Consul stared at himself with bloodshot eyes in one of the many mirrors in his penthouse apartment, as he endlessly, monotonously kept stroking the massive bruise that discolored his otherwise flawless face. It was already fading after a few minutes.

He'd managed to hurt himself the only way he knew how, by flying the odd mile or two to the forest behind his fifth mansion, this one in the Rockies, and then punching himself in the face, the sonic boom from the blow stripping the needles from swaying pines in the vicinity. The pain was a foreign sensation, almost ecstatic through the sheer novelty of it.

He wasn't a masochist. He just hated himself.

This might surprise you, because despite ranking very very high up in the many lists purporting to rank all the supes according to the strength of their powers, everyone agrees he'd take first place when it came to being vain.

Supermodels. Actresses. Even a tryst with Chang's daughter, the woman said to be so beautiful people whispered she must have been hiding some kind of Charismatic power, whereas Consul knew it was just gene therapy from well before the haughty 18 year old had been born. He'd fucked till he was bored, then fucked some more, tirelessly working through the long, long list of women who would die for a chance to stroke his diamond-hard abs.

He'd flown into the sun, diving down into the photosphere until he was worried he'd get lost in the endless white. Even the guidance gizmo that a Crafter had promised was as robust as he was had melted a day into his pilgrimage. All he got out of it was boredom and a slight tan.

Boredom. Tedium. He'd fucked the next supe below him in the power list, screwing her till she screamed loud enough to drown out the endless lightning in the Great Red Spot in Jupiter. All he got out of it was the distasteful stink of ammonia in his nostrils for hours afterwards, the crying woman left to slowly follow in his wake as he raced off to Saturn, which happened to be in an unusually convenient position in its languid orbit in Sol. It smelled even worse, the only celestial bodies whose aroma he didn't hate was the quiet saltiness of the little air around Enceladus and Europa, though he had a bit of a soft spot for the gunpowder smell of the Moon.

He'd stood there, for a long time, staring up at the Earth till his eyes glazed over. He imagined taking off at the maximum acceleration he could push, eyes wide open as he struck the planet and cored through, the impact shaking continents and raising tsunamis. Maybe it wouldn't be that bad, he was still pretty close, he considered giving himself a running start somewhere near Mars. Then he reconsidered, that one time he'd spotted a twinkling teacup floating next to a shining classic Tesla Roadster, he'd been genuinely convinced he was losing his damn mind.

No, Earth was by far the least boring of the places he'd been, that's why he still called it home, when he could have begun his steady voyage to the center of the galaxy, to kiss the supermassive blackhole at the core. He'd talked to some egghead, they'd told him it wouldn't feel nearly as long as it would otherwise seem, once he managed to get close to the speed of light, he'd only take centuries instead of millennia from his point of view.

He took the man at his word, annoyed at how he couldn't follow along using a lace like everyone else in the room. He hated being bored, but he hated feeling stupid even more.

He felt stupid on a regular basis, being just smart enough to know he was dumb, especially compared to those people with the weird devices in their brain, or AI, which he wasn't still fully on board with.

Maybe a black hole would end him, even if he was prepared, his defensive powers at the ready despite his own intentions. Once upon a time, he'd felt afraid that the next attack might kill him. Yes, that first time that mugger had fired a gun at him had made his heart race, which is why he'd turned the man into a red smear on the pavements of Sao Paulo rather than just break his bones and leave him for the cops.

Then it was that missile, the jet breaking the sound barrier in its haste to escape, only to find him waiting ahead, arms braced for impact. He didn't even kill the pilot, the man had been begging him so eloquently to spare his life as his lips turned blue in the thin air after Consul cracked his helmet.

Even the begging got boring, he'd heard it all. These days he just tried to kill quickly and move on, unless he had an audience.

Yes, Consul did love an adoring crowd. Their cheers made him feel like Superman, and he was positively overjoyed when he found that the public liked the cape, immediately firing the stylist who charged ten thousand an hour for her useless advice. Ten thousand of what? He didn't remember, money bored him too. He was used to getting anything he asked for, though he deigned to let them claim him as some kind of brand ambassador afterwards.

He liked Superman, even though he'd read every single issue of the old comics, not liking the ones that came later where every author and his dog tried to deconstruct the man, or make him evil. He even hired twenty authors he liked to write new ones just for him, he still couldn't understand why the man acted the way he did.

He'd been charitable, hoping that giving away his gifts would feel better than receiving head. It had been nice enough, but then the world started running short of starving orphans, so he got even more bored. Or maybe the blowjobs got better, he pretty much exclusively fucked other supes now, finding mild enjoyment in seeing how far he could push their enhanced physiques, at least till they screamed for him to stop. He usually did, there was no point keeping a toy that didn't want to be played with, there were always more.

He'd hoped drugs would help, but once again, his body cherished itself like a holy temple, categorically refusing to provide even the slightest buzz. Why did people drink coffee anyway? It tasted like shit, though he only knew how the latter tasted because he'd occasionally smash through some idiot and get flecks of the contents of their bowels in his mouth. The smell, of course he knew the smell, he shat just like you and me, and so did his enemies if they saw him coming. He often slowed down so they would.

He'd tried starving himself too, yet even as his stomach growled so hard that he forced himself to chew rock and shit out gravel, he hadn't lost a gram by the end of the week. More eggheads, this time from the UN, had told him he didn't need energy at all. He still liked food, even now, a good meal made him sleepy and content. Some cynical members of the public saw him at McDonald's and thought he was doing another PR stunt, but he just loved the taste of their greasy burgers, he could have as many as he liked, he never grew fat after all. His abs, which he experimentally poked at, only gave way when it was him doing the poking.

Even the country he'd decided to call home, not bothering to ever formally apply for citizenship, hadn't had the balls to try and draft him. Instead, he'd gotten bored and visited the recruitment center, the official just as bored as he was from sitting in an empty room for hours on end had almost shit himself too. Consul liked seeing that other people could get bored like him, so he gave the man a Faberge egg the size of a grapefruit some head of state had handed him on the way, better it go to him, because he had intended to toss it away when nobody was looking.

Thus, Consul ended up in AC, and he hated it.

Everything was too fucking fast, by the time the neurons in his brains fired and processed what was going on, both the enemy and the rest of the fleet had fucked off thousands of kilometers. Sometimes they'd give him a Teleporter, if he ended up inside an alien ship, it was a piece of cake to tear it apart.

Usually. Sometimes, it was one of the big ones, with that weird gray material that the scientists told him was known as neutronium. It was resistant to his blows, almost impossible to tear apart even when he strained so hard that his enhanced muscles got sore. Other stuff too, with names so long his eyes glazed over. Even then, he managed to destroy them eventually.

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Unless they ran away, it took forever to catch up, and every now and then he'd run into a ship he couldn't quite keep up with, and since his vision was no better than anyone else's, he quite often ended up lost in the blackness of space, feeling that familiar sense of agoraphobia, unsure which of the millions of identical stars that blazed around him was the way home.

His clothes and occasional equipment wasn't nearly as sturdy as he was, and thus he'd end up entirely naked after the aliens hit him with a particle cannon, or nuke, harmlessly if he had his guard up, waiting impatiently for hours or days till the human fleet located him and sent someone or something to pick him up. Besides, it took a little bit of time for his telekinesis to kick in to the maximum strength, and he'd been told that if he was taken entirely by surprise, it might even be lethal, without the few milliseconds of warmup. He still picked and chose his engagements, at least following the suggestions given to him by AIs in charge.

Someone had once paid an absurd amount of money to buy his hair as it fell, only to be disappointed that shortly after it was shed, it lost the near invincibility he displayed. They'd been planning to make something big with it, weaving it into braids that could resist the tugs of worlds.

That's one of the reasons he never committed to traveling to the center of the galaxy, there was a very real chance he'd get lost along the way, or overshoot it, spending yet more time zig-zagging back. Later, the aliens started using something else, that weapon that made even the stars smear into a blur, filling him with endless nausea till he hurled a comet's worth of vomit into the expanse. They'd shine lasers at him, they didn't hurt, but he couldn't see shit while they dazzled his eyes. But when they used their graviton bombs, he'd be useless for hours, the drugs did nothing to cure it, and eventually, the military decided that he was better used as a quasi-guided missile to blow up whatever they pointed him at, assuming it didn't move out of the way. Even then, after a heated debate and cost-benefit analysis, it was decided that he was being wasted there, just too slow to keep up, and he was sent home, where he often worked by constructing the towering creations he had no reason to use himself.

Space Elevator? Didn't people have rockets? Whatever, they paid him a big number, or so his staff told him, and it was a novelty to carry heavy equipment and smaller asteroids about, it almost made him feel like he was his dad, the construction worker dying in an accident when Consul barely went past his knee.

But the real reason? The reason he hated himself so much, even if most humans alive would kill to be in his shoes?

Unlike them, he was growing old. He'd be dead before he got there, before he managed to reach the speeds where time went the same for him but incredibly fast for everyone else.

His hands had shook as he saw the first grey hairs pop up, the fine wrinkles refusing to flatten out even after he'd let himself be subjected to all the best treatments and even the powers of other supes.

His body seemed to consider itself pristine and perfect, categorically refusing to be improved or damaged by others, even as it exhibited the failure modes of standard human biology.

Senescence. Cancer. They couldn't remove it, but they told him it was so slow it would take decades before it was a concern.

Decades? Fucking decades? When they told him almost everyone else might live forever?

He hyperventilated, resisting the urge to smash the mirror that showed him his slowly decaying face. He knew that if he lost control, not only would he not have the mirror anymore, but the mansion, and even the mountain it was on. He owned all of it, of course, for hundreds of square kilometers around, but he still resisted that urge born from despair.

If only he could solve all his problems by punching them.

He decided to visit his mother, that always made him feel better. He loved her, perhaps the first and last human being he'd ever loved. His father had been too distant and busy, working long hours and being too tired to play with his little boy, at least until that girder had fallen and squashed him flat.

He'd grown up, fast; in the slums of Sao Paulo, you had to. He'd dropped out of school, helping his mother where he could, doing odd jobs, sometimes in construction again. Yes, his life now wasn't all that different was it? His girlfriends were certainly much hotter, even if he'd been handsome then.

After making up his mind, he made up his face instead. He pulled out a cosmetic kit and began applying it finely. It was expensive, made by some meta, and it held up very well to most the abuse he put his skin through. It covered up the livid bruise that still hadn't fully faded, as well as the wrinkles he tried to keep away from the public eye.

There. He wouldn't scare her, make her cry and wonder who or what could have hurt her darling boy who could still do no wrong in her eyes. He wanted to hug her, tell her that she hadn't done anything wrong, he understood now, why she had kept calling over those strange men to their home, making him listlessly juggle a football outside for hours till they scurried away and she could call him back in. He had to tell her that, tell her he was sorry for his pointless rage back then. She'd been trying to save for his college tuition, still in denial that he was too slow to hack it.

She didn't live on Earth anymore, choosing to stay in one of those spinning cylinders that somehow managed to stay in the same place relative to the Earth and Moon. Lagrange point? Is that the right name, he thought? At any rate, it made it easier to navigate there as he soared through the sky, taking it easy since he wanted to think along the way.

The reunion was disappointing, while she had been overjoyed at his visit, making him feel a little guilty for putting it off so long, he still didn't feel right about her.

She looked too young, far too pretty. It almost made her seem like one of the women he'd slept with recently, all perfect skin and buxom bosom, not the haggard, homely woman who had raised him. He was around forty, having been in his teens when that weird dream awoke his powers. His mother should have been old, her back stooped, like his grandmother had been before she died shortly after his father.

She had married again, and was excitedly telling him that he had a little sister along the way when she heard him gasping, turning around with familiar concern on her face as he went into the throes of his regular panic attacks.

Her hugging him made him feel better, but it just wasn't the same, and he demurred her offer of a home cooked meal, the same dish he'd always loved as a kid, and gently but inexorably unpried her soft hands and took off back into the void.

He'd outlived his dad, and now, he was sure that his mother would outlive him.

He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die.

He didn't want to-

Hyperventilation in orbit, his lungs trying to suck down air that didn't exist. He didn't know how long he'd been up there when the insistent buzzing of the small device stuck to his ear brought him down to Earth.

He buzzed over to his main abode, a towering starscraper in Indonesia, the place advertising itself exclusively to other rich and powerful supes. He could have bought the entire place out, but it made picking up the girls with powers much easier when they lived next door.

He flew into his penthouse, the balcony doors whispering open and revealing his reverent employees and servants waiting for him.

What was it this time?

Ah, someone was trying to hire him. That wasn't news at all, and he frowned, planning to fire the idiot who'd disturbed him until the calm man told him the amount.

Isn't a trillion really big? That's more than he had right? At least after compulsively purchasing every property he saw on that website when he was bored.

A few years back, a PR consultancy firm had set up a website in his name where anyone could publicly bid for his services, it had been amazing advertising, millions of random people would visit to gape at how high the numbers went.

Anyone could bid on a slot, if they had the money, and if more than one wanted him, they had to compete in a rapid auction with the others clamoring for his time.

Once, he'd preferred to only let nations book him, that seemed like something Superman would do, if he had wanted money that is. These days, he didn't really care, just did whatever was wanted by whoever paid him the most.

But even he was struck by how fast the numbers on the bids rose, and it was unusual how badly so many people, or perhaps countries, wanted him in the next 5 minutes till several hours later.

Ten trillion? Surely that was a mistake, he'd never seen so many zeroes, but the assistant confirmed that these were bids by entities who could make good on their promise, they'd already put down tens of billions in non-refundable deposits.

Time was running out till he was on the clock, so he ordered the auction to halt, giving them only a few seconds to submit their maximum bid, and took the one on top.

Mars? Why did they want him on Mars? Well, if they expected him to get there in time, they better have a Teleporter ready.

He yawned loudly, stripped naked in front of people who had seen it all, and put on his favorite suit.

He'd do the job, but if they were too slow for him to make it there before time ran out, they weren't getting a refund.

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