I ran at speeds far faster than any human could ever achieve. It felt like I was riding in a car with how everything was passing by so fast. My vision was so crystal clear that I could see even the tiniest of details on the sidewalks.
People noticed me and my rather odd outfit, so I ran into an alleyway. The wall of the building in the alley was far higher than the ceiling of my lab, but I figured I might as well test out my jumping capabilities while I was out and about. One leap led me three quarters of the way up. I sank the claws on my feet into the side of the building, and I walked up it.
The claws on the feet of my suit were built to be delicate enough to not take chunks out of the wall out, while still gripping onto surfaces. Eventually I made it to the top of the roof. The whole process felt like walking up the wall. I’m really going to enjoy testing this thing out.
With the significantly better vantage point I scanned my environment. I closed my eyes and let in all the noise of the city. With enhanced ears I heard a lot more than a normal person could ever dream of. A woman in the apartments two blocks away was cooking dinner for her six year old son. She asked him what cartoon he wanted to watch as he laid on the couch. Two young boys near a fence line talked about what they’d do with a million dollars. Nothing I could use.
Then I caught a little bit of what I was looking for. Four blocks away, a man was in his backyard talking on the phone. There were two more guys around him saying things I couldn’t quite make out without losing him. I focused really hard and tried to piece together his call.
“Tie-…. Down… Care of evidence whe-… Done…” Was what I could discern.
Well, this calls for a celebration. I found a crime. Where a normal person would call the police and leave with a clean conscience, I must put myself in the line of fire for absolutely no reward.
My thoughts hung in my head as I bounced from building to building, giving my suit a proper test run. To bystanders I must have been a very interesting sight, a teenager in a monkey suit leaping from building to building.
I’d have looked down to check how people were reacting, but I was afraid if I did I’d miss a jump and smash into a wall or something. I soon arrived at my destination. A small house in a normal looking suburban neighborhood. The roof of the house was damaged, and in some places there were holes large enough for me to fall through. The grass in the front yard was so overgrown you could hide a couch within it. I walked carefully and silently to the edge of the roof and peered into the fenced backyard.
Within I saw a sickening sight. Three men, who looked well acquainted with drugs, were standing around holding weapons. A bald one with a scar on his scalp was holding a baseball bat. A sickly thin one with a gross beard filled with spittle and week-old food droppings was fidgeting a knife around. He had a strange cackle. The third was the most normal looking, clearly their drug dealer. A young looking latino wearing a grey suit. He was surveying the scene with disgust.
Note to self: Enhanced smell is not a superpower when you’re near a crackhouse.
I almost fell when I spotted what they were looking over. Two people were gagged and tied to chairs in the center of the backyard. A middle aged woman who was already slumped over.
Her throat and chest were opened up and covered in red, her eyes rolled back into her skull. A teenage boy with black hair was tied up back to back with her, but he was still alive. His face was bloody and bruised.
The bearded man with the knife started walking towards him and making his weird cackle.
…
Jones never thought he’d had a chance. He grew up in the classic nuclear family, mom and dad. But his mom was a paranoid schizophrenic who thought that Jones was a changeling created by the government, and her real son was eaten by politicians.
His dad’s idea of quality time was getting wasted and throwing empty beer bottles at his head. When Jones graduated high school, he got the fuck out of there and never looked back. He promised himself he’d never end up like that. Jones got a job in construction, making enough to live comfortably. He found the girl of his dreams, and had a beautiful son with her.
The only problem was that he wasn’t the man of her dreams. She cheated on Jones, and then divorced him. She took half of his money, his house, his car, and his son. Jones had made himself a promise that he would never lose his mind.
He’d spent years worrying about the schizophrenia, about how one bad day might bring it out of him. In his desperation, Jones turned to less than legal things to help him keep his mind clear. In his desperation to not turn into his mother, he ended becoming worse than his father ever was.
Which was how he ended up in his backyard, with his best friend, and his drug dealer. His new girlfriend tied up to a chair, eyes still moving as she bled out from her throat. Her bratty teenage son sat next to her, his screams muffled by the tape on his mouth. Jones wouldn’t say he was glad that his girlfriend was dead. He was certainly happy that there was no chance she’d call the cops. It was her fault anyway, not keeping her little shit in line. He’d had no choice but to teach them a lesson. She never wanted to call the cops when she’d been doing blow with the rest of them.
Billy seemed to enjoy slitting her throat a little too much. The whole situation made Jones sick to his stomach. Having to take the bat to both of them, Billy deciding to kill her. He had called his dealer, Oliver, to get rid of the evidence. He would be a lot calmer once the little bastard was dead and they could bury them in a shallow grave and have this over with.
Billy took his sweet time walking over to the boy. The boy was barely conscious but still shook his head, furiously trying to convince the deranged man. Billy just cackled and licked the sharp edge of his blade. He stroked the cheek of the boy, and told him in a soft voice to be quiet.
“Shhh shh. Everything’s gonna be alright, boy. Sh sh sh.” Billy Whispered.
Jones heard a soft thud coming from behind them. He decided not to turn around, as it was probably just something falling from the roof. Jones and his friends all turned at once as they heard someone clear their throat behind them.
The voice was deep and robotic sounding. Like it’d been slowed down and then computerized. The face was something different altogether. It was tall, covered head to ankle in fur. It had big giant clawed feet, the toes stuck out like seven inch long razor blades. Its face was smooth, white, and porcelain. Like the face of a baby doll stretched over a grown man’s head. There was no mouth, no nose or ears. Just two robotic bright white eyes covered in tiny black dots. They seemed to glow in the dark.
“What the fuck is that?” Oliver asked no one in particular. He looked over at Jones and Billy.
Jones shrugged his shoulders and Billy moved over to grip the knife against the boy’s throat. The figure responded by jumping straight up onto the roof, looking down at the group like a furry gargoyle.
Oliver reached for his gun, and before he could even register what was going on he was flat on the ground and the figure was standing on top of him, its giant toe razor gently tapping his throat.
“Don’t move.” The deep robotic voice growled. The inflection was way too far off to sound even close to a human. Jones just stared, not knowing what else to do.
The figure looked up at him and made eye contact. In a quick movement the figure wrapped his tail around Oliver’s throat. Oliver tried to fight back but the tail tightened in response, until his eyes rolled back into his head and his hands fell flat against his sides.
Billy held the knife to the throat of the tied up boy, using him as a human shield. The figure didn’t seem to care at all, as it stood up and approached him.
“I’ll slit his throat, I swear to God! I’ll slit his throat you motherfucker!” Billy hollered, his hands shaking. The knife was held close enough to the boy’s throat to draw droplets of blood. The boy was completely still, his eyes closed.
The figure ran forward faster than Jones’s eye could track. Billy was struck so hard his feet left the ground, his hand made a cracking noise as the figure grabbed it and squeezed to get him to drop the knife. The knife dropped between the boy’s legs.
Jones turned around. He tried to run to the door, to safety. But he felt his feet fall as they were swept out from under him. He knew he wasn’t getting back up.
“Why?” Jones whispered at the figure. The figure slowly walked over to him. Jones felt regret building in his stomach as he saw its slow march.
The figure leaned down. It got face to face with Jones. Its pale white eyes and mask glowed in the moonlight. The black dots on its eyes shook violently as they stared at Jones. The brown hair across the figure’s body stood up all over.
“Because you deserved it.” The words sounded more human than before, like a teenager. Jones passed into unconsciousness as he realized that the monster that had just taken out him and his friends, was a little kid. A little kid…
…
I was breathing heavy by the time I knocked the third guy unconscious. I was lucky I caught them all by surprise. Had they had the opportunity to team up on me they would’ve been able to beat the hell out of me before I could do anything to retaliate.
Even with the exoskeleton giving me the strength to crush a man’s fist like it’s nothing, three against one is still three against one. I stood up, and as I did I noticed the tied up guy was looking at me with pure fear in his eyes. I held up my hands in a kind of ‘I surrender’ motion.
I wanted to facepalm when I realized how awkward that must’ve seemed. He did look a little bit disarmed after that, though. I slowly walked over to where he was tied up. I didn’t want to move too fast and spook him even further. I wished I’d installed a mouth on the suit so I could’ve flashed him a smile and showed him that I was trying to help.
Once I got to him I grabbed at the rope that he was tied up with. He squirmed in the chair and tried desperately to move away from my grip. By the time I managed to grab the rope right and pull it apart, he was still squirming and ended up on his side on the ground with a thud. He pulled the tape off his mouth in one motion.
“Who… What are you?” He asked with alarm. I looked at the guy. He went to my high school. He was a senior I think, though I didn’t know his name. I’d never really talked to him.
“I’m a superhero.” I said with confidence. I controlled the voice modifier so I sounded less like a monster and more like a teenager. It ended up sounding more high pitched than I would’ve wanted.
Definitely something I’d have to fix later, along with my toe claws that did not respond near as well as I needed them to.
I had almost slit the guy with the knife’s throat, and the toe claws not moving properly had cost me my balance several times as I made my way there. It’d be a shame if I entered a big climactic fight scene and fell flat on my face because I couldn’t get the mechanics down right.
“There’s no such thing as superheroes.” He replied with a frown. I offered my hand to pull him up, and he took it. In one heave he was back on his feet.
“There is now, I guess.” At this point my voice basically sounded like me, just with a little distortion. “What’s your name?” I asked him.
“Jack. My name’s Jack.” He shook my hand, and flashed a warm toothy smile. If it wasn’t for the bruises and blood on his face I wouldn’t have been able to tell that he’d been attacked just now at all.
“Okay, Jack. You need to go inside and call the police before these idiots wake up. Lock the back door if you have to, oh, and take this.” I grabbed the idiot’s baseball bat that he’d laid down before he turned to run. Jack just nodded his head, and took the baseball bat. He started to head back in. Halfway there he paused, and turned to face me.
“Thanks. I owe you one.” He said with a toothy grin. I gave him a thumbs up, and he disappeared inside. Once I made sure he was calling the cops, I went through and double checked to make sure all the goons were actually unconscious.
Did I just use the word ‘goon’ in my internal monologue? Weirdo.
Once I double checked each of them, I leaped onto the roof and started to run back to the factory. When I was about halfway there I stopped on the roof of a car shop to catch my breath. I used my heightened sense of hearing to listen in for the police sirens. About twenty minutes had passed since I left the crime scene. It sounded like the cops had just gotten there, along with an ambulance.
I guess they thought they could maybe save the woman with the slit throat. I doubted that, as the cuts on her throat were so deep I could see bone. I looked up at the sky. My adrenaline high had basically reached its peak. My heart felt like a bomb going off in my chest, I was breathing like I was at the edge of death, and my legs burned like they were on fire.
“WOOOHOOOOO!” I screamed into the night. It’s the only thing I felt like I could do to release the pent up energy. With that, I ran back to my lab.
Once I was there, I gently placed my hand on the porcelain mask. I imagined the exoskeleton letting go of the mask, and it complied. It hurt a lot less on the way out than on the way in. It took my face a couple of minutes to stop being numb. The lights burned my eyes as they adjusted to not being connected to the lens. Watery tears filled my eyes as a way to lessen the burn. I smiled at the pain, the wonderful beautiful pain.
Thank GOD that mask came off. M
y ears rang while they adjusted to my inferior hearing. My nostrils burned like tiny needles had punctured holes all throughout them. Blood started to pour out of my nose and ears. I mentally added that to the list of things I needed to improve with the suit. I grabbed a piece of scratch paper off a table. I tore it into strips, crumbled them up, and shoved them into the orifices to stop the bleeding.
The rest of the suit came off a lot easier. Again, I simply imagined the suit letting go of me and it complied. The pain was debilitating at first. For about an hour after taking it off I simply laid on the floor of my lab and cried. My legs felt too weak to move, my arms didn’t even feel there. My spine was on fire.
At least it didn’t kill me. That was a real possibility, wasn’t it?
I’m not sure that amount of pain was worth the power it gave me. Or the thrill of the adrenaline high.
I stuck the suit back on the table, along with the mask. I took my backpack that I’d stuffed under the table, and I gently folded the suit and placed it in the backpack on top of my textbooks. The sturdy design would keep it from being damaged inside, but just in case I made sure nothing was on top of it or touching it in a way that might harm it.
Next I placed the mask on top of it. Then I zipped up my backpack and started my much slower walk back home to a depressed and desperate family.
My legs hurt.
