Courtney leapt into Nate, forcing him to catch her as she wrapped her arms around him; as he handled the shock of her sudden appearance, she gave him a small kiss on the cheek and yelled, “Happy Birthday!” He laughed, letting her down onto the wooden floors of the treehouse. “I got you something.” She said. She reached into the large pocket of her baggy, white sweatshirt and pulled out a small envelope and handed it to him as he insisted that she did not need to get him anything. “Don’t worry, you’ll like it, I think. Well, I dunno.” Nate moved to open the letter, but she instead that he wait until he got home.

So the two began their shift, starting, as always, in the center of the town square. Courtney, with the same excited look in her eye and tail wagging, would ask Nate every few seconds if he still had the letter, which Nate continually assured her that he did, pulling it out of his pocket to show her. It was cold and dark in the square, and, as Nate knew incredibly well, nobody wanted to work in the cold, not even villains. He enjoyed the winter months, as crime came mostly to a halt, and he could just relax while on-duty, watching everyone hastily prepare for the holidays. Courtney would keep them warm by keeping a running current of hot air circulating around them, and so, all-in-all, Nate decided that working in the winter months was pretty good.

The street lamp at the corner of the square — where Main Street and Stacks Street intersect — would flicker on and off on colder days. It was not, objectively speaking, a problem, but it always made Nate feel uneasy. Like one day it would flicker on and a villain would have appeared from thin air. He knew it was somewhat irrational to feel that way, but the other part of him insisted on staying continuously guarded.

“Do you have any birthday plans?” Courtney asked him, as he watched the lamplight flicker.

“What’s that?” He responded. “Oh, I hadn’t really thought of anything,” Nate answered, “maybe I’ll get to bed early, maybe I’ll watch a movie, I don’t know. Maybe spend some time with my family,” he finally decided; Courtney’s eyes fell, the current became a bit less stable with some cold air leaking in. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh, nothing,” Nate waited, “I said nothing. It’s really nothing. I was just hoping… I mean I, kinda, wanted to celebrate with you. We could get off shift, we could party, we could go to the movies, we could even train to get Eloise back, I don’t care. We’ve never hung out on your birthday before, you always disappear of somewhere or other and tell me about it when you get back… I… yknow, it’s probably just me being dumb, I’m sorry.” She finished, her cheeks red as an apple.

“Kid,” Nate started, “I said I was spending time with my family: that’s you, bud. So don’t worry about it, we’ll figure something out.” She smiled and Nate could’ve sworn he saw a tear when a loud scream came crashing towards them from Stacks Street.

Courtney pulled herself into the air and began launching herself towards the scene as Nate entered into the first stage of his powers and started barreling down Stacks Street. As they ran, the screams began to get louder. “Stop! Stop! I’ll do anything!” Nate heard, followed by the mumbles of someone else speaking. “Just don’t hurt them! Please!” Nate was sprinting now, sweat racing down his neck. Courtney was a few feet a head of him. “Please, please…” Courtney suddenly stopped and Nate felt the cold winter winds stand still. He kept running to catch up with her, his footsteps echoing loudly against the ground until he turned the corner and was able to see what she saw.

It didn’t make any sense. There was no villain. Nate saw a man, bloodied and beaten, with his wife and two daughters crouched together on the wall behind him. In front of the man was Liam, with his metal arm shaped in a blunt club-like structure, in his full hero-outfit standing now in the windless night. Liam lifted his metal arm and swiftly brought it down on the man’s head, which forced Courtney to look away while Nate screamed. The Forge turned to face them. Nate stepped forward as Courtney dropped to the ground behind him.

“What’s going on?” Nate asked him. “Why did you do that?”

“The girls here, they tried to steal some money from me. They have powers, they attacked me. I fought back and their father tried to step in; it’s all honest hero-work, Nate. Promise.”

“Step away from the family,” Menace instructed him. “Courtney, call an ambulance.”

“I can fly him there faster,” she responded.

“Do it. I don’t want you to see this.”

With that, she hoisted the body into the air and pressed towards the New Monmouth Presbyterian. They were gone. The family was still cowering, and the Forge was still firmly between Nate and them. He entered into the second stage of his powers, his fists clenched firmly against his waistline. “Step away from the family, please.” Menace insisted. “Let them go.” “They’re criminals, Nate, they can’t just be locked away, they need to be punished!” He screamed, throwing his bludgeon into the mother’s neck, smashing her against the wall. The two girls screamed and ran in either direction as he lifted his arm from the mother. The ground was a dark shade of red. The woman was dead.

“Liam… Liam why?” Nate said, trying not to throw up at what he witnessed.

“These people — these criminals — walk around all day with no regret and no concern. Throw them in jail and they just break out, again and again, and fuck with us, the good guys, again and again. Again and again. They attack us, they maim us, they kill us sometimes, and why shouldn’t we respond in kind?”

“Because then we’re just as bad as them,” Menace responded as he heard footsteps slowly creeping up behind him.

“What’s going on here?” Nate turned to see Jenny, dressed in sweatpants and a large, ugly Christmas sweater. She was wearing her glasses, and her hair looked a mess. She still looked divine. “Courtney called me here. Nate, you can go home, you don’t need to deal with this.”

“I think I do,” he responded. “I really think I do. Let me. Please let me.”

“I won’t stop you, Goggles, I just want to let you know that you aren’t alone and you don’t have to do this if you can’t.”

“How many times do I have to tell you?” He asked her, his face somewhere between a grin and a wince. “It’s not Goggles anymore,” he wiped some wetness from his eyes, then strapped the goggles on, “it’s Menace.”

Nate ran towards the Forge, who immediately turned his metallic arm into a blade, and made a lunge for Nate’s chest. Menace smacked the flat of the blade down and threw his fist into the stomach of the hero, who collapsed to the ground, coughing up blood. Nate kicked his side, hearing a decisive crack, and let him fall onto his stomach. He exited his powers, falling onto the fallen hero and began to throw his fists into his friend repeatedly. Liam let out moans of pain as Nate continued to pound him, letting blood cover his gloved hands.

“That’s enough, Nate.” Nate let another blow on the Forge’s face. Liam was losing consciousness, he could tell. “I said that’s enough.” Jenny’s voice was hardly reaching him.

“Why did you do it?” He screamed into Liam’s unaware face. “Why?” He threw another punch. “How?” He slammed his fists into the Forge’s chest, forcing blood out of the boy’s mouth. Jenny’s hands were around Nate’s wrists now, pulling him off the bloodied body. “How could you do this?” Nate screamed as he got wrenched away. “Why would you?” Jenny forced Nate to sit as he cried into his blood-encrusted gloves. His hands had started bleeding during the endeavor as well. Jenny crouched down next to him and held him as he cried. “What did I do?” He moaned into her shoulder. “What am I supposed to do?”

Menace got home later that night, checked his phone, saw fourteen texts from Courtney, and fell into bed. He scrolled through some of the messages which read: Where did you go? Are we still doing something? Is everything okay? I’m sorry I sent Jenny, if that’s the problem. I won’t go to sleep until you promise me things are okay. He reached into his pocket and pulled out the small envelope she had given him that morning. On the front, in a messily written font, it read: To Nate, love Courtney. He pried open the envelope and slid out a post-card like picture of them together, from her first day on duty as a hero. He turned it over in his still-bloody hands; it read:

Dear Nate ,

I know that I’m not great at times — I get super excited, I complain, I’m too mean, or whatever — so thank you for always sticking with me. I really think that you’re the best hero out there. Thank you for teaching me everything. You’re like the big brother I never got to have. And I love you.

I will always be here whenever you need me, so need me a little more, okay?

Sincerely,

Courtney Rose Aethea

Nate enjoyed the rare delicacy of spending time alone. He would normally watch television, read a book, maybe paint or write, and, of course, sleep. He might take a stroll through his rural neighborhood, or maybe walk down to the park. He might attempt to cook something for himself, fail miserably, and the order take out. The possibilities were endless, and that was just how he liked them; alone, he was free. He was able to keep work and his personal time separate, at least to an extent. On the battlefield, he was Menace, super hero extraordinaire, at home, he was simply Nate Coplin. That was just who he was.

The letter that the Gentleman had left for him in the cube distressed him, both as the super hero and as the person. The simple message had sent a jarring reminder to him that the Gentleman was constantly looking for ways to attack him; a truth he could ignore in his day-to-day life before know. The threat to the White Witch was something he could not ignore. As he climbed down from the cube that evening, he could not help but recall the Gentleman’s threat to him more than a month ago: When the world is falling, when the heroes fail, when your loved ones are in danger who are you then? He had sent Courtney home — to her house — in hopes that she might be safer there than at the cube, something that she was certainly not thankful for. After ensuring that she had arrived home safely, he returned to the cube, resting underneath the tree, in the darkness of the natural treehouse.

He looked out over the forest, then down at his gloved hands, squeezing them as hard as he could. What do I do now? He asked himself. Do I go after the Gentleman? He questioned, placing his head against the bark of the tree. Should I kill him? This was a question that Nate had never asked himself, a question that he never thought he’d have to ask himself. The answer was a repeated, unequivocal, emphatic “no” every time he’d asked him self in the past. Now he was not so sure. Should I kill myself? Nate then asked. His psyche had managed to catch him off guard with that question. If he did, he figured, the Gentleman would have no reason to go after the White Witch. The peace of the forest failed to soothe his jittering nerves, and he found himself standing abruptly at the sound of a shaking in the bushes. It failed to persist, and so Nate figured it must have been a rodent of sorts, yet he remained standing. What can I do? He wished he had some advice from a beloved mentor, parent, or friend to reflect on at that moment. He pulled out his phone to text the Mutation that something had come up, remembering that Anthony had sent him a few texts earlier about getting attacked. His fingers danced over the screen after the text had been sent. Do I ask for help? He decided against it, slipping his phone into his pocket.

Nate then noticed that the garlic he had been tending for the past couple months had grown in full. He carefully pulled the bulbs from the ground, remembering that the online guide he red stated that they were still immature. They would need to be left in a shady area to “cure,” which Nate assumed meant live. He figured that outside the Count’s mansion was as good a place as any to “cure,” and so he journeyed to the burlesque house to carefully hide them around the premises. The building looked to be almost alive, with a dull light exuding from the windows, with bright, changing colors shooting from the castle-like turrets on either side. He wondered if the Count remained inside tonight, in his nightly beast form, or if he was out inflict terror on the masses. The worst kind of evil, Nate mused to himself, is the acceptance of the inevitability that there will be evil. Nate, walking away from the premises of the building, couldn’t help but remember the last time he had walked the same walkway. Bloody, broken, hardly fighting off the vampiric beast. He wondered — if the same scenario happened again — if he could fight off the beast.

Nate began to walk the road towards town center. It was a rather dull walk until he came to pass the cemetery. He had, almost religiously, avoided coming to the cemetery since Ultraman’s death. Not that he had much motivation to come in his day-to-day life, he would justify. The black gates of the enclosure were covered in ivy plants that had grown to entrench the metal. From where he was standing, Nate could barely make-out the outline of the statue of Ultraman. Nate remembered likening the statue to the poem “Ozymandias” when he first saw it. He walked a few steps further, to the open gate, and walked into the cemetery. It was past midnight, Nate was sure, as he approached the statue of the fallen hero. “Hail, king of kings.” Nate said to the immobile statue of the once great man, taking a seat in front of the hulking figure. “You once told me that nothing good comes from sunshine.” Nate started, trying to overcome the inherent silliness of talking to a deceased man’s statue. “But the sunshine is nice. It’s warm, it’s pleasant. I enjoy it. I understand that you meant that progress strives through adversity, but why is it always a necessity to fight resistance? You know what I mean? I mean, the easiest thing for me to do would be to stop being a hero. It was never really my dream in the first place, you know? I wanted it because Marie wanted it, I think. I know that that doesn’t sound very heroic, but it’s the truth. You never told me why you wanted to be a hero. I guess that’s because we didm’t really know each other for very long.

“I still don’t quite understand you.” Nate admitted. “How you were such a fantastic hero all the fucking time. I still get tired, I still need breaks; more as the days go by, I’ve found. What would you do in my situation? I mean, you don’t have to answer if you don’t want to. Or are unable. Probably the latter. You always wanted us rookies to solve our own problems anyway, if I remember correctly. Why don’t I just stop all this? If I stop being a hero, she stays safe, and I have less work. I think I’d most likely be safer in my daily life too. A friend of mine, a short while back, insisted that I looked just like you when I was in action. But I don’t think I want to be you. I’m not sure I even want to be me, whoever I am. I’m not the greatest hero anyway. The world would not lose much.” He sighed. “Sorry for venting.” He apologized. The statue did not respond. “Fuck it.” He said, standing slowly from his seated position.

He turned around to see a lanky man, standing a few feet from him. The man was facing him,  but looking over his head to the face of the statue. He had long, flowing, black hair that fell down below his shoulders, but his chin looked freshly shaved. He looked to be somewhere in his late twenties. His eyes had an intense look to them; a look, Nate had learned, that only comes to those who have taken a life. He was wearing a black T-shirt and jeans, yet his feet were bare. He was smiling. Nate had the strangest feeling that he’d seen the man somewhere before. He couldn't remember if he was on the list of escaped villains from the Chambers four years ago. The look in his eyes unsettled Nate who, instinctively, went into the first stage of his powers.

“I don’t mean to fight you, young man. I just needed a breath of fresh air.” The lanky man told Nate, his voice calm and slightly more high-pitched than he had anticipated. “Honestly, where I live doesn’t have the best ventilation system.” He laughed as though he had made a hilarious joke, and moved to wipe a tear from his eye.

“What are you doing here?” Menace asked him.

“Same as you, I figure, paying respects. Although, I don’t mean to talk to him the way you have been.”

“I-I didn’t know you were there.” Nate stuttered, blush rushing to his cheeks.

“No? A novice hero, then?” The lanky man shrugged and moved to sit closer to the statue. He gestured for Nate to follow. “I knew Ultraman for a long time. Couldn’t make his funeral, it’s my greatest regret. I practically taught him everything he knew.”

“You did?” Nate asked, his ears perking up.

“Yes.” The man said plainly. “He was, in a sense, my greatest achievement.” “Would you…” Nate stopped himself from asking the question. Do I even want to be a hero anymore? He asked himself. Is it for the greater good?

“Speak up.”

“Would you teach me?” Menace asked, unable to resist any longer. The lanky man laughed again, as though Nate had told a hilarious joke.

“You sure you want that?” Nate nodded. “I don’t have a problem with it,” the man said, “but I have a few parameters. One, your phone has to go. Ruins the focus. Two, you will follow all instructions that I give. Three, you will not complain. Are we in agreement?”

“When do we start?”

“Now.” Nate sent a text to the Mutation telling him that he was leaving for a short while, then handed his phone to the lanky man.

Nate was in hell. He was not sure what caused him the most pain, the morning runs, the noontime spars, or the nightly hunts, but he was sure that he did not enjoy any of them. He had provided a rundown of his powers for the lanky man, who had told Nate his name was Clyde, and Clyde had provided for him the rundown of his necessary exercises. He was to run four miles each morning, one without augmentation, one in his first stage, and so on. All of these were to be timed so that Nate might learn the limits of his powers. Although Nate had explained to Clyde that his transition from level to level caused him exhaustion and, at times, agony, Clyde refused to acknowledge the set back. After the run, it was time for his education. Clyde, reasonably of course, had the mindset that preparation was the key to success; he began to instruct Nate on the construction of villain social structure that he had learned. Evidently, a hierarchy must be established between a group of more than two villains or, historically, chaos ensued. At noon, Nate had to spar with Clyde, which meant that Nate, too often, ended up whipped and on his ass. Even when Nate began to use his powers, he failed miserably. Clyde, from Nate’s perspective, was a wall that he was punching at. He may be able to land a hit, but, even if he did, it would amount to nothing. After the sparring, Nate would receive a lesson about tracking, hiding, and combat tactics. He would then receive a short break while the sun fell behind the clouds, then it was time for the hunt.

The nightly hunts were extraordinarily brutal. Nate and Clyde would enter the Wharton State Forest from separate locations and roughly half an hour apart. The hunt was divided into two categories: hunting and being hunted. For the beginning of the night, Clyde would search for Nate inside the forest. Once Nate was found, much like in a game of tag, he was it. Afterwards, Nate had to search for Clyde. If he could not find Clyde by morning, he did not get to sleep. Then he would go to run. Nate couldn’t remember the last time he had been so drenched in sweat for so long.

It was almost a week into this training when Nate began to understand the brutality and rigidity of his training. He had not realized that his weakness after jumping from stage to stage was the glaring weakness that it was. Of course, recognizing that, the running portion of his training began to make sense, but the recoil was hardly lessening. The combat training was quite straightforward, Nate thought at the beginning of the training, he was just learning how to fight more acutely and with greater precision. After fighting with Clyde for the week, however, he realized that he was not supposed to win. The lesson Clyde was teaching him was how to survive a losing battle; Nate did not need to know how to win a battle against a weaker opponent, rather, he needed to know how to live and, perhaps, turn the tables against a stronger one. This realization still did nothing to tend his ego when he knew that Clyde was simply toying with him. The hunts, Nate knew, were not simply about finding Clyde or hiding from Clyde. They were about endurance and self-control. The extension of one’s senses to notice all their surroundings, and, additionally, a full control of bodily functions (such as quiet breaths and the like).

Nate began to understand Clyde better as well. His teacher didn’t care what Nate did or used; in the real world, Nate knew, he would work to prepare for his encounters. Thus, he began to borrow — or, more accurately, steal — the forge of creation from Liam. Nightly, in the hunts, he would use it as a net or javelin, attempting to pin his opponent to a tree. It never worked, but Nate credited himself for trying. The work became all he could think about, and all he would do in his day. Just before the two week mark, Clyde suddenly stopped him.

“Listen, Nate.” He began before they were to begin their noontime spar. “I can continue teaching you indefinitely. I can help you become the greatest hero that has ever lived; I can teach you the ways to win every fight, to consolidate every bond, to succeed in all endeavors. If we keep going, we must keep going until this point. However.” He paused.  “I can also leave you now with what you know. Two weeks is a long time to be away from friends, from family. Years may be too long for you to endure.”

Nate attempted to look up, through his sweat, in the fierce eyes of his teacher. “I won’t keep going, then. I’m doing this for them, not for me.” Clyde nodded his head and held out his hand for Nate to take. “I do wonder, though,” Nate started, “why waste your time training me?”

“Ah, you see, that’s an interesting story. Find me again someday and I may just tell you.” Clyde said, turning Nate around and watching him stumble on his way home. Silly child, the lanky man thought to himself, he looks as dopey as he did four years ago. His weak eyes haven’t changed. I thought he was going to get himself killed. Hell, he still probably is. His eyes squinted at the boy walking away, and Vanish began to laugh.

Mrs. Coplin would wake up every morning at five in the morning. She would shower, eat breakfast, and change into her jogging clothes so that she might take a run around the block each morning, to help stay in shape and keep a healthy heart. She was a fairly attractive woman, just under forty (although, anyone who saw her thought she was on the later cusp of her twenties), with short, brown hair and bright green eyes. Every morning for the past ten years she had done this — in the rain, the sun, the snow — and, without fail, she had never seen another person running on her morning trek. So, in the middle of the prior week, when she saw what looked to be a young man looking strikingly like her son, with dark hair and blue eyes, she was perplexed. She considered the possibility of it being a mirage or a dream that her tired brain was concocting, for the boy was moving unreasonably fast. In the end, she had made the decision that the occurrence was, at the very least, an anomaly. That is, until she saw the boy again the next day. On the third day of this occurrence, she called out to the boy, hoping he was real and that she was not a crazy lady about to be screaming through the streets at five in the morning. The boy did not respond. Well fuck, Mrs. Coplin thought, I guess that means I’m crazy then.

The Bloodhound woke up in her jail-cell. The top of her head was still sore from when that hero, whatever his name was, smashed her on the head with a quantity of cement. Her orange jumpsuit was too large for her body, and it hung loosely around her arms, legs, and waist. She went to wipe a tear from her cheek, but realized it had dried a short time ago. Marie could smell all of the disgusting people around her, around the cell. She could smell dried urine down the hall, some fecal matter that had, unfortunately, missed the toilet of her neighbors cell, and the rodents squirming throughout the building. She could smell her own, unadulterated sweat as it dripped inside her jumpsuit. Everything about the jail felt warm and pungent. Her own cell, while she attempted to keep it as tidy as she could, still smelled of the former resident; a large, bulking, sweaty man (as far as she could tell). The super-villain wing of the county jail was small. Only herself and two more residents occupied the cells, and, from what she’d gathered, they, too, were recent occupants. She wondered why she was not sent to the Chambers, the normal holding cell for super-villains, but realized, as she sighed in agony, that her powers hardly merited a holding of that magnitude. Marie cursed her own powerlessness as she sat in the cell, and thought, ironically, that the last time she felt so weak was when she was at the Chambers. She thought back to Nate Coplin, her best friend at the time. She hadn’t thought about him in years.

Eloise was worried. She sat on her couch — which, she always noted, looked far more comfortable than it was — and sent Nate another text to say good morning. He hadn’t responded for almost two weeks now. She curled her hair with her finger as she set her phone down on the coffee table and fiddled with the remote to her television. She sipped at her coffee as the seven o’clock news began to play. Marie’s warning to her at the Spring Praestan had affected her more than she’d have liked to admit. She was waiting for something to happen to her. Every noise, every movement in the corner of her eye as she walked down the street, every awkward conversation with friends and customer service employees all shook her to the core. She knew the risks of leaving the coalition, and she knew they would come for her eventually. Now, however, she could feel the presence of the villains on top of her, like a hot, moist breath in her ear. She decided to text Nate again. A knock came swiftly across her door.

The Forge’s eyes opened slowly to see his clock read: 7:30 A.M. He was surprised at this, being unable to recall the last time he had woken before noon. His computer lay open to the other side of his bed, and he remembered that he’d fallen asleep earlier than usual last night, as the fan fiction he’d chosen to read was poor at best. His room was a cluttered mess. He glanced down to the foot of the bed, where he’d somehow thrown all of his sheets over the duration of the night. A pile of clothes was reaching four feet high to the right of the sheets, and he stripped off his shirt and threw it to the top of the pile. He yawned, then looked towards the left of his bed, where he normally placed the Forge of Creation before he slept. The fact that it was missing immediately forced his eyes open, and brought him to his feet. He hopped from his bed, and began to make his way through the house. “If somebody’s here…” He shouted cautiously as he walked down the stairs, “come out now and I won’t hurt you.” Little do they know, I’m lying, Liam thought to himself. At the base of the stairs, he looked towards his kitchen table, where he noticed the sizable, black, metal ball. On top of it rested a few words scribbled out on a Post-It Note: Sorry, had to borrow it again. I’ll do my best to tell you next time — Menace.

Pygmalion had been missing the toilet on purpose. His jail cell had begun to stink of shit after the first miss, so he decided that, since he’d already have to deal with the consequences anyway, he may as well finish the plan. He realized, shortly after coming, that no guards wanted to clean any of the villains cells, especially ones who were purposely missing the toilet, and so they began to punish him by refusing to clean the cell. He laughed internally as he knew that this meant his plan might function without a hitch. Pygmalion was gifted with the powers to turn any non-sentient humanoid into a sentient, functioning, human-like creature; he preferred to work with marble and clay, crafting giant, beautiful creatures like his lovely Galatea, which that wretched rabbit hero so rudely destroyed, but he was willing to work with more mundane materials, should he have to. He had lost all concept of time inside the jail cell, and so, he figured, as soon as his platoon was constructed, he might as well get on with the show. He began working quickly, and diligently as he laughed maniacally while working in his own feces.

The Mutation had not seen Nate in weeks. On the night of his battle at the Spring Praestan, Nate had sent him two texts: Sorry, something important came up, and, a few hours later, I need to disappear for a bit. Anthony had no idea what the second text meant, but figured it was just another example of Nate’s pretentious bullshit. When Nate stopped showing up for hero duty, Anthony began to worry. He contacted Eloise and the White Witch — the two people who he thought Nate would tell everything — but neither of them seemed to know where he was either. He then sought out his mother who, despite not having seen him, did not act particularly worried about his disappearance; although, as far as Anthony could tell, she was looking nervously aside as though she were hiding something. The Mutation decided he should take on Menace’s shift in addition to his own, and began working double, which, somehow, was bearably. All crime in New Monmouth City had come to a shaky halt in the past two weeks. Anomalies like this had happened before. Anthony knew, perhaps better than anyone, that this meant something big was something. He laughed awkwardly as he began his shift: it was going to be a long one.

Earshot was nervous about Menace’s disappearance. In her hero experience, heroes only went missing if they were captured by villains or about to become a villain. She had always liked Menace, even back when he was still going by the name “Goggles,” and she did not want either eventuality to befall him. Ever since they had worked together to take down Pygmalion, she was feeling less and less enticed by the prospect of working with Lionheart, the leader of her hero-team. He was nice enough, she settled, when off-duty, and he looked like he was trying very hard when on the job, but she couldn’t help but resent him for his incompetence. She was ready to fight, she wanted to fight, and he wouldn’t let her fight. He wouldn’t let the Forge fight either, so she did not take it so personally, but the anger still boiled inside her. Her team was assigned to cover the North end of town, specifically, the Spring Praestan for the next six hours: it was a known villain hideout and warehouse, and Lionheart believed (and petitioned passionately) that a group of heroes standing in front of the building would scare away all evil doers. She fixed her mask as she began driving towards the North side of the city, deciding that this would be the last day she worked on Lionheart’s team.

The Engine hated Eloise. He hated every fiber of her being, hated every strand of hair on her head, hated every colorful pigmentation she ever placed into anything she owned. Unfortunately, he was a hero, and, even when not officially on duty, he had to chase after the screaming lady. He was not sure what he had seen at first. He was walking towards The Royal Jester for lunch when what looked like a bridge constructed entirely of bright, glowing particles manifested in the sky. A man covered in a large, black hood ran across the light bridge, holding a beautiful, blonde girl as she screamed and kicked in opposition. When Jake recognized that the girl was Eloise, he took pause. He didn’t want to help her. Even looking at her sent pain coursing through his body and forced his fists to clench. He stood on the sidewalk of downtown New Monmouth City. Steam began to rise from his body, as though independent from his stream of consciousness. “Ah, fuck it.” He decided, and ran, faster than a speeding bullet, in the direction of the light bridge.

Magnet Man still refused to believe that he had been beaten by the Mutation brat and his little friend. Moreno then that, however, he lamented the system that provided that two heroes could mercilessly beat him in the center of a bank, and he would go to jail for it. It was unjust! Furthermore, the unnecessary cruelty of cuffing his hands behind his back was clearly against the constitution, he thought. He thought many things, actually. Confined in his jail cell without much of a view, and no access to his powers or any form of entertainment, he had much time to think. No amount of thinking, however, would prepare him for seeing a four foot tall monster composed entirely of shit walk down the hallway of the jail, pass his cell, and walk straight into the warden’s office.  Nor would he comprehend that same monster, walking back past his cell with the set of the warden’s keys. He could easily understand, however, when Pygmalion approached his cell with a handful of shit-covered keys, smiling like a maniac. He slid the key into the lock of the cell.

Lionheart stood in front of the Spring Praestan with a large smile across his face. He had his whole team with him, it was a beautiful day, and he was doing good for the community. The beautiful, old building that stood behind them was a national landmark (or, at least, he felt it should be), and the ability to guard it with all his might was something he was extensively proud of. He could not understand why Earshot and the Forge stood so glumly next to him, despite the pounding of the heat of the sun at noon. He was practically sweating through his campy mane, but he still bore a wide grin as he felt he was doing good. Little did he know, or could he know, that the Spring Praestan was no longer the base for the super villain coalition. About a week earlier, they had all quickly evacuated from the building and not scene there since. No hero would have understood the reason why; the heroes mentality always remained the same. “Villains will do bad until heroes stop them,” Lionheart stated aloud, trying to raise the morale of the group of heroes he was leading. This was the universal mentality that all heroes had bashed into their heads, even from a young age. However, the statement is not always true and is, in fact, a majority of the time false. Evil men don’t stop doing bad, even when opposed by heroes. This coalition of super villains certainly would not evacuate a good hideout simply because heroes discovered them. The only thing that could have forced the migration of such a powerful coalition of villains would be something far worse than themselves.

The White Witch could not stop thinking about Nate. He had forced her to return back to her home, for the time being, as he was immediately convinced that the cube was no longer a safe place for her to stay. “The Gentleman found us,” he had said, “we have to move now.” And so they had. She pouted in the confines of her room, as she heard her father screaming at his attorney in the living room below. She hated her room; the walls were painted light pink to match her bedsheets, and her desk was made of sparkly plastic. She had hated the room since she could remember. It had been over a week since she’d last seen Nate, and she not only missed him, but she was itching to get back out on hero duty. She wanted to be out there, stopping crime, or, at least, working towards something greater. Maybe, she thought to herself, I can find him through the other world. She climbed onto her bed and sat in a crosslegged position. Alright, if I can just focus I can enter the- Her thoughts were abruptly cut off by her father shouting racial slurs at the divorce lawyer. She sighed. She hadn’t been able to enter the astral world all week on account of the superficial distractions of daily life.  She was tired of not being able to use her powers. She had never felt so useless or so alone. And then the explosion happened.

The Photon was tired of the speedster running underneath his light bridge. The mission was rather simple, in essence. Retrieve the lost member of the coalition, return her to the base. The decision to make it a spectacle was not his own; it was to be a message to all heroes and villains alike that no one was safe. Except that it led to him getting tailed by a particularly annoying teenage runner. The kid, the Photon could tell, was losing steam. The Photon had slowly raised the elevation of the bridge so that, despite the Engine’s speed and leaping capabilities, he could not come close to landing on the bridge. The kid was beginning to slow down. The steam rising from his body was beginning to dissipate sooner and sooner, faster and faster. He was a sprinter, not a distance runner. It didn’t matter how fast the Photon moved, in any event, because the kid couldn’t catch him. The Photon threw Eloise on the floor of his bridge and began to raise the density of the light particles in his hand. “Here we go.” He muttered to himself as he shot the light particles towards the speedster. The Engine reacted a moment to late, and the dense light smacked him across the face, forcing him to the ground. The Photon picked Eloise up again, as she had remained crumpled on the ground in pain, and began walking towards his base. Eloise screamed as the bridge slowly melted into a staircase, leading down to an abandoned building in West New Monmouth City that was once called The Hero’s Ballroom.

Cosmos was a villain who enjoyed his privacy. More so than that, he enjoyed killing people who called themselves “super-heroes.” When he noticed a platoon of young super-heroes outside the front door of his perfect new hideout, the Spring Praestan, he came to the realization that he could kill two birds with one stone. Or, more accurately, three heroes with one explosion. He realized that, if he acted first, they would be mince-meat before they even knew what was happening. Thusly, he began to conjure in his hand, from nothing, the makings of a two inch, golden star that he then hurled into the center of the triad of heroes. “Three, two, one.” He counted down, as the miniature star expanded rapidly to a ten foot radius bursting the ground beneath it wide open and incinerating the left arm of the Forge as Earshot pulled both him and Lionheart out of the way. “God damn it!” Cosmos exclaimed as he cursed his luck. One of them must have some augmented senses, he thought as he constructed the next star. He hurled it towards the girl who looked like a rabbit, assuming she was the one. The star, before it was able to reach her, bounced back as though it were halted by an invisible wall, landed on the ground behind the triad of heroes, and exploded into another crevice. “What was that?” He asked himself. “Oh.” He continued, to himself. A small girl in a large white hooded sweatshirt floated above the triad of heroes. The winds seemed to bend around her as she slowly lowered herself to the ground. “More company.” Cosmos grunted to himself. “Just wonderful.” He started constructing another star.

The Spring Praestan was once an ornately decorated building, an immaculate structure poised in opposition to the sky, casting a cool shadow onto the street below. The building, a privately constructed apartment complex intended to house the upper-ring of New Monmouth City, stood firmly in the North-most point of the city; it lay far from the quaint town square, in the once bustling collection of stores, hotels, and offices that stacked the streets. At the opening of The Spring Praestan, many people drew both hope and solace from the construction of the building: it was to gentrify the area with the thickest collection of buildings in the city, and, perhaps, draw attention to the high crime rates that plagued the streets. The building itself was constructed in an unorganized fashion. The bottom of the building stood in an almost Roman fashion, with eight columns lined across the base, stretching a maximum of fifty feet to the top of an arch that surrounded the front doors of the building. The front of the building, itself, consisted of a staggering amount of glass windows and two glass doors that lay directly in the center of the building, hidden from view by the center-most column. Inside the building was a large lobby-like entrance way, leading to a slew of elevators and stairwells. Just beyond that, in the furthest back portion of the first floor, lay the Praestan Moonbeam, a restaurant constructed and run inside the apartment complex. In this now-abandoned restaurant, Menace sat across from Eloise, wishing, more than anything, that there was still some semblance of food somewhere in his immediate surroundings.

“You nervous?” Eloise asked him, as she noticed he was fingering the goggles that hung around his neck. She had dressed casually for the meeting; her hair fell freely behind her shoulders, which were covered by a plain, white T-shirt with the name “Trickshot” written across it in black, bold letters that looked as though they attempted to pop forth, out from the shirt. Nate had laughed when he saw the shirt she had decided to wear; with villains and heroes being in the public eye, companies quickly decided to capitalize on them. Suddenly, at every Hot Topic Nate could buy a shirt representing practically any hero or villain that he’d ever heard of, including himself. With this shirt, she wore jean-shorts, and sandals. Eloise had told Nate that, during the summer, it was a sin to wear anything but sandals to cover your feet.

“A little.” Nate admitted. “What is she doing hanging out in places like this?” He asked. “And how did you two become friends?”

“All people have their own certain proclivities.” Eloise said, spinning a strand of her hair with her finger. “Maybe this is just her aesthetic. And all super-villains know each other, you know that.” Eloise nodded. “Just like all heroes know each other; when it’s us against the world, we gotta stick together.” She explained.

“That’s right, so what happened to you?” Nate turned to see a girl standing a few feet behind him in the abandoned restaurant. He recognized that she was taller than he was, if only by a few inches, and dressed entirely in black. She had straight hair that barely touched beneath her chin. The part in her hair was oriented slightly to the left, splitting so that it just covered the top of her left eye before falling off to the side. Freckles were scattered across her face, which gave an almost rustic look to her beauty, which clashed heavily with the heavy, black mascara she had chosen to wear. She looked, as far as Nate could tell, fit, if not too thin. She stomped forward as she walked, her combat boots slamming into the ground with each step. “Why did you leave?”

“Things change.”  Eloise told her, refusing to look directly at the girl. “I had to make a choice, Marie.”

“And you didn’t choose me.” She said. She turned her head to look at Menace, perhaps noticing him for the first time, or perhaps she had not cared to acknowledge him. “Heh. Hanging out with heroes now? How far you’ve fallen.” Nate refused to say a word. He could feel the tension of the scene playing out in front of him, and he felt as though he’d stumbled upon a moment he should not be a part of. “What do you have to say for yourself? The group is not happy with you, El. You know what happens to people who leave. I can’t keep defending you from them, especially if you’re going to hold company with this one.” She gestured to the Menace.

“Ever thought I don’t need your protection?” Eloise mumbled quietly to herself.

“What was that?” Marie asked, leaning in closer.

“Ever thought I don’t need your protection?” She repeated, throwing her face closer to Marie, so that they were only inches apart. “You’ve always been like this, you always do this. I’m not a child, I don’t need to be smothered, I can make my own choices.” The two glared at each other. “You try to hide it, but I can see, Mare. I can see. You’re exhausted. The fatigue shows. The hickeys on your neck? God, Mare, are you just letting them do whatever they want to you?” Nate hadn’t noticed the bruises, but, looking very closely, he could see small blotches of concealer that didn’t quite match her skin color. “I always used to think you were better than that, that we were better than that.” Eloise pulled her face away from Marie’s. “Then I realized, some time ago, that you weren’t. I didn’t want to be like you. So I left.”

“I’m done.” Marie said. “Done helping you. Done with you.” The girl stood upright and began to walk away as Eloise stared fiercely. Nate, remembering why he came, swiftly stood.

“Do you remember me, Marie?” He asked. Marie turned to look at him, and he looked into her eyes. Without Marie saying a word, he’d received his answer. He sat back in the booth across from Eloise as he heard the villain stomp back out the door. Eloise and Nate sat in silence for a moment. She was on the verge of tears. He was deep in his own mind, thinking about another world, about all the things Marie could have been. In another life, where things were even the slightest bit different, who knows what could have happened?

“You saw it too, right?” Eloise said slowly, her voice was a shattered windowpane, where, even though the cracks were apparent and glaring, the pane refused to fall. “In her eyes… She’s not there anymore.”

The Mutation was a very good hero. He lived and breathed the business, trained in his spare time, and used the rest to forge lasting relationships and ponder morality. He had been wanting to work with Menace for a very long time, as the two had bonded during the most recent CEF (Catastrophic-Event-Function), and had been close friends ever since. In addition, the Mutation was by no means stupid, which, he figured, meant that everyone else was for not realizing that the Menace was, by far, the most powerful hero alive since the passing of Ultraman. In fact, he was fairly certain that not even Nate himself knew the limits of his powers, but — and also theorized by the Mutation — perhaps Menace’s powers had no limits. In half of the stories Nate had told him, Nate had somehow, miraculously pulled off an incredible feat by accessing powers that he did not even know he had. At the very least, the Mutation was curious.

The main problem was that Nate was, arguably, very hard to work with. That is not to say that Menace was not an excellent hero, or that, when he showed up, he was as good an ally as anyone. No, the real trick in working with the Menace was to get him to show up. The Mutation was very offset by Nate’s tendency to be late or, sometimes, not show up at all. He had received texts from the Menace a few hours after starting his shift where he apologized for not showing up, then still failed to show up. So, Anthony’s shift having started an hour ago and the sun having firmly set, he decided that Nate was most likely not coming, and that he should just go about his business as normal.

Luckily for him, the night was cool, and the center of town square was sparsely populated. The Mutation sighed as he leaned back on his bench, wondering who or what might come along to ruin his peaceful evening. Just then, as if the universe had an overwhelming desire to appease him, a girl fell onto the bench next to him, forcing him to sit up straight, and remove his arms from the span of the bench, placing them back in his lap. The girl was not bad looking, with short, black hair and all black clothes. She wore too much eyeliner, the Mutation thought, and mixed with her light sprinkling of freckles she appeared to be some odd mix of vampire and farm-girl.

“You’re a hero, right?” She asked. She tilted her head down, and lifted her eyes so that Anthony was forced to look into her dazzling, emerald green eyes. “I need a hero.” She said, inching closer o the bench to Anthony.

“What do you need, ma’am?” The Mutation asked.

“Some mean people took my purse.” She said in a half-whiney voice.

“Do you know where these people are, ma’am?” Anthony asked, sighing. The worst part about being a hero, the Mutation always thought, is that, even though I know this is a trap, I still have to go. The girl nodded. “Of course you do.” The girl grabbed his hand, lifted him from the bench, and began walking him in the direction of the North end of town. The Mutation used his free hand to send a text to the Menace: Get your fucking ass here now, I’m about to get jumped. He attached his location to the text and prayed that Nate wasn’t a total scumbag.

Anthony began to analyze the situation, wondering what he could do, and when, to escape or win an ensuing fight. It kept throwing him off, however, that the girl pulling him smelt incredible; she smelt like a strawberry blended in a vanilla milkshake. It was an annoyingly distracting smell, as he could not ignore it, and it kept drawing his eyes to the girl leading him. “Where are we going?” He asked, but the girl just kept pulling him forward, until she came to a sudden stop. The Mutation looked around and noticed that he was across the street from the Spring Praestan. The moon lingered in the night sky that he could make out just above the top of the building. “Where are the muggers?”

“Inside.” The girl said.

“Yeah, fuck that.” The Mutation said. “I’m not that stupid.” He glanced down at his hand to notice that the ring he always wore across his finger had been lifted. He looked back up at the girl. “Seriously? Are we really doing this?” The girl lifted her foot into his groin and he howled as he collapsed onto his knees. He dropped his hand to the ground, onto the cement sidewalk and sighed. He felt his hand begin to mutate, condensing into the equivalent of a cement brick. He wiggled his now rock-like fingers as he stood up, still in a large bit of pain. The girl threw her fist at his face, but he brushed it aside and then slammed his cement-fist onto her head. She crumpled like a paper bag. Just then his phone buzzed, and he lifted it from his pocket. It was from Menace, it read: Sorry, something important came up. The Mutation laughed.

Nate was not lying, something important had come up. Just before he was to begin his shift with the Mutation, he received a text from Courtney. Apparently, there was something he needed to see immediately. He figured it would only take a moment, and so decided to swing by the cube in the Wharton State Forest, where she was staying. The cube, a large, wooden, natural structure amongst the trees of the forest served as the Menace’s base of operations and, frequently, the bedroom of the White Witch.

He arrived at the cube as his shift with the Mutation was supposed to begin, but he felt a text would be an unnecessary inconvenience, as he would be only a moment. He climbed the ladder into the cube, where he was met with a tackle-hug from Courtney, forcing him onto his back.

“Everything okay?” He asked, and she let go of him, standing, and walked to the Northwest corner of the cube.

“I was kinda scared.” The White Witch told him. “I took a mid-afternoon nap after my meditations, and when I woke up, there was this, just lying on me.” She handed him a crisply folded, white piece of paper. He opened it, reading the words written in neat calligraphy:

“It was a field trip.” Nate explained. “The mandatory one that all state middle-schools have to do, the one to the Chambers.” He was sitting in a rather uncomfortable chair in the middle of the Forge’s living room, in the midst of another party that he wished he were not at. Sitting on the floor in front of him was Courtney, and to his right Eloise; his two guests to the party who both happened to lack the social graces (or desire) to leave his side during the party. They both nodded as he referenced the Chambers, as they too had attended a similar field trip their eighth grade year of middle school. In leu of public deterrents to super-villainy (such as posters and television commercials), the government of New Jersey opted to have all middle schools require a mandatory trip to the Chambers, a prison designed to hold the worst super-villains in history. “I was leading the line down the spiraling steps into the entrance of the cave, behind the teacher of course. It was an average day, I’d say, but really fucking hot. All I could think about was this girl, Marie.

“You see, Marie and I were planning to become super heroes together. I had discovered my powers the previous year when I accidentally fell off of the roof of my house.” He paused so that Courtney could snicker before he continued. “And she had known she’d had powers since, like, second grade. She had a hyper-sensitive sense of smell, which, thinking back on it, really isn’t as cool as it seemed back then, but, hey, we were kids. She had already picked out her hero name, the Bloodhound, and I told her I wouldn’t have minded being her sidekick as we paved names for ourselves in the hero world. I don’t think she liked me like I liked her but who knows? In any event, all I could think about was her as I walked into the prison; she was following closely behind me. I remember her breath feeling warm on my neck as the air conditioning of the lobby of the Chamber attacked me. I also remember reaching into my pocket for a mint to slide into my mouth so that I wouldn’t bother her hyper-sensitive nose. I was kind of a tool back then.”

“Back then?” Courtney asked pointedly, but Nate, choosing not to hear her, continued his story.

“So, the man running the seminar, I don’t know if he was a guard or the warden — it doesn’t matter — he started to explain to us the necessity for the prison and the reason for the intricacies of the design. He began with a stupid little joke; he said something like, ‘Well, the first line of defense we have here is the front door, which we usually remember to lock.’ We, being stupid little eighth graders, all laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world. He gave us a tour of the first level, which had cells for what were called ‘Class C’ villains. Anything lower than C didn’t merit being taken to the Chambers. Most C class villains, you see, are generally people who developed equipment to give them powers, or were given powers by the Endarian charms that they wore. Since they no longer had access to those objects, they were hardly more dangerous than common criminals. They scowled at us as we walked by, but the guy leading the seminar didn’t miss a beat. Just kept walking, opening the door to the next level and leading us down.

“I was still at the front of the line, mind you, and, although I really wanted to be a hero, I was almost shaking in my boots. ‘Class B’ villains are the ones that you see on television. Like when Cosmos leveled Colonial Trenton, or when the Electron destroyed the Empire State Building. The next level was at least one hundred feet below the first one, and the steps became narrower and more slippery, as some natural water somehow remained, dripping from the top of the cave. The stairway eventually opened into a wide open, structured area with four large cells. We were explained to that each cell was catered to the needs of those inside. For example, the Electron had close to a fifty foot radius that he could teleport in any direction, so his cell was the largest of the four, so that he might be confined. You all know this, though.” Nate said, realizing that his active audience had gone from two people to eight, most of whom he did not recognized. “Then, there was the class ‘A’ villain. The one you did not hear about on television or the news. The staircase was not as long this time, only twenty or so steps. We all walked in and formed a circle around the enclosure of the most dangerous super villain in the world. The enclosure was small, only about ten feet horizontally and the same vertically. The seminar spokesperson continued talking about the horrors of being a villain in prison as the man inside the enclosure stood up. He was very scruffy looking, his beard branching down to his collar, his hair at his shoulders. His eyes still had that intensity though. You know, the kind that the worst villains have? He lifted his lanky arm and began writing, with his finger, a message on the wall of the plastic. He did this quickly, then collapsed back onto his bed, in a fit of tears or laughter, I was never quite sure. No one could read his message, so I entered into the first stage of my powers, and could just make out the faintest marks that the man’s finger had left on the plastic: You left the front door open.” Nate paused to take a sip from his water.

“I read the message aloud to him, the man running the seminar. I did not think that it was a particularly large deal, but the man told all of the super-powered in the class to follow him, and so Marie and I followed him up the stairs to the second floor. At first, I thought nothing was wrong; nothing seemed askew. It was silent then. All the heroes here, I’m sure, know about the silence. That silence there is before everything goes to absolute shit.

“From what looked like a bolt of lightning, a man appeared in front of us. He was tall, I remember, but probably shorter than me now. I recognized him from television; he had straight blonde hair that fell to his eyes, which were a bright shade of blue. It was the Electron. ‘Just so you know,’ he started to speak very casually, ‘I could have done that at any time.’ His powers let him teleport, but only along the pathways of the orbitals of electrons. What that means — I think — is that the first time he could teleport a short distance in a spherical area around himself. The more times he teleported, the larger the distance he could transmute himself. I’ve heard this works only up until the eight time he did it, at which point he would have to teleport back to his starting position. It’s all really complex, and I’m not sure that even I understand it, I’ve never spoken with him about it.

“Marie, then, for some reason beyond my comprehension, took the liberty of charging at the released convict. She was howling like a dog as she charged, winding up a punch, when the Electron shoved out his hand to grab her neck. She looked confused. Frightened. The Electron wasted no time in throwing her against the wall. I heard her head smack against it, and it looked like she was unconscious. I stood there, watching. What can I do? I asked myself. What is there for me to do? The Electron decided not to give me the luxury of time so that I might answer that question. He was in front of me then, in that instant. I think I shouted some profanity at him, as I jumped back in fear. His hand reached out and grabbed the edge of my collar, pulling me closer to him. ‘Tell me, child, why do you want to be a hero?’ He asked me. I was breathing heavily, I couldn’t swallow. I saw the look in his eyes and I couldn’t speak. I was helpless. His hand inched its way towards my throat. It felt like an eternity, but it probably only took a second or two. It was right there, below me. I didn’t know why he wanted to kill me, what could possibly have led him to that decision. His hand sealed around my neck and I felt the pressure rise to the point where I could not breathe. That was when I entered into the second stage of my powers.

“I used to hate going into the second stage. It would leave me drained and, basically, asleep. But when I had to choose between asleep and dead, I would bet I guessed correctly. I grabbed his wrist with my hand and bent it backwards; it snapped like a twig. He screamed in pain as he tried to teleport away, but I had a grip on him and so I was jumped with him. It was an odd feeling, teleporting. There was no stall time, I was just suddenly somewhere else. We were now standing in front of the Electron’s cell. I hollered back to the seminar-man, shouted that he needed to go upstairs, to see who else was out. I then turned to the Electron himself and asked why he decided to attempt a breakout at this very moment.

“‘I heard the ruckus going on upstairs. Someone left the door open. Someone got in. All it takes is one super-villain to knock out the guards and steal the keys. The entire C block is most likely already free. And that means I’m out as well.’ Suddenly, he and I were somewhere else, with someone else. From what I could tell, I was now inside the cell of Photon, a villain that could, as I remember, change the density of photons and control them. He would basically throw light at people. It took him a second to understand what was going on. He looked at me, then at the Electron, as though wondering which of us he wanted to attack more. I let go of the Electron and leapt back, placing my back firmly against the wall. I used to think that was the safest place to be. Photon raised his hand towards me and, almost faster than I could see, I felt something smash into my stomach, causing me to fall to my knees. It was the first time I had really felt pain. I can’t say I cared for it. I looked up to see another shot from Photon and moved as quickly as I could; the light scraped across my face as it passed, leaving a nasty open wound. Without a second to rest, the Electron was next to me, and he planted his foot into my ribcage, sending me onto my side. There were tears in my eyes now I was sure, probably some on the ground and my face too.

“I felt a third crack inside me. You see, this was back before I realized I had more than two stages in my arsenal. I moved a hand to touch the wound on my cheek, but I found that it had stopped bleeding. I managed to my feet. The room, which was colored entirely white from top to bottom, was overwhelming my senses; it felt like the colors were screaming at me. The outlines of the two men were all I could make out. It was more than enough. The Electron was suddenly in front of me, and threw his fist into my face. I used the moment of contact to bear-hug the man, and, using him as a human shield, began to charge towards Photon. Photon kept firing, I could hear the shots hitting the Electron as I charged forward, I could hear his screams, I liked hearing his screams. I slammed into Photon and the three of us tumbled to the ground. I stood first. The Electron lay unconscious on the ground, and I could see Photon scrambling to stand. I knocked him onto his back. He was lying in the shape of a T, breathing heavily. I lifted my foot and stomped it into his right arm, hearing it shatter as I did, hoping I had separated it from his body. He fainted from the pain, and I trudged back to the door of the cell, forcing it open with my fist. I collapsed in the center of the jail.” Nate paused, looking at the sea of attentive faces staring at him. He finished his water, and put it down.

“I was offered a hero license when I woke up in the hospital a few days later. I asked if Marie was getting one as well. They told me she wasn’t.” Nate shook his head. “She hasn’t talked to me since then, I have no idea what she does now.” He laughed an uncomfortable laugh and turned to Eloise, who, he was surprised to see, was staring at him anxiously. She opened her mouth to say something, then abruptly shut it. She opened her mouth again.

Nate felt underdressed. His fingers tapped nervously against the sides of his cargo shorts as he waited at his table outside The Royal Jester, a bar in the downtown New Monmouth area. He raised his hand to the table, trying to find a utensil to check his reflection in, but the metal of the knife and fork were too faded for him to check, not that he would have had much success checking his reflection in a fork. He knew how he looked, how poorly he had groomed himself: his hair was a mess, his beard had been left untrimmed for a day too long (eliminating the “scruffy-yet-charming” look he desired for himself), and his T-shirt, a yellow shirt with black letters in a circle spelling “Ultraman,” had a noticeable smug on its shoulder from the Count-inflicted neck-wounds reopening a few weeks prior. Still,  he had not felt so underdressed until he had seen Eloise sit down across from him.

The girl — who had looked stunningly immaculate in a messy bun while cooking — had, by Nate’s perception, transcended the human limitation of physical beauty. She was wearing her blonde hair down so that the bottom of her hairline rested just below the top of her shoulder. A part divided the curve of her hair just above her left eyebrow, and a blue-faded rose of Sharon seemed to float of the top of the right side of her head. As Nate stared, he could not tell if she was wearing makeup, or if the unashamed, vibrant pink of her lips were just the natural shade. She was wearing a soft blue sundress that began as a light, sky blue but increased in intensity as it fell, so that the bottom cusp of the dress was a bright shade of electric blue. The sharp color of her eyes blended softly with the flower in her hair and top of her dress, but matched equally as well with the intensity of the bottom of her dress. She wore blue Crocs brand sandals with the facade, which normally would have ruined the supposed class of the outfit, but instead augmented the illusion of the ocean mist sweeping over the beach on a hot summer day.

“Am I overdressed?” She asked as she sat across from him. Nate wanted to insist that she wasn’t, that she looked lovely, divine even. Unfortunately, upon seeing her, his tongue had fallen numb, frozen in the image of her beauty, so he remained mute. “I tend to do that a lot.” She laughed softly, her face falling into a nervous smile that, to Nate, felt like a warm embrace. “I don’t have many clothes.” She admitted. “I originally wanted to wear a flower crown,” she explained, “but I don’t have much of a garden. The small balcony off my apartment is, well, small. If I devoted it entirely to blue flowers, then I could never wear any other color of clothing!” She delivered the line proudly, not so much as a joke, but rather the conclusion of many hours planning and planting a garden on the second floor of a rundown apartment building. “Besides, my friends keep telling me that flower crowns are weird. Especially to wear on a first date. Maybe I should get a rainbow dress, then I could wear all the flowers.” She said, beginning to trail off into her own head, picturing the possible color combinations of the flowers she had and the dresses she could buy. Nate watched in awe and amusement as her hands moved casually and without thought as she spoke, attempting to paint with gestures the story she was telling. “Oh!” Eloise said, just remembering the small paper-bag she held in her hand. “I brought you something.” She handed the brown bag to him, and he paused, unsure whether it was polite or impolite to open the bag at the table just as it was given to him. “Go on, look inside.” She prompted. Nate peered inside the bag, where he saw a cupcake and a small piece of paper. He pulled out the paper, and on it he saw a simple doodle of a boy his size dressed in his black shirt, pants, and gloves with the silver rimmed goggles and fingerless gloves. On the bottom, written in elegant script, was the name “Menace.” “The cupcake,” Eloise told him, “was what I was baking when you all barged into my apartment.” Nate nodded as he put the drawing of himself back into the bag, and then rested the bag at his feet. The waitress came by and took their drink orders. “So… did everything work out between you and Jake? He looked pretty angry.”

“Oh,” Nate felt the blood rush to his face as he tried to form words to continue, “yes, everything’s fine. He said something like ‘It’s whatever, dude, we were both thinking with our…’ well, you know.” Nate abruptly stopped talking, but, when Eloise did not say anything, he began to justify: “Which is completely false, by the way. I was not thinking with anything other than my head.” Not even Nate could explain why he was speaking so awkwardly, but each uncomfortable word felt like a bullet in his chest. “Anyway,” he continued grasping desperately for things to talk about, “those paintings in your apartment. Did you paint those yourself? They’re incredible!”

“You think so?” Eloise’s face turned slightly red and she looked down at her empty plate. “I spent way too much time painting them.” She said. “Normally I can sell my paintings,” she began, “but those ones are my favorites; I just can’t seem to let them go. There’s something amazing, mystical about winter days in the city.” She moved her hand to fidget with the flower in her hair. “Are you sure the flower isn’t a little too much?” She asked, and Nate got the sneaking suspicion that she could not care less how he thought she looked, but, rather, that her appearance was an extension of her art, an art that she wanted to be proud of.

“It looks lovely.” Nate managed. Eloise smiled at him, then sipped from her water that the waitress had brought over. “So…” Nate started again, falling into the rhythm of conversations he had had with other heroes throughout his life, “When did you get your powers?”

“Always had em.” She said plainly. “I didn’t always know I did, though.” She paused and brushed some hair behind her ear. “It’s not even much of a power, really. Hyper-sensitive eyesight and hand-eye coordination? I just thought I was always good at art.” She laughed a little, and Nate smiled at the warmth in her voice. “It wasn’t until, oh, say, freshman year that I realized I was a little different.” She smiled.

Nate, caught in the rapport of his normal conversation with other heroes, continued: “So, why did you want to be a —” he stopped himself, swallowed hard, and finished, “villain?” Nate could see that Eloise had tensed upon hearing the question. Her soft smile remained, but her eyes were stricken with something like fear, or perhaps exhilaration. Nate felt like she was far away.

“Look, Menace,” She said flatly, “nobody grows up wanting to be a villain.”

The young witch was very excited for her first night on the job. She walked with Menace into city hall, clocked in, and walked out. She could not have described the inside of the city hall building, or even the outside. To her, the only things that existed were herself, Nate, and the villainy that plagued the city. She walked confidently, straight-backed, behind Menace as he made his way to town square. He told her that this was the best place to start at the beginning of a shift because he could get anywhere in the city equally fast. She pulled out a small notepad and wrote that down. Nate laughed as she did; on the front of the small notebook she had written: “Menace’s Hero Compendium.” He assumed that she had looked up the word “compendium.”

Nate sat on the bench dedicated to Dr. Nelson Selmy, a doctor who happened to have been born in New Monmouth City, and beckoned Courtney to sit as well. She, acting much like a hound dog hunting for its meal, opted to remain standing so that she might get the jump on any villain who might try to sneak by. It was a relatively dull night. The moon overhead was round and full, but it only peaked through the clouds on occasion. The street lamps that lined the square provided most of the light, and the square was fairly populated. Some people chose this night to bring their loved ones out to eat, some parents decided to have their children come play in the square around the fountain, and some had chosen this night to go for a long, thought-filled walk. All-in-all, Courtney estimated that there were about twenty people in the square.

It was a Monday night, so Nate knew that very few villains wanted to go to work; much like everyone else in the world, villains hated Mondays. This was part of the reason that Menace had decided to adopt a sidekick specifically on Monday night. He was sure his new sidekick — who really, at this point, should adopt the hero name Overly Excitable Attack Dog — was not too thrilled by the lack of action, but he had no complaints. That is, until he saw the mask in the crowd.

“Hey, White Witch.” Nate called to her. She turned to make eye contact with him, and he directed her towards the masked man standing at the other end of the square. Nate saw Courtney’s eyes fill with excitement as she turned back towards him.

“What do we do?” She asked, practically wagging her tail. “Can we attack him?”

“With all the civilians around? You know how he uses them. Think, kid.”

“Well, I don’t know.” She said, exasperated. “You wanna shit on my plans, you think of the next one.”

“We should pretend we haven’t seen him.” Nate directed.

“And, what, hope he goes away?” She sassed.

“No, and lure him away from people. Into an alley-way or something. Then we can get the jump on him.” Courtney, evidently satisfied, pulled the notebook out of her pocket and wrote down what Nate had theorized. “You ready yet?” Nate asked impatiently. She dotted the last eye in her notebook, closed the book, and slid it back in the pocket of her sweatshirt.

“Yup.”

Nate stood up casually, stretching his arms over his head and yawning. He checked his phone, pretending (in the largest way he could) that he had seen an alert calling him to another corner of the city. He beckoned for the White Witch to follow, and the two ran from the square. They ran towards downtown New Monmouth, where Nate had eaten earlier that day, and ducked into an alleyway that was crammed between the New Monmouth Public Library and The Royal Jester. Nate had Courtney run all the way to the back end of the alley, and he stood a few feet in front of her, waiting. The two waited, Nate with fear, Courtney with unbridled excitement. This was her first hero mission, and she was going to do well. This was her first hero mission, and Nate was scared shitless.

A minute passed. Then another. Nate was sweating now. He had activated the first stage of his powers, instinctively, when he had first scene the mask in the park.  The moss that was growing on the walls of the Public Library looked slimy and gross, and the slight difference in shading noticeably marked it from the dank, worn walls. Nate could hear the White Witch breathing behind him, could feel her excitement. He realized he didn’t mind having the kid with him.

“Well, well, well.” He heard the shrill voice of the Gentleman as the masked figure walked to the front of the alleyway. “Looks like my little Menace has found himself a sidekick. What’s your name, little lady?”

“I’m the White Witch.” She called out, saying her name defiantly, as though, just by existing, she was spiting him.

“Well, Menace, I believe two against one is remarkably unfair, wouldn’t you agree? Good thing, just for this occasion, I brought myself a plus one as well. I believe you’ve met him, he’s quite famous in some circles.” From the sky dropped a black, winged monster that landed just in front of the Gentleman, facing Nate. It raised itself to its full height and extended its wings, letting out a deafening howl. It then bared its fangs.

“Ah, Count, I see you’re feeling better.” Nate joked, trying to hide the panic he was experiencing. “I didn’t fashion you as one to work with others, Gentleman.”

“I would not call it working together so much as a beast obeying its master. You see, I am in control here. For example.” The Gentleman raised his left hand a wiggled his pointer and middle finger. As he did so, the Count’s wings began to flap and he raised into the air. “But I can command him even without the hands.” The Gentleman admitted, and the beast began to nose-dive towards Nate. As it did a large gust of wind rose to meet it, slowing it as it dove, so that as it approached Menace was able to raise his leg and kick it into the alley wall. It howled it pain as it crashed, but it did not break the library wall, it simply fell to the ground. “Forgetting something?” The Gentleman asked, as his cane swept across Nate’s face, smacking him across the cheek.

“Don’t let him touch you, Court!” Nate commanded as he through a fist at the Gentleman, who ducked, and jabbed his cane into Nate’s ribcage. Nate grunted in pain, as he brought his hands down to grab the Gentleman’s cane. He tugged at the cane, pulling the Gentleman towards him, ready to smack him to the ground, when the Count grabbed him from behind and hoisted him into the air. Nate hovered a few inches of the ground in the suffocating embrace of the Count; he smacked the back of his head into the Count’s monstrous nose, causing the monster to release him, and he fell back to the ground, landing on his hands and knees. The Gentleman, having used this time to regain composure, was able to bring his boot to Nate’s face and knock him onto his back. Nate struggled to his feet as the White Witch sent a gust of wind at the Count, forcing him up and over Menace, back behind the Gentleman.

“Still having fun, Court?” Nate asked, wiping some blood from his mouth.  He stood up to face the Gentleman and the Count. He was still about a minute away from going into the second stage of his powers, which meant he was at least sixteen minutes away from going into the third stage. He could see that the fur covering the Count’s body was puffed out, wildly going in every direction. The mask on the Gentleman’s body looked the same as it always did. Nate’s tongue felt noticeably dry in his mouth. He turned his head to see Courtney, standing firmly behind him. She held her wand out in front of her, the hood of her white sweatshirt had fallen behind her head; her hair looked as crazy as the Count’s. There was a hopeful fierceness to her eyes, like the fight had been won since the beginning.

“Ha.” The Gentleman spoke. “This is wonderful. Delightful, even.” He was shaking his head in an exaggerated fashion, as though he could not believe his luck.

“What are you talking about?” The Menace spat at him, eager to buy as much time as he could.

“When you attacked me last year, during the Catastrophic Event Function, I understood, I realized that you have to do what you have to do. Of course, I was still upset that you never came to apologize. When you threatened me at the wake, though, and refused my help, it led me to believe that you didn’t care that your family’s life was in my hands. You were smart enough to realize that I was threatening their lives. You just did not care.” He punctuated every word with a period as they popped out from his mouth. Nate realized what he was talking about, and turned to look at the White Witch as she stood, her face unwavering. He needed to keep her safe.

The Gentleman laughed as the Count leapt again, reaching over the height of the two story library. “Move!” Menace shouted, as the White Witch pushed him forward with a gust of wind, and forcing herself back against the back wall of the alley. Nate used the gust to launch himself at the Gentleman, who quickly sidestepped the flying boy. Nate grabbed onto his shirt as he passed, and slammed the Gentleman against the ground.

“Tsk, tsk, tsk.” The Gentleman scolded. “You should have been more careful.” He heard a scream from behind him. He turned his head to see the Count’s meaty, hoof of a fist colliding with Courtney’s stomach. She crumpled around the fist as it pressed her against the wall, her face was now completely covered by the hood that had fallen over it. Menace’s second stage of powers activated as he jumped off of the Gentleman and, in a single bound, had grabbed the black collar of fur from around the Count’s neck, and thrown him back with all his might. He lifted Courtney into his arms, and ran out of the alleyway, attempting to step on the Gentleman’s face as he left. He brought her around the corner of the street to just in front of a drugstore, where he put her down. She immediately fell to her hands and knees where she began to hack up blood onto he sidewalk.

“The fight’s not over.” He told her as she fell backwards, catching herself on her hands. She was shaking now and her face had grown incredulously pale. “You’re in a state of shock. You’ll need a few minutes to calm down. We don’t have a few minutes.” He said, trying not to show how horribly he’s panicking.

“I can’t go back out there.” She said. Tears had begun to land on her sweater. Nate wanted to agree. He wanted to shout at her for coming in the first place. He wanted to scold her, tell her to keep safe. That she mattered, and shouldn’t be so frivolous as to pretend she didn’t. He looked at this girl, this poor girl who had nothing. She just wanted to be a hero.

“Hey, hey.” Nate said, sitting down next to the girl. “We all get knocked off our feet once in awhile. You’re learning. I should’ve kept a closer eye on you.” Nate admitted. She was still breathing rapidly.

“I’m sorry for forcing you to take me.” She said, not trying to hide the tears anymore. “I’m sorry. I can’t do this, Nate.” Her breathing was speeding up and the tears weren’t stopping. “I guess I just won’t be a hero.” She broke down, then, into her hands she was practically sobbing, trying to wipe away the tears but they were coming too quickly.

Nate grabbed the girl’s chin and lifted into the air gently, yet forcefully, so that he could look into her watery, red eyes. “Deep breaths, kid. Deep breaths.” Nate let go of her chin, but she kept staring up at him. “It’s okay.” He promised her. “You’re okay.” He brought her head to his chest and she wrapped her arms around him as she tried to sniffle up the last of her tears. He leaned down so that his head was right next to hers, and whispered into her ear: “Keep going.”

She nodded and struggled to her feet. Nate stood. “Think you’ve got a few sparks left?” He asked. She nodded again, afraid to speak for fear that her voice would crack from the tears. “Good, give it all to them.”

The Count was barreling towards them, the Gentleman walking briskly behind the beast. Nate’s fist found its way onto the monster’s chest, forcing it backwards. The beast staggered back, let out something like a screech, then came at him again. Their hands interlocked as Nate dug his heals into the ground; he began to press back against the wrists of the Count, forcing his hands to tilt back, his wrists to crack, and his knees to bend into submission. Nate hadn’t realized that he was yelling in the monster’s face as Menace forced him to the ground. The Gentleman had been making his way around the scene towards the White Witch who was focusing intently on her magic, her eyes closed as she chanted words under her breath. Nate kicked the beast down, then forced himself towards the Gentleman, landing his foot against the masked man’s shoulder, and toppling him to the ground. The Count was rising from where Nate had left him, still recoiling from the kick. He stared right at the Menace, who fixed his goggles onto his eyes, turned to the White Witch and gave her the thumbs up.

The Count screeched as the White Which screamed and brought her wand straight downwards, and with it came a lighting strike slamming into the Count’s monstrous form, a thunderclap drowning out all other sounds as it did. The Count fell into the street, breathing, Nate could hear, but certainly unconscious. He turned towards the Gentleman who had struggled to his feet, pulled from his cane a thin sword, and held it to the back of Courtney’s throat. Courtney had fallen to the ground, the effort of the magic forcing her to her knees.

“It looks like our associates have grown tired.” The Gentleman spoke to him. “The difference is,” the Gentleman lifted his free hand, and with it, the unconscious Count rose to his feet, “mine can fight forever.” Nate sighed in exasperation. “But,” the Gentleman continued, “that would be animal cruelty. I have learned what I have needed to learn, and done what I needed to do. Besides, she’s more valuable to me alive than dead, for the time being, at least. Furthermore, I’d like to thank you, Menace, for turning a blind eye to my bank robbery tomorrow at seven in the evening. So does your little friend here.” He, and the Count, walked slowly out, down the street. Nate fell down to his hands and knees, looking over at Courtney, who’s eyes could barely afford to stay open.

Nate didn’t like parties. He would admit that he enjoyed the rare party here and there that happened to strike a chord, and he could accept the use of ballroom parties and dances as mediums for social structure and meeting new people. He would not, however, admit to enjoying himself as he sat in the disgusting filth of Jake Silver’s apartment as his shit-faced friends danced, drank, and fucked to blaring, generic party music.

The apartment was small, especially for the number of people invited. The living area consisted of one small, faded couch, on which Nate sat, across from a thirty-inch television, and three doors. The door that led to the kitchen was propped open, allowing for ease of access for the drunks to traverse rooms, or for the people who were afflicted with a rather severe case of the munchies to find food. Another door led to the restroom, where the floors were covered in some disgusting mixture of urine, feces, vomit, and other less identifiable liquids. The third door led to what was assumably the bedroom, but the door had been closed and locked since one particularly passionate couple happened to desire privacy. Thus, the forty-something people attending the party were cramped into two small rooms, and none of them, as far as Nate could tell, payed the slightest attention to personal hygiene.

“So, what do you think of the party?” Jake asked, taking a seat next to Nate. Jake was normally a fairly good-looking young adult, with soft blond hair and unblemished skin, usually keeping up to date on the latest fashion trends while maintaining his own, personal look. As he now sat next to Nate in gym-shorts (or boxers, Nate couldn’t quite tell) and a wife-beater undershirt, Nate wondered if it was really the same person. Nate shifted uncomfortably where he sat, noticing that he was sitting on top of what he assumed was a bag of chips.

“It’s really fun, man, thanks for inviting me.” Nate lied. He had only agreed to come to meet Jake himself, a hero quickly rising in popularity and esteem. Surprisingly to Nate, the hero gig had come with a large amount of politics; increasingly the world was about who he knew and how that could help him rise the ranks. The best heroes, as defined by the state based on a number of criteria, get the highest pay, benefits, and honors. The rest are equivalent to meter maids: technically they’re real heroes, but they have little authority. Of the twenty or so heroes in the state, Nate never particularly strived to be number one, as Ultraman had had that position unequivocally reserved. Now, as the charts stated, Menace was toeing the line at fifth. Not too long ago, Menace would have been fine being last on the list — his association with the Gentleman not only boosted him into the higher rankings, but the higher he went, the more he was certain someone would find out. As he knew his number was soon to fall, and with his forged relationship with the Gentleman gone, he now felt impassioned to join the climb.

The first thing he needed to do was to be recognized (and therefore well liked) by other heroes. The state determined the rankings by pier review, pedestrian satisfaction, Catastrophic Event Function (CEF) completions, and how many hours worked. Nate felt that his hours were roughly at the top of the list, and his pedestrian satisfaction was as high it was going to be. There hadn’t been a CEF since Ultraman’s death, so that too was an unavailable resource. Thus, he had to raise the hero-societies view of him, a daunting task that he was not thrilled to complete. He inhaled deeply through his mouth and began to speak again. “So…” Suddenly, he was unsure how to proceed. He understood that he could not simply ask for a good recommendation, but, seeing as that was his sole purpose, he had not prepared to tiptoe around the subject. “Would you ever consider, say, taking a shift with me?” The Menace asked, cringing at his own wording.

“Sure, man, that sounds lit!” Jake responded, and Nate wasn’t sure if it was him or the booze talking. Jake was the number three hero in the state, and the number two hero in New Monmouth City, who donned the hero name: The Engine. Nate always admired his powers, and thought he looked amazing in action, but was always a little too offset by his person to work with him. Nonetheless, he was now a cleaner, more desperate hero, and agreed to concede his long-held yet perhaps unwarranted hatred. “Yo, here’s my number, just hit me up when you wanna do it.” Nate nodded, taking a poorly-scribbled note from the Engine and putting it in his pocket. He then excused himself, walked from the apartment, slamming the door behind him. He plugged the number into his contacts, then ripped the note up and threw it away, sighing. The night was not over for him quite yet.

Courtney always insisted on training later and later into the night. It had been a full week since the training began, and the sessions had moved from eight to eleven at night. Nate did not enjoy the training sessions, as he had no idea how the magic worked or how to work with anyone else, but, despite his apprehensions, he had to admit that he was enjoying the White Witch’s company. She was often quite childish, but, Nate figured, she was a child, and so most squabbles could be chalked up to that. In addition, Nate found she was also very set in her ways, which was unusual for a fourteen your old, but he did not really care. What he noticed most was the large smile on her face whenever they began to train, and he could not help but wonder if no one had given her their time before.

“So when do I get to start hero-ing?” She asked, as she always would at the beginning of practice. Every session she would wear her full hero garb, which was ridiculous seeing as how it consisted of a large sweatshirt in the middle of summer.

“When I say so.” Nate responded, the same response he’d given a thousand times. “You know,” he admitted, “I have no idea how your magic works.” Nate expected her to change the subject or brush off the statement, as she often did, but she just looked at him curiously. Her eyes were alive as she stared at him, dancing as fire in the midst of raging winds. They seemed to lose and reattain focus every so often, always on a different location, so Nate could not even begin to imagine what she was thinking.

“It’s simple, really.” She began. She motioned for Nate to sit down on the grass, like a young child would for their teachers or parents. “So, magic comes from chaos.” She repeated this line as though she were repeating it straight from a textbook. “The magic is, to untrained eyes and minds, an unexplainable force in the wold. This unexplained something from nothing is the very essence of magic.” She paused, as if trying to remember the next line, but gave up. “So then, it’s like,” she bit her lip, “how do I explain it? I think it’s like this: the magicians, wizards, witches, sorcerers, conjurers, or whatever type of magical entity you happen to be, they all are, let’s say, regulators for this chaos. Thus, the random nothingness of the projected world becomes the ordered, concise ‘magic’ in this world.” She saw Nate’s inquisitive look and beat him to the question. “So what is the projected world, right? Well, it’s kind of a world mirroring ours and it’s kind of a world in our heads. I didn’t really get it either until I went. It’s like… imagine everything that isn’t a sentient entity is gone from the world. No houses, no structures, no bridges, no nothing. So it’s just that and then the people, upon entering the realm, begin to construct it from their magic and their willpower. So, I mean, I guess, magic in this reality is bringing chaos from the other world and making it ordered, and magic in the projected realm is taking order from this world and making it chaotic. Something like that.”

Nate was slightly more confused then he let on, but he had certainly attained the basic concept of where magic came from, despite the fact that he still had no idea how it worked. He was more curious, however, about the projected realm, and what it must be like. “Can you take me to the projected realm?” He asked.

Fear blazed in her eyes as she shook her head: “No.” Nate decided not to push the issue. “Now are we going to train, or what?”

Nate squared himself as the girl drew her wand. Their training matches operated thusly: it was a game of tag. She had the winds at her disposal, along with an arsenal of other magic, and Menace had his usual powers, but consistently refused to use them. She started as it, as he was much faster than her when she failed to use her magic. He ran, weaving between the trees, as she hoisted herself into a levitating flight and launched herself towards him. He rounded a tree and doubled back, as the girl just barely avoided the tree but the momentum carried her much farther forward. Nate ran back into the clearing beneath the cube and caught his breathe as the White Witch came barreling towards him. He was about to side step when the girl pulled her wand in front of her, forcing a gale to thrust the Menace squarely into the tree behind him. Ironically, Nate had the wind knocked out of him, as Courtney crashed into his stomach. “Tag.” She said, patronizingly.

“Thanks, kid.” Menace muttered under his breath.

“No problem, teach.” She responded. The night progressed long past midnight, when Courtney decided to return to her house to sleep, and Nate, following suit, did the same.

The Gentleman was waiting for Nate when he got back to the house. As Nate entered, he saw the completely masked face raise a finger to where his mouth would be, and then lower it to his waist. The Gentleman then waved for Nate to take a seat at the kitchen table, where he sat. Nate slowly and quietly pulled back a black wooden chair from the table, and sat across from the Gentleman, staring into the mask. The light above the table remained unlit, and the darkness felt imposing, almost threatening, around Nate’s throat like a dagger. The Gentleman seemed unperturbed, or, at least, his perturbation was hidden under the mask.

“How has your life been since our last meeting, my little Menace?” The Gentleman asked, and Nate could have sworn the masked man was attempting to hide a giggle while he spoke.

“Increasingly difficult.” Nate said, reluctantly. As much as he hated to admit it, he had established a rapport with the masked man over the years, and had simply become accustomed to speaking frankly. He understood that, behind the mask, there was a flesh-and-blood human being, who was not entirely evil.

“I might be able to help with that.” The Gentleman said, and Nate knew he was smirking behind the mask. “Our old arrangement was quite beneficial, wouldn’t you agree?”

“I have to say I would.” Nate admitted. “But why again? Why now?”

“Perhaps for peace of mind in my life, perhaps to save yours, or perhaps for neither reason. Maybe it’s because I need you out of the way for my next assignment, or maybe it’s because I dislike seeing you squirm so. It could be because I pity you. Nonetheless, I am willing to reestablish our kind-hearted, peaceful arrangement, despite your past transgression.” Nate thought. He was doing fine on his own, at least to his knowledge. He had yet to majorly fuck up, and he had yet to die, which he counted quite simply as a win in his book. The Gentleman was offering peace of mind to him, at a price he could easily afford. The Menace grimaced, but he knew that the answer had to be a firm and resounding yes. It was a three-year crutch that he thought he no longer needed, putting pressure again on the leg only to find that, somehow, it had become dulled through lack of use. It was a truth that he knew, and one that he knew the gentleman knew. Nate reached to rub the bite marks on his neck, still sore three weeks later. He felt his mouth, still injured from Galatea’s fist the week before. His hand then fell to his stomach, where, not two hours ago, Courtney had collided with all her heroic might. Everything on his body ached from training or from working, and yet he could not help the smile from climbing across his face.

“No thanks.” Nate answered. He could not tell the expression behind the Gentleman’s mask, but he was sure it could not have been pleasant. “I think I’m going to keep on doing what I’m doing.” The Gentleman sighed as he stood from the table.

The first letter came a few weeks after Nate had registered as a hero. He had returned home from a particularly long day’s work, and he wanted nothing more than to fall into bed and sleep until noon the next day. It was a cool night, early in July; the sky outside was dark and the moon was large, but covered by countless clouds. The letter was placed neatly on the dining table, a wooden table with a bright, tan hue in the center of his dining room. He hardly noticed it at first, as he was hungry and the normal clutter of the household lent itself to many misplaced objects. It wasn’t until much later in the evening when he finally gave it a second look, and noticed his name, Goggles, written on the front. He hastily ripped the top from the envelope, pulling out the small, folded strip of white paper from inside. He unwrapped it and read:

“Dear Nate,

It has come to my attention that you have enlisted in the service line of heroism. I admire your bravery and commitment to self-sacrifice, though I am concerned that your plight may, in fact, produce some — shall we call them — conflicts, between you and I. In light of this fact, and before we might begin said controversies, I would like to offer a proposal. You see, the others and I are not quite on the best terms, as the educated often struggle with the heathens (after having been mired in their assaults for the past few weeks, I imagine you understand that of which I speak), and so I see a chance to produce a quid pro quo arrangement between us. I shall inform you of their intentions as I hear of them, and you shall, kindly, keep from engaging in my plans. I will assume that you have agreed with this arrangement and act thusly. Next weekend, at the stroke of midnight, the villain you call Pygmalion will be attempting to steal the rabbit medallion from the new Endarian exhibit at the New Monmouth Museum. If you have yet to believe me, this should verify my authenticity. I hope we never come into direct conflict new hero.

Signed,

The Gentleman

P.S. Goggles is not a very menacing hero name, I might try something darker if you wish to be taken seriously.

The letter baffled Nate. There was no protocol for what to do next, no mission-statement, no textbook, no guidance for him to follow. He was just rudely torn from the world of heroism, the fictional world that he’d constructed of justice and bravery, and forced into a harsh reality. Was he to ignore the letter, continue on the seemingly righteous path, and stop the Gentlemen when he next showed his face? He pondered the importance of the information the man could provide over the weight of letting a villain run free. He began to rationalize, figuring that any other hero could put a stop to the Gentleman’s misdeeds, anyone could do it. He then stopped himself, looking down at his hands. He was a young hero, only fourteen. The realization of the situation he was in did not hit him until the next morning: the Gentleman knew where he lived and had gotten into his house. The letter was not an offer, Nate understood, it was a threat.

Nate had not received a letter for some time. This was no surprise to him, as when he was sixteen there was a catastrophic event function (a CEF) involving the Gentleman, and all the nearby heroes were called into service. Thus, Nate had to intervene and, shortly thereafter, the letters halted altogether. Still, he waited. Despite his efforts at nonchalance, he was very afraid of the Gentleman and of his capabilities. He had not taken the time to think it through before the incident, but he was beginning to realize that his minions could be anywhere. He had developed a nasty habit of glancing over his shoulder as he walked the streets, and walking briskly from place to place. The worst part, however, was that Nate no longer knew when crimes would occur. He had been relying so heavily on the crutch of information, that staring into the face of the unknown was an intimidating experience. All he could do was wait.

It was another hot summer day, lazy enough for adults to slack off work, but not quite scorching enough for the children to be dissuaded from playing throughout the town. There were a few clouds in the sky, but no threat of rain, and a cool breeze would float in every so often, giving Nate a much-needed, literal breath of fresh air. His phone was constantly buzzing with texts from the White Witch, complaining about how he hadn’t brought her along yet, but he needed to check the phone each time in case it was an emergency. He sighed, taking solace in the fact that he was not the only hero on duty.

Heroes often formed groups in efforts to dissuade villains from committing crimes while they are on duty; they were usually scheduled for middle-of-the-day duty, which was why crime during the day was nearly nonexistent. It was an interesting tactic, Nate always thought, but the hours spent on coordinating the team felt both foreign and useless to him, as he was fairly effective on his own. He also understood that, with the scarcity of heroes, he could not afford to join up with others and lessen the overall protection of the city for peace of mind when he was on duty. In groups of three, the heroes tend to follow the same format and structure: the king, the princess, and the warrior.

Nate’s thoughts were interrupted by the buzzing of his phone, and he was about to call Courtney and tell her to chill, when he realized it wasn’t from her. It was a news alert: Pygmalion  was attacking the New Monmouth Museum. Fuck, Nate thought, I should have known, he does this every goddamn year. Nate was far from the museum, but he began sprinting with all his might, entering into the first stage of his powers. He had never had to do this before, and the experience was very odd for him. As he ran down the street, most people had the common decency to get out of his way, some children even cheered for him as he ran, but a few of them decided that their business must be far more important than the superhero’s and continued their snails pace with ease. After the third person refused to move from his path, Nate decided that he needed to get there as fast as possible, and the fastest way was through. He toppled over the next snail, shouting backwards “Sorry, hero business!” and continued his full throttle run.

He arrived at the front of the Museum, a large, cement building with two large glass doors with windows above them. The cement had once been all black, but street-artists had changed it into a mosaic of color and strange gangster names. Inside the glass doors, Nate could see that the front desk had been toppled over, and the attendant was lying on the ground inside, unconscious. He pulled out his phone and called her an ambulance as he continued into the building.

When Nate walked past the front desk into the first exhibit, he had absolutely no idea what was going on. Most things were broken beyond recognition, and the things that weren’t were on fire. The exhibit had been detailing all of the Endarian artifacts found in the Middle East, but it had quickly become an exhibit detailing the destruction of belligerent villains and idiotic heroes. Nate looked across the room and saw Pygmalion a short, blond man dressed in a Grecian toga, standing against the back wall. From what Nate could tell, the man looked horror-struck, which was an unbecoming look for the man. Nate then saw Galatea leap to his side. Pygmalion had created Galatea some time ago from a clay block, but, forgetting that she was made of clay, anyone would have considered her an astounding beauty. She was tall with her hair faded to a dark black color, and her face was the pinnacle of perfection. She wore no clothes, as why would a clay monster-woman need clothes, and stood without shame at Pygmalion’s side. From Nate’s experience, he knew that she was incredibly strong, and his body tensed on sight. The villains, however, did not appear to be looking at him. Nate turned his head to follow their gaze towards the right side of the room, where three heroes stood. Their costumes were ripped, and their faces looked worn and wan. Nate knew the heroes, and cursed his rotten luck. It was the Lionheart Hero Squadron. The leader, Lionheart himself, looked over towards Nate and called out, “Don’t worry, we have a plan!” Nate, stricken with fear and hatred, decided to, against his better knowledge, sit down and let them attempt their plan.

The leader, Lionheart, was a twenty year old hero who had been in the business for roughly three years. Whereas most heroes form groups to dissuade higher crime, Lionheart was desperately in search of basic aid, prowling the market a few years ago looking for heroes to beg to join his group. He was not a strong man, nor was he a smart man, but he felt himself to be both, and so, once he had managed to form a squadron, began to assume leadership and take command. Nate had seen him in action a few times before, and had had the displeasure of working with him on one occasion, which he immediately recognized was one too many. The man was an idiot, rude, and weak, always opting to work from a distance. This would normally have been fine; he would be a great support-hero, to aid the assault-heroes from a distance, using his mighty roar to injure or paralyze foes. Instead, he insisted on being the warrior, and the only person to make close-range assaults on the team, which he never did. His costume was very frumpy as well, with a red and orange lion’s mane plastered around his neck, slicked back black hair, and brown sweats covering the rest of his body. If there was one hero Nate refused to work with, it was Lionheart.

The other heroes on his team were actually very good at what they did, perhaps even the best heroes in the business. The Forge was a good friend of Nate’s, and had helped Menace on many occasions. He wore a white shirt, red karate-style belt, and white pants (which were now slightly torn), and held in his hands a bright silver katana, that, as Nate watched, began to shrink down into a metal ball that the Forge held until he needed to mold it into another weapon. His powers, Nate always thought, were incredibly interesting and useful on the front lines, but Lionheart insisted he stand as guard, to protect his undeniable importance in the team. He looked exhausted as he took a knee and ran his hand through his close-cropped hair. Nate pitied him. But not as much as he pitied the third member of the team, Earshot, or, as Nate liked to refer to her, Bunny-Girl.

Nate remembered when she became a hero, as it was only a few weeks after he received the first letter from the Gentleman. She wore a full-face mask which connected with the rest of her costume; it was all white with two eyeholes cut out, and a pink triangle colored from her nose expanding down around her mouth. She usually had a hood around the top of the mask, and from the hood sprung two bunny-ears, which she claimed were there to aid in hearing, but Nate could feel that it was solely for the aesthetic. The rest of her costume was entirely white, save for an oval of her stomach that was colored pink, and the palms of her hands which were padded and painted pink to look like a paw. She wore white boots around her feet, which blended so well into the costume it was difficult to discern whether she was really wearing them. She refused to take the costume off while on duty, and so no other hero knew what she really looked like under the costume. She was one of Nate’s favorite heroes; unfortunately, he never really got to see her do much.

Her part on the team, as far as Nate could tell, was to sit there and look pretty, or, if worse came to worst, she would be a second line of defense for Lionheart. He had never seen her in a combat role, in fact, he’d never seen her do anything except cover her floppy ears every time Lionheart went to roar. Nate laughed a little as he sat there, thinking over their team composition, and how badly Lionheart was leading. He did not have much time to ponder.

Lionheart stepped in front of the other two heroes, staring straight at Pygmalion and Galatea, and let out his mighty roar, forcing Pygmalion to his knees but Galatea, made entirely of clay, felt no pain at the roar. The sound, however, was able to shatter the glass encasement of one of the chaos-scrolls. Galatea began to charge at the faux-hero, and was stopped by the Forge who stepped in front of him with a shiny, silver shield that he had crafted. Galatea began to pound at the shield forcing the Forge backwards with each strike until his back was pressed against Lionheart. With one final shove, Galatea threw the both of them back against the wall, and they collided with a loud crashing sound, as the Forge’s head smacked against his shield. Earshot turned to face Galatea, squaring herself in a fighting position, with a slight bounce in her footing so that she would be prepared for anything. Nate admired her from where he sat, seeing that she did, in fact, know what she was doing. Just as she was about to strike, Lionheart called out to her, barking an order to return to his side. She sighed, lowering her head, and turned to leap to him, but as she did, Galatea shoved her foot into the girl’s stomach, sending her a few feet backwards. Nate tried not to look as Earshot hoisted herself onto her arms and knees and hacked up some of her stomach contents. Menace had had enough.

He felt a large snapping sound inside himself, and entered into the second stage of his powers. He slapped on his goggles to handle the input of his senses, and noticed that Galatea’s form had a few, small cracks in it. Pygmalion had returned to his feet and was beginning to scour the exhibit for something, but Nate knew he could stop the man later, and the odds were six-to five-and-pick-em that the object was destroyed by either Galatea or Lionheart. He could feel his power surge through him, but he’d fought Galatea before and he knew that if he wasn’t careful, he was still going to take a beating. He sprinted towards her, practically leaping from where he stood, and smashed his elbow into her chest, causing her to lose her footing and topple backwards onto the ground. As she began to stand, Menace heard Lionheart calling for him to stop, for him to fall in line and let his team handle the situation. Nate turned and walked to him as quickly as he could, while trying to keep one eye on Galatea.

“Listen,” Nate began, hoisting Lionheart up by his mane, “when it’s just you on duty, you can feel free to fuck up as much as you like.” The hero in his hands began to protest, but Menace continued, “But when I’m on duty, when it’s my shift, you need to present yourself with a little decorum and civility, or at least not destroy the entire god damn museum that you were commissioned to protect, understand?” Lionheart nodded slowly. The Forge was unconscious beside him. Nate dropped Lionheart next to the unconscious hero and turned to face Galatea, who had finally recovered her bearings.

“Hey, Bunny-Girl,” he called, as Earshot had managed to compose herself as well, “go stop Pygmalion.” The girl nodded and ran off into the exhibit among the maze of broken exhibits and burning refuge. Nate turned back to Galatea just in time for her fist to collide with his face, making him step back and howl in pain. “Holy shit that hurt.” Nate complained as he wiped some blood from his mouth. He turned to the tall woman in front of him and squared himself. She threw the fist again, but he swept it to the side and threw his leg to her stomach, which she sidestepped and brushed his leg away. Nate, capitalizing on the momentum, spun and hoisted his other leg which crashed into the side of her body, making an odd cracking sound but failing to move the woman. Menace put his foot down to step back, as the large right leg of the woman flew at him, forcing him to duck down so that the leg would coast over him. He made a desperate grab for her leg, and managed to clamp onto it, then twisted it with all his might. With a strange “plop” sound, her leg flew off and Nate released it onto the ground, and the giant woman, losing her balance, fell onto him. Nate gasped in pain as the air was forced out of him by the clay woman who began to lift herself by her hands. She was glaring at him now, and he wondered if she could feel emotional strife or anger as she lifted one of her fists to throw down into his face. The hit never landed, however, because just then the bunny slammed her foot into the base of Galatea’s chin, forcing the head to twist off and land against the far wall. He heard Pygmalion’s cries near him, for he loved the monster he had created. Earshot held out her hand for Menace to grab, and she pulled him up. “Thanks, Bunny-Girl.”

“No problem, Goggles.” She returned.

“It’s Menace, now, actually, has been for awhile.” Nate blushed, slightly embarrassed by his old name.

“Earshot, thanks.” She said; Nate could tell she was smirking behind the mask.

Menace loved the cube. The wooden walls, the oaken smell, and the hidden compartments where he stored chips all made him immeasurably happy and feel incredibly safe. He knew that, even if the Gentleman knew where his house was, even if villains took up the search for him, no one would ever find the cube. He smiled and stretched his hands out against the walls which, now more than ever, made him feel at peace. Of course, the loud girl shouting at him made it slightly hard to relax, but he was working through it.

“Why didn’t you take me along today?” The White Witch shouted at him. “I was all prepared, I had my costume touched up, I worked out my insignia, I practiced my magic all night and you still didn’t take me along. Why did we even go and get the permit, Nate? Why?”

“Look, I know you’re excited to start hero-ing and such, but have you ever stopped to consider the danger?” Nate responded, yawning a little. “Plus, we’d have to practice our teamwork — together, that is — and we have yet to do that, so I can’t quite bring you with me yet.”

“Then we have to do that now!” Courtney decided, but Nate stayed where he was and showed no signs of getting up. “Come on!” She shouted at him. “Stop being a bitch.”

“There’ll be time tomorrow.” Nate responded.

“Tomorrow you’re going to say that again.”

“Tomorrow it will be true again.”

“I want to help.”

Nate looked up at the girl, who appeared to be holding back tears. She was biting her lip very hard, and her eyes were very red. She was shaking too, almost like she was trying to hold back a tantrum, or perhaps an explosion of unkept magic. “I just want to help.” She repeated.