Superhero to Supervillian

 

Superhero to Supervillian

Ashita Agarwal

There are- were- five parts of the world, kingdoms where now-evil superheroes made themselves warped kings and queens, waging never-ending war on each other. These were the kingdoms of Cronus, Inferno, Blackout, Tremor and Enchantress. Even after making the kingdoms as a way to enforce peace, battle continued. 

No one knew how long this would go on for. But we wanted it to stop. This just couldn’t keep going on. We needed to stop it, before it got too out of hand. 

Perhaps, as a high-ranking general, I could’ve done something earlier to discontinue this battle. I always wanted to, but I never knew what until my grandfather died. 

Before I tell you that story, however, I need to ask you this: what is the difference between a superhero and a supervillain? Well, a superhero is someone who uses exceptional abilities to enforce the law and save people from harm. 

A supervillain, however, is a person who uses their exceptional abilities to serve a cause without regard for the law and the cost in the suffering of others. I suppose the only thing that they have in common is their moral ambiguity. They never question whether what they’re doing is right or wrong; they just do what they think they must. 

Now, let me start from the start: I am Dirk Wagner. I live in the kingdom of Cronus, the only man with control over time. Being a part of the army, especially one where we are forced to commit atrocities on behalf of our "superhero" leader, means we get hurt a lot. And when we get hurt, we are sent to the hospital to get taken care of. And the hospital here has lots of gossip.

I’d heard rumours about the science-generated heroes with powers ranging from telepathy to super strength to super speed to telekinesis. Basically, everything you could find in a comic book. That they turned their backs on us because of that certainty about their version of right and wrong.

Maybe that’s why our superheroes went to the dark side. No one really knew, though, why they became belligerent, fighting amongst themselves as well as against the people they’d sworn to protect. People just speculate. 

Those superheroes were the only thing standing between us and oblivion. Without them, we wouldn’t have hope to continue fighting in this damaged society. Without them, we wouldn’t be able to continue fighting. 

Turns out, we did. We continued fighting. Not together, not against evil. Instead, we reluctantly fought against each other, under the rule of corrupted superheroes. 

And I’m not the only rebel. Almost everyone in this kingdom, in this world, wants to rid our planet of this tyranny and bring back the defenders of our beloved society.

The day I got the letter, I started a journey to change the world. My late grandfather, Brian Wagner, was someone I’d never met, so I didn’t really feel any remorse for his death. We aren’t allowed to see prisoners, unless you worked in the prison. Especially people who’d stolen something very important to this world. Something, that if my grandfather hadn't just stood aside while it was stolen, would’ve been the key to bring our defenders-against-evil back: the Emergency Superhero Reversion Process (ESRP) that could be used in case something went wrong with the superheroes, to revert them back into normal humans with no superpowers. It had been made by the scientists who mutated people to make superheroes. Just in case. 

One of the security guards of the ESRP was, Brian Wagner, forever to be known as the Betrayer of Humankind, tarnishing the Wagner name. Making me destined to be Grandson of the Betrayer, the reason why Cronus liked me and my family so much and gave me such a high ranking in his army. The reason I’m hated by so many people.

Grandfather Brian had been caught sleeping while the thief stole the ESRP on that night that society became destined to be doomed. But the thief was never found. Neither was the ESRP. Or the sixth member of the superhero gang: Honeycomb. She was the queen bee, both metaphorically and in terms of her superhero powers.

And I’d been invited to the reading of Grandfather Brian’s will.

***

“To my dear daughter, Maggie, I give all my money, my house and wishes of a happy life ahead. I know you never forgave me for what happened that night. I do not expect you to. I have not forgiven myself for being so careless,” said the attorney in a monotone voice. The man was a short, slight, bronze skinned man with very thin lips, a softly shaped jaw, dull, angular, light brown eyes and a stubby nose.

I looked towards my mother. Her forest green eyes were welling with tears, a few already falling down her puffed up cheeks. She took out a piece of cloth from her blue handbag and blew her nose on it. The attorney waited patiently for her to finish before he continued.

“I think it fit to give my special mirror to my grandson, Dirk, along with a letter. Read it, son, and you will know what to do. You did not deserve the reputation I gave you. I’m sorry.”

You got that right! 

But then I realised something. Wait, what?! Why would he want to give me his mirror? Why would he ever want to give me anything? I barely knew him. Truth be told, we’d never even met! 

Then I realised something else. What would I do with a mirror, of all things?

The rest of the reading went in a blur. My mind was somewhere else while everyone bowed their heads to pay their respects to my dead grandfather. I got the mirror the next day, with a yellowing envelope that I assumed was the letter stuck to it. The mirror was, I had to admit, beautiful. Though the glass was stained and dusty, the golden lining around it was covered with intricate markings.

I picked up the envelope sitting on top of the mirror. When I opened it, the little paper sitting inside the envelope fell on my shoes. All it said was: “Right my wrong. Save the world.”

I lugged the big mirror inside the house, propping it against a wall. Staring at this oval, bigger-than-me mirror, I got a weird feeling inside. But I kept looking at it, hoping that the cryptic meaning of his “letter” would be revealed. 

I didn’t realise that I was walking closer and closer to the mirror with every second. I was too engrossed in my thoughts. It was also why I didn’t notice the bump in the carpet, tripped over it and fell inside the mirror.

***

The fall was long. There were lights, pricking through my closed eyelids, as I tried to keep in the high-pitched scream that would fall out of my mouth, along with the bile rising up my throat. Suddenly, I landed, right on my behind, on solid rock. 

“Ow. That hurt!” 

And when I noticed my surroundings, I quickly got up. I was back in my childhood house. But it looked different; none of the extra decorations that my mother had added after Grandfather Brian had gone to jail. 

“Mom? You home?” 

No answer. 

So I headed to the kitchen, the one room in this entire house that Maggie Wagner loved the most. But I didn’t find my mother there. I found someone else entirely, tossing something in a pan, wearing a rainbow apron and humming an unrecognisable song under his breath. 

This man looked exactly like me, if, of course, I wore my hair in a ‘crazy scientist’ style and went around in a long lab coat, an overgrown beard, clown shoes and glasses too big for my face. His very thin, pale skinned body and deep, prominent, brown eyes, his thick, ginger hair and even thicker eyebrows. All were similar to mine. 

But his differences. They were a part of the signature get-up of the famous Brian Wagner. All were recognisable from the photo of him, my mother and my grandmother that was kept on my mother’s bedside table. A photo from when he was way younger, before the Dividing took place. The only photo of him that we have. Or, at least, that I’ve seen. 

Then I realised what was in front of me: my late grandfather, very much alive, and looking much younger than he’s supposed to be. Apparently, I wasn’t the only one who thought this entire situation was weird; I was getting scanned up and down, as I stood uncomfortably under his piercing gaze, not knowing what to make of this. 

The silence was becoming awkward. My “grandfather”  probably realised that and decided to break it. “Welcome to the past.”

…Past?

“From the looks of it, you are a part of Adan’s kingdom. Am I right?”

The confusion must’ve shown on my face. What on Earth was happening?! And who was Adan?!

“You are wearing a military suit with a patch on the breast pocket shaped like a clock and ‘Cronus’ written on it. I suppose that it is Adan’s future supervillain name? He was always so interested in Greek mythology.”

So Adan was Cronus’s real name. That’s one question answered.

“And you just fell out of my time-travel mirror.”

He jerked his chin towards something behind me. I turned around and saw a mirror. The mirror. The same one as the one I was bequeathed  (or would it be ‘will be bequeathed?’). 

“What is your name, son? I would like to know what my future grandson is named.”

How did he know?! Did he plan all this or was he just really, really smart?

Again, he was able to understand how confused I was. “You just came from the future to the year 981 A.E.”

A.E?! I was getting really tired of being so befuddled. I wanted to know what was happening, for a change.

“After Evolution,” he offered, calmly. Way calmer than I was at the moment. 

How could someone be so calm when getting a surprise visit from their grandson from the future?!

“You did not learn this in school?”

School? Was that the same thing as the military training each citizen of each kingdom had to do until the age sixteen, through which it is decided what job you get? 

I simply shook my head side to side. 

“Now, why are you here?”

“I don’t know. You just gave me that mirror and a very brief letter.”

I still had it, so I showed it to him.

He stroked his beard, rereading it again and again. Grandfather Brian- would I still call him “Grandfather Brian” if  he hadn’t had Mom y-

Wait. Has Mom been born yet? I decided to ask him.

“Yes. But Maggie goes to boarding school. She won’t be back by July.”

I never knew that. Well, I suppose I’ll just call him Brian, then. 

“What month is it now?”

“February. The third.”

The day the ESRP was stolen.

“I know what wrong you wanted me right.”

***

When Brian found out about his entire ‘sleeping on the job’ thing, he was very disappointed in himself. But he looked way sadder when I told him about the thieves. He sighed and said, “of course I would fall asleep on the one day the ERSP was stolen.” Brian shook his head. I would’ve been disappointed in myself too, if I’d been in his place. Poor guy.

I wanted to start planning what to do, how to right Grandfather Brian’s wrong. But I couldn’t do that until my questions had been answered. 

“So, I have a few questions.  What does the ESRP look like? How do I activate it? What do I do with it once I activate it? How will it save the world?”

“All great questions, son. Of course, there is a very fast method to activate the ESRP because if the superheroes went out of control, we’d need to access the emergency plan to strip them of their powers quickly, before anything bad happened. To do this, we will have to smuggle you into the Building and-”

“What’s’ I raised my hands to make quotation marks in the air. “The Building?”

“The nickname for the science lab where people were mutated to have superpowers.”

Oh. Okay, I guess.

“Anyway, when you go to the future, you need to simply press the ‘deactivate powers’ button and set the dial to ‘All’. And then, when you go to the future, you have to break the glass of the time-travel mirror on the other side and no one will be able to come through after you. Like I said, very simple.”

“I see. And how would you smuggle me into the Building?”

He smiled at me, a wild, proud look in his eyes. He cracked his knuckles and leaned back in his seat, hands behind his head, right leg on top of his left. 

“Leave that to me.”

***

The vault room was true to its name. The door was a vault door that led to a huge room containing multiple science tables surrounding the one and only ESRP. 

I picked it up and examined it. The ESRP was basically a video game console-looking thing, but with more controls. There were two dials right next to the ‘activate powers’ and ‘deactivate powers’ that had labels from Adan to Cecilia  (probably Enchantress’s real name) and an ‘All’ option. There were different power moves listed under each button, like ‘Time Freeze’ (maybe Cronus’s) and  ‘Earthquake’ (Most probably Tremor’s. His power was basically stuff like that). 

“Dirk.’ His voice was barely a garbled whisper. Oh, yeah. I’d forgotten to mention that he’d stuffed me in a box (apparently he worked as a delivery man, too) and was now outside, guarding the door. “The thieves are here. There will probably be a time-travel mirror in the vault room. Take the ERSP with you and run. Quickly.”

I looked around and saw what I was looking for. Suddenly, I heard crackling. 

“Chloroform.” And then the other side went silent.

What-?!

The doors were thrown open and six people, familiar superheroes, ran in. Well,  one five were recognizable. I knew who the two black-eyed brunettes who looked like twins (Cronus and his brother Tremor) were, who the redheaded Mr Baby Blue Eyes named Blackout was, and the name of the woman with multicoloured hair and kaleidoscope eyes (Enchantress). 

But the blondie with honey-coloured eyes was someone I didn’t think I’d ever seen before.

They looked around wildly, before finally seeing me and what was in my hands. They narrowed their eyes at me and started to run in my direction. As soon as they moved, I saw my grandfather behind them, slumped and looking like he was sleeping-

What?! Oh… 

Poor Brian.

The ‘chloroform’ message finally made sense! 

Brian didn’t fall asleep that night. He was sedated, while trying to help me! That explains why nobody could find the ESRP. It was because I had taken it, back to the future! 

Then I realised that the thieves were getting closer. I shook my head, cleared my thoughts, and quickly jumped inside the mirror. I fell again. This time it felt longer.

***

When I finally fell back into my house, I didn’t waste any time. The superheroes were probably already jumping into the time-travel mirror. I ran, as fast as I could, to the cupboard in the kitchen where I kept all my tools. With a hammer in my hands, I went back to the mirror, seeing an unfamiliar-looking woman emerging from the mess of pinks, purples and blues. I swung the hammer at the mirror, effectively shattering it. 

Where’s that thief now? Is she back in the past? Who was she? 

Then it occurred to me: the woman was Honeycomb. She probably didn’t return to the past, like Cronus, Enchantress, Tremor, Blackout and Inferno did. 

By now, you’d probably have realised that I’m a master at stating the obvious.

Why’d they decide to steal the ESRP?  

Because of how obvious the answer was, I was able to answer myself without thinking too hard.

Because they didn’t want to be turned back into normal humans. They wanted their power to stay, to grow and corrupt them. Maybe they always planned on going to the dark side. Who knows.

Finally, I remembered about the ESRP. I pressed the ‘deactivate powers’ and turned the dial to ‘all’. A buzzing noise started up. Low at first, becoming louder and louder each second. After a few minutes, the sound reached its highest volume. By now I was pressing my hands to my ears, pathetically trying to block the drum-tearing noise. 

And the world went silent.

***