Mr. Terrific (Superhero BoyxBoy)

Issue #1: "Now You See Me, Now You Don't"

"You either die a hero or you live long enough to see yourself become the villain."  - Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight

Issue #1: Now You See Me, Now You Don’t.

IT DOESN’T take a Bachelor’s degree in Logical Thinking or a Master’s in Common Sense to figure out that something was off.

Something was just so weirdly off about my biology professor, Dr. Harding.

Maybe it was the way he wore that white lab coat with the ridiculous surplus of pockets everywhere he went. I had seen him from time to time at the supermarket somewhere in between the produce aisle deciding between apples and avocados with it on.

I’d seen him where it at his nephew’s soccer games, sitting in the stands with his nurse sister and her attorney husband. Some say he even showers with it on. Though, the real and more terrifying question is how do you know he showers with it on?

 Perhaps it was the way his hair did that thing whenever the wind blew in that direction. Possibly, it was its smoky, ghostly white color or the way he greased his entire skull, even though he only had hair in the back.

But, perhaps it was the way he talked in the most I’m-a-maniacal-evil-doctor voice of all time and laughed like he belonged in some comic book made in the 80s whenever he found something funny. Maybe, juuust maybe all those signs were clear enough to let everyone know that Mr. Harding was, well…sort of nuts.

So, did anyone really not see this coming? Is there anyone – human or otherwise; living, deceased or a combination of two in the state of Indiana that was even remotely shocked when Dr. Harding walked into class, collected the homework he had assigned on respiration the previous session and assigned homework on Atoms to be collected the next class before he proceeded to unbutton his lab coat to reveal a ticking bomb wrapped tightly around his waist; humming lightly from whatever powered it on with numbers winding down in big, red digital font; ones that resembled an alarm clock.

Not Me. Not the other kids in the class, who lazily packed their notebooks back into their bags while grumbling about getting up at six-fucking-o-clock this morning to make it to this class on time …for this shit? as they huddled (lounged) in the back of the room as Harding instructed; threatening us all the way with blowing us up into just particles of matter.

Not the news crew(s) outside; all huddled on the grassy lawn that had a court seat view into the classroom where we were and certainly not The Ginger Valley Police Department. They were here within seconds when the call was made that some biochemistry teacher ingested too much bath salts and was trying to (once again) destroy the city. But the thing was, who wasn’t trying to destroy the city every now and then?

 Sure, some outsiders, tourist and passer-throughers may have gasped a little at the sight of a high school surrounded by half a dozen cops cars and yellow tape. Some may even use adjectives of the negative variety like travesty or perhaps horrifying to describe the events that were currently unfolding on every news channel at the moment.

They all pointed with their mouths covered by their palms as they watched in horror. Which, fine, maybe they weren’t used to seeing a sight such as this one in whatever big city or little town they were from, but it was so common for a day to start like this that instead of using adjectives to describe a hostage situation, the residents of Ginger Valley just called it Tuesday.