Lightweight 3: "Flames"

By Nicholas Ahlhelm

Hellfire menaces the city and only Lightweight can stop him! But when Lightweight learns that the fiery villain is a figure from his own everyday life, can he bring himself to do what it takes to stop the monster?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Metahuman
• Release date: Feb 8, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311901026

Nicholas Ahlhelm

Nicholas Ahlhelm produces new super powered fiction, often in a serialized format like you see here with Lightweight. He lives in Eastern Iowa where he wishes the winters were just a bit less wintery. Learn more about his work at superpoweredfiction.com. To directly back his writing and get new serialized stories months before everyone else, support him at Patreon.com/ahlhelm.

Book preview

Lightweight 3

Flames

By Nicholas Ahlhelm

Lightweight 3: Flames Smashwords Edition, Lightweight and all related characters are copyright © 2014 Nicholas Ahlhelm.

Cover illustration by Brent Sprecher.

Lightweight logo designed by Cynthia Celeste Miller. Lightweight costume and insignia design by Brent Sprecher.

Some fonts used in production of this book were created by Blambot and are used under their Free Font License Agreement. © Nate Piekos. Blambot.com.

CONTENTS

Flames

Afterword

Letters

Character Profile: Hellfire

Backers

About the Author

FLAMES

This time everything was different.

I still floated above the city, like every night for weeks before. I was alone, high above it all.

But the sky was different.

It wasn’t night anymore. The sky was golden, almost orange. Thick billowing clouds of smoke filled the skyline.

I stood atop my cloud. Always the cloud. It scared me, but I knew I needed to see the world below me.

I took a deep breath as I leaned off the edge of my perch. Below me, flames crackled and burned. I never saw anything like it before. Sure I’ve seen a house burn, maybe even a few in those videos of California forest fires. This was so much bigger.

All of Federation burned below me. The city was in ruins. Everyone was dead. I was alone and my city was gone.

Instinctively I knew it was my fault. Lightweight was supposed to save the city. Instead I doomed it.

***

Kevin shot upright. His head bashed into the ceiling of his room. The sudden impact jarred his subconscious use of his powers. The pull on the blankets tangled around him vanished.

He dropped down to the floor. He threw out his hands to stop his fall, but it was too late. He crashed all the way down to the floor and landed hard on his left side.

Pain shot from his hip and he knew he would have a nasty bruise on his side, but otherwise he would be okay.

He climbed to his feet, checked himself one more time and found his initial assessment seemed correct. He walked across the room and turned on the light. He knew he wouldn’t get anymore sleep tonight.

His room was a mess. But unlike most mornings in his life as a metahuman, it was the same mess as when he went to sleep. His fear seemed to have focused his subconscious battle with gravity on him and his bedding.

He was able to easily find clothes for the day, but before he could head to the bathroom, his phone buzzed. Kevin picked it up and accepted the text.

Turn on the news, Millie’s message said.

He grabbed the remote and switched on his television. As soon as he found a local channel, he saw it.

Shepard’s Department Store had sat downtown for over a hundred-fifty years. It was one of the first businesses in the city. It managed to stay at one location for decades despite increasing competition from huge chain stores.

And now it was burning.

Kevin raised the volume.

"—again police are still on