Omake: Okay, Coach Boomer!
It was a lovely afternoon at Pimento University. The students were in high spirits, rushing out of the building at the end of classes to catch the big football game of the season, campus hero Tom Dover's last before graduation.
"Don't forget, bubbalekh, virology test is tomorrow! Don't let any football parties keep you up, eh?" Professor Sunbright yelled to his rapidly disappearing biology class. Once the last had vanished, the aging dwarf slid from his seat with a sigh, adjusting his goggles and thick Einstein hair as he locked up the lab.
"Come on now, Doc, let them have a little fun!" came a loud call from down the hallway. Sunbright turned to see P.U.'s own Coach Boomowski, chatting up a vaguely familiar blonde woman. Rolling his eyes a little beneath his tinted goggles, he headed over to speak with his friend and most frequent headache.
"Thomas, bubbie, life's not all games. What is it you say, no whiner-babies? I like to think my words are a bit of law as well, even if yours are louder. Now, are you going to introduce me to your friend? Or have we met already, miss? Compounds, formulae, I don't forget. Faces, eh."
The woman gave a friendly grin and bent down to shake Sunbright's hand. "Jill Carson! My son Xander is a student of yours. I was just swinging by to check on him."
"Ah, yes, Xander. Bright boy, top of class." Sunbright replied, continuing absent-mindedly along his way. "Won't find him here though, I'm sure coach will be happy to escort you to the football pitch."
"Wait! Professor, before you go, I was hoping I might have a look around your classroom? My Xander has only the nicest things to say about you, but he's so secretive about his class projects. I did a bit of chemistry in school, can I see some of his work? You'd be making a mother very proud."
"No, closing up now, must be going. Perhaps schedule meeting through councilors." The Professor replied, still trying to place her face and voice. She seemed familiar, but not from any parent-teacher meetings he could recall. "You'll see projects soon on display I'm sure, goodbye. And Thomas, don't forget to be meeting me later! Check-up time again."
--
"Check-up time", for most, might imply cleaning one's teeth or taking blood pressure. For Boomer and Sunbright, it looked a little different. When the slightly tipsy coach finally arrived at the doctor's unassuming apartment at 10, Sunbright checked to be sure no neighbors were poking about before pulling a lever concealed in the radiator. With a mechanical whine, a whole array of high-tech devices and equipment folded out from every corner and cabinet.
"You're late, bubbaleh. Having nice time with Miss Carson I'm sure. Won't ask. You know drill."
With a subdued grumble, the coach began making his way to each, being subjected to a succession of tests and scans while Sunbright scribbled notes and made adjustments.
"I don't know why you keep running me through these physicals, Sunny. You fixed my body, right? It's my old mug in the mirror again."
"Not so hasty, Thomas. Didn't fix you. Headmistress turned you into whiney-baby, as you call it, and I force rapid aging back. Not healthy. Antibodies missing, hormone imbalance. Unstable -" he interrupted himself briefly, hitting a button on his tablet. A laser flared to life, briefly irradiating Boomer's chest and causing him to wince. "-cell division. Just fixed likely cancer precursor. Good you came for physical. Should be grateful, not complain."
Boomer said nothing for a moment. He was grateful, and Sunbright knew it. They also knew, painfully well, just who they were both missing and how much they'd lost.
Unbidden, the doctor's mind wandered back to the day the sky had fallen, and a school for bright young supers had become nothing more than a lair of villains. Not being a super himself, Sunbright had never been directly affiliated with Sky High or its faculty, but as the premier doctor treating supers he'd been in high demand for guest lectures or to tend to the school's latest power mishap. He was just arriving by flying bus answering a call from Professor Medulla when Gwen Grayson launched her coup - when he stepped off, he was greeted by babies swaddled in colourful costumes and capes. His cousin Edna's work, many of them, he knew how much pride she took in them - not that they had done any good for their owners. Cursing his own diminutive size, he'd scooped up a baby under each arm and started hobbling back to the bus, only to be caught square in the same ray that had reduced the nation's greatest heroes into incontinent noise machines.
By all rights, his would-be rescue should have ended right there - the great Doctor Sunbright, just another helpless tyke, with Sky High's new mistress towering overhead. Only an unexpected side-effect of the Pacifier had spared him. Years before - while delivering Mr. Incredible's youngest, in fact - he'd been exposed to a strange alien virus with unpredictable effects, which had caused no end of trouble after granting a roomful of henchmen superpowers. The virus had since gone fully dormant in him, held in check by his adult immune system and carefully mutated into harmlessness through his own expert intervention. But the Pacifier had removed both of these checks, reverting the virus to its original potent form even as it stripped him of the antibodies he'd developed. While Grayson's ray had rendered a school full of supers powerless, it had also inadvertently made a super out of the mild-mannered midget doctor. Even with his intellect reduced to merely brilliant, he'd managed to take Gwen by surprise with a burst of flames, driving her back long enough to haul the nearest baby into the bus with him and make his escape. Hoping against hope he'd saved Medulla, his closest friend and the man best suited to fix such a mess.
He sighed as he finished the battery of tests and powered off the machines. No sense dwelling on the past. Boomer had been Medulla's friend as well, and the two remembered him together even as they made their way through their new, decidedly less glamorous lives.
"You're healthy, Thomas. Powers will still be erratic. They come with adolescence, your new body still has not properly gone through these changes, so no cape work -"
He stopped short, cut off by a flashing alarm on his tablet. Boomer leaned over, curious.
"What's the alarm mean, Doc? Off-the-chart testosterone?"
"No, Thomas. Not your tests. Somebody's broken into my lab."
With surprising quickness, Sunbright shimmied from his seat to the closet, taking out a collection of esoteric gadgets and a much more straightforward shotgun. He hurried to the door, Boomer following.
"Wait, you mean in your biology classroom? But nobody's broken into the school, I'd get paged if they did."
"School isn't concealing alien tech or super DNA, Thomas. My lab is. Has its own alarms, mystery interloper tripped those ones. I take back doctor's order, time for cape work."
--
The two raced back to Pimento U in Sunbright's jeep, Boomer unlocking the school's doors and keying in the alarm code as they arrived. There was no sign of forced entry, and the alarm hadn't been tripped, but instincts built through his years of fighting crime as Sonic Boom kept the coach on his toes all the same.
"I'll go ahead Sunny. Burglars like it quiet, I'll give it to them loud."
Sunbright, engrossed in scanner readouts, did not respond as Boomer raced down the stairs and through the maze of corridors to the doctor's biology lab.
He didn't entirely know what he expected, but it certainly wasn't the familiar voice he heard angrily screeching as he crept through the classroom's doors.
"No… no, more children's chemistry set stuff… doesn't that shrimp know how to LABEL?"
Pausing in surprise, he couldn't help but reply. "Jill?"
At the sound of her voice, his newfound friend turned sharply about, dressed in fishnets, neon yellow goggles and a tight-fitting purple costume that probably worked a little better a decade prior.
"Sonic Boom! I figured you'd recognize me eventually! But you're too late!"
Boomer stood still a moment, mind slowly processing. Very slowly.
"Er... Jill, if you're still looking for Xander's homework, you really only had to -"
"Is that what passes for a quip with you pathetic capes these days? I should…"
She stopped, taking in the genuine stupefaction on Boomer's face.
"Wait, you really don't recognize me, do you? We fought each other! Four times! I'm deaf in one ear because of you!"
There were no signs of recognition on Boomer's stony face.
"You teamed up with Elastigirl… I almost dropped you in that vat… AAAAGH! I'm ORGANA! Mistress of Organic Chemistry! ORGANA, you dimwitted jock! All day listening to your boring stories over drinks so I could slip you those power nullifiers, just waiting for the look of horror on your face when you realized… AAAGH!"
"Sorry Jill, I went through a bit of a second growth spurt recently so to speak, my memories are still a bit… wait, did you say power nullifiers?"
The question snapped them both back to the reality of their situation. Organa tossed a pair of vials from her belt to the ground, while Boomer opened his mouth for a sonic scream… which simply didn't materialize. He gave another decidedly un-super wail in an attempt to access his powers as the chemicals mixed on the floor - and then an involuntary one as an enormous, faceless muscular figure formed out of the ooze and charged him. Though his reflexes were still sharp after years away from heroics, the creature moved with surprising speed, catching him by the arm and sending a wave of agony through his body.
"Yes, power nullifiers! I'm sure you're pretty durable, even with that noisemaker of yours extinguished - but I whipped these drones up special when I saw you on staff! This one's for my eardrums!"
The pain continued spreading down his arm, far worse than it has any right to be. With a subdued moan he wrenched free of the drone's grip, leaving most of the skin of his upper arm behind in the monster's corrosive grip.
He was already beginning to fade from consciousness as he hit the ground, drone raising its chemical arm for the killing blow. Then a net of silvery filaments lashed out, binding the creature for a few crucial moments. He heard Sunbright's voice saying something, then the floor went out beneath them and he was falling…
--
"THOMAS! Time to come to, bubbie!"
He jerked back into consciousness in a dark workshop, a dull throbbing of pain in his…
His hand was gone. A strange metal cast was fitted over the stump, wires protruding from the end.
"Stupid, stupid, running ahead! I escape us through floor to woodworking class, but Organa still upstairs! No time for whining!"
"Wait, Sunny… my -"
"No time!" Sunbright tossed a blood-spattered chainsaw back into the chainsaw art display. "Had to amputate! Gave you adrenal booster, and cast is advanced mind-link, interlinks with most technology. Will make prosthetic to fit at home. First, getting out! Drone is breaking through door soon!"
He glaced behind him. The thick door was being held shut by a spidery mass of robotic arms, but looked ready to tear off its hinges at any moment. In front of him, Sunbright worked furiously with another of his gadgets.
"Teleporter ready, but only built for my size… can fix, just need to -"
He never finished the sentence. With a crash, the arm of a second drone broke through the ceiling above them, a chunk of rubble knocking the doctor unconscious. Through the hole it left, he could see Organa peering down, grinning vengefully. The door continued to shudder.
Boomer was powerless.
But looking down at his friend, slumped over the teleporter's controls, he remembered something.
He was still a hero.
"Alright Organa! That's how you want to play it? You'll be screaming louder than I ever managed in a minute!"
Hitting the teleporter's activator, he watched Sunbright vanish. One of them would make it out, at least. Then springing into action, he grabbed the chainsaw the doctor had discarded, holding it to his cast. The filaments came to life, attaching the chainsaw firmly to the stump of his hand, the engine roaring to life with a thought.
Picking up the doctor's fallen shotgun in his other hand, he raced for the door.
The hinges exploded on the drone's next blow, door and barricade flung across the room. Without pausing Boomer dropped to the ground, sliding under the monster and ripping it open with his chainsaw arm raised.
"Science nothing! I've taught baseball to kids that can leap buildings! SHOULDN'T A SKIPPED GYM, LADY!"
Spinning around, he blasted the shotgun into the mass of chemicals, scattering it and delaying its reformation, then continued on up the stairs past a terrified night janitor. "G'night, Mick."
Upstairs, the second drone stood guard near the entrance to the lab. Boomer rolled past its first blow and into the lab, a furious Organa staring him down from across the room.
"I will MELT you, you puffed-up jock! Suck fluoroantimonic acid!" The villainess cried, hurling a vial at Boomer. He batted it away with the chainsaw, letting it burst against the drone behind him and sending the creature staggering back.
"Calling our attacks now, are we?" he relied with a shout, leaping across a table and delivering a vicious roundhouse. "SIIIIIIDE KICK!"
Despite the force of the blow, though, Organa barely stumbled. He felt the impact absorbed by her costume, which discoloured where he hit it and clung to his leg, revealing itself as more of the same animated chemicals the drones were formed from. The villainess flashed him an evil grin.
"You thought you could beat me with sports and thuggery? You couldn't beat me as Sonic Boom! You'll never beat me as a depowered cripple!"
His leg stuck, the reformed drones charging him, he levelled the shotgun.
"You want a sonic boom, Organa?"
Organa's face went white.
"Well this… is my BOOM STICK!"
He discharged the firearm into the racks of chemicals and experiments behind them, creating a fierce chemical explosion. The vials around Organa's waist shattered, and flames began to consume the lab, alarms blaring and sprinklers flashing uselessly to life.
--
By the time the fire was contained, most of Pimento's west wing had burned to nothing. Mick the night janitor, witness to the events, claimed he'd seen Organa and a strange cyborg still fighting as the flames danced, and certain passersby swore they saw someone escape the blaze to vanish into the night. It is true that on occasion in the months since the fire, a deafening noise will bring the police running, only to find some visiting super-criminal lying unconscious and foiled in the wreckage of his would-be heist.
But for all the rumours, the blaze left no trace of either Organa or of Pimento's own vanished Coach Boomer.
All that remained… was ash.