Superego

Eji and his dad before the proper fight in the chapter called "The Oni"

Despite it's presence in other superhero media, very little magic exists within the world of Error 10-9 or anywhere in it's potential multiverse, only existing in mythical locations, objects, beings or beings that have interacted with mythical objects or forces, some examples of magical items are mjolnir, Excalibur, Florent, The Holy Grail, the scabbard avalon and the remains of the Original Judas.

Some magical locations include The Fountain of Youth, any body of water that The Lady of The Lake has been recorded to appear, Stonehenge and the surface of the moon.

Some examples of magical entities include all identities of Morgan le fay, The Ascendant Carp, Rumplstiltskin and The Headless Horseman.

While superpowered beings aren't on every streetcorner, only one in a thousand people are BORN with a superpower, various patterns have formed from observation and propaganda peddled by AGE.

Invisibility: despite the nefarious, intrusive thoughts many people have regarding invisibility, a propaganda campaign for "Invisible security" by AGE shifted the perspective to Invisibility becoming called "the slacker's power" as many people with invisibility are hired as jobs with little manual labor or as security guards who simply need to remain invisible in one spot, with many in blue collar jobs using their power to steal time from the company while still being verifiably on the job site, despite not actually doing their job as it's very difficult to prove they are or aren't actually working.

Super strength: Super Strength is usually seen as either the power of a bully or a hero, being used by both selfish and selfless people, sometimes the same person for different reasons.

Flight: the free spirited power, flight is usually viewed as good due to people being more punctual when they don't have to contend with traffic, crosswalks, subways, etc. Although they also tend to be less organized since they spend more time doing leisurely things instead of getting from point A to point B

Regeneration: The Daredevil, people with regenerative powers tend to be reckless, why avoid an injury that won't last for longer than a hangover? although this lack of caution is seen as good as those with the power hold more enthusiasm for life, something about being much harder to kill tends to make people want to live life more fully.

Telepathy: The Manipulator. Telepathy was seen as a messenger's ability until 1994 in which a politician's young son was found with a telepathic teacher who had been grooming him for months, leading to a discovery that many telepaths abused their ability to manipulate minds, especially younger minds, as they could easily be silenced through mental suggestion leading to the unfortunate sterotype that telepaths are perverts and pedophiles, and unfortunately criminals statistics show that out of every ten convicted pedophiles seven are telepaths, and five of those seven are women, leading to many female telepaths facing heavy discrimination and even lynching in extreme scenarios unless they take measures to block out their own powers. Laws have been put in place, as well as technology, to find telepathic signals and prevent the developments of cults, relationships between children and adults, and blackmailing through mindreading plots from forming.

Super Speed: super speed is seen as another slacker's power like invisibility as the ability to go from point A to point B in only a few seconds over a great distance allows for a lack of planning to still be rewarded, many students with super speed using their powers to cheat during exams without being detected as most instances of superspeed make the user immune to friction generated while using their powers.

Elemental powers: elemental powers are varied, just as much as people are as no two users of even the same elemental power will use their power the same, fire powers being used for arson or powering generators happen in equal measure so it's only safe to make assumptions on the person based on other factors.

super senses(X ray vision, super hearing, smell, or other senses that allow one to perceive things others can't): people with JUST this power seem to be seen as natural born snitches and spies, reporting things more anonymously and while propaganda is strong, the urge to take a peep under the hood with X ray vision can be too strong a temptation, especially of the proverbial peep is into somewhere they shouldn't be.

Flying Brick(flight, strength, speed and durability) this specific set of powers has a good reputation due to the existence of Goldilocks, the most powerful instance of it being an inspiration as a force of good, many with the power set try to emulate him, even at young ages

in 1977 the world saw then 17 year old Goldilocks take a life for the first time in his life, while it did not stick the action caused a ripple across the world. The United States government formed the agency of Augmentation, Genetics and Evolution to study, create, and harness Anomalous Materials, Elements, and most importantly: produce a countermeasure for if Goldilocks ever truly went rogue.

Founded by Charles Lance Sr. and signed to have no presidential oversight, AGE has developed technology and policies meant to protect normal humans from rogue or inexperienced powered beings, understanding that overly forceful methods would bring the ire of both the public and Goldilocks, a force of good capable of becoming a looming threat should the right circumstances arise, which is a path best avoided.

AGE is the government agency responsible for supervising superheroes, a classification that is a bit silly in universe due to many simply being licensed vigilantes but the term stuck as it was already in use. the organization is also responsible for logging and studying superpowered individuals, having placed monetary incentives for people to register themselves honestly.

Undocumented superpowered beings are studied "naturally" by AGE through channels in the NSA, spying on them through smart devices, text messages, phone calls, anything that transmits information, however, violently detaining or arresting supers can cause panic and accidental discharge of their powers which can lead to disastrous consequences, such as The Supernova Incident in which Xavier Hong, a second generation immigrant and vigilante was detained by force in 1980, their powers detonating the area around themself in a ten mile radius, the force atomizing not only the buildings and civilians in the blast radius but themself as well. This incident and Goldilocks' presence has lead to a more passive method of observation through individual agents occasionally acting in hospitals or under the guise of Child Protective Services agents to discern the mentality and rationality of the being in question.

Current protocol for unknown superpowered beings is observation, keeping careful watch of them and their activities through social media, daily routines and purchases on or off credit.

i the world Error 10-9 exists in, there is the term "superscience" and "mad science", they are interchangeable inn terms of in universe definition due to mad scientists and superscientists doing the same work.

Mad scientists have a neurological disorder originally named "Victor Frankenstein's Disease" after the doctor of Mary Shelley's novel, however history is a bit different here. Mary Shelley was indeed a novelist however her main occupation was a psychologist who specialized in post-mortem diagnosis.

Her initial discovery of the disorder leads back to her finding the diary of the real Victor Frankenstein, as not only did he truly exist, so did his monster, his diary acting as an outline for her novel from his own first person perspective of the events, however most interesting was his in depth description of his experiment for his monster, meticulous as not even any medical journal was in human anatomy, diagrams and formulas for human function strewn as a blueprint along several pages. Mary Shelly and then Fiance, Percey Bysshe Shelley, who was a well known poet had various certifications as a doctor in this history, but was more well known for poetry, granting Mary access to cadavers and space within which to recreate Victor's experiment, after months of preparation and relocation waiting for a storm in just the right conditions. lightning struck their conduit, the man of bodies springing to life just as the monster had done, not before being shot down, put out of it's abstract misery before it was truly awake. The two disposed of the lab, the experiment, and the passages of victor's diary, fabricating a false description of the experiment to hide the truth, deeming the knowledge to be too dangerous, especially with the second Seminole war being just yesteryear. The book "Frankenstein" was published just as it had been in our time as a fabrication of events, meant to act as a distraction from the real principals that he had discovered despite the lack of evidence of scientific studies. Naming the Neurological disease after him, and reclassified later as "Mad Scientist's Disorder". The reclassification aided in legitimate research in psychology as well.

before Goldilocks, there were still superheroes and supervillains, all across time, but they were small time, not notable in the grand scheme of things, their impact not enough to change history in a meaningful way until the second world war, superpowered individuals being made through mad science to turn the tide on both sides, and powers awakening in the heat of battle, the scale ever increasing until the use of atomic weaponry.

During the early reign of the soviet union, Viegar Malice was born to wealthy political figures, learning from the best university at the time, Diagnosed with Victor Frankenstein's Disease he had a greater understanding of subjects being taught, by adulthood he had received every doctorate and appropriated a title held onto by the west for communist nations: The Red Menace. Malice had become so efficient with his production of weapons of mass destruction and interpersonal combat robots that he held the soviet union hostage to his whims, threatening to start WW3 numerous times over should he not get his way. During his tenure as the leading scientific military mind of the union during World War two, Red Menace tested his technology in the field, cloning and robotic assault technology being improved and perfected during battles such as Stalingrad and Moscow. Treating the involvement in the was as a proverbial dick measuring competition with rival superscientist of Nazi Germany, Ubermensch.

Ubermensch served as a combat medic during WW1, graduating medical school between the wars and becoming a researcher in Nazi Germany's Concentration Camps, his experiments so heinous that before the war even ended, any evidence that ubermensch was German, of even born, were wiped from existence, his old name long forgotten. Ubermensch, much like red menace, was diagnosed with Victor Frankenstein's disease at a young age, understanding biological factors far greater and through his experiments gave himself a regenerative immortality, so long as a single flake of skin remains on this world, so shall he.

After the second world war ended, Ubermensch faked his death in a lab explosion and re-emerged fifteen years later, teaming up with his old rival to take the world with their combined scientific knowledge, and ubermensch receiving recruits from Neo Zazi organizations forming in the west giving him a steady supply of manpower, test subjects and foot soldiers.

Lastly is The Second Spanish Inquisition, a group so horrendous that they were cursed to be immortal without youth as every branch of Christianity disavowed and disowned them, and only under pain of death do they regain their spent years, while they have not receIved new blood in over two hundred years, their outdated zealotry to what they believe to be the work of the God that cursed them fuels countless atrocities across the world, ever present and vigilant to their beliefs being challenged and to snuff out any that would oppose it.

The activities of the inquisition, Red Menace and Ubermensch is enough to keep the most powerful superheroes in the world under constant strain, having little free time in spite of their own vast power that dwarf all others.

A comic book-esque story inspired by a mixture of satire content regarding the superhero genre works of love honoring it, and my own desire to be the change I want to see in creating media.

The background noise of this story, or lore as it's called, is somewhat as follows: in 1960 the first superpowered being was naturally born to a homeless woman in the state of Wyoming, while superbeings had been created artificially in the past, the first natural born superhuman was entirely unique in this world, born with immeasurable strength, durability, speed and reflexes, with hair that looks and shines like pure gold. This being became known as Goldilocks, the most successful, well known and loved superhero in the world.

this is not his story. you've all seen superman if he was X, Y, or Z, and as entertaining as those stories can be to explore, they're done to death, sure YOU may want to write more of them but that's your choice. Mine is different.

Goldilocks is a man of which no known weaknesses exist, surviving in the vaccuum of space, weapons like hydrogen bombs leave less than a scratch and no poison has weakened him. as such the united states government was not content to lose an arms race and wanted to produce countermeasures, finding the mother of Goldilocks in 1978 and extracting genetic material from her, in exchange for enough money that she'd never want for anything again, a new branch was created: The department of Augmentation, Genetics, and Evolution, or AGE. Age used the genetic material to form a embryo, which was divided into ten pieces, each predicted to produce super beings of various power sets, each piece was reconstructed into a full embryo that was cloned 50 times each and each clone was designated as an experiment subject, modified to harness whatever genetic anomaly within her created Goldilocks. The process was imperfect, with every batch having a increasing mortality rate, batch one a mortality rate of 10% from experiments gone wrong, powers killing their users and infighting between them, with batch two having a 20% mortality rate batch 3 30% and so on, until batch 10. declared completely inviable as no subject showed any signs of life or response to stimuli, the batch was to be buried in a landfill in 2003, until subject 9's tank cracked, the cold polluted air woke it up, resembling not a human but a pigment devoid softball sized lump of skin, able to manipulate it's own cells, escaping certain death in the pit dug for it's disposal. Subject 10-9 escaped, dragging his tank out of the pit while no human was observing, surviving for months until being adopted by a homeless man and taking human form, as he was biologically human to begin with. He was named Eji Idas, taking his surname from then homeless business genius Micheal Idas, a seven time bankruptee who had been ousted by his board of directors for short term profit, driving his last company into the ground after his removal. The two were considered father and son as Micheal bounced back from bankruptcy yet again and by 2013 he had a successful business and apartment to raise his son in. Eji attending school and keeping his powers hidden not in fear of of government abduction for study, but to avoid villains who would rather he be a weapon than a person.

Eji's existence is personally inspired by many villanous or anti-heroic characters who have the potential for great acts of heroism or good but due to circumstances of their creation or life are forced to be villains of some description. Eji's powerset is biological shapeshifting, but thik less "beast boy" and more "john carpenter's the thing" as he requires biomass to use his powers, he cannot simply PRODUCE mass and needs to eat to maintain his body, additionally all of his cells contain capabilities to perform all functions of living beings, from thinking to eating or oxygenating blood, although in his human form he has organs to lessen the energy use of his body, compartmentalizing his bodily functions for greater efficiency and improving his organs from learning about biology through studies, textbooks, and gaining inspirations for using his powers by studying other cultures, monsters and symbols.

The Human form of Eji Idas, i did not draw it shoutout to Muoi_art on twitter for the commission.

(WARNING, EJI'S POWERS INVOLVE A LOT OF BODY HORROR AS SUCH DESCRIPTIONS OF HIS USE OF HIS POWERS MAY NOT BE SUITABLE FOR ALL AUDIENCES.)