The Totally Secret Origin of Foxman by Kelly McCullough Page B

bit more comfortable … red-and-white powered assault armor with a grinning fox mask and fluffy-looking tail, all rendered in a poly-ceramic composite of my own invention.
    Now, where were we? Right. Without the Hero Bomb and the powers it gave me, I could never have survived the fall. Even if I had, I’d probably have gone hypothermic and drowned before I could swim ashore. On the other hand, the rocket on my skateboard would never have been half so effective, and I’d have gotten off the track long before meeting the train. That would have precluded the need to use the bridge strut like a jump. But the point is still the bomb and the powers it gave me. No, not me , Foxman.
    â€œAll right, all right, I’ll go back a bit further.” This was supposed to be therapy, which demands honesty. Perhaps if I went with something earlier, something safer …
    It maybe started with my sixteenth birthday present from my dad—Archibald Hammer of Foxhammer Industries—God, how I hated that car.
    My relationship with my father was … difficult, what with him dumping my mother and using a whole herd of his fancy corporate lawyers to prevent her from getting so much as a penny in the divorce. He thought he’d end up with me too, but when the judge asked who I wanted to live with, I chose Mom. I think that might have been the first time in his whole life my dad lost out on something he wanted—billionaires rarely do.
    The car—a brand-new ’88 Corvette—was his latest attempt to buy me back, and I’d sworn never to drive it. Which is why I was messing around with rockets and skateboards. A guy’s got to get around somehow. Besides, gutting that shiny new engine for parts to build the rocket felt like the perfect kick in the balls for the old man. And so it went …
    *   *   *
    â€œRand, when are you going to schedule your driver’s test?” My mother knocked on the locked door of my room in our little apartment. “It’s been more than a month. Think of all the things you could do if you could drive…”
    â€œI’ve almost got the Triumph running!” I glanced guiltily at the half-rebuilt carburetor sitting on the corner of the worktable I’d welded together from wheel rims and an old security door—but I’d long since lost interest in the project and had started quietly gutting it for parts along with the ’vette. Anybody could rebuild a car. “I want to take it in my own car.”
    â€œA boy your age should be getting out more, going to movies, dating … You could use the ’vette.”
    â€œNo!”
    â€œIt’s a new car, Rand, and it’s got your name on the title…”
    â€¦And a mostly empty engine compartment—not that I wanted her to know that. “I will never drive that car.”
    â€œLook, just because your dad and I got a divorce doesn’t mean you have to cut him out of your life too.”
    â€œI am not having this conversation again,” I growled as I stuffed tools into my backpack. “No, Mom.”
    â€œRand, he could do so much for you.”
    But I was already going out my window. I used one foot to pin my skateboard to the roof of the shuttered warehouse that butted up against our apartment building, while I closed the window. Then I tipped the board onto the steep slope and shot away. At the edge of the roof I kicked up the nose and dropped six feet onto the top of a shipping container in the fenced-in yard of the warehouse. My wheels barely touched down before I was across and taking the next drop onto the concrete.
    In a normal winter I would have had to shovel my way from there to the back door of the battered old building, but it had been unusually warm this year with repeated cold rains wiping out the snow. There was ice, sure, but surprisingly little for late November. As I got closer to the door, I hit the button on