonna get all this out?”
Obviously, the wrench wasn’t gonna cut it. Kryptonian tech didn’t really use lug nuts.
Jon still swung the stupid thing around in his hand. “Well… I’ll figure it out.”
“You can’t just start yanking on it! Go ask Grandma or something! You can get there all on your own now.”
“I did! She, well, wasn’t all that sure. I guess she didn’t really expect me to install it in, you know, my truck.”
“I don’t think any of us did,” Jordan muttered.
“And there’s been a few weird things,” Jon said over top of him. “I had to give up the idea of a camouflage function because it started changing color on its own.”
“Bro…”
“It’s fine. I think that’s stabilized. And the weapons stuff shouldn’t matter. We have powers.”
“You put red solar lights in it!”
“It’s not like it’s Kryptonite! Here, if you’re so freaked out, you can take the wrench.”
Jordan felt even stupider actually holding the wrench, but at least that meant he didn’t have to touch the pulsating tentacle-like things inside the truck. He just needed to bite his lip and tighten his grip as he watched Jon lean in, pick at the smallest one, and start to pry it off of the big boxy thing off to the right.
A jagged bolt of electricity shot outward. It sizzled and sparked, filling the air with the smell of ozone.
With a startled hiss, Jon let go and jumped backwards. Jordan ducked down.
“It’s fine!”Jon said, shaking out his fingers like they had been stung. “I mean, I think so. You know we’re not gonna get hurt by a shock or anything, right?”
And, okay, it was dumb that Jordan had been dealing with the powers for longer and still got spooked by possibly getting hurt. But it wasn’t like Jon could know that for sure.
“It’s kryptonian tech, dumbass. If anything could hurt us, this would be it.”
Jon tilted his head. “Well… I don’t think it will.”
“Yeah, we already know you didn’t think about this.”
Jon gave Jordan a heavy shove and rolled his eyes.
Then they both turned back to the truck.
“Maybe…” Jordan wiped his clammy hands on his jeans, switching the wrench from hand to hand. “Maybe you need to try some speed? If you get at it faster?”
Jon tilted his head. “Yeah, maybe. Like, pull it off before it has a chance to react.”
Jordan was already having second thoughts about it, but before he said anything, Jon raced forward in a speedy blur.
And then, just as fast as he had gone there, he was stumbling back wincing and coughing as a cloud of black smoke belched out of the truck.
“Jon!”
“I’m fine; I’m fine! It’s—” Jon hacked out another cough and tilted his head towards the sun. “It’s okay. I guess I can’t sneak up on it.”
“You think?!” Jordan dragged in his own deep breath. This was such a mistake. They shouldn’t be messing with Kryptonian tech that their grandma didn’t even understand. They needed to… Well, Jordan didn’t even know.
Jon was still deep in thought.
“I think it’s kinda… grown,” he said. “Since I first put it in.”
Jordan sighed. “Of course it has. Look, Jon, I think that—”
“Wait, what if it needs to be a heat vision thing?” Jon interrupted. He was already angling his head to the side and starting to squint in a way that put Jordan on edge.
“Wait! Just—”
But it was too late. Jon hit the alien octopus thing inside his truck with a blast of heat vision narrowed down to pinpoint accuracy. Jordan knew from experience that his brother was no slouch in this department, which made it all the worse when it didn’t make a difference. The weird glowy tendrils only got brighter, and an ominous humming sound began to reverberate in the air.
It wasn’t working. It was just making it worse and they had already seen what this thing was capable of in self defense. Jordan wasn’t going to leave his brother hanging so he tossed the wrench aside and stepped up to help with his own blast of crazy-ass laser eyes.
But as bright as their combined efforts were, the brightness from the truck was even more overpowering. It actually hurt Jordan’s eyes, and he had to push through to keep himself focused. At some point, the thing had to die, right? If he just tried a little harder then—
He didn’t even see the explosion. One second, he was standing by his brother, and the next he was fifty yards away from the truck, ears ringing so hard and eyes barely able to see anything. He back hurt. He was on the ground. And he couldn’t— He could tell if—
“Jon?! Jon, where—”
A sweaty, shaky hand gripped onto his own, and the panic left him in a whoosh. There was his brother: right beside him like he always was. Jordan took a deep breath.
They were okay. They were alive.
With a groan, he finally rolled over and faced upwards towards the sun. Clouds drifted across the bright blue sky. One of them looked like a rabbit. Slowly, the pain faded and his senses came back to him. He still kept hold of Jon’s hand.
“Are you okay?” Jon asked.
“Yeah… you?”
“Getting there. Hey, how many times do you have to almost die and then get healed by the sun before it starts to feel normal?”
Jordan blinked lazily. “Dunno. I’ll tell you when I’ve figured it out.”
It took another couple minutes and then, in unspoke unison, they sat up and faced the truck.
The truck that still looked totally normal. It stood, without a scratch, in the center of a charred circle. Every single blade of grass had been burnt away, and scorch marks radiated outwards in the dirt. The house was still standing, at least, but the wooden siding was black with smoke. The porch was covered in a thin layer of ash.
“Mom and Dad are gonna kill us.”
Jordan whipped his head around. “Us?! This was all you!”
He didn’t get anything back in response, just a pouty sigh that told Jordan he was definitely gonna end up sharing the blame for this. And then Jon got that thoughtful look on his face again.
“Well, maybe if I went at it with—”
Jordan cut him off with a glare. “No. Not happening. You hear that, Jon? We’re done. Your stupid mutant truck is gonna stay that way forever, and you can never sell it. You’ll have to, like, work it into your hero identity or something. I dunno.”
Jon rolled his eyes. “The whole point is that I don’t need it anymore, remember?”
“Doesn’t matter. You have to use it to keep it appeased. We’ll just tell people it’s your new best friend or something.”
Jon snorted, and Jordan was too loopy to stop. The explosion must have knocked something loose in his brain.
“And you’ll have to change your name,” he continued. “It’ll be, like, Super Trucker or… or whatever. Something so that everyone knows that this thing exists because of you.”
Another exceedingly strong shove hit his side.
And then Jon thought about it.
“Well, there would be one good thing,” he mused.
And there was that stupid expression back on his face, but Jordan was still dumb enough to ask.
“What?”
Jon’s face spread into the biggest shit-eating grin. “At least I finally get to stop being Superboy.”