True Sidekick - *Sequel to Hero by Day

Chapter 13 - The Super Debate

"So you can train, lift weights, climb that stupid bar until your heart explodes, but you'll never be as fast as I am. You'll never be what I am. And that's got to hurt your rock-hard pride, Ollie."

~ Barry Allen (The Flash)

:Elise:

My fork tapped on the tablecloth with an insistent urgency. The more I listened, the faster my fork bounced against the tablecloth.

I was resisting the urge to throttle every adult in the room, yes, even Oliver's mother and her boyfriend.

(Especially the boyfriend.)

Somehow the conversation had drifted to the supers and I was not liking it one bit. My parents might not have known for sure that I was a super, but they sure as hell believed every single one of them were villains. And, if I was defending them, I might as well be as bad as the rest of them.

Oliver must've been uncomfortable, but his poker face was a bit better than mine. After years of lying straight to people's faces about being a superhero, he was probably used to hiding his emotions.

I wasn't.

"Yes, I totally agree with you, Sharon. Why they didn't take government action back in the seventies, I have no idea! It seems about damn time someone did something about these freaks of nature parading about like it's Halloween."

"They did." Oliver spoke up, barely audible.

"What did you say, my dear?" My mom asked.

Oliver looked up from his mashed potatoes and flashed his whitest smile. "They did take action – the government I mean. Back in the late sixties, when people with super human abilities first appeared, the government tried to hush it up. People who lifted rubble after an earthquake to save innocents soon disappeared. People who performed unnatural feats were soon gone. The government was picking up these strange humans with strange abilities so as to study them and to hide them from the public.

"It wasn't until about 1972 that one super human put on the mask and saved a bus from crashing. The next day he stopped an assassination attempt on the mayor. Soon he was saving the entire city. The government couldn't find him, and there was no way to shut down the news articles talking about this person with superpowers in such a big city like Empire City. The Avenger was the first superhero, and he was no freak or anti-hero. Soon other supers got the idea and started putting on masks as well. The government couldn't make them all disappear, people would surely notice now that these saviors were being kidnapped.

"So, the government instead created protocols to make sure these supers stayed in line. They all signed the Super Ordinance and swore to protect and serve on the Homefront. All supers who didn't sign were considered villains and were sought after by the police.

"But when supers got popular, the government shut up about their old projects. They didn't want to admit to trying to stop these saviors from saving lives in the first place. They didn't want to admit that they were wrong in experimenting on innocent lives. They didn't want to admit that they did something unconstitutional in the name of science.

"So, when you all talk about getting rid of the 'freaks' who save our city every day, remember who you're talking about. These citizens save us from countless threats. So what if some of them are bad? There can never be any guarantee that everyone wants to be a hero. Just because some are villains, doesn't mean that all the supers are bad. The same goes for politicians, or just regular people in general. You can't blame every member of a group of people for the actions of only a couple of them."