Modern Ninja jumped about the one room warehouse, drop kicking a punching bag, leaping a pile of equipment then doing a roundhouse on a full body punching bag.
Unfortunately she had used too much force with her roundhouse amped up by her powerful exoskeleton, that she split open the punching bag. That still happened much too frequently. She mustn’t use full power all the time as she seriously would kill too many opponents. She had promised Mother Earth that she wouldn’t. Indeed, she had agreed that one of her ‘modern’ features, which was her using silenced guns, would only be with rubber bullets. Apparently modern ninjas were less lethal than their traditional counterparts.
She had just thrown the ruined punching bag on the pile of equipment when a buzzer sounded from the main door.
She thought about it for a second. Maybe it was a supervillain and although she might not be ready to incapacitate them, she could still kill most potential enemies.
She saw someone in full costume, complete with a cape. “I’m here to see Mother Earth,” said the strange man. Modern Ninja read his chest. That said ‘Tail’.
“The superhero tryouts were last month,” she said looking out through the reinforced glass of the door.
“Are you saying that she never mentioned me?”
“She mentioned a partner she used to have. But she also said she really needed more than one partner. She had been shown that.”
“We lost touch but I’m back with something to say to her. Please. I believe you can signal her. I used to be able to.”
Modern Ninja mulled that over for a minute. Then she hailed Mother Earth.
It took a full minute for a grumpy looking Mother Earth to answer. “To what do I owe the pleasure of being woken up?”
“Do you know this man?” Modern Ninja asked pointing her phone up to the other superhero.
“TAIL! I was beginning to think that I would never see you again. It’s been almost two months. Where were you all this time?”
“I tried to come back but our own government agents got me first.”
“Oh my god! Did they hurt you?”
“No that would be blue collar torture. Like being water boarded or having your nails ripped out. They used white collar torture on me. Like putting me in a cell with bright lights all the time. Then waking me up at odd times and using psychological tricks. It takes longer but it is just as effective as blue collar torture.”
“You don’t have PTSD?”
“No. I think I’m alright but I let them know all I knew about you. Which isn’t much.”
“I’m not worried.”
“I think I ended up knowing more about you. The government thinks you are the maker of the world’s biggest and best quantum computer. They say that this and this alone is how you manage to break into computer systems in less than a second. No ordinary hacker could match that.”
“So my superpower is out. You could at least have waited till we were alone to out me, Tail.”
“I’ll keep the secret,” said Modern Ninja.
Tail said, “You seem to trust her as much as you trusted me in the past. I didn’t think it would be a problem.”
“Well at least keep it hidden from Near Absolute Hero.”
“Are all four of us going to become a team?” asked Tail.
“Just when one of us gets stuck,” said Mother Earth. “I dub us Mother Earth Force.”
“You’re taking top billing?”
“Of course. I’m the one being hunted by the biggest powers on Earth.”
Modern Ninja asked, “Isn’t mother earth force just gravity.”
“Exactly,” said Mother Earth. “When we’re forced together it should be a mission of gravity.”
