Superheroes in Prose: The 1-4 Collection

by Paris, Sevan

  I slowly turn and look at what used to be Gabe. The impact of Villainous’ gun scattered chunks of his blood, skull, and brain over three rows of Harry Potter books. I want to throw up. I want to look away. Once again, I want to run from the store and never think about this place, never think about M, never think about this hero bullshit ever again. I can’t do this. I can’t die for … I … can’t die. I want to do things. I want to get out of this city … I want to see the world … I want to … live without M.

  “Do it.”

  What?

  “Do it. Leave my body—save him.”

  You realize there is no turning back, Reagan. Even if you change your mind, I’m not entirely certain I can rebond with you. In fact, I’m not entirely certain I can rebond with Gabe. You could very well be throwing your life away for nothing.

  I start to stand, squeeze my eyes, then stop myself with a sniff. “Well … you’ll always have the wiener dog,” I say hoarsely. “Do it.”

  No.

  “What?!”

  You never know if people are going to thank or lynch you—those were your words, Reagan, remember? You understand the realities of life better than he does. Such as the foolishness of helping those that don’t deserve it; those that fear you because they don’t understand you; those that hate you because you won’t follow their ridiculous rules. Quite simply, you are a far better—far safer—match for me than Gabe. I’m not going to throw all of that away because you have a fleeting moment of morality.

  Tears stream down my cheeks.

  Oh don’t even. By this time next year, you’ll have forgotten all about him. And be thanking me.

  I’m on my knees without remembering how I got there. “Why tell me those things about saving him?! Why pretend like you were giving me a choice?!”

  You needed to feel that you had one. If you had agreed to stay with me, it would make accepting the situation easier.

  “Wait … acceptance. That’s what this is about.”

  Reagan …

  “You need me to accept you—our survival depends on mutual acceptance of our situation—those were your words, M, REMEMBER?”

  Don’t think that you can just simply—

  I press the barrel of the VT against my right temple.

  M makes us starry.

  That will do you no good. As I told the good doctor, I made force field modifications to prevent all of his older weapons from hurting me.

  “No, you said you made modifications to keep most of his weapons from hurting you. At first, I thought that meant this one too, but now I don’t think so. His other weapons were just designed to hurt—this one sends crap back in time. That’s a whole different thing.

  M’s pause tells me I’m right.

  You’re bluffing. That time displacement weapon was made for Zyborg physiology. Gabe was already dead before the beam hit him. You don’t know if you’ll survive the process.

  “If you can’t find another person to bond with in the two months leading to this moment, I know you won’t survive the process.”

  Okay, lets make a deal then. You place the weapon down, and I’ll attempt to find another human—

  “You know what, M?” I say quietly. “You were right about that not believing you thing. I did figure it out eventually.”

  I close my eyes. We share a long moment, filled only with waves of rain slapping at the window.

  “Your move.”

  With a heavy, frustrated sigh, a dark blue cloud meanders from my body. It’s the most horrifyingly beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.

  ***

  “Hey, hero.” I hear the voice of Reagan MacPherson weakly say beside me.

  I open my eyes.

  There’s a sugary burnt smell in the air. My mouth tastes like ash and my back is wet. Something blue covers my hand. It’s the Galaxy goo stuff. There’s a slight buzzing sensation in my head, bringing the last several hours with it: M continuously threatening Reagan, my feeble attempts to take my body back, and M explaining an origin that I damn well should have forced him into explaining a long time ago. “Reagan?”

  “Over here.” She leans against a bookcase. Her skin looks ghostly in the moonlight. She looks so frail that I stop myself from touching her, afraid it will somehow hurt her even more.

  “Reagan?” I say with a lot more strength than I feel. I slide through the goo and stop next to her. I risk a quick glance behind the counter to see that Dr. Villainous has already taken off.

  She looks at me, but I don’t think she sees me. “I feel funny … Gabe. Like … ”

  I lean against the bookcase. “Funny, like you’re about to sneeze funny?”

  No, funny like she’s about to die funny.

  “Wait—what do you mean?”

  Reagan’s chest rises and her breath makes a rattling sound.

  That weapon you gave Reagan sent me back in time. I bonded with her. You were dying and she chose your life over hers. I rebounded with you and brought you back to life.

  M healed some pretty serious injuries that I had during that Deathbot craziness. But I wasn’t aware he could … “I was actually dead, and you brought me back to life?”

  Yes, it involved—

  Reagan’s eyes close and her head slides to the floor. “Forget it! Go back, M! Rejoin with her!”

  No.

  “WHY?”

  I don’t have to. I don’t want to.

  “What do you mean you don’t have to? She’ll die!”

  Of course she will—just not today.

  “M, I’m not asking you, I’m—wait—what?”

  She’s going to be perfectly fine, Gabe. Oh, she’ll be weak for a while. But we weren’t together long enough for her body to depend upon mine the way that yours does. Of course, I did lie and tell her otherwise. She actually thought the only way to save your life was to suicide herself.

  “Why?” I say, barely above a whisper. “Why would you—“

  Why do you think? She was a safer place to hide from The Council. She had the good sense not to risk her life for the sake of others. Or at least she did … now—God help you both—she’s just as hopeless as you.

  “Reagan, you’re going to be okay. M was lying. You’re not going to die.” I lift her head and ease it onto my leg. Her sweat, blood, and goo matt her hair and clothes. Her freckles twitch, but her eyes remain closed. Color returns to her cheeks.

  Probably shouldn’t try to wake her, Gabe. I’m sure we’ll just have to listen to her cry again.

  “Shut up, M. Just—just shut the hell up.”

  Epilogue

  It took three very long days for M to shut up.

  I gave him the silent treatment. After all of the points he made about being heard and stuff, it seemed the most appropriate.

  He tried his first go to: a hundred bottles of beer on the wall. He sung it all during my phone call to 911, the paramedics taking Reagan away, and the police questioning me about the sudden appearance and later disappearance of one of the world’s slipperiest Supervillains. Not wanting to make the lie too complicated for me to retell later, I just told them the truth, minus a few details: I stayed late at the store to have coffee with a friend, when Dr. Villainous and some spacey looking hero carried their Super-style slugfest into the coffee shop. Both Reagan and I must have been knocked out in the fight, officer, because the details are blurry for me and seemed to be blurry for her. Yes, officer, she was only barely conscious when I found her .... No, I don’t know where the starry Super or Dr. Villainous ran off to …

  The cop seemed to buy it, and I think Reagan must have said something similar in the hospital later because he never contacted me for more questioning. The only person left to collaborate the story—Dr. Villainous—was nowhere in site and, honestly, given his past exploits, I doubted anybody would believe him over us anyway.

  The next day, M tried reversing the silent treatment on me for a few hours, believing that I would eventually need him so badly for some sort of “superhero n
onsense” that I would have to talk to him. I took the day, much to his chagrin, to catch up on some serious playing of the video games. It was the only way I could distract myself from his constant yakking, the fact Liberty’s deadline was twelve hours away, or Reagan’s condition.

  On the third day, M went back to another old trick: Gabe, he begun, I swear that if you do not, at the very least, acknowledge my presence in some way, I will send the very next flesh-person we come across into orbit.

  This one was tricky. Not because I thought him incapable on a moral level, but the same reasons he didn’t want my originally doing this hero thing in the first place, I believed, would keep him from sending anybody into orbit: M was afraid. He was afraid that the wrong person would be looking at the wrong time and witness a Grav Beam lift Johnny or Jilly Unfortunate into space. It would reveal that which M had gone to great lengths to avoid: his secret identity. I knew that, as long as I played it safe and stuck to well-populated areas, I had nothing to worry about. It certainly wasn’t a perfect or even long term sort of plan, but right now it was all I had.

  I look at the park bench I’m sitting on at North Shore. It’s the same one that Glop slopped through the other night. Wonder how the rest of that guy’s weekend went? Is it possible somebody I sent to The Bend actually had a better weekend than me? It’s almost twenty-four hours past Liberty’s deadline. M hasn’t spoken to me since the threat. Pink wants me to start hunting that robot thing next week. I have no idea how Reagan is doing.

  I rub my face. Why do I put myself through this?

  “Gabe?” I hear behind me. I turn, looking over my shoulder. There is a coolness in the night air, causing the breath of Reagan MacPherson to frost.

  I stand. “Reagan? I … didn’t know you were …”

  She walks around the bench and sits to my right. She is dressed in a shiny purple coat ending just below her hips. The bottom of a black skirt eventually meets knee high boots. “I know. The doctor released me last night. Anything from Liberty? I’ve been watching the news, but …”

  “No, and I think it’s intentional.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You know how your mom or dad will tell you you’re in trouble for something, but won’t tell you what you’re punishment is for a couple of days?”

  “OMG, I hate that.”

  “I think Liberty wants me to hate it too.”

  “What about Pink? She could be keeping him off your back somehow. I mean, that is what she’s supposed to be doing, right?”

  “Maybe. I’m supposed to meet her next week to discuss some stuff. Guess I’ll find out then.”

  “You don’t seem that worried.”

  “Right now, I’m just numb. I mean all this, what M did to you, the fact that he never told me about creating Supers … I don’t know how I’m supposed to feel, so I’m not feeling anything.”

  Gee, Gabe, wonder why I never told you.

  The Liberty Bell sloshes by us on the Tennessee, continuing its nightly cruise. I rub my hands on my jeans and zip up my blue hoodie. “So, full recovery I see.”

  “Uh-huh. Nobody knows exactly how or why—they’re not even sure what happened. The fact that I wasn’t all forth-with on the details didn’t help. I just told them I thought I was knocked out.”

  “Well, M—”

  She touches my wrist. “Didn’t say I didn’t know what happened.”

  Told you she would remember.

  “I waited. I waited until they told me to go away, the doctors … and your family I mean. They wondered if I was your boyfriend.”

  “Are you?”

  “Well, I don’t … isn’t that something we kinda have to have a conversation about first?”

  “No, that’s not what I meant. I don’t mean are you my boyfriend. I mean … are you wondering if you’re my boyfriend?”

  “No. No I’m not.”

  “Okay ... I just, I wanted to make sure. I know you have a thing for me, and it made me—I took advantage of it to get what I wanted the other night—but I’m not sorry.” She slightly flinches at her own words.

  “…. Okay?”

  “You still slammed the door in my face Friday—so there.”

  I sigh. “Reagan, I’m so tired of this. Of M, of you, of being … a hero. Just do whatever you want, think whatever you want … I don’t care.”

  “Yes you do.” The wind blows several strands of red hair into her mouth, and she pulls them behind her ear. “You might be a little burnt out right now, but you do care. I don’t know what made you start being Galaxy, but I know what keeps you being Galaxy.”

  Oh please, enlighten us.

  “Will you tell him to shut up?”

  What-the-what?

  “You can hear him?”

  She nods. “When I’m close to you—which isn’t hard to do because, for some reason, anytime I think about you, I seem to just … know where you are. I was surprised to hear him … but not really—I think I knew that I could hear him someway, somehow … I don’t know.”

  Well, since you can hear me, and more importantly, you seem to have the uncanny knack for response to go right along with that hearing phenomenon, I have a few things to say …

  Reagan looks firmly into my eyes. “Shut up, M, or I’m gone.”

  The three of us seem to wait for the awkward silence to get a little less awkward.

  “M said, when he was you, he said all any of us ever want is to be heard. And, that may be true … but I think it’s more complicated than that. Gabe, what if we want to be heard, but we have nothing we want to say?”

  “What do you mean? Like you’re not important or something?”

  “No, I feel like I’m too important to me, and that’s the problem. All I wanted was to find a way out of this city. I wanted to get out of the country; I wanted to do things. But at the moment M told me it was you or me, all of that changed. All I wanted was to freaking live.”

  “But you saved me.”

  “I didn’t do it for you, Gabe. I did it for me. As much as I wanted to live, I knew I couldn’t live with that thing.”

  We’re back to calling me a thing now, really? If that isn’t the pot calling the kettle black … Gabe’s caveman instincts may have somehow guided my incorporeal self to you two months ago, based off some sort of familiarity. But—make no mistake—I still chose you, Reagan, to be my vessel. Having experienced two months of your life, I can tell you that it was—without a doubt—the single most interesting thing that has or will ever happen to you. I brought you kicking and screaming out of that drudgery you called a life and gave you purpose through mystery, motivation through intrigue, and meaning through reflection. The fact that you’re able to have this conversation is proof of all these things. You damn me, Reagan MacPherson, for the very thing you should be on your knees thanking me for.

  Reagan laughs even though I can tell she doesn’t think anything about this situation is remotely funny. “See what I mean? I am a horrible person, and I didn’t even realize it until another horrible person pointed it out.”

  “You’re not a horrible person.”

  “I didn’t save you out of selflessness, Gabe. It was selfishness.”

  “It’s not selfish—it’s human.”

  “Who wants to be … just human? You save people on a daily basis, people you know, people you don’t know. You put up with M—something that would drive most people insane. You work a part time job, go to school full time … and you handle all this stuff like it’s just-just nothing.”

  She looks at the river. “You’ve given your life over to something so big … and I look at you and I think about that, and it just makes me feel …”

  I touch her knee and feel my entire body go tense. Here it comes. The moment I’ve been waiting years for. I’ve finally won the respect, won the admiration, won the heart of the very woman that I—

  “… hate. I feel hate.”

  “Oh.”

  “Not at you—myself. I’m reminded
of what I’m not … and probably can’t ever be. That’s why I can’t be here, in this city, anymore. I’m reminded of this. I have to just leave … I have to get away from it.”

  Reagan stands and my hand stays on the bench where her knee was. She barely touches my cheek with strawberry scented fingertips, and sniffs. “And it really sucks because I think I love you.”

  She may have said something else, but my thoughts were too far away. After giving me a smile that fails to touch her green eyes, she walks out of my life and into the night, pulling tightly on her purple coat.

  PART THREE

  PARADIGM

  In dedication to those of Aurora … your tragedy leaves this writer without words.

  Prologue

  I lower the V-Plane’s landing gear and hover to a stop on the landing pad. Here I am … my last bastion.

  The Pacific island’s official name is Ralmyra, but I secretly renamed it V-Island over a decade ago. It’s my last stash of alien Zyborg technology. After it’s used up, I’m done. El fin. Dr. Villainous, the self-proclaimed “Master of Machines” will be without a machine to master. Of course, I couldn’t let THEM know that—Galaxy and the lot of them who … stop me every bloody time.

  No.

  Not just stop.

  “Defeat,” I say barely above a whisper.

  I rub my eyes and scream in pain when I accidentally touch the scalded flesh covering the right side of my face. Blasted painkillers are wearing off. That’s what I get for only having the bad kind, the human kind, with me. Given the amount of pain I’ve experienced over the years, you would think that I would have learned my lesson.

  The V-Plane’s hatch slowly opens. “Systems on,” I say weakly. A series of networked Zyborg computers and technology hum to life. Lights clap on throughout the cave, and the V-Plane’s runway lights simultaneously turn off to conserve power. The hangar entrance, at the other end of a three-mile tunnel, sends a metallic echo throughout the cavern walls as its camouflaged door clanks shut.