With a loud boom, a man in a red and gold spandex suit had all of a sudden crashed through the highway traffic you were driving on. Parts of his suit were charred black, and patches of burnt skin showing all over his body, with cracks permeating through the asphalt road he was smashed into head-on, faint fire petering out from inside of them. It seemed that the man had fallen unconscious, though you couldn’t really be sure due to the mask and goggles blocking his face.

Following that, another man in a red tailcoat (which you could only muse had come from the traveling Super Circus Band of the Disquieting) glided down next to him in a ball of fiery crimson, smirking victoriously. You were supposed to move into the nearby city tonight and so you didn’t know who these supers were, but it had seemed that the onlookers did. The people in their cars shouted, crying out for their beloved city superhero’s name.

“Fear me, denizens of Akremont! For I, the great and dreadful Hellfire have defeated your so-called Amber Honor! Mark my words, for I will rule over your now unprotected city and spread TERROR and PANIC all, throughout… throughout! All, throughout… Uh…”

Weird, you ponder, stroking your greying hair. It doesn’t normally take this long. Maybe it was because they flew in from the city too fast for your power to take effect? Shaking off those idle thoughts, you drove closer to the two of them. Opening your car door and running toward them, you shout out.

“Someone with a healing power, come here now! We need to administer first aid until the ambulance arrives!"

The man in the red tailcoat looks at you clumsily, eyes glazed over, and tumbles back, falling on his butt. He holds his head in his hands, muttering to himself.

“What… What have I done? Why did I hurt him? He was just trying to protect all these people. What… Why have I been robbing and killing so many people all these years? What for…?”

You don’t flinch at his sudden change of personality. You’re used to it now, after all. I’ll have to ask him some questions later, you think to yourself. The onlookers were cautious of the villain at first, but you organize the situation like you always do, working with them to help their superhero. Others call for their local Bureau of Supernatural Damage Control. Soon enough you hear the characteristic siren of police cars and as they walk up to you, asking for details of what happened, you show them your badge.

“I’m with the Supernatural Incidences Investigation Division. I’ll be handling this case together with your local Bureau.”

The police officers widened their eyes in surprise and immediately salute. You walk over to the supervillain still hugging his knees, rocking back and forth while audibly mumbling to himself, and drag him over to your car. He complies quietly, sitting in the back wide-eyed with delirium. You enter into the driver’s seat, and as you ride toward the concrete jungle of a city that was Akremont, you think back to the first time you had a taste of the supernatural.

You still weren’t an agent then. No, you were still in high school when on your way home after having a game of D&D at Brad’s when a pair of supers not unlike the ones at the previous crime scene crashed into your home. The impact sent the concrete shattered from the walls soaring through the skies, one even crashing next to you on the sidewalk. Needless to say, you were terrified. You had come so close— just less than a meter, in fact— to courting death and kissing her on the lips. But then, you remembered—

Mom, Dad! They’re still in there!

It had been your mom’s birthday, so your dad had taken a day off from work today and the day before, preparing a surprise birthday cake for your mom. He had a history of mucking up every dish he worked on; cookies baked with salt instead of sugar, stir-fry with very, very burnt vegetables, extremely soggy instant noodles (How does that even happen?), and even egg fried rice made using a colander. Nevertheless, he wanted to at least try for your mother. So while she had been off at her own job, your dad painstakingly toiled away at the kitchen— cups upon cups of all-purpose flour, sugar, and other baking ingredients were baked up into burnt, wet, and somehow salty mixtures of cake.

You tried to lend him a helping hand, but he refused, saying This is a man’s pride on the line, son! And so you let him keep at it until finally, he had baked a barely passable cake with the words Happy Birt- hday clumsily emblazoned with frosting on the top. It ain’t much, he proudly said, but it’s honest work. You’d honestly been impressed. Though your mom had a picky palate, she would still want to eat something her loving husband had worked hours on to make. She really would’ve, if she was still alive.

You rushed toward the scene, forgetting about the two supers sprawled out on the road, struggling to get up and start beating each other to death again. Breath ragged and adrenaline pumping all over, you tripped on the sidewalk with a loud thud, falling face-first into the pavement. Pushing yourself up, you saw them. Or, at least, what remained of a few of their limbs. A hand was jutting out of the layers of concrete stacked upon one another. It had a wedding ring on it. Your mom’s wedding ring.

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With your nose bleeding from your previous fall and the sight of your parents under all that rubble, you were a deer caught in the headlights. You were devastated. So much so that you didn’t even notice when one of the supers, the villain who had won, apparent from the superhero breathing raggedly underneath his feet, had doubled over and started throwing up, bleeding from every crevasse possible in his face.

Everything after that was a blur. You heard some blaring sirens, a few screams from the neighbors going out of their homes to see what was going on. You saw some police cars pull over, their red and blue lights gleaming malevolently. An ambulance arrived, and some paramedics put you in a stretcher, carrying you in.

The doctors checked you for any major injuries, any possible side-effects from being exposed to the powers of the two supers. After treating your nose injury, you were sent off to the local BSDC station. Saying how sorry they were that this had to happen, and talking about compensation and this, and that, you were told to stay seated in the lobby and wait for your uncle to pick you up.

After waiting there in a daze for what seemed like hours, a pair of a man and woman in suits and sunglasses walked up to you, telling you something about a secret division of the BSDC working toward investigating the nature of supers. Though you were still stunned, you wondered why they would say this in a public space if they were so secret when you noticed that none of the other people in the lobby seemed to be moving. They said that you may have a very valuable superpower they could utilize for their objectives, and gave you a black card. It had their contact numbers printed in gold on the bottom, and some kind of rectangular symbol on the top, though your head hurt just trying to look at it. Looking back up, you saw not a single trace of the pair, and everyone started moving again.

A few days passed, and you’re in a spare room that your uncle had cleared up for you to use. It was still bare, of course, with only a small wardrobe, a desk, and the bed you were sitting on. You were fiddling with the black card the pair had given you, ruminating whether or not to call them. Deciding you had nothing to lose though, you pulled out your smartphone and dialed the number. You pressed the call button, and almost immediately, you blacked out.

Waking up, you found yourself seated in a dark, suffocating room. You had a metal table in front of you, and across from that was one of the pair that approached you, the man in the suit and sunglasses. Now that you were able to take a closer look at him, you saw that he had countless scars on his face— ranging from what might’ve been from burns to big slashes from a wild animal. Before you could even open your mouth though, he started speaking. He said that they were a secret coalition with the ultimate goal of eradicating all superpowers from the planet. The civilians’ minor powers, and the supers’ city-destroying powers, he said it didn’t matter— the coalition would destroy all of that, and return the world to how it was before.

You asked him why they were interested in you, and for an instant, you could swear you saw a savage grin, as though he were a predator salivating at his prey. He explained that since the villain had come from that scuffle that cost you your family, he had been acting unusual. Something about his regaining reason and memories, as though he woke up from a bad dream and, most importantly, losing most of his powers. You swallowed, realizing the implications of what the man across from him just said. I can avenge them, you thought to yourself. You could rid the world of these monsters, these abominations of nature. And so, you joined them.

Dropping out of high school, and working with the cover story they had given your school and extended family, you moved into one of their many branches to be trained in espionage and were experimented on to learn how your powers worked. After years, you were finally assigned to their surface cover organization, the SIID. You dealt with a few cases here and there, rising through the ranks, but you felt like there was nothing really special about what you were doing. A few decades have passed since then, and working with other agents, you were able to neutralize dozens of supers along the way, but you weren’t getting any closer to your ultimate goal.

But after what seemed like an eternity, they sent you a notice through your mail. They said that the number of supers, both heroes and villains alike, in the city of Akremont had been rising astronomically recently. The agency had studied the sequence of hero and villain appearances around the country and noticed a new pattern. The closer a city or town was to Akremont, the more supers there were inhabiting them. Ever since your agency started investigating supers, they had never had any leads to the origin of supers this obvious. Of course, it might be a trap. But your agency was grasping at straws now. Nothing like this had happened since the supers started appearing. This couldn't be ignored. And so you were sent here to be one of the first investigators. That was an obvious choice, and one you expected.

“We’re here.”

The former supervillain was still curled and trembling sitting in the backseat but looked up as he heard your voice.

“I swear that wasn’t me! It’s… It felt like a dream. I wasn’t in control. Like something was manipulating my limbs and my mouth with some… some invisible strings. I swear it wasn’t me! Please. I don't want to go to jail!”

You look the young man over. From his face and small build, you discern that he’s barely an adult. Chuckling, you strike him an evil grin.

“Save that for later, kid. We’re going to interrogate you inside the station.”

He starts sobbing, shouting, as he scrambles toward the car door to his right. Realizing in a panic that he can’t open it, he shrieks and looks back at you.

"No! I won't go! I won't let you take me!"

He raises his left arm toward you and spreads his palm. A small fire flickers in his hand. And then it disappears.

"What? No, why, why isn't it working? No! I don't want to go. I don't want to go!"

You get out, pulling the young man out of the car and into the building with you. You have a lot of work to do here in Akremont, and nothing is going to stop you from getting to the bottom of this mystery.