Once I had my costume, I didn’t rush headlong into superheroing, despite what William expected.
He still hadn’t seen my costume.
Given its design, he probably wouldn’t recognize me even if he saw me on TV.
But soon something happened that made me put on my new red suit under my clothes, hide my mask in my pocket, and sneak out of the house to the neighboring city.
It was all because of a news report on the local station about a terrorist attack in a mall.
This was a very unusual case.
First, the terrorists who’d taken the staff and visitors hostage weren’t demanding money, a helicopter, a free flight to Mexico, or even twenty pizzas.
They wanted a specific superhero to fly to them.
Their description: red hair, pink costume with a skirt, five feet tall.
You could recognize the superheroine who’d recently debuted by stopping a dangerous cyborg villain known as Kill Cannon.
That heroine was Atom Eve, my classmate in history, a good friend from my past life, and a member of a yet-to-be-formed teen superhero team.
Though stopping Kill Cannon wasn’t a very loud event, so the reporters couldn’t figure out who exactly the criminals wanted.
They just listed various female heroes with a thing for pink who might fit the description.
There were surprisingly many.
Second, Eve had once mentioned that she’d “dealt with her past” before meeting Rex and joining the team, but she’d never given details.
She’d only said it was the worst day of her life.
And third, thanks to the temporary incapacitation of most of the Guardians of the Globe, my father, Omni-Man, was in high demand.
Today was no exception.
In fact, he had a long, exhausting fight ahead with one of Earth’s significant internal threats.
Internal not only in the sense of the planet, but also in that these guys literally live in magma.
He’d be there all day, warming his Viltrumite bones in the embrace of magma warriors.
That gave me some freedom, as long as Mom didn’t realize where her son had disappeared to again.
I really needed to move out of my parents’ house soon.
When I didn’t have powers and certain, let’s say, adult needs, living at home was like an all-inclusive resort.
Now it was a constant headache.
*
*
*
When I arrived at the scene, pretending to be an ordinary onlooker, there were plenty of us, I found that Eve and I had been beaten by Black Samson.
But he wasn’t in a hurry to solve the problem.
He just stood with the cops, wondering who exactly the criminals wanted.
If this had happened a couple of years ago, Samson would have probably tried to do something himself.
After all, he didn’t get his spot on the Guardians through racial quotas.
But the current Samson was just a pale shadow of his former self.
Anyone who’d followed his career could see that.
He hadn’t participated in any serious fights for six months, ever since he nearly died in one.
He only showed up at minor incidents where he could still do something and remind fans of his existence.
Whatever the nature of Samson’s powers, they were leaving him.
Five minutes of the police standing around and weak attempts to negotiate with the hostage-takers later, the guest of honor arrived.
Swooping down behind the cops and Samson, Eve took a deep breath for courage and, with a brave look, as if she’d done this a hundred times before, asked the officer what was going on.
During the short conversation, it turned out that the newcomer fit the criminals’ description perfectly.
Eve immediately announced she’d handle it.
Samson pretended everything was fine.
The officer showed a bit of concern, suspecting the hero under the mask was too young.
But Eve waved him off, announcing that everything was fine and she was a big hero.
And she decided to simply do what the enemy wanted.
Walk into their trap alone, with no idea what was waiting for her.
“Seriously, Eve.
On this planet, there are threats that can mix even me, a larval cosmic super-being, into the dirt.
What are you getting into?
One lucky bullet is all it would take.”
I pulled my mask over my eyes but kept my costume under my clothes.
I didn’t want my first appearance as my fake superhero persona to be so close to home.
But I still needed to keep an eye on Eve.
Yes, she’d survived this fight in that world.
But back then, Ave Maria wasn’t mopping the floor with the Guardians.
So I wasn’t sure of anything anymore.
I was worried about her.
She was still a loner.
Neither Robot’s team nor that idiot Rex would come to her aid.
She didn’t know them yet.
And Samson was hopeless.
She even went through the main entrance, not even thinking about hiding her presence or preparing for an ambush.
I, taking advantage of the lack of aerial surveillance of the building, snuck inside through a huge hole in the supermarket roof, apparently made by the criminals themselves. You are reading on g.com, the official source.
And immediately saw the instigators of the panic.
Thanks to my super speed, nearly equal to invisibility when dealing with beings of normal perception, there were only five of them.
And they were very strange.
First, they were all obviously children.
The youngest looked about ten.
Second, they all had serious physical deformities.
The younger the child, the more significant their health problems.
And with all of them dressed in the same clothes, tight swimming-like shorts and tops for the girls, with a belt showing a sequence number starting from two and ending with six, I immediately suspected their origin.
The oldest, Number Two, a blond teenager maybe a year younger than me, looked the most normal.
A small cleft lip and an ugly fringe covering his eyes didn’t count.
The next oldest, a red-haired girl, had a significant skull defect and either a crack in her bone or a lobotomy scar on her forehead with a bald patch stretching to her crown.
Number Four, a boy, had no body hair at all.
His skin was bright red, like it had been burned.
Plus, again, a crooked face.
Number Five, another girl, but you could only tell by her top.
Her face was disfigured by a hump rising from her forehead to her nose and extending to her left cheek.
A few pathetic strands of light hair hung from the back of her head.
Number Six, the ten-year-old boy, I would have taken for a non-human life form in any other situation.
He was completely purple.
Only his ribs and veins showed blue through his translucent skin.
But he had perfectly normal, completely gray hair.
Just their appearance alone would have been enough to damage the psyche of anyone overly impressionable, especially if you thought about what their lives must have been like.
*
*
*
“So the reports were true.
You’re alive!” the oldest said, addressing Eve.
“If you behave yourself, you’ll stay that way.”
“I’m sorry,” Eve stammered, taken aback by the children’s appearance and the speaker’s tone.
“Do I know you?”
“I spent most of my life in a tube,” Number Two began, walking toward Eve.
“After you ‘died,’ they decided to try again.
Move forward.
Believe in the future.”
He approached the girl almost completely and reached out a hand toward her, as if to confirm her existence, continuing his story.
“When I was born, they tried to teach me how to be as good as…” At that moment, when he almost touched Eve, she flinched and created a defensive wall of compressed air.
It completely severed his hand at the wrist.
That wasn’t cool.
He hadn’t even done anything to her.
But the pain and loss of his limb didn’t seem to bother Number Two.
No blood even flowed from the stump.
He continued his speech from where he’d left off a second earlier.
“As good as you.
The daughter who was perfect in their imagination.”
“Sorry!
I didn’t mean to!” Eve panicked, staring wide-eyed at the consequences of using her powers.
But he didn’t need her apology.
He calmly picked up his hand from the floor and continued his accusatory speech.
“I tried again and again to live up to their ideal image of you.
But I failed, time after time.
And they put me back in the fucking tube!” By the end, he’d dropped the pretense of calm and coldness and was almost shouting.
“In their eyes, you had no flaws, because they never even knew you.
How could I ever measure up?”
He pressed his hand to the stump, and it immediately reattached.
But this wasn’t regeneration.
I think he directly controlled the molecules and atoms of his own body, rearranging them as he wished.
That confirmed his words.
It was the same ability that Eve herself possessed.
Though she always said she couldn’t manipulate living flesh.
Number Two had no such limitations.
“And now it turns out you’ve been alive all this time. Follow the newest chapters on g.com.
And you’re exactly as beautiful as they said!” He’d fully worked himself up into a rage.
He tried to hit Eve with his reattached hand.
“And I hate you for it!”
Bad idea.
Eve had already honed her abilities to reflex.
She raised another wall of compressed air between herself and her attacker.
He smashed his hand to practically mincemeat against it.
“We all hate you,” he added, watching Eve flinch again.
“The little ones probably hate you even more than I do.
But they can’t say as many words.
Unlike me, they never left the tube long enough to learn to speak.”
They attacked Eve again, all together this time.
But they only succeeded in hurting themselves against her defensive dome.
They mostly transformed their own bodies, growing muscles, turning their hands into sledgehammers, warhammers, or blades.
The youngest turned into a cloud of purple smoke.
He moved right up to the dome, then turned back into himself and exhaled a beam of compressed purple air at Eve’s shield.
Of everything they’d shown, this was closest to what Eve herself did.
***
What should I do?
The situation wasn’t simple.
The kids weren’t right to blame Eve for all their problems.
She didn’t choose to be born a perfect super weapon and be saved by her creator father.
If anyone was to blame, it was him, and those idiots who tried to continue the project after losing the lead scientist and all his work.
Speaking of scientists…
“And how did you get in here?” I caught a white-bearded old man in a pristine white lab coat sneaking through the rubble toward the hostages who were trying to flee the super-family fight.
“Got a death wish?”
“Let me go!” The old man struggled when I lifted him off the floor by his collar.
“I have to help her!”
“And how are you going to help Samantha?
Become a hostage in her enemies’ hands?”
“I…” He wanted to object but realized how counterproductive that would be.
He was a scientist.
He should be able to use his brain.
“I’ll think of something.
Wait, you know her name?
You know her secret identity?
Who are you?”
“Too many questions at once.
But yes, I’m a superhero.
And I know Eve.”
“Then you have to help her!
I can’t do it.
But you can.
They’re about to break through her barrier!”
All this time, the creepy super brothers and sisters of Eve continued to pound on her dome.
Their efforts were finally paying off.
The walls were cracking.
“Calm down, old man.
She’s not even there anymore.” And as if to confirm my words, Eve popped out of a tunnel she’d made under the floor.
She quickly hid behind a wall next to us and started praying.
“Dear God,” she said, putting her hands together in supplication, not noticing us standing on the other side of the doorway she’d hidden behind.
“I’ve been a good girl this year.
Please replace these scary children with five little Kill Cannons, and I won’t ever ask for anything again for the rest of my life!”
“Eve!” While I was thinking of a witty joke, the old man drew Samantha’s attention.
Damn it.
He ruined the moment.
This was my first impression.
I had a chance to show myself in the best light!
“Doc?” Under the gaze of a shocked Eve, I put her creator down.
“And you?” She turned her confused look to me.
‘Think, Mark, think.
I need a witty joke right now.
Not all is lost!’