Chapter 1

 

A villain should never be frightened by the darkest alley,

Because he should be sure in his soul that the most terrifying thing in that alley is him.

 

Call me Materias.  

 

I used to be called Mr. Matter back in the day but some cornball named Mr. Hatter who literally was able to pull rabbits out of his hat got really famous out in East Liberty.  His rabbits were maniacal supposedly but at the end of the day they were fuckin' rabbits.  I didn't want to be anywhere near mixed up with this clown.

 

"Ride that dick.  That pussy is so wet."

Why am I riding a man's dick you ask?  Well...long story.  The guy leans back.  He's handsome in his own way...a little too short and scrawny for my taste but I'm here now.  He's a state worker for the Mandate Ministry.  I'd been tracking him for a little while now making sure that he was gay.  Scan-man was sure that he was.  See Scan Man was able to detect attributes like that.  Whether someone was gay or straight or could fly or breathe underwater. It was a useful gift to have in the city where we lived.  Nothing like dumb ass Mr.  Hatter.

That's beside the point.  The point is, he's gay and he's from the Mandate Ministry.  The key point was his job.
"Can you not?" I ask.

"Not what?"

"Call my ass a pussy," I roll my eyes at him.  

 

"It's so tight though," he responds, "So good. So..."


I hadn't had sex in a minute.  I had to admit this little guy's dick was pretty substantial.  It's always the little ones that carry a fuckin baseball bat in their pants.  Maybe that's the only reason I'm sitting on it now.  Honestly I didn't need to go this far.

 

"Oh ok.  This isn't working..."


I grab one of the pillows that he has in his hands.  It's a little too full.  So I take out the pillow from the pillowcase.  The pillowcase is in my hands.  

 

"What are you doing?"


"Just watch me or you'll miss the best part."


He thinks I'm doing some freaky sexy trick with the sheet.  God knows what he has in mind.  He stares intently and right in front of his eyes the bedsheet begins to change as I hold it.  His eyes grows wide as he struggles to figure out what the fuck is happening to the cute dark baldheaded guy riding his dick.  Little does he know that in the next minute what was once a bedsheet is now a pair of handcuffs.

He struggles at first.  Everyone struggles at first...

 

It doesn't take long for me to secure him with the handcuffs onto the bedpost.  I hop off his dick, taking the condom off his dick and changing it into a wet wipe that I use to clean myself.

 

"What---the---what—the----"

It's all he can say.

 

"It's called transmutation," I explain to him, "Noun:  the action of changing or the state of being changed into another form.  As in you went from a horny guy to dumbass. You see I have a magic touch.  Literally, I can change something just by touching it."

His face scorns when he realizes who I am.  He realizes what I am.  I don't blame him.  People like me look just like people like him.  There is no real difference when you look at us.  He thought I was like him...a normal human but I wasn't and he knew that now.

 

"You goddam fucking metahumans."

He spits the word like he's calling me a nigger, or a faggot, or a roach.  I should probably get mad but he's so pissed that I kind of find it funny.   Because if I'm a roach to this son of a bitch, I'm a roach that kicked his fuckin' ass without even trying.

 

So I leave him, high and dry and chained to a goddam bed.

I'm not a good guy.  Not in any sense of the word.  I don't kill people or no shit like that.  Not that I wouldn't but I just never had to.  I do what I have to do.  It's hard out here for a metahuman pimp.  The man is always trying to keep us down.

 

It started almost 10 years ago.  I was just 16 back then.  I was a goddam kid and the only gay kid out in my neighborhood.  And one night things changed.  My best friend Aaron calls me at 4am in the morning.  He says he's scared.  Scared of what, I ask.  He says these boys are waiting outside of a gay bar to gay bash him.  Mind you...Aaron's not gay.  He's just a goddam weirdo.  He's a weirdo I so happen to have been obsessed with.

 

So like a gay teen who thinks with his little head instead of his big head I'm off...to save the fucking day.  Long story short...both me and my best friend Aaron get gay bashed that night.  We don't even put up a fight.  I mean these guys straight destroy us.  

 

I'm bleeding on the sidewalk.  Aaron's asking me for a cigarette as if the homophobes didn't destroy his body enough.  I'm telling Aaron that he needs a fuckin' nicotine patch and he's telling me that I need an attitude adjustment.  

 

And in the middle of this bullshit argument about nothing, I look up in the sky.

 

And there are these lights.  These goddam neon Tele tubby gay ass fucking lights in sky floating above the city as if RuPaul's drag race had a special cloud runway episode.  

 

Next thing I know there are such things as super humans.

 

And I'm one of them.

"Did you get it?  Did you get it?  Did you get it?"


Baby Boom is standing next to me.  I'm looking down at him.  We are in our secret lair.  We call ourselves the Misfits for lack of a better name.  Our so called lair was a one bedroom apartment in the Hill District of a place we call the Metropolis.  Mind you don't let the fancy name fool you.  The metropolis is wack ass Pittsburgh Pennsylvania for all intents and purposes.

 

"What do ya'll feed this kid?" I ask walking into the room.

 

They are ready for me by the time I get back.  We don't have much time.  The Ministry would find my victim tied up in his bed.  They'd realize what I took for him.

 

"Spinach," Sunbeam replies.

 

Sunbeam walks over to me.  He immediately gives me a hug when I wave the key card in front of his face.   His name used to be Aaron but we don't call each other by our own name.  Not since we saw the lights.  Not since we received the gift.  He's Sunbeam now, a metahuman whose powers came from the sun.  Sunbeam was able to fly and produce huge photogenic light blasts.   

 

Sunbeam is handsome and he knew it.  He has jet black hair and eyes so black they are hypnotizing.  His teeth are always white like he's on a Colgate commercial and his skin is this interesting shade of brown.  His nationality is Tunisian.  I just think it's exotic as shit.  He had a half mask on his face.  That was his signature thing.  See...we didn't do capes.  Not my gang at least.  We did masks.  His mask was shitty to say the least.  His girlfriend made him the mask out of some rhinestones, she cut some holes in his jeans, and put a black hoodie on him and WALLAH---instant Super Villain Gang Leader.  

 

"You miss me?" I ask.

"You know I did," Sunbeam smiles.

 

He pats me on the ass.  Sunbeam isn't gay but he does...gay things like that all the time. It's just our friendship.  It's how it's always been.  I couldn't imagine a world without him.  

 

"We have to hurry," Scan-Man says, "You guys can do your weird gay-straight-curious-sexually frustrated back and forth later."

Scan-man is next to Sunbeam.  They are brothers.  His real name is Boe.  He's the oldest in our group at 30.  He's a goddam nerd but he's a very useful one.  Like Sunbeam he has that jet black hair and is fucking beautiful in his own way.  Unlike his brother his hair falls to his shoulders.  He would be sexy if he weren't such a fucking nerd.  Scan-Man has the ability to read attributes of a person.  Just by staring at someone, Scan-man can tell what skills a person is good at, exactly how old they were, what day they were born, etc, etc.  He's a walking talking Wikipedia.  I say Wikipedia because half of the shit that he says seem more like guestimates than completely accurate information.  That's his Limit.  He knows info but only about 80 percent of it is right.  Every metahuman had a Limit.

 

Baby Boom is the youngest at the tender age of 17.   Jolie is around my age.  She's sitting on the couch watching TV when I walk in.  She's pretty...enough I guess.  Truth is I was always jealous of Jolie and Sunbeam's relationship and a part of me figured Jolie always was bothered by how close her boyfriend was to a gay guy.  Jolie didn't have a superpower.  She was a normal but that didn't stop her from putting on a suit and rolling with our rag tag team.

 

"Do you guys see this?  They're saying there was a sighting of Vigor."

Vigor, The legend?

 

Baby Boom's eye light up, "Vigor?"

"Vigor isn't coming back..." I tell Baby Boom.

 

The kid looks disappointed.  Baby Boom always looked up to me.  I don't know why.  Sunbeam is the better role model.  He doesn't curse.  He doesn't do anything bad at all really.   He's a half-ass villain.  I didn't half ass anything.  I was a whole ass villain.  I also had a nice ass by the way.

"No time.  We have a mission," Scan-man says, "Shut that shit off."

Jolie rolls her eyes.  Even though I've never been a huge fan of her I know how she feels.  Scan-man has been talking about this goddam mission or months now.  

 

Sunbeam always backs up his brother, "He's right.  Materias has the card.  It's time to go.  You all know the plan.  Let's get it.  No one mess up.  We go in...we get the jewels.  We get the fuck out."

 

It was supposed to be so easy.  In the back of that van I had no idea that one day would change my life forever.  Well...again...that is.  See 10 years ago metahumans saw something that everyone referred to as the Gift.   Everyone who was up at that god forsaken hour and looked up at the sky in Pittsburgh got the Gift and received a power.  I never asked Baby Boom why the fuck he was up at 4 am when he was just 7 years old, but my friends...minus Jolie all received that gift.   So here are all these super humans and you'd think the world would become so amazing.  Wrong.  Almost immediately a government agency called the Magnate Ministry took over the city.  The Ministry was intent on making sure that all metahumans were registered. They called it the Super Hero Registration Decree.  

Being registered isn't a good thing.  Not for me at least.  The registered metahumans had to expose all of their powers and also their weaknesses.  Every metahuman had a weakness.  We called it Limits.  Act up or do something the Ministry didn't like they were coming after you and if they knew what your Limit was...you didn't stand a chance.  

 

So yeah. The only register I gave a fuck about was the one in this Mandate Ministry building.

 

"OPEN THE FUCKING REGISTER BITCH!  DON'T MAKE ME ASK TWICE!"  My voice screams.

 

Tears almost immediately come out of the ladies face.  The stupid ass security guard wet his pants.  I swear to god.  He wet his pants.  I'm talking Niagara Falls and we hadn't even pointed a gun at him.  That's how it is with these goddam humans nowadays.  Useless.

 

"Jewels.  Materias... JEWELS.  Stick to the plan," Sunbeam tells me.

 

He comes up from behind me and pats me on my ass.  Just like Sunbeam to remind me that cash wasn't worth shit in the Metropolis.  See the reason that cash wasn't worth shit in the Metropolis was because no one came or left out of the Metropolis for 9 years.  The first year after the metahumans received the Gift...some people, like me, said fuck that registration bullshit.  Stick that registration bullshit up your fucking ass.   Well, the government didn't take too well to us telling them where they could shove their registration.  They came after the bad guys.  They came after us hard.  Little did they know that some bad asses, like me, would fight back.  

Enter Vicious Vigor.  He's a badass.  I'm talking 6 foot 3 inches, 4 percent body fat, and 200 pounds worth of badass.  And Vigor took his badass right down to the motherfucking white house and he told the motherfucking president he could kiss his motherfucking ass.  And he took his registration papers and shoved it down the president's throat on live television.  

 

"EVERYBODY DOWN!  THIS IS A STICK UP!" Jolie follows up, "HEY YOU---You right there, put the jewels in here.  Put the jewels in here right now."

 

Jolie has her guns out.  I mean I have a gun too but it's different.  See...I can change my gun into anything I want.  I can switch it up from to a goddam Uzi if I needed to.  Jolie is standing there with her goddam pistol thinking she's a badass.  She should have been the get-away driver but Scan-man was out there instead.  Honestly I think he would have been more worth it.

I watch as he struggles to put the jewels in a bag only to have the bag torn by the shards of glass.

 

"Girl, make way for the big boys," I respond as soon as I see the jewels.

 

I turn the gun in my hand into a hammer.  The Magnate Ministry kept jewels in their banks because money is completely fucking useless in Metropolis.  It's all about the barter system and the more expensive something is the more its worth.

 

Jolie rolls her eyes at me as I move her out of the way and smash the glass with the hammer.  I immediately touch the hammer again and turn it into a bag.  I begin shoving the jewels down the bag as Jolie guards me.

 

"3 minutes," Jolie tells me, "3 minutes before the automatic alarm sounds."

"Great you have the super human ability to tell time," I roll my eyes at her.

 

"Can you stop being a dick for 1 minute and hurry up?" Jolie asks me.

 

It's nothing unusual.  Just a normal day.  I want her goddam boyfriend.  I've been in love with her boyfriend since we were six years old.  It's not fair that just because Jolie was born with a vagina that she got to have Sunbeam.  I was the one who he spent all his time with.  I was the one he deserved.  I am standing there wondering why the fuck I'm even thinking about Sunbeam right now.  I turn to my right to find out how him and Baby Boom are doing with collecting the rest of the jewels.

 

That's when I realize they aren't.  Sunbeam is standing at this door.  This red fucking door on the other side of the room.  

 

"Baby Boom.  Help me out of here," Sunbeam states.

 

Jolie and I look over at Sunbeam.  Jolie is still pointing her gun around the building.  There are two guards to our right.  There are some Mandate Ministers lined up on the wall.  The ministers are completely still pressed up against the wall.  I'm assuming Sunbeam or maybe even Baby Boom told them to hold that position.  Hell...with all the crime going on in the city lately maybe they all just knew the usual routine to take.  

 

"What are you doing?" I ask Sunbeam.

 

Sunbeam ignores me.  He's standing at this door waiting for Baby Boom to get over there.

"BOOM BOOM BOOM!"


What the fuck!

Baby Boom explodes the door.  That's his superpower.  He has the ability to literally blow shit up by screaming in its direction.  His power was uncanny.  His limit if he did it enough he would lose his voice.  Sometimes he'd lose his voice for a day or two.  The longest Baby Boom went without talking was a whole month after he used his powers too much. That was the best month of my gay ass life.

 

Sunbeam whispers something to Baby Boom and Baby Boom stands guard as he steps into the room where the red door once stood.  I look at him confused.  This wasn't part of the plan.  Were there more jewels behind that door?  Sunbeam seemed like he knew where he was going.  He hadn't mentioned it.  This was a quick in and out deal.  We'd take these jewels to the Black Market and use the profit to maybe get better headquarters.  That was the deal.  Going into strange red rooms didn't make the cut.

 

"What's he doing?" Jolie asks me.

"I don't know...that's your boyfriend..."

"That's your BEST friend."

"Bitch move---fucking useless human," I mock her before pushing the bag of jewels into her hand for her to hold.

Maybe I'm hard on her but to be fair I'm hard on all humans.  The reason they are so scared of us is because they are so much weaker than we are.  Vigor showed the entire nation what metahumans can do when he shoved his registration papers down the president's throat.

 

Sure... the fucking president gagged on his hand and ended up dying.   

 

Sure... all hell broke loose.

 

Sure...a huge invisible wall came out of nowhere around Pittsburgh making sure that no metahumans...or any humans went in or out of the city until every single metahuman was registered.

 

That's not the point.  The point was Vigor was a fucking hero.  He was a badass and I never laughed so hard in my fucking life.

 

"What the fuck are you doing?" I ask Sunbeam when I go into the room.

 

The room Sunbeam is in is full of books.  I kid you not.  Goddam books.  

 

"Hold on...I think this is it," Sunbeam responds to me.

I look at this boy like he's an alien to me.  We have the jewels.  All we have to do is run away.  All we have to do is get the fuck into the van that Scan-man has outside and leave.  That's it.  Instead he makes Baby Boom blow up the fucking door for him to read.

"Is this a joke to you?" I ask, "Do you think this is the reading rainbow?  You think this is Blues Clues, Sunbeam?  We got the jewels.  Let's scramble."

Scramble.  I like that word.  It sounded real villainous.

 

"You trust me?"

I look at him with a strange expression, "Is that a trick question?"

Sunbeam stares hard at me, "Do you trust me?"

I think it's a trick question.  It has to be.  I've been his ride or die forever.  I mean we've slept in beds.  We've taken showers together.  He was my first kiss because I couldn't find a gay guy who would kiss me back then because I was so ugly.  When I grew into my looks Sunbeam was the guy who came to all the gay clubs with me and pretended to be my boyfriend to keep guys from hounding me.  The guy took me to my goddam prom for god sakes.  We got our super powers together.  We started our crime group together.  Of course I trusted him.  

"There's no one else I'd rather be dastardly with."

Sunbeam smiles at me, "I like that word.  Dastardly.  It sounds villainous."

 

"I trust you Sunbeam."

"Read this passage..." he says.

 

He hands me one of the books.  It's so strange to me that they would keep books locked up like this but keep the jewelry and shit out front.  It took Baby Boom's goddam explosion to get us through that huge steal enforced red door.  

I look at the book, open it up and read the passage Sunbeam is showing me, "April 5^th, 2015: 2am: After nearly 30 years of goals behind all our research are coming to a head.  Visible, just like the lights from test subject 32.   Bishop Leaf argues that the formation of lights has to be in a preordained order in accordance to gene segmentation.  The very same segmentation was found in Santonio Williams, test subject 32 during trial 51.  He was able to produce...a gift to test subject 40.  Before Williams no single gene mutation was shown to cause the condition known as metahumans.  After test subject 32 it has become clear that Williams is the answer to all of this.  If I can further develop Leaf's theories I just may be able to reproduce that order..."

Research files.  I look at the name of the person who wrote the book.  Doctor Eleanor Wiselman.  It doesn't ring a bell.  I'm confused by it.

 

"Amazing isn't it?"

"Who is Bishop Leaf?  Who is Santonio Williams?" I ask, before stopping, "Matter of fact.  Sunbeam...Aaron.  Why do you give a fuck?  Let's get out of here.  We got the jewels."

"This was NEVER about the jewels," Sunbeam responds.

 

I look at him.  I had called him his government name.  He should have known I was serious.   He doesn't respond though.  He's brushing his jet black hair over and over as though desperate to find something.  He even starts picking up another book.

I grab the book out of his hand and transmutate it.  I turn the book to dust!

"Let's go!"  I respond.

"Why'd you do that?  The answers could have been in that book?"

He's sweeping the book up.  I know why he's doing that.  Sunbeam knows my Limit.  See...the Limit to my power is that everything that I change, changes back after just a few minutes.  If that wasn't the case I would have changed pebbles to diamonds by now.  Every metahuman had a Limit though.

 

"The answers to what?" I ask seeing how desperate he is.

"THE GIFT!" he responds.

That's it.   He's lost his mind.

Just at that moment I hear Baby Boom run into the room.  This is not good.  Baby Boom is extremely loyal.  He's probably the only one out of all of us that actually listens to what the fuck they are told.  Him coming in the room when Sunbeam told him to wait outside most likely means there is trouble.

 

"Trouble," Baby Boom tells us.

 

See, I Knew it.

 

"Who is it?" Sunbeam asks.

That's the thing.  See.  We are supervillains.  The opposite of supervillains are the superheroes.  The look in Baby Booms eyes says it's a super hero.  It if it was more cops from the Mandate Ministry Baby Boom would have handled them with his voice.  Hell...useless Jolie probably could have held back some cops from the Ministry, but no a superhero was here.

The question was who.

 

"They sent the Mayor.  Mayor Morals."

Shit.  Shit.  Shit.

"God.  We're dead...we're so FUCKING DEAD!"  I say at that moment.

 

Why the fuck would he be here?  Mayor Morals was a metahuman and he was in cahoots with the Ministry.  When the ministry took over Mayor Morals helped them to stop the crime in the city.  It only took a short time before he became the beacon of what was `good and just in the Metropolis.  I cross my hands at that moment.  I mean I'm not a punk but Mayor Morals was a legend.  Villains didn't really stand a chance.  No one except for Vicious Vigor and Vicious Vigor had disappeared after the attack on the president.  No one knew what happened to him.

 

"Run..." Sunbeam says, "I'll hold him back."

"Bullshit you will," I respond.

 

Sunbeam doesn't wait for me to argue him down.  He's halfway out of the room.  Baby Boom and I chase after him and immediately we are in the main room of the Mandate Ministry's building.  Jolie is shooting at Mayor Morals.

 

The bullets reflect off of him.  He's a force.  I'd never seen him in person but seeing him now its all a blur.  Mayor Morals catches one of the bullets that Jolie shoots at him.  He turns it towards her.  He aims it at her.  And he throws it.

 

The force catches Jolie in her chest throwing her back.

 

She's dead before she hits the ground.

 

That's another thing.  In Metropolis people died.  This wasn't a PG lifestyle.  The so called good guys would probably kill a motherfucker faster than the bad guys and they'd do it just as brutally.  I look over at Jolie's body wondering why the fuck the girl didn't take off running as soon as she saw Mayor Morals walk through the fucking door.  Did she really want to be a bad bitch that bad?   I guess she was paying the price.

 

"FUCK!"  I hear Sunbeam scream.

He goes into a panic.  Beams are coming out of his hands in a matter of seconds.  They aren't as strong as they would be if he was outside in direct sunlight but they are something.  Before long he's flying through the sky attacking Mayor Morals.  

His beams push the Mayor back but they aren't hurting him, they aren't vaporizing the Mayor like they would do to anyone else.  The only thing that is tearing is the Mayor's tight outfit with a huge M on the front of his spandex.  Within seconds the Mayor is completely shirtless and he seems to be losing the rest of his clothing soon.  If I wasn't so scared of death, I would be a little excited that a half-naked superhero was standing right in front of my face.

But I was worried.  I was scared for Sunbeam.  The Mayor was relentless.

 

"Give me something..." I tell Baby Boom.

 

"What?"

"Anything."

Baby boom takes off his watch and hands it to me.  

I hold the watch and can feel my energy going through it.  Within a matter of minutes I create a grenade. Chaos is breaking out.  Sunbeam is flying around the room rapidly.  He's shooting Mayor Morals from all angles.  I'm not sure what Mayor Morals exact super powers are but I know invulnerability is on that list.  If only I knew his Limit, I would be able to form an attack.  The thing is I don't know his Limit though.  None of us have even come close to guessing what the Mayor's limit is.

The mayor picks up a desk and throws it at Sunbeam hitting him right out of the sky almost like he's swatting a fly.

 

Baby Boom and I are up next.  Baby Boom knows the drill.  He takes the front while I sneak in from the back with a grenade.  I hadn't killed someone yet but this is do or die.  Mayor Morals wasn't a comic book superhero.  He wouldn't hesitate to take my life and ask questions later.  

"BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!"

The floor around Mayor Morals explodes all around him as Baby Boom screams.  Dirt and debris rise up from every which way.  I'm struggling to breathe through the dust but I'm making my way as fast as I can towards the back of Mayor Morals.  

 

I see him!


Yes.  His back is turned away from me and towards the explosions.  I sneak closer to him.  Closer and closer.  I have this grenade in my fucking hand.

 

And just as I'm about shove the thing in the back of his spandex he turns around and grabs me.  He holds me by my neck.

His words are sure and evident, "You ready to die?"

"We'll die together motherfucker..."

I release the pin.

Boom.

Boom.

 

Boom.

I wake up confused and lost. A part of me is wondering if this is heaven, but then I have to correct myself.  I'm a goddam Villain.  Heaven wouldn't be where I ended up.

 

"Ahhh fuck..."


My head hurts.  I touch the top of my head and realize that my head is wrapped up.  It is painful as fuck.  My eyes are sensitive to the lights in the room.  What the fuck happened?


I can't even think as I look around the room.  There are no windows in the room I'm in.  The walls are black and a little scary looking.  The room is extremely neat and orderly.  The décor has this heavy sense of modern minimalism about it.  It looks expensive but not luxurious.  There is a sense of seriousness about this place that I'm in.   

 

The room is full of cubic forms.  The walls slant geometrically.  There is a painting on the wall of nothing more than a white canvas.   There is this heavy smell of industrial materials all around me.  

 

"You've been sleeping forever..."

There is someone talking.  There is someone speaking in the shadows of the room where the slanted roof slopes even lower.  I struggle off my bed at that moment shocked that I am not restrained.  Mayor Morals wasn't the type to capture someone.  His people were known as the Host of Heroes but the Host didn't have buildings like this.  I'd seen the Host Buildings.  I'd been inside a jail specifically for super villains.  This wasn't it.

This was...different.

And that voice wasn't full of justice and this overpowering sense of morality.  This voice was slow, deep, scary and overall...AMAZINGLY sexy.

 

"Where are my people?" I ask.

I can't let my hormones take over.  Not now at least.  The person in the shadows doesn't answer my question.  He is watching me and seems to be studying me more than anything.  I pull my sheet off the bed.  I wrap the sheets up in a ball and I can feel my energy going into it.  I think of something that I want to change the sheets into.  Something big...something scary.

 

Within a few seconds I am holding a rocket launcher in my hand.  If this isn't big and scary enough to get the answers I wanted I didn't know what was.  

 

"Your powers are amazing," he laughs.

Fuck the voice is so sexy.  Whoever is talking is almost like he's talking from his balls.  That's the only way I can describe the deep bass in his tone.  I'd never heard a voice so deep and sultry. The bass seems to echo in my soul when he speaks.  

 

"Where are my people Barry White?"

Ok, he doesn't sound like Barry White.  That's not sexy, to my age group at least, but regardless he's commanding the room and he doesn't seem to be the least bit worried about the fact that a rocket launcher is pointed at him right now.

I need to get the answers out of him soon.  I'm feeling weak as if I lost a lot of blood or something.  My rocket launcher will go back to a bedsheet in just a little bit if I'm not careful and I'll be completely vulnerable with not enough energy to transmutate anything else.

"Dead every last one of them."

His voice offers no solace.

 

My mouth is dry at that moment, "De---de---dead?"

Sunbeam.  Baby Boom.  

Dead?


"You would be too, If I hadn't save you.  But I'm no hero.  I don't go around saving people, not without a reason.  Not without something I want from them.  And you would be amazing in my division..."

My mouth is so dry.  I'm so scared.  For the first time in my life I'm scared and I realize it's because Sunbeam isn't here.  I realize Sunbeam is dead and I'm alone for the first time ever.

 

"Division?" Is the only word I can say.

 

"Yes you want revenge?" he asks me, "Against the heroes who killed your friends I can give it to you.  I saved you so you can join the Division of Disaster."


He holds the words Disaster at that moment and steps slowly out of the shadows.  My mouth drops open when I realize who it is.  I'd never seen him in person.  I'd only seen him on television.  I only saw him when cameras caught him gagging the president of the United States.

I'm staring into the eyes of Vicious Vigor.

 

 

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