I ran through the street, dodging and side-stepping every business suit and skirt out on a lunch break. Behind me, an epic battle between The League and the Chaos Carnival was being fought, explosions and crumbling buildings and all that other exciting stuff. I'd heard The Ringmaster even managed to resurrect both The Murder Magician and Big Lizzy, the Bearded Lady. It was all hands on deck for The League membership, which was the only reason I was allowed to work this job on my own. Honestly, I thought as I leapt clear over another hot dog cart while my cape fluttered in the wind, what kind of inconsiderate bastard robs a bank not only while the Heroes are already engaged, but at lunch time no less? I turned the corner and couldn't get my feet to move fast enough before I plowed into a trench coat.
"Sorry about that, citizen," I said, not taking the time to determine if the person in the coat was a man or woman, or even injured. I got to my feet and took off running, though noticeably a step or two slower and where I was going that was going to be a problem. My powers were starting to fade and I was still a block away from the bank. What I needed, unfortunately, was a quick boost.
I scanned the crowd ahead of me until I spotted a target. Immediately I broke from a jog to a flat-out sprint. Fifty feet. Forty feet. Most people are smart enough to get out of the way of a man in a mask and cape sprinting down the sidewalk. The nearest dove into bushes or stepped off the curb and into the street. The ones with more time pulled others out of my way. An old couple still up ahead began shuffling to the very edge of the sidewalk, maneuvering their walker and cane as quickly, but still carefully, as they possibly could to allow me to pass. Thirty feet. Twenty feet. The old couple was now lined up on just one section of the sidewalk, a clear path to the bank laid out in front of me. Ten feet. For a split second, as it always does, my mind flashed back to the day I became who I am - an eerie, red glow; a dozen voices chanting in unison; a woman's scream; the smell of blood clogging my nose. Most of all, I remembered the high-pitched, maniacal laughter and a horned face with red eyes and yellow fangs. In that moment I hesitated, nothing noticeable to the normal, human eye, but I knew, I felt it. Besides, my powers wouldn't work if I didn't. Then I stepped forward and shoved the old man. It happened fast enough that I saw it all before I sprinted passed them, but slow enough for my mind to capture it all, every single detail, another memory to haunt my thoughts. The story of my new life.
The old man flew backwards, his cane flying into the air. He went over his wife's walker, slamming into her with enough force to send the two of them airborne for a moment. Two sets of dentures as well as the cane landed on the grassy hill before they did. At least the sprinklers were running and the wet grass and mud might cushion their fall slightly, I hoped. And with that, my speed picked up again and I ran the rest of the way to the bank, the wind wiping a drop or two of water from under my eye.
The police had already set up a barricade and perimeter around the bank entrance. Unfortunately I didn't have time to stop and chat, risking the old couple's forcible sacrifice draining away. Instead I blew passed the perimeter of onlookers and cop cars and smashed through the bank's reinforced glass window and steel security gate. Glass and a few metal fragments scattered on the linoleum floor, as well as in my arms, shoulder, two in my side, and one in my cheek. I yanked out a couple pieces, letting my advanced healing take effect as I did a quick scan of the room. Several business desks on my left, teller line directly in front, and two dozen hostages sitting on the floor to my right. At my feet was a security guard, a fist-sized hole blown through his chest, still smoking but not bleeding. Kind of what I was expecting since the report was that this robber wielded some lightning abilities.
"Come on out, Sparky," I said, taking note of the confused look on the faces of some of the hostages.
In an instant, a bolt of lightning punched a hole in my stomach and knocked me to the ground. As I lay on my back on the cold floor with a sizzling hole in me, I heard footsteps scuff the tile floor. "The name is Thunder Dragon," Sparky said.
Slowly, I brought myself up into a sitting position, though I still didn't have the strength to point out the flaw in his name. That's when I noticed two very important things: One, the hole wasn't closing as quickly as it should, which meant that I used up too much of my powers breaking into the building. And two, the lightning-thrower was already charging up another bolt. I felt all my hair start to rise as a loud, crackling noise filled my ears. A big, murderous smile plastered itself on Sparky's face. Terror spread on the faces of the hostages. Stupid, I scolded myself as I forced myself to move. I wasn't going to get many chances to prove myself to The League, especially with my particular abilities and there was no way I was going to fail this mission. I reached behind my back and unholstered my trump card.
"Really?" he said with a mix of surprise and amusement as he looked upon the black handgun, "You're going to use a gun against me." And from where he was standing, a lightning bolt nearly complete and his opponent, wounded and on the floor, I could see where he would find this funny. Plus, in the time it would take for me to aim and shoot, he could unleash the bolt, vaporizing the bullet and whatever body part of mine that might also be in the way. It was a pretty stupid plan. Good thing the bullets weren't for him.
I pointed the gun and saw the demon's face again. Bang! One of the hostages hit the ground, a spray of blood from his arm. Bang! Another hostage turned over, a pool of red slowly spreading on his jeans. Bang! Bang! Bang! Three more hostages screamed, rolling in pain. And the demon laughed its maniacal laughter. And someplace deep, deep down, I was scared that I did too.
"What the fuck are you doing?" Sparky shouted, staring at the injured hostages as the lightning bolt flickered momentarily. It's always a shock for those villain-types to see the Hero cause harm. It mostly surprised me that they would care after so casually taking lives of their own. The confusion in his eyes turned to fear as he saw the hole in my stomach start to close. "What the hell are you?"
I tossed the gun aside just as the hole in my stomach finished sealing, what would have taken an hour, now healing in seconds. Yep, my powers were back. "Let's just say, when you ask for Immortality, don't drop that first 'T'," I said with a smile. The next moment I was on my feet and sprinting toward Sparky. The lightning flew from his hands. I don't know exactly how fast lightning travels, but I do know that I was faster. I dodged, avoiding the bolt and continuing forward without missing a step. He fired again, a weaker bolt, but twice as fast as the last one. Still I was faster. A heartbeat later, I was on him. I paused. My thoughts quickly flashed back to the old couple on the street; the five hostages with bullet wounds; the faces of every single person I had to hurt to get to this place. Finally, the hooded woman and the knife in my hand. All of them, it was all their sacrifice that gave me this power. I smiled, wide. My fist swung and launched him high across the room, leaving a small crater in the wall before he fell hard to the floor.
I walked back to the hostages. Most of them had already escaped out the door. Several were helping apply pressure to the five gunshot wounds. One of them slapped me in the face.
"What the hell is your problem?" she screamed as her eyes looked from me to one of the men I'd shot in the leg and then back to me.
I sighed. "Call it a Satanic ritual gone wrong," I said. Still she looked unsatisfied with my answer, though to be fair, most people usually do. "Yellow Dress," I said nodding to the woman with the bullet in her arm, "Red Baseball Cap. Sunglasses. Sweat Stains." I looked at the man on the floor next to me holding a cloth to his leg. "And your boyfriend was Gray Jacket."
"He's my husband," the woman said quickly, "and what's that got to do with anything that just happened?"
I sighed again and I could hear the demon's laughter again. "I chose them as soon as got into the bank. The way my powers work, I need to do something wrong, something bad in order to.. well, you saw it first hand. Super strength and speed. Fast regeneration. It's all linked to that. Your husband and those other hostages, well, no offense, but they're all a little on the thicker side, if you know what I mean. I assumed that if anyone could take a bullet, it would be them. It's not as if I just rushed in here and shot 5 random people for power."
The woman stared at me in silence for a second. Two second. Five seconds. Her face changed from rage to confusion to a face I hadn't seen in a while, pity. "That's horrible. Doesn't it terrify you to know that in order for you to save people, you need to hurt someone else first?"
I shook my head and turned to leave. "No," I said and that was the truth. What terrified me is that one day I'm going to hurt someone not to save someone else, but because hurting people becomes who I am. After doing these horrible things everyday, one day knocking over old folks or maiming innocent people isn't going to be enough for me, and I know that. It's just going to be something I do because it's what I do and that scares me, that one day I'll need to do worse things than what I've done today to feed the demon and activate my powers. And one day, when the guilt doesn't come, when hurting becomes habit, the powers won't come but I won't be able to stop. And though no one ever said it, I knew that was the real reason The League never let me work alone.
So that took 2 weeks, but finally I've got a story. Last week, there was a Reddit writing prompt that went "You asked for Immortality, but you misspelled it and got Immorality" or something like that. Well, a while back, there was another prompt that was basically the same thing which acted as the bare bones for this story. I took the old story and, with some (a lot) of editing, I got this story. As for the superpower itself, well, I salvaged it from that Superhero mess called "The Sovereignty." In the original storyline, I never got around to it, but the main character was supposed to meet a group of other super-people whose powers were supposed to be too powerful to use in public. One of those characters had an ability called "No rest for the wicked" and I was basically going to make him like Wolverine in terms of powers minus the adamantium skeleton. He was supposed to be hundreds of years old, doing one guilty deed was enough to keep him alive for one more day, but every day he needed to do something like push a child off his bike or flatten his neighbor's tire, just one thing a day to keep him alive. Anything more went to his abilities, and the guiltier he felt from the deed, the more power he would gain (which is why he was more powerful after shooting five people than when he shoved over the old couple). After all that, it seems like it would be a good character at least to revisit, maybe not within the whole Sovereignty context, but something else. I don't know. What I really wish I could do is take out that huge chunk at the end, maybe find a way to spread it out in the rest of the story. I was also going to splice in bits and pieces of the ritual and how he got his powers, but I couldn't find the appropriate parts to pause and throw in backstory. Yeah I guess that's it. Hopefully it won't take another two weeks. Maybe pictures next time. I like having at least one picture, it makes it look a little professional, like a book cover, though I suck at drawing, and it's not like I was going to find a bank hostage situation on demand just so I could get a picture. Meh, problems for future Alan.
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