The sun rose on a fine Saturday morning and the day started with the sound of Thunderstruck by AC/DC from Max's phone, the past three months had been nothing but easy, balancing his hero life and regular life was a tedious task but with the help of Jessica and Ramon, it was easier. Jessica used that big brain of hers to help him out with homework anytime he stayed out late on patrol tracking down criminals or helping the police take down a mafia or drug cartel. It was safe to say that he had more control over his powers now being able to activate them at will now and he was using that to his advantage, even though Mach 2 wasn't that fast when comparing it to the speedsters out there in the world, he was very slow but it was fast enough for him to use to accomplish multiple tasks and chores at once. He could speed read through his notebook multiple times and still do his house chores utilizing his speed whenever his parents weren't home and that helped him retain some knowledge and keep his grades and some say they went up a bit. In his hero life, he was getting really popular in his city, nationally and internationally saving people all around the globe which saw his hero ranking going up both in his city and country as well as on the international ranking. So far, he was ranked higher than Ravage and Water woman putting him third place in his state and he was ranked 50th nationally and 30th internationally. Its safe to say that the international rankings are completely different from the national rankings, the international ranking rated you based on the severity of the scenario a hero is able to make a rescue while that of the national does consider that too but pays more attention to how many saves you make and the popularity or fan base a hero has with debate platforms made pitting a hero against another and it was left for their fans to argue it out for the winner to emerge. With the feats Max was pulling off, especially after his fight against that mech, his popularity was steadily increasing making his way up the hero name ladder thanks to his durability and strength as well as Ramon who was the head of his fanbase.
He blasted off in his hero suit to help out the citizens the best way he could, his first call of the day was a runaway van Boulder Bowler chased rolling around the city as a boulder weaving through traffic to catch up.
"I have to go faster, faster boulder, faster!" he chanted rolling through the streets trying to catch up to the van.
There was no possible way he would get there in time so Max decided to step in, he flew ahead and then appeared in front of the van sticking out his left arm with his palm facing them. The robbers were to engrossed in checking on Boulder Bowler as they steadily pulled away from him and had their eyes of their front windscreen and by the time their eyes returned to face what was ahead, they ran into his palm with a loud crash that rocked the buildings around. People shivered in fear and were frozen in place at the sound with black smoke covering both the front of the van and Max, Boulder Bowler rolled to a stop retracting the protective rock matter to his skin as he looked at the scene in front of him. He wore a sky blue sleeveless onesie that ended with shorts, he had no symbol on his chest and had his skin, eyes and hair covered in rock matter to mask his appearance and deepened his voice. The smoke cleared to reveal Maverick unharmed by the crash and how he stopped the van rolling at 150 kilometers per hour with just the palm of his hand. As bowler walked up to thank him, he found the hero already flying away to the next call and that gave the wrong impression as Boulder now believed he was a proud and cocky person which was not true.
His next task was helping put out a fire that had engulfed an entire apartment complex, Water Woman was on her last legs controlling fifteen streams of water simultaneously which was physically draining and mentally as well. She was more than capable of extinguishing the flames with a large wave of water but the problem was that there were still civilians stuck in their rooms and doing that could injure or even kill them so she had to extend streams of water into the buildings to protect the fire fighters from falling debris and the heat of the flames and keep the flames from bursting through the doors of the people stuck inside. Max arrived the scene floating above a firetruck spraying water into the blaze and to the right of Water Woman. She had long light brown hair stretching all the way to her back and wore a satin blue mask that covered only her green eyes and nose matching the suit she wore. She wore a Satin blue skirt that met her at the knees on a blue shirt which had vertical shoulder pads for some reason with gloves, to top it all off she wore brown boots. Pretty plain for a hero.
"Could you help me-"
Max had already flown into the building totally blanking out Water Woman as she was about to give instructions. She had a disappointed look on her face mixed with disgust as she watched him fly into the building.
"How rude" she commented.
In a matter of seconds Max flew out a window with the first batch of civilians then flew back in to get some more people out. In five minutes, he had evacuated the entire building with the fir fighters included, this gave Water Woman some time to breathe as the fifteen streams of water fell to the ground as she panted heavily trying to get her breathe.
"Now, to put out these flames" she said finally gathering her breath and raising up her hands as water began to form behind her.
She was going to make one huge wave to quench it all but just at that moment, Maverick flew over her casting a gigantic shadow into the street below him as he carried a water tank and dumped all its contents on to the flame quenching them entirely. The people below clapped for him and cheered at his act of bravery and display of strength.
"Can you believe it, Maverick saved all those people in minutes and even upstaged Water Woman in using that water tank to quench the flames" one said.
"Yeah, I guess fire calls won't be answered by just her alone anymore" said another.
Their words filled her ears adding to the anger she already had against him and then when she saw the people, she painstakingly kept alive using water to constantly keep their doors wet so that fire wouldn't break through into their homes to kill them thank him for saving them and even took selfies with him, it was the last straw. She gritted her teeth in anger staring at him so intensely that she didn't even know when some people began to take pictures of her.
Max continued his rounds doing jobs as tiny as getting a cat out of a tree or as kind as helping an old couple cross the street or even giving directions. Then the big one arrived, while scoping around town, he saw a story that caught his eye on the news about an oil tanker in a port in Brazil that had a huge crack on the side after running aground was stuck. The captain was scared of moving the titanic ship back scared that he might hit the same rows of rocks and cause an oil spill so he called for help and the only way they could save them from an oil spill was to transfer all the crude oil he was carrying into smaller vessels and that could take days with no crane strong enough to lift it and it would take some time before any of the strength heroes would arrive as they would have to come by plane or any other means of transported. He immediately landed on top of an office complex to get a GPS reading to Brazil so that he could fly down there and help, once he got his bearings down, he flew out of the city as fast as he could as the sound of him breaking the sound barrier twice caught the attention of the pedestrians on the street. Unknown to him, the world number one hero and number four in the world had arrived. They went by the names Gears and Wave; both wore robot suits that gave them access to high tech weapons and information from around the globe. Gear's suit was metallic grey and fitted to his body looking sleek and had a golden eight toothed gear on his chest that spun with, light blue lights were evident on the shoulders, waist, back eye holes and the middle of the gear. Wave on the other hand had a purple-blue color scheme which looked black from afar but was a blend of blue and purple once you look at it closely, three moving transverse waves enclosed in a circle served as his symbol and moved faster when he spoke. His suit was built in the same style as Gear's with the only difference being the absence of lights on his shoulders, waist and back but his eyes glowed purple. They stood on a ship deck facing security officials as they briefed then on the extent of the situation.
"Gears, Wave, a pleasure to meet you" a fat bald man said stretching out his hand to shake them.
They both shook his hand.
"Please tell us how bad the situation is" Gears said.
"Based on what we've discovered, the ships sensors were faulty and did not warn the captain about the rocks as he came closer to the port and was shocked as he heard the sound rocks running against the haul of the ship. There are also reports that the rocks might have punctured the it and oil may begin leaking any minute now" the man reported.
"That's not good" Wave said with a worried tone.
"So, what can we do to avoid an oil spill?" asked Gears full of concern.
"Well, we've proposed carrying out all the oil from the ship so that the captain could take out his ship without a spill but others say we should get someone who could lift the ship out of there" the man reported.
"Lifting the ship will save us more time and it won't affect the price of fuel and diesel in the country to keep the price of things from skyrocketing" another added.
"Lifting sounds like the best and fastest solution but the only person with that type of colossal strength is dead and Power Man maxes out at carrying a sixteen-wheeler and that almost killed him" Waves said stoking his chin.
"I've just run every strong Johns we have but none are capable of carrying out the feat" Gears added.
"What about that Maverick guy?" Wave asked.
"Well, we haven't seen him hit his max yet but I wouldn't count on him even though he's strong" Gears said. "We could try using a telepath to try and lift it?" he suggested.
"That would be to much strain on their minds, are you forgetting how strong that thing weighs?" Wave replied with the officials just standing there and watching them deliberate.
"Yeah, it would take a lot out of them and no one has showed the ability to handle it alone yet" Gears added.
"What about if we just gathered all the telepaths we have and ask them to lift it, that would ease the burden of them right?" Wave stated his idea.
"That should be plausible but remember some are stronger than others so they would carry more weight and if its too much for their brains to handle, they'll bleed from their noses then collapse and die almost in an instance" Gears reasoned with the other.
"That's true plus some of them are the only ones protecting their city so they might refuse to come help as it would let criminals run rampant in their cities" Wave said.
"We could try building a gravity disruptor or build mini thrusters to carry it?"
"Making the calculations for both suggestions would be easy but building them won't be the same. The mere size of that and weight of that ship would take us at least two or three days to develop the gravity disruptor and the mini thrusters would take about a day and a half to make and fly down here then attaching them to the that is a kilometer and a half long would be tedious and time taking"
"I agree" Gears then.
Just then something was flying towards their position attracting their attention as they turned to the officials when a loud thump came from behind them, the heroes and officials turned to see a figure walking towards them. With confidence seeping from him, Max walked up confidently towards the two with the group of men and women around them splitting into two to allow him walk to his fellow justice enforcers and the two were surprised to see him. His show of confidence impressed the two as he had only just started this line of work just a couple months ago but looked like he had been doing it for years, like he belonged, they were eager to see what he had to offer.
"Speak of the devil" Wave said seeing the red eyed boy approach him.
"Gears, Wave, an honor to meet you" he said nodding as he said their names.
"What brings you here?" the person within metallic grey suit said.
"I'm here to help" he answered.