Victims Pt. I

It's Friday, mid day in a city that never sleeps because of something obviously stress induced. Powerman, as he has chosen to call himself, is responding to yet another distress call. The local police force, being fully under prepared as well as underpaid enough to handle any situation let alone that of a supernatural tendency, has called him in. The police chief, an ordinary, but proud man, usually refrains from doing so unless he is at risk of letting good people die on his watch, decides to call this one in personally. In a world that possesses even a single superhero, there must invariably be at least one super villain. This is of course reality's way of maintaining constant accountability. In this reality, the villain goes by Hell Raiser. After the death of his girlfriend the young and bright engineer attempted to give himself the power to raise the dead using some rather technically advanced gauntlets or something. It worked, but as is the case with the reanimated dead, the newly resurrected hardly kept the charm exhibited in their former life. Since that time, Hell Raiser has been trying to kidnap young women and harvest their living nature into the corpse of his past girlfriend. Anyone who attempts to stop him will be forced to answer to an army of zombies that Hell Raiser can summon and command. Today, Friday, he has Elizabeth (Liz) Destin strapped (once again) to his U.S. patented "Life Harvesting Machine", in the middle of his secret layer, deep underground, in the 3rd largest cemetery in the country. Enter Powerman.

Powerman, power being the obvious addition to the title, but man? He was little older than 22, which true enough is older than eighteen and technically qualifies him as an adult, but rarely do we look upon 22 year olds as men and women. Still, man is and has always been the official title, even since he was a small boy. Little Adam was his real name, rather, Adam Little and he was definitely not an alien, nor a product of science or tragedy. Adam was no victim of magic or cosmic energy and certainly not genetic malfunction, there was nothing. The universe simply willed him to have superpowers and he did. Just the usual stuff; the ability to fly, super strength, laser vision and completely impervious to anything. Yet there wasn't much excitement over the ordeal, this is a world whose imagination has produced thousands of Powermen and Powerwomen alike. When Adam Little stepped up to the role of hero when he was 18 years old, the world of mass media and globalization was not surprised, but rather expectant. His youthful demeanor made it difficult for world leaders to take him seriously, so instead of an arbiter for peace, he became a protector of the innocent, but lacking any political context Powerman was reduced to stopping plane crashes rather than stopping genocides. Without anyone telling him what was truly right or wrong and with a crippling fear of getting it drastically wrong, Adam sought to act only when the right decision was something quickly and easily agreed upon by the whole of society. Saving Liz Destin was obvious because she did not need to die for any purpose, especially for the need of a selfish individual. Plus Liz and Powerman were kind of dating, so...

So Powerman crashes into the 3rd largest cemetery in the nation, tells a beleaguered group police officers to go home and proceeds to smash zombie heads in with very little regard for being bitten. So, with the use of x-ray vision, Powerman finds the secret layer and zaps a few more zombies to smithereens. So, before Powerman can get much further Hell Raiser covers him in zombies and surrounds Liz Destin with a bunch of drooling undead before screaming "it's me or the girl Powerman you fascist!" while escaping out an emergency hatch with the corpse of his dead girlfriend slung over his shoulder. So Powerman swats away any remaining zombies, unstraps Liz Destin from the machine and flies them both to their favorite Thai Food restaurant on Main Street.
"Well Elizabeth, are you feeling alright? Have you been bitten?" He speaks with a false authority, he knows this is what is expected of him. He really loves Liz, but he feels he can only really love her in a limited capacity, with a doting fatherly love often bestowed on a damsel by a hero. The public thinks his life too complicated, mysterious and dangerous for any real love to take place, so Adam projects this. Though he truly wants to tell her everything he feels for her he can't. His secret identity is Adam Little and everyone knows it, they just enjoy believing that Powerman is a tool, no different than the threat of Nuclear warfare, that he goes away when he is not needed. This doesn't mean that Adam is free to feel things like a normal human being, but rather, is expected to exist out of sight, like a true secret identity.
"I- I'm a little scared, can we just order? I'll have the Pad Thai please" A passive, but friendly Thai waiter briskly leaves knowing that Powerman is perhaps the greatest tipper of all time.
"Scared? This has to be the tenth time he's kidnapped you this month? Why you? Why is it always you?" He can feel himself slipping, but this is getting ridiculous.
"I don't know, I think maybe it's because I remind him of his passed girlfriend, it's so creepy!" Powerman pours some of his water over, presumably zombie spit on his bronze costume before continuing.
"Neigh" he's taken to saying Norse-ish words after seeing the Avengers in theaters and feeling a particular likeness in Thor. His super senses notice Liz blink hard when he says it and makes a mental note to never say that again. "I believe he knows you and I are...an item and wishes to destroy me through you. He knows that my one weakness is my love for you and seeks to use it against me" and before the last word even leaves his mouth he thinks of a hundred things she could respond with. The obvious fact that he doesn't wear a mask, the fact that everyone, including the Thai waiter, knows they are an item, the irritation that he asked a question despite already knowing an answer, the "Neigh", this idea that he has a weakness when he really doesn't, the idea that she knows what he really wants to say to her and can't or won't or whatever. But she only smiles.
"Thanks for saving me Powerman, I just don't know how I'll repay you!" It's the same line he's always fed, followed by a small kiss on the cheek and the same line shortly after: "I just don't think I could eat another bite!" he flies her home, then flies to his house, a two story ranch that a generic, but wealthy architect had built for him after he saved the man's daughter from a snow storm. That night be perused Reddit for a couple hours before he went to sleep.

Meanwhile, is a word often used in comic books. It denotes that while something is occurring in the main story arc, something else is afoot that will have an immense impact on that story line in due time. Meanwhile is the perfect word for what is currently happening because currently, Liz Destin is driving across town to a crummy apartment complex with nothing, but her 2002 Lumina and a small box of left over Thai Food. The man who answers the door is Sam Burton, an engineering teaching assistant at the local community college and also known as the super villain Hell Raiser.
"Hey, did you-" before he can finish his sentence Liz Destin's lips are on his while a small box of Thai food is thrust into his hands simultaneously. "Thanks!"
"No thank you for getting me off work today, there is no way I would have had time to get the story in by the deadline, that kidnapping was enough to buy me a week extension at least." Liz has used everything to ever happen to her in life to her advantage. She did not do this in a sleazy way like one may think, but rather in a way men might revere in other men. She had good looks and noticed she attracted the teachers aide that works at the local college she studies journalism at, she decides to casually date the young man and hopefully glean some special access to the college off him, but soon learns that this man she is dating has a rather painted past. This is where many women would be turned off, Liz on the other hand, is not, she is calm, she tells him that there is a silver lining to all of this. Sam tries explaining that he cannot simply go to the world governments with his technologies as that would be unethical, reckless and may cause the deaths of countless innocent people. So Liz creates for her lover a back story, a persona, a character for him to play in the world stage. In the mean time, she, an aspiring reporter, would be following his and Powerman's epic battles. Her and her camera became the official documentarian of these two super powers. She fed him lines and knew just how to get him out of range of being caught every time there was a battle. The public ate it up, it was like watching a real life superhero movie unfold at any given time and even more tantalizing was the relationship that developed between Powerman and this lovely new reporter. She was smart, she knew every angle, but what she couldn't seem to grasp was
"Liz, this isn't working anymore. This has to be the tenth time I've kidnapped you this month and the public just seems to be getting more and more annoyed. These stunts are expensive and they're not paying like they used to. I know you're getting more and more pressure to cover other things too."
"Well I'm sorry Sam. Shame on me for funding our lifestyle, shame on me! How am I supposed to know that people don't give a fuck anymore."
"You're the one writing this shit. You should know. I'm just playing along, just another victim of the Puppet Master" He would sometimes lovingly call her this in the beginning of their tirades, he would call her a super villain too and they would laugh together. Of late, the nickname has taken on a more sinister meaning.
"Hey, I got this ok? I know what I'm doing. I just need you to kidnap me one more time, in about one week. Same old story, but I'm going to spin it different in the paper, you'll see, it'll be a good one. Now pull up Netflix while I warm up the Thai food." Sam trusted Liz enough to leave it at that, besides she was placating him with his two favorite things in the world.

That night, Sam Hell Raiser Burton lays on the couch with Elizabeth Puppet Master Destin. She strokes his hair while they watch the season finale of The Walking Dead. That night they sleep together, but not before embracing each other wholly.

"This has to be kidnapping number twelve" Powerman flies to a small pet cemetery on the outskirts of town. He pauses briefly in his thoughts to acknowledge the notion that a pet cemetery hasn't been done before and what the motive here could be, but never the less he's getting a little sick of this game. Just today Powerman saved 15 drowning men, thwarted a school shooting and did his best to prevent an oil spill. Now this. Now he has to take care of this ridiculous business of saving his own girlfriend from peril for the twelfth  time this month. He's received keys to cities, gotten paid hundreds of thousands in reward money, was even in the running for the Nobel Peace Prize and now he has to continue to pretend to love a girl he actually loves from a safe enough distance to appease the very people he works for. Needless to say, when Powerman lands he is fuming. He half ass waives the police officers on, pauses to note that a zombie dog tried to bite his leg, notes that maybe this is all because Hell Raiser ran out of people Cemeteries for secret labs and continues thwarting the plan like always. When he enters the secret layer he is tired of being calculated and deliberate with his unwanted arch nemesis.
"Look Hell Raiser, this is getting fucking stupid." Silence, no one can believe what was just said. Hell Raiser almost seems to look alarmingly at Liz strapped helplessly (once again) to the machine.
"It's me or the" before Sam can finish his theatrical, rehearsed threat a beam of laser vision pelts the machine and a half a second later incinerates Hell Raiser's former girlfriend corpse. Powerman stares his foe down in a demeanor that only reads as unimpressed. Panicked, Hell Raiser loses all nerve and sends 250 zombie rats straight for Liz, who lets out a legitimate scream. The scream seems to snap Powerman out of his own head, now Adam Little is wondering if he has actually ever heard his "girlfriend" legitimately scream before. He saves her and flies her to Thai Food as per usual. Maybe it was the zombie rats or maybe because they have both noted a feeling of deep change in one another, but neither is hungry for Thai Food.

That night Adam Little peruses Reddit. There is an entire subsection devoted to him. He occasionally will skim over it looking for pictures of him and Liz to pine over. He does this so haphazardly that he almost glosses over the Hell Raiser Sex Tape thread. But he doesn't. He goes back up and watches a very popular Youtube video of Elizabeth, passionately and quietly making love to Hell Raiser. To Sam Burton. Hell Raiser indeed.

Adam Little found his adversary quicker than even he expected. He did not burst into the apartment, but he did not enter through unlocked doors either. When he opened the door they almost didn't recognize him without his bronze costume on. It dawned on Sam first, who simply dropped his box of Thai food and said "Oh." Adam facetiously imitated Sam's painful, embarrassed expression.
"Oh? Oh what? You think I wouldn't be able to find you, you fucking peon?" Liz just dropped to her knees and started to cry. This phased Adam for all of one second, when that second was up, he went on behaving like what he thought was a real man. He was across the room faster than the human mind can comprehend and his fist was into the stomach of Sam Burton and into the stomach it continued. As blood ran down his forearm, Adam began to burn everything in the apartment with his laser vision, burned it all while holding a dead Sam Burton on his fist; all the ridiculous technology that only the imagination of a child and the ingenuity of a psychopath could create, all the technology that was reserved for the use of super villains when they chose to be mere mortals and everything else that was of little importance to anyone, but for some reason still needed to burn. Adam put out the fire with his freeze breath before he left that night. He floated above the apartment for a short while, thinking. He knew she escaped the fire, he knew he couldn't go after her too, the public wouldn't allow it. So Adam would simply fly home and continue to know nothing. He would continue to know nothing about the plot of one journalist to engineer the end of a story. He would continue to know nothing of the camera catching every second of his killing Sam Burton. He would continue to know nothing of his girlfriend's motive for putting a video of her making love to another man all over the internet. When he finally did put it all together and figure out that he was just being played, he might consider it only one more play in an infinite play book, and force himself into quiet, unknowing, contentedness.