Superheroes in Prose: The 1-4 Collection

by Paris, Sevan

  I take to the air again and land on the other side of the trailer. It rocks back three times with impacts of Villainous repeatedly driving Smoke’s head into the trailer’s bottom. Smoke’s barely there light tells me he’s already dead, but I guess Villainous is just lost in his psychopathic power trip. I run towards him and get a Grav Blast ready …

  What am I doing?

  I can’t attack him. That’s how this mess started in the first place. I can’t just not attack him either. What the hell do I do? Maybe M will have an idea.

  Gabe, we should leave.

  Maybe not.

  More reservers are on the way. Let them deal with this mess.

  “They’re only gonna get more people killed, M! What Casa said is true. These guys don’t know how to fight—they just know how to look good.”

  With a wet pop, Villainous twists off what’s left of Smoke’s head and throws it and the flailing body in opposite directions.

  I don’t know about looking, but they certainly know how to die good.

  There is a whistling sound above us. He looks up, right as Pink slams into him with Captain Strong’s mean right hook. The smoke clears from the impact, making us look like we’re in the eye of some messed up hurricane.

  Villainous backhands Captain Strong, making Pink form a trench two-feet deep in the asphalt. She grinds to a stop beside me.

  Villainous slaps his palms together and brings them apart, forming some sort of laser sword thing. The Voltron music jumps in my head and refuses to leave. Pink leaps out of the trench, comes down with another punch and misses. I’m halfway there without even realizing I’ve been running in their direction. Villainous’ laser sword makes a loud buzz as he brings it up, sending Pink over my head with an angry looking gash down the side of Captain Strong’s face and chest. She lies face down, unmoving. The domino mask lays a few feet to her right. Guess if her host gets knocked out so does she.

  I hold up my hands. “This ends now. I’m not going to attack you.”

  He laughs—man that digitized voice makes it creepy. “Then I’ll just wait until those other bents get here.”

  Great. He can detect them coming in too.

  The cloud continues to clear with the sound of a wump-wump-wump. A green helicopter with the words “iWitness News” on the side hovers back and forth eighty feet above.

  “You can’t want this. You can’t want to live your last moments like this.”

  Seriously? That’s the best you’ve got?

  “It’s a bit too late for that.” He points at the helicopter. A cameraman leans out, focusing his lens on both of us. “It stopped being about my life a long time ago, Galaxy. Now it’s about my death. YOU HEAR ME, LISA LANCASTER? THIS IS ABOUT THE DEATH OF ME: DR. VILLAINOUS!”

  There is no way they can hear him from up—

  He lifts the buzzing sword above his head.

  I raise both of my hands in a cupping motion, as if I’m trying to catch somebody from falling over, queuing M to raise a force field. A loud hum fills the air. I turn my upper body to the right, wrenching the sword from Villainous’ grasp. It disappears, leaving behind little energy spheres that quickly flitter into nothingness. I turn back right when Villainous sends a foot into my gut, doubling me over. Another kick flips me into a red Honda Civic, forty feet away.

  Gabe, honestly, after all of the things to which you’ve bared witness, why do you still let some twinkling lights distract you?

  “Why can he attack me?” I say. “I haven’t done anything to him.”

  He still perceives you as a threat.

  Villainous turns to the news helicopter …

  “Perceives?”

  It’s all up to how his mind perceives you. If you are a threat, his safeguards justify self-defense.

  Villainous points at me, keeping his eyes on the cameraman …

  “How can he—you mean when I attacked him at the restaurant? It wasn’t even him then. He wasn’t in control.”

  Nevertheless, you did attack him. Another spectacular reason why we should leave this up to HEROES. Statistically, they’re bound to have some reserve member that isn’t completely incompetent.

  Villainous mimes slicing across his throat with an index finger …

  “What’s the death count?”

  …. Nine. Gabe, we’re at five percent power. There is nothing else we can do but fly out of here.

  Villainous looks at me and his eyes glow an angry red. Following the Reformer’s eye line, the cameraman focuses on me with a few turns of his wrist.

  We can come back after recharging if the reservers haven’t defeated him. More humans will die, but we’ve done everything we can right now.

  Villainous smacks the rear of the Escalade out of his way and runs at me. The family inside the SUV looks at me with desperate eyes.

  “No—not yet we haven’t.”

  I raise my left fist and point it near the bottom of the helicopter.

  Gabe … what in The Eternal are you doing?

  “W-We might die, M.” I say through rapid breaths. Feels like my power is lower than five percent. “But we’ll definitely die if you don’t fire. I’m not moving.”

  Villainous closes half the distance between us …

  Such a pointless way to die. M takes the last of our power and fires a Grav Blast a few feet underneath the helicopter. The pilot’s eyes widen—as if he never imagined a Superhero fight fifty feet away could suddenly go bad for him. He yanks the helicopter away, into the safety of the remaining cloud. It hides them from the fight and hides what is about to happen to me from the camera.

  Villainous takes the last two giant, running leaps towards me, rears back his hand …

  And I power down.

  He barely sees me—the regular old human me—in time and shifts his weight, sending the massive punch into the ground half a foot to my right. I go down to one knee but avoid falling completely over. Small pieces of road rain down.

  “What are you doing?”

  I slowly stand, keeping my hands on my knees for support. “I’m—I’m plainly giving up.”

  “Well I plainly don’t believe you.”

  “Yes you do. You just don’t want to.”

  Probably because you refuse to believe how infinitely stupid he is.

  “I don’t want YOU, that’s what I don’t want. Now, do that Space Boy thing again. Hurry before Lisa Lancaster comes back.”

  Mom and Dad in the Escalade behind Villainous manage to get their kids out of the vehicle. Somewhere behind me, something catches on fire. “This is all you get. Just me.”

  “Change.”

  “No.”

  “CHANGE!’

  I laugh, really meaning it. “What’s the matter—even with all this power, you think an nineteen year old kid is too much for you—Dr. Villainous?”

  Villainous screams. But it’s not just a scream at me. It’s a scream at everything he’s lost. Everything he never was. And—most importantly—everything he’ll never be. He puts his fists together, raises them as high as he can, brings them down …

  I close my eyes, raise my arm to cover my face and fall backwards.

  And then the screaming, the whirring sound of his moving, his huge feet clanking on the pavement—all of it just stops.

  I open one eye, then two. Villainous, with a look somewhere between rage and confusion on his robotic face, is frozen right in the middle of his Captain Kirk-like two fisted punch.

  Thankfully, Villainous is even stupider than you.

  “Is he still alive?” The deep voice of Captain Strong with a tweenage inflection comes from behind me.

  I turn and look at Pink, painfully aware that I’m no longer Galaxy. How long has she been awake? “I don’t … how should I know—I was just walking—”

  She raises a hand. “Galaxy, you’re just—seriously? Just walking? On I-24? Could you suck any harder at lying?”

  He’s actually proven so, yes.

  I sigh and look back at the b
lue, red, and black statue of a robot. “No, he’s still alive. Just shut down.”

  “Mind too?”

  No.

  I shake my head. “His prison just became more prison-y.”

  My head pounds with the full ramifications of Pink knowing who I am hitting me. According to the threat Liberty delivered back on the Michael Booth Bridge, all it would take is a phone call for anyone in HEROES to put a name to my face. “What happens now? Are we good?”

  She nods. “Long as you don’t go all Carmen Sandiego on me again. I still need help finding those other two robots.”

  Rocket packs of more HEROES roar in the distance. The echoes of ambulance and fire truck sirens echo off the rocky walls of the Ridge Cut. Their red and white lights flicker through the smoke.

  “Why?”

  “Why what?”

  “Why are you doing this? You …” I almost fall over and she grabs my arm with Captain Strong’s hand, bracing me.

  “Does this happen every time you run out of juice?”

  “…. You have more to gain by turning me in. Why help me?”

  She looks at me with those glowing Pink eyes, as if she is trying to decide if I’m worth the truth.

  Don’t you dare believe whatever comes out of that shallow little twit’s mouth. Whatever she says, whatever she does—it’s only meant to act as a distraction. To keep us from finding out the real her, to keep us from—

  She lets go of my arm and walks towards the direction of the sirens, shrugging with Captain Strong’s massive shoulders. “Ask Casa.”

  Okay, forget all that stuff I just said—next time, we hang on the brat’s every word.

  Epilogue

  …. "It's still unclear exactly what happened an hour ago here on I-24 when an unknown robot Supervillian attacked motorists at the Ridge Cut in the Eastbound lane. What is clear is that six motorists lost their lives in this attack along with three reserve members of HEROES. The victims’ identities is being kept secret until authorities have a chance to notify loved ones.”

  "We've reached out to representatives from HEROES and they say, quote, While we're still unsure of the exact nature of events that transpired this evening, it's becoming increasingly clear that the robot in question is Zyborg and creating a dangerous fog like the one seen on I-24 is well within their technological means. We now have the robot in custody and want to assure those affected by this horrible tragedy that we will not rest until those responsible have been brought to justice. Our thoughts and prayers are with you, end quote."

  "Eye witness James Spencer had this to add …"

  "I was driving in my Escalade when the cloud just—it was just there. I don't know where it came from. I do know that Galaxy is the only reason we're alive. My family and I owe him our lives and … just, everything. Wherever he is, thank you, Galaxy. Thank you."

  "…. You may remember Galaxy from the incident one month ago, when he helped The World's Greatest Hero take down the Supervillain known as Deathbot. Aside from the incident at Rock Creek Bookstore, he hasn't been seen much since. But there is at least one Prose family that's very glad he was seen tonight. This is Lisa Lancaster, reporting live for iWitness news."

  I stand in Casa’s office doorway for another two minutes before he finally looks up from the television in the corner of his office. He doesn’t do or say anything else to acknowledge my presence.

  “Have they said how many people died at the Liberty?”

  “No, and they probably won’t until they get their cover story straight.”

  I put my hands on the back of the blue leather chair I sat in this morning. “I came here to say a couple of things. The first one is thank you. For saving my Mom earlier.”

  He thumbs the button on his TV remote, turning it off. “I didn’t save her. I helped her.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Saving someone implies that someone is incapable of saving herself. Helping someone doesn’t.”

  “But she didn’t have a choice. That person—that waiter—would have died if she didn’t help him.”

  Casa stands and pulls his coat off a coat rack in the corner. “She did have a choice. But it was who she was—who you are—that makes both of you think there isn’t a choice. That’s why both of you are heroes. And that’s heroes in the real sense; not HEROES in the capital sense.”

  I’m too tired to engage with him right now. I just want to go home, eat something and collapse into a coma-like sleep. It was a long, staggering walk from the interstate, which I remember very little of … I was too wrapped in the madness that was I-24.

  After Pink dropped her Casa sized bomb on me, she disappeared into the thinning cloud to help the incoming HEROES with the upcoming mess. I wanted to stay and help. I figured even without my powers, there had to be something I could do—help with the wounded, help clear the road—something. M convinced me otherwise.

  People are trained to help with this sort of thing and you're not, Gabe, he had said. Our power is tapped out, you're exhausted, and sooner or later, someone with some sort of authority will ask you questions that you will have a very difficult time answering, such as ‘why are you here, which vehicle were you in, and what did you see?’ What will your response be? ‘Um, like, I don't know—just walking by on the interstate, dude?’

  Insults aside, M made some convincing points. I walked down the nearest onramp, and then the few miles back to campus. I built up just enough juice to fly the rest of the way home, but I had to stop to see if Casa was in his office. I had to say some stuff. And I just had to know, “Why do you want to know how I hide?”

  “What?”

  “I get the whole seeing the pattern thing. I get the whole predicting the end of the world thing. What I don’t get is why you want to know how I can hide my powers from HEROES.”

  “I’m hoping I can use it to help others that are trying to hide.”

  “Or you’re wanting to use it to organize a resistance yourself. Just like you might be wanting to use me. Just like you might be using Pink. Are you warning people about the apocalypse or are you trying to start it?”

  “It’s more complicated than—”

  “Prove me wrong then. Throw some radical theories, paradigms, or insults in my face and prove me wrong.”

  “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours: Who’s M?”

  My hands white knuckle the back of the chair.

  “Guess we both have to hang on to our secrets a little while longer.”

  He turns his computer monitor to face me. “In the meantime, you might wanna see this.”

  It takes a few moments before I reluctantly look at the monitor: It has an image of a bunch of newspaper clippings of Villainous’ various failures.

  “This came from Villainous’ island hideout. The authorities—”

  “Did Pink send those images to you?”

  “—the authorities believe he kept it there to motivate himself.”

  I swivel the monitor so that I can get a better look. There are too many clippings to easily count. “Sounds incredibly sad.”

  “That’s because it is incredibly sad. But pay close attention to … this section.” Casa hits a couple of keys on the keyboard and the image zooms into some sort of rejection letter.”

  “What’s that?”

  “Villainous, a.k.a., Hilbert Worthy, apparently applied for a Superhero permit once discovering and registering his powers. They denied him.”

  “Why? That guy—with all the stuff he can do—he would have been a huge bonus-y plus. We probably could have avoided two or three of the Zyborg invasions all together.”

  Casa thumbs off the monitor. “Why do you think?”

  “…. Because he doesn’t look the part.”

  “Then he became a Supervillain. One of many. Because he was denied a choice.”

  “But wait a minute: He did choose. What he did on that interstate today … he chose to do that stuff. To hurt—to kill people. He’s a monster. And I’m suppo
sed to feel sorry for the guy?”

  “No. But think about the people that died today and then think about the people that died during the invasions. How many lives could he have saved if he’d been allowed to do what he can do for humanity’s benefit instead of feeling like he was forced to do it for his own?”

  “…. I didn’t come here for all of that, and I’m too tired anyway. I just—there’s something else I have to tell you. You may have helped my Mom, but you’re the one that put her in danger. You put everyone in that restaurant in danger.”

  He gives me an incredulous laugh. "I moved the robot to where you were because it was safer for Prose. You don't like that, blame whatever gave you powers."

  I certainly do.

  “Casa, it’s on you. We still had time to get that thing to another building, an abandoned one or something, but you had to be all dramatic about it.”

  “It’s not dramatic. It’s efficient.”

  “You’re dangerous. You’re not telling me everything. And you’re so smart it terrifies me. Add that up, and you got a really quick recipe for Gabe-be-gone.” I turn to leave.

  “Stop.”

  I keep walking.

  “Please,” he says in a small voice.

  I stop in the doorway in the exact same spot where his words stopped me this morning. “What?” I say, leaning on the doorframe.

  “You’re right. For comparing me to Liberty earlier and … to that other guy. But you’re wrong about me starting all of this.” He walks to the window and looks in the direction of Shunter Hall. “I know what’s coming, I know it needs to be stopped, but I don’t have the power to stop it—to smooth the transition. To keep the body count low. I accepted that a long time ago; I just didn’t realize I should have problems with accepting it—or maybe that I did have problems with accepting it. You did.” He walks around the desk and takes a deep breath. “I need your help. If nothing else, to keep me from becoming what I’m trying to stop.”

  “So, wait a minute, are you admitting that I’m right and you’re wrong?”