The following events take place after Capes! Issue 5

Tyler left the restaurant, hands in pockets, his eyes downcast.  He was, to put it mildly, pensive.  He’d been beaten like a drum in this recent engagement, contributing nothing to the group and acting only as a punching bag.  Maybe, he reflected, this superhero thing wasn’t for him.  After all, not everyone was cut out to be a crimefighter, and he hadn’t even really wanted to try out for the stupid show to begin with – his girlfriend had put him up to it.  And anyway the show had rejected him, telling him – and this was a quote, “Kid, go home.  You don’t belong here.”  They knew a lot more about superheroes than he did.  Maybe he should listen to them?

He came to a street corner just as the light changed and the traffic started flooding past.  He stopped and stared at the street without seeing the cars, and then suddenly shook himself with disgust.  He could fly!  What was he doing walking?  With a mental command his body lost coherence, becoming a cloud of fine particles and taking to the sky – much to the shock of a dog-walker and his bevy of 14 leashed canines, all of whom barked frantically after the rising storm of sand…

Moments later he was sailing over Garden Grove, his passing the only thing in the sky besides smog and a few hardy birds.  Flying always seemed to bring him clarity, and this was no exception.  He was no superhero.  He couldn’t be!  He was just Tyler Chang, skateboarder, unemployed, damned good looking.  That was all he was.  What the hell had he been thinking?  Sandboy?  SANDBOY?  He thought he could be a superhero when the best name he could come up with was fuckin’ SANDBOY?  He must have been out of his mind.  He’d been playing above his league, he’d been stomped, he’d learned his lesson.  End of story.  He was done. 

The instant he made the decision, he felt better.  He wasn’t built for this.  He was nobody’s hero.  He was just going to tell his girlfriend that he’d tried and failed, find another pizza job, maybe get a car if he could afford it.  That was enough.  He had his friends.  He had his skateboard.  He had a girl.  He didn’t need fame, fortune and the adulation of millions.  That was for the birds anyway.

After some minutes of soaring around, he spotted a strip of green – Central Park in Huntington Beach.  Suddenly it seemed utterly appropriate to sit on a bench and take in some sun.  Just him.  Just Tyler.  Nobody else to worry about.  No heroics.  He settled down, took form, and felt his weight settle onto the bench.  It was a warm, sunny day.  It would be all right.

A goose looked up at him, surprised at his sudden appearance.  It gave an indignant honk, crapped mightily, and waddled off toward the lake. 

Tyler frowned.  “Stupid goose.”  It seemed an inauspicious way to begin his post-heroic career.  Once the bird was gone, he settled in, watching the sun glint off the water, and tried to decide what to do next.

Was he doing the right thing?  The question came from a small part of his brain, a distant part he usually didn’t listen to.  Maybe it was his conscience or something.  Anyway, it irritated him and he shook his head.  “Of course I am,” he muttered angrily to himself, shaking his head.  “Of course I am.”

Wasn’t he?

The tinkle of a distant ice cream cart caught his fancy.  Ice cream was good.  Ice cream made everything better.  He reached into his pocket…three bucks.  Well, that would get some ice cream.

Ten minutes later he was back on the bench with a fudgesicle, the vaguely chocolate vaguely ice cream melting down onto his hand the way it always did on hot days.  It tasted the way it always did – good enough – and the familiarity of it let his mind go blank…

And suddenly he felt a pang of loss.  For there, clear as day in his mind, was the image of him doing…something, something good, saving…someone or…a dog…or…a school.  Or something.  All right, that part wasn’t all that clear, but he was saving something, or someone, and people were grateful.  THAT part was clear.  And in his mind there was a hot girl with big jugs in a tank top throwing her arms around him and saying, “Sandboy, you’re a hero!  You saved me!”  Or maybe it was “Sandboy, you’re a hero!  You saved my dog!”  Whatever.  She was thanking him…and she called him a hero.  A hero. 

But he wasn’t a hero.  He never was.  He never could have been.  He was just Tyler.

He felt that pang again.

“Ah fuck it,” he snarled suddenly, whipping the half-eaten fudgesicle at a passing pigeon, which fluttered with some alacrity into the air and disappeared over the pond.  “Who cares, anyway?  I don’t.  I don’t care.”

He was still telling himself that fifteen minutes later when he heard a panicked shriek from the bushes nearby, a sound that suddenly appeared and suddenly was cut off.  He was on his feet before he knew it, sprinting toward the concealing foliage and pushing into it, shoving leaf and branch aside until he came to a little clearing –

Then he stopped.

Because there, in the clearing, big as shit, was Vin Diesel.  He was clutching the lapel of a frightened looking middle aged man in a rumpled suit, a man being held up by three of Diesel’s goons.  One of those goons had shoved him in the mud in Tijuana.  Another had punched him in the stomach after the car accident.  The third one hadn’t done anything to him…yet.

Vin Diesel looked over at him and sighed.  “Christ, not you again!”

“I was gonna say the same thing!” Tyler replied, frankly astonished.  Yes, this WAS Los Angeles, but this was like way too many times to just be RUNNING INTO Vin Diesel. 

“I thought you learned after last time when I caught you stealing my dog,” Diesel replied, letting go of the frightened man’s lapels and giving him a shove that sent him sprawling into the underbrush.  “You fuck with the Diesel, you get tire tracks!”

Shit.  That was a good battle cry, Tyler thought.  He wished he could come up with something clever like that.  But he didn’t have time to think about it because, just like that, the three thugs were upon him! 

His reactions were instantaneous.  With a mental command his body shifted to its sand form, so that the massive fist of Gut-Puncher went right through him.  It didn’t hurt…in fact, it kinda tickled.  Tyler’s reply was a blast of ultra-fine sand particles that suddenly seemed everywhere, and Gut-Puncher dropped to the ground howling in extreme discomfort, tugging at his underwear so he could get the sand out from between his dick and his foreskin. 

Tyler had been there.

Push-in-the-Mud aimed a kick at Tyler’s groin, but his groin was just as much sand as the rest of him and the foot went clear through, pitching Push-in-the-Mud off balance.  Tyler gave him a blast of sand as he toppled, and the thug joined his buddy doing the “I got sand where it hurts” dance on the ground. 

I-Ain’t-Done-Nothing took one look, turned, and sprinted away.  Smart dude.

Vin Diesel was standing, arms crossed in front of his massive chest, looking woefully unimpressed.  “Looks like you’ve been practicing,” he said with a sneer.

“A little, yeah,” Tyler replied cockily.  “Let’s just say Mr. Fast and Furious and his Gs ain’t the toughest thing I faced today.”

Diesel’s sneer got bigger and he spread his hands, his arms strong and massive and his torso muscular and rippled.  “You haven’t faced me yet.”

Tyler shrugged, drips of sand flaking off his shoulders, and asked, “Dude…do you take steroids?  ‘Cause those guns don’t look natural to me, man.”

Diesel’s sneer turned into a laugh.  “Those are going to be your last words, Beach Boy.”

“My name,” Tyler replied, drawing himself up to full height, “is SANDBOY!”

Diesel paused, staring in disbelief, then shook his head.  “That name sucks.”

“SHUT UP!”

And suddenly, Vin Diesel seemed to grow larger.  Tyler boggled for an instant, doubting the evidence of his eyes, but there could be no doubt.  Vin Diesel was changing!  He grew enormous, at least ten feet tall, before he hunched over and dropped to all fours.  His skin went from…whatever color it was to grayish green, then dark green.  His form became massive, rounded, armored, powerful, and the bones of his face shifted and flowed into a wicked, sharp, horny beak.  All of this happened in an instant, so fast that Tyler barely had time to take half a step back before the fading Hollywood star was replaced – by a GIANT SNAPPING TURTLE!

The man in the suit, lying forgotten on the ground, gave a terrified squeak and tried to scramble underneath a bush that was much too small to conceal him.

“God…DAMN!” Tyler gasped.  He was too astonished even to dodge when the Vin the Turtle snapped at him!

Pain!  Even though he was still in his sand form, and should have been immune to a turtle no matter how big it was, or how many movies it had been in, the beak closing around his thigh hurt like a motherfucker and knocked him to the ground!

Tyler knew what he had to do.  He had to get out here and warn the world that Vin Diesel was a 25’ long snapping turtle!  With a single thought he let the sand of his body coalesce again and took flight, darting into the air.  Vin the Turtle snapped at him again, but Tyler juked and dodged and didn’t go where he was expected.  For Vin the Turtle expected him to soar straight up, but Tyler didn’t play that way.  There was a civilian to be rescued.

And heroes rescued civilians.

As he flashed past, he darted out his arms, extending them to preternatural lengths by feeding sand into them, and snatched the man in the suit beneath his sweaty armpits.  The man yelped in surprise when Tyler hoisted him into the air, and Tyler almost dropped him when he had to dodge another snap from Vin the Turtle, but in a moment he was into the sky and away, carrying his rescued Vin-ctim (heh, Vin-ctim.  He slayed himself.).  And if there was one thing a sandstorm could do, it was outrun a turtle.

“Who…who are you?” the man gasped.

“I’m Sandboy,” Tyler replied cheerfully.  “Who are you?  And why did Squirtle want to rough you up?”

“My name is Chester Smith,” came the reply.  “I put new gutters on his house in Brentwood.  I accidentally put on the Embossed Half Round Copper Gutters with the Greek Key design instead of the Embossed Half Round Copper Gutters with the Caesar Circle.  He said he was going to kill me!”

“Whoa,” Tyler said softly.  “Do you think he would have?”

“YES!”

A few moments later, Tyler set Chester Smith on the hood of a police car (the two cops inside were eating tacos) and took off again. The world had to be warned!