It was a Tuesday evening, I was hours from graduation — to becoming a semi-qualified hero — and it was the day I’d die.

“They turn them into supervillains,” I sputtered, face tomato-red, outrage almost suffocating me. We’d just come from of our final lecture, the last secrets of herohood revealed to us during it. ”Gaslight them into become villains. It’s not that they’re bad people, but they’re made bad.”

It was me, Corpse Kenny, and Jen Phoenix. We were stewing together in an empty locker room. They sat on slatted benches, heads down, as I marched back and forth in front of them. We’d gotten friendly over the last few months. Not my initial intention — my intention had been purely to scope out the hero course and to use any knowledge gained to my later advantage.

“We’re not fighting to make a difference,” said Jen Phoenix, not bitterly, just ruefully. A single flame of bright red danced over the fingers of her left hand, back and forth, back and forth.

“We’re fighting to not make a difference,“ said Corpse Kenny. Corpse Kenny was born with two skeletons, an extra on the outside. It was like he was wearing an armoured shell at all times. Not the greatest power, but he was as brave as a bullet.

I continued my polemic, “We wear sponsorships slogans on our cloaks and costumes. Come out of battles looking victorious against the scum of the earth. For what? To sell another cola. This whole thing’s rigged. We’re pawns.” By ‘we’ I’d meant villains — people like me. People tormented by the system, orphaned and mistreated, rejected by society and told it’s all just bad luck or our attitudes. But no, that was a lie; it’s premeditated rejection. Forcing us to become villains so the heroes have someone to defeat.

“People like us are getting used,” said Jen.

The pipes in floor beneath us screeched, twisting in response to my balled fists. I controlled copper. Not much of a power — but if I had a decent power they wouldn’t have made me a villain. I’d have been too dangerous. Too much of a risk to defeat.

”I don’t think I can do this,” said Kenny. “The hero thing.”

”Because it’s not a hero thing,” said Jen. She patted his hand. “And you’re a hero.”

The three of us had grown close, even choosing to group together during some practice missions. There was a purity to the pair of them that I had at one point hated — an innate goodness. I’d wanted to get near to them to slowly corrupt it, to make them see the world as I did.

But I knew better now. There is no world as I see it, or as they see it. There is only the world how the powerful see it.

The pipes groaned under the weight of my rage. I’d need to be careful; a water leak would give us away. And then a thought occurred.

”We could destroy this place,” I said. “We could destroy the Ministry of Heroes. Reset the entire game.“

”What?” said Jen, the flame leaping off her hand and down to the wet tiles where it extinguished in a sizzle.

”We destroy it. We flood it. Or we burn it down. All files and records. And then we show the world who did it — heroes about to graduate from this very institute. We’ll show the system is flawed. We’ll make everyone rethink. Or at least think for the first time in their lives*.*”

”I don’t know if I can,” said Kenny. “Ma thinks I’m a hero. She loves this placed and cried the day I got accepted. If she saw me destroy it…“

”I’ll take the blame then,” I said. “You two just need to help me do it. I’ll say that I forced you into helping me or I’d kill you both.”

Jen looked up. Her blue eyes met mine, hovered. I wondered if she’d imagined the same world I had over these last few months; a world where we graduate and we leave all this behind. Heroes, villains, all in our rearview mirror. We start something new together — a remote gas station far from the city, anything.

”I’m in,” she said. “This rot needs to burn.”

Her eyes flared bright with the hot hope of something better.

I should have known they were listening in. Of course — if they made villains then they knew who I was and would have been monitoring me this entire time. And they didn’t need cameras. They had supers who could feel every word said through the vibrations of the building.

They burst in. Heroes we’d all seen on television. The most powerful, popular.

”Sorry,” said Dr Bend. “But we can’t let you do that. You’d ruin a much too good a thing.”

There were eight of them; three of us.

”You,” Bend said, smirking at me. “You helped us find two more potential villains. Helped us kill them, too. For that, I thank you.”

Kenny charged forward yelling: Bastards.

Dr Bend was too fast.

With the sickening cracks of both Kenny’s spines, it became eight of them, two of us.

The piping in the ceiling, walls, floors, gutted itself as it coiled like an anaconda around the group of heroes, locking them in position, squeezing their life. For a second, I dared think I had them.

AntiMatter thought differently. The copper rusted like a dry autumn leaf between a child’s fingers. Dusted to the ground.

I looked at Jen and hoped my look said a lifetime of words. Then I ran at them

I felt my neck click. Then I was gurgling on the ground, coughing up a pool of red.

Someone laughed as I slowly died.

My final memory was of fire. Of the great flame that leapt from Jen, who had become blue and white, as fierce, wrathful, and beautiful as the sun itself.

They screamed as they burned.

​

***

​

Hours later we woke. The three of us. We weren’t fully reformed yet, our dust still pulling together like iron filings to magnets, our consciousness still rebuilding.

Phoenix.

I’d never known she had a second ability.

Maybe she hadn’t either.

For a moment our dust connected — me and Jen — as our minds rebuilt. We shared a single thought, or maybe it was all our thoughts.

An orange horizon unfurling to the distance like god’s palm. Sycamores whisking in a dusty breeze. A little gas station, the only building for many miles, with a cat sitting on the roof. Two people beneath the veranda, lazily rocking back and forth, sipping on iced teas with not a care in the world.