Steven
I watched in horror as my biological father threw my adopted father's corpse to the ground, landing at Tiffany's bound feet. The lawyer shrieked through her gag, eyes brimming with tears as she sobbed.
I drew my blaster and tried to activate my superpower dampening ability out of reflex, but it wasn't necessary. The cell's dampening was doing that part well enough.
WalkMan cackled again. "Steven, my boy, do you think I'd let you get this far without a plan?"
"DON'T CALL ME THAT" I shouted, trying to blink away the tears of rage that threatened to consume me. "You don't get to call me ANYTHING anymore."
WalkMan took a step towards me, avoiding the lifeless cyborg arm of Doctor Nigel Doomsday. "And why's that?" He sneered at me. "Because I killed your godfather? This mass murdering villain?"
The blaster trembled in my hand, but never left WalkMan's chest. "Because you killed my Dad." I said through clenched teeth.
WalkMan knelt beside Doctor Doomsday. "Him?" He said, placing his hand on the lifeless man. "He's not your dad. He was using you, Steven. Only pretending to-"
I fired, blowing a chunk out of the concrete floor beside the kneeling man. He didn't even flinch as the floor chunks settled around him.
WalkMan sighed. "My boy, did Doomy here ever tell you about this?" He asked, patting the body until he retrieved a small cylinder from Doctor Doomsday's lab coat pocket. "Its something he took with him in your time jumping escape. He took it out from a secret desk compartment, leaving behind everything else. Even his Doctorate degrees."
I couldn't quite identify the tube, but I didn't pay it much attention. I kept focused on aiming my sights at him.
"Lets see what he valued so much", WalkMan said with a hint of manic glee. He snapped the tube in half, revealing a rolled up paper...
...showing a child's drawing.
The construction paper depicted a stick figure family, with Doctor Doomsday's lab coat clad stick equivalent holding hands with two smaller stick figures. In large, clumsy text, the bottom of the page read "Happy Father's Day, Doctor Daddy!"
WalkMan scoffed. "Is that it? No super weapon, no evidence, just this?"
"Of course you wouldn't understand." I said. "You never wanted to be a father."
WalkMan stood, tossing the drawing back onto Doctor Doomsday's limp body. "Oh, Steven. I suppose you were too young to remember, but at one point I tried."
I shot again, but this time I didn't aim to scare him. Instead, I blew his hand off.
WalkMan staggered back a step, grabbing his new stump with his remaining hand, and laughing. "I tried, but you were just so fucking annoying!" He shouted, sounding far more unhinged than any hero should. "Why do you think I hate the Cocomelon songs so much? Because I watched them with YOU!"
I shot again, but this time the ball of plasma swerved in mid-air. The faint hum of the power suppression field disappeared at the same time.
A bright glowing light surged through WalkMan, charging down from his ears through the collar of his stained uniform. His manic grin grew almost as fast as his arm stump grew a new hand.
"Your mother BEGGED me to stay, so she wouldn't have to deal with your SHIT by herself. Did she ever tell you that?" He shouted.
He was listening to two songs at once, I realized. His healing playlist and a defensive one overlapped into a cacophony of clashing sounds, mirroring his own insanity.
WalkMan raised his fists in a fighting stance, activating his combat playlist.
"I should have ended you the night I left, when you were still a baby. Saved myself a whole fuckload of trouble." He cackled.
This wasn't my father. My father was dead, at this man's feet. My father wouldn't lament about not killing an infant.
My father would have remembered what my Superpowers were.
I trained my blaster at WalkMan's face, unleashed my power dampening abilities, and pulled the trigger. For Stacy. For Doctor Doomsday. For me.
Again.
And again.
I fired until my blaster ran dry, and kept pulling the trigger. There was nothing to fire, and nothing left to hit, but I pulled nonetheless.
"Steven", Tiffany said softly. "Its over. He's gone."
I collapsed besides my dad's corpse, and sobbed.
