Prologue: The Forty-Eight Hour Festival
Monika
I’m watching Taranis through my lens like a stalker. I shouldn’t be. I’m here to shoot agroupof superheroes, not focus on just the one. Even if I were to focus on just one, it should be the ginormous pink-skinned monster with twin horns who spits fire whenever anyone looks at his girlfriend—sorry, fiancée—sideways, but I’m not.
Instead, I’m focused on Taranis, the world’sfavoritesuperhero. At least, he was. He may be tied for first now that the Wyvern has turned into a monster, through a process he and other Champions refer to as hisreversion.But Taranis doesn’t seem to mind sharing the spotlight. He’s just sokind. And pretty.
I swallow hard, snapping a couple shots as he reaches down to help the Olympian stand up. She doesn’t need it, of course. She’s among the most famous and most powerful of the Champions, but it’s still a sweet gesture.
She says something to Taranis as he yanks her up, and she tumbles into him, catching herself on his broad chest, which is covered in glittery, skintight baby-blue spandex. My ten-freaking-pound 400mm lens swivels on top of my tripod.
It’s rare that I get to bring out equipment this heavy, since I usually shoot in the middle of hostile environments and in much closer range. A 400mm lens is too bulky and unwieldy, requiring both hands to shoot, if you can even carry it for that long. Now, mounted on my tripod to capture the full gathering of eight superheroes, it’s perfect.
With my Nikon Z9 and giant-ass lens, I’m able to catch all the microexpressions on the Champions’ faces—more importantly, all the ways their powers flare with their emotions, in fascinating unconscious gestures—from thirty yards back.
Pele, who can manifest and control lava, accidentally scorches the tarmac under her heels when she’s shoved back in a playful gesture by Ceto. Ceto controls water, and when she spits some out of her mouth now, it moves like an arrow loosed from a bow, hitting Taranis in the side of his face. He gawks at her in the cutest fucking way, and when he laughs and steps back, electricity titters across the tops of his shoulders. I catch all of it, and it honestly makes me a little teary to see eight of the forty-eight most powerful beings on this planet behaving like children.
My heart clenches in my chest at the sight of Taranis, in particular.
Like 99 percent of the planet, I’ve had a crush ever since I first saw the shaky footage of him crawling out of his pod as a child twenty-two years ago. His was one of forty-eight pods that fell from the sky that day and changed the world forever. The beings who emerged from each shattered pod looked human enough, but they carried an ethereal, otherworldly aura that made each of them so beautiful, I found them hard to look at. I still do.
These forty-eight alien kids wielded extraordinary powers but had no memory of where they came from or even really how to use them. So, after a confusing initial six months of governments panicking and scrambling to decide what to do with our superhuman guests, the children were placed with human host families, and the Supernatural Defense Department was set up to help manage—cough,control,cough, cough—them. The only problem? Some didn’t want to be controlled.
The child who became the grown-up we now know as the Marduk was the first to defect from the SDD when he was in his early teens. He pulled several of the Forty-Eight with him, and together they formed the Villains Network of America—the VNA—and began using their powers to cause chaos all over the world. The Champions of Earth Coalition—the COE—was established as an offshoot of the SDD to counter the villains. And just like that, the Forty-Eight became instant celebrity brands, with the VNA and the COE competing with massive contracts and endorsement deals to “win” unaffiliated Forty-Eight beings over to their respective sides.
Today, the balance stands:
Champions: seventeen.
Villains: seventeen.
Unaffiliated: fourteen.
The Wyvern evened out the balance between the Champions and villains earlier this year when hefell in love with Vanessatook a contract with the COE. And now eight of the Champions stand together like kids underneath a banner that glimmers high above them in the airplane hangar, celebrating the day the Forty-Eight crashed here. It’s a fun festival, one I always enjoyed as a teen when it was first established—but I have to wonder why they decided to keep the photo shoot advertising the festival at this location ...
The airplane hangar looks ... rough. It’s only been three weeks since the Old Sundale Airport was destroyed when the VNA kidnapped a newly reverted Wyvern and Vanessa, and her crazy family helicoptered in to save the day. Even a few of her coworkers were there, which really pissed me off since I’m technically a full-time contractor for her agency, The Riot Creative. I mean, come on. Why didn’t I get an invite to the party? It sounded chaotic and bloody fabulous—quite literally.
Now the historic airport is half caved in, a majority of the antique airplanes destroyed or missing. Even the tarmac still has burn marks and bloodstains on it. But Mr. Singkham, head of the COE, and Ms. Lemon, head of the SDD, thought it would send a powerful messageto the VNA to keep the photo shoot here, even if the festivities would mostly take place in downtown Sundale over the course of the next week.
“Are we ready, Monika?” Mr. Singkham shouts over the distance separating us. I’m glad I have my 50mm lens fitted to my backup Z9 ready to go, and give Mr. Singkham a thumbs-up as I approach the group to take shots from much closer.
Mr. Singkham’s typically stoic face breaks into a grin as the infectious energy of the Champions permeates the air. Even the Wyvern grins a little bit as he watches the antics of the other Champions, holding Vanessa crushed to his side. His larger-than-life proportions make the average-size woman look like Tinker Bell next to him. Yet she still looks up at him adoringly, like he’s a cute cuddly teddy bear instead of someone who looks like he got lost on his way across the River Styx and should be guarding the gates of Hell.
Crouching in the middle of the runway, I adjust my settings to be able to focus on both the people—and aliens—in the foreground as well as the signage billowing over the scorched hangar. I give Mr. Singkham another thumbs-up.
He sweeps a hand over his dark hair. His tie is an homage to his homeland, decorated with the red, white, and much thicker blue stripe of the Thai flag, though I’m sure any average American will just assume it represents the United States. “Shh! Everyone, please give Monika your attention!”
I snap a couple shots of the cluster of eight Champions and four humans, who include Vanessa, Mr. Singkham, Ms. Lemon, and Sundale’s mayor, Mrs. Tambor. She was the one who roped Vanessa into the frame even though Vanessa’s technically working on-site as the Wyvern’s PR manager. But she’s also his fiancée.
As theSundale Dailyso aptly put, the Wyvern and Vanessa’s work romance “took the world by storm,” and I’m not at all surprised that the mayor hopes to capitalize on Vanessa’s presence here. They have no fewer than eight events over the next week—even more than Taranis and the Olympian—to mingle with VIPs and take photos with citizens.This is apparently the largest Forty-Eight Hour Festival Sundale will have ever hosted over the fifteen years it’s been active. So large that after the Wyvern’s reversion, the festival was extended to last a whole week.
And I’m expected to take cutesy pictures throughout all of it. I’m awarphotographer,mein Gott. Not a tabloid gossip-column reporter.
With a grimace, I review the last few frames. They’re awful, as I expected they would be. But I just needed to test the focus and shutter speed while Pele held a ball of revolving lava in her hand, Taranis’s chest crackled with electricity, and the Wyvern’s horns caught fire—simultaneously.
I approach the group, wind whipping the scent of smoke from the hangar to flood my nostrils—just another dagger to the gut, reminding me of the battle I missed. Forcing a neutral expression, I stand in front of Mr. Singkham. “Can you move up front? I can’t see you past the Olympian’s shoulder.”
I then move over to the mayor and pull her forward. A tall, heavyset Jamaican woman, she stands sheepishly amid the crowd of Champions, apologizing to Ceto and the Olympian as she brushes shoulders with them.
