My name is Isaac Kaine Ellis, and I am just your average, regular twenty something year old and I grew up in the city of Angels. L.A. for those outside the know; more like a city of homelessness and shattered dreams.

Unlike others who stupidly went to the city with the hopes of a better life, I was born there, and knew early on that my life was going to be a bit different.

Two dead parents, ten foster homes, and abandonment issues leaves you with a semi-functioning adult living in the living room of a friend to whom I pay hundreds of dollars of rent for the use of his couch.

And that was a bargain!

My only pleasure in life was using my friend’s toys: Video games and comics were my drugs—the things I never had as a child. Objects to pretend that my life was worth living.

Well and the occasional drugs.

Besides that, I worked the night shift at the fast-food place down the street. No car, no money, no girlfriend (little surprise there) and most of all:

No hope.

That is the TLDR of my childhood and origin story. Now you may be asking yourself, “Ike, why are you even writing this? Isn’t it sort of self-indulgent, nay, narcissistic, to write a story about yourself? Who even is Ike? I thought your name was Isaac?” to which I reply:

1. Fuck you!

2. Who else is going to write it?

3. Ike is a nickname I got from one of my foster dad’s. Let’s say he was number 2. (if you get my drift)

“Isaac is a biblical name, and you aren’t worthy,” he would tell me. Or some shit like that.

I like Ike better anyway.

So now that we have cleared up my reasons, let’s start—

This is the story of how I became the greatest villain and the greatest hero in all of existence.

World 1-1:

A New Hope?

I woke to the sound of my alarm blaring on my phone; some 90s song that reminded me of when I still knew what was popular. My roommate, Grant, had graciously turned on the coffee machine, but had also forgotten that our coffee machine… was shit.

I poured myself a cup of the burned stuff and dashed a tablespoon of sugar into it and way too much cream, but nothing could mask the terrible taste. I know they say that black coffee puts hair on your chest, but nobody tells you that hairy chests look ugly and can get itchy as hell when you have no working AC.

I put my work uniform on; the cotton polo was stuffy, the shoes were uncomfortable, but regardless, I began my long half-mile walk down to work.

The sounds of blaring horns on the street filled my ears, as they had done a thousand times before. Five PM traffic in LA is the thing of nightmares and if I believed in a god, I would say he laughed at us petty ants spending days of time sitting in clean-air killing, planet murdering, death boxes instead of just moving to a more convenient location. That’s L.A. the city where nobody owns a vehicle, yet there are far too many cars on the road.

Time for some introspection. I was always complaining about my life, like so many others did at work and online, but what the fuck was I doing to improve my situation? Absolutely nothing. I was special all along, but too stupid to realize it…

But that’s getting ahead of myself.

I pulled out my last cigarette, an expensive indulgence, and before anyone reading thinks to themselves, “cigarettes cause cancer,” yeah, I know. Let’s just say that I didn’t think I would last long enough for the cancer to get me.

After my cigarette was long past done, and the small smolder at the tip was lightly burning my finger, I dragged myself inside, clocked-in, and began the process of turning all functions of my brain completely off for the next eight hours—as had become my custom in defense against the enemy known as boredom.

Like always, our team meeting lasted far too long. The manager, I think his name was Gary, spoke about “Team” this, and “Sales quotas” that. What a prick. They would fire us at a moment’s notice and for any reason, and don’t you dare say the word that shall not be said…

Unionize.

“One more time and you’re gone,” Gary said to me for the third time that month. I felt bad hating on poor Gary, but he was just so cheery doing this dead-end job and that grated on my nerves endlessly.

Eight grueling hours went as expected: shitty customers, shitty supervisor, and a shitty life. But when the crowd died down, at least the solitude of a night shift gave me a small peace. I clocked-out and began my half-mile trek back home, ready to start it all over again. The hamster, running endlessly on the wheel… of time.

I reached for another cigarette and realized that I had smoked my last one earlier. Grumbling to myself, I visited the gas station across the street.

It smelled as all gas stations smelled—like a mix of cleaning supplies and, well, gas. I grabbed a coke to go along with my smokes; the perfect breakfast.

The man at the counter hardly regarded my presence as he took my soda and retrieved my pack. He moved like a zombie, going through the motions with little care—a brother in arms in the battle of shitty retail work.

I walked outside into the chill air of a mid-October night; it had slightly cleansed the fumes from the traffic of the previous day. I lit my cigarette and took a long drag before I resumed my way home. Suddenly, I heard someone call from a nearby alley, a man’s voice. It sounded like a cry for help.

You're shitting me? I thought. I knew there and then that I should pack up and leave, but like a cat with not enough lives left, curiosity got the better of me, and I went to check it out.

“You alright, man?” I called out at the mouth of the alley. I heard the faint sound of someone yelling from a nearby apartment for me to “shut the fuck up,” when a figure approached from out of the alley.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

A tall, foreboding figure.

I tried to turn away when I noticed a second man behind me, about my size, but a lot skinnier. He shoved me forward into the alley. He was stronger than he looked.

“Give us everythin’ you have,” the skinny man said, smiling with self-satisfaction. Clearly, it was his plan to lure people with cries of help, and I was the idiot who fell for it. Not my proudest moment.

I noticed the skinny man had multiple missing teeth, and his skin was pale from the small illumination a nearby street light granted me. His hand seemed to tremble slightly and uncontrollably. I wondered if he was high or just nervous.

“Here,” I said cowardly as I pulled my wallet from my back-pocket, throwing it to the ground. The wallet had no cash, and my bank account was close to being withdrawn anyway. They weren’t getting much.

The pair looked on expectantly.

“I don’t have a cell phone,” I lied. What were they going to do, pat me down?

“Cigarettes too,” the skinny man said, reaching out and pulling it from my mouth. I hadn’t noticed, but it had been burning the entire time, just hanging at the edge of my lips.

“You’ve gotta be shittin’ me,” I said in protest. “Come on...”

The big man from the alleyway shoved me against the wall and commanded my full attention. He was his partner’s polar opposite. Taller by a head, he wore a dark beanie and the alcohol on his breath assaulted my nose.

The big man gave me one swift punch in the gut, driving the air from my lungs. Yet, I somehow stayed on my feet, leaning heavily on the wall.

“We aren’t asking you again,” the skinny man said with a glint in his eye.

Now everyone knows that there is a phenomenon called “fight or flight,” and I was about to experience a painful lesson in it. The pragmatic in me would have chosen flight, but the nicotine addict in me decided to fight.

Before I could control my body, my fist curled up, and I threw a hooked punch, which hit the big man in the chin with a crack.

The man stepped back, clutching at his face, and the blood that dribbled out of his cut lip gave me a satisfaction unlike any I had experienced in a long time. That’s when the skinny man’s fist connected with the side of my head.

It was over. Just like that.

I remember little of the rest of the encounter, other than a random bystander screaming that they were calling the cops and clutching to my pack of cigarettes with all my might as the two men assaulted me with kicks and punches. I heard the scrambling of footsteps back into the alley and the bystander ran up and started asking questions that sounded like alien gibberish to me in my dazed state.

I stammered to my feet and walked out of the alley in the apartment's direction—the bystander tried to tell me to wait for the police, but I shrugged him off and kept walking.

My hands were trembling so hard that when I tried to light another cigarette, I fumbled it into a dirty-looking puddle. I went to reach for it before deciding not to.

Don’t fuck with L.A. water.

I breathed in the air deeply, trying to calm my nerves and it filled me like it had never before, bringing along with it clarity of mind and body. The coolness in my chest washed over me like a tidal-wave and the adrenaline pumping through my veins gave me a high unlike any other. I smiled and for the first time in a long time I felt...

Happy.

I awoke early the next day, after only an hour or two of sleep—a very unusual change of my normal sleeping habits.

My roommate, Grant, was also up. He didn’t work until midday, so he quietly read a comic book at the kitchen table to not disturb me. He noticed me awakened and peered at me quizzically before shock slowly took over his expression.

“What the hell happened, Ike?” He asked with genuine concern.

“What?” I replied.

“Dude, your face. It’s fucked!”

“Huh?” I didn’t know how to respond, so I got up and went to the bathroom with Grant following me.

I looked into the mirror and found a slightly different person staring back at me. My face was beaten to a pulp. Both of my beautiful green-eyes were swollen, and my lip had been busted open, but was now closed with a nasty-looking scab.

My face had seen better days.

“Holy shit! That was real?” I said, shocked.

“What’s real?” Grant replied, so excited that he paced behind me.

“I got mugged last night, I think. Thought it was a bad dream.”

“You call the police?”

“I don’t think so… Shit, where’s my wallet?”

Grant shrugged his shoulders, and I went to check the usual spot. My cell phone was there, but nothing else.

“I’ll call the police,” he said, calling 911 and speaking with the dispatcher. “They’ll be here in twenty minutes.” My head pounded, and I sat down on the coach, Grant sitting next to me. “Do you need some aspirin?”

“Do ya’ got anything stronger?” I asked, but decided against it—would be a stupid thing to do with police on the way. “Aspirin would be fine, and a cup of coffee if you don’t mind.”

The police arrived two hours later to take a statement from me. I told them what I knew, and they mentioned a string of muggings in the area, and to be careful.

Little late for that.

They handed me the police report and told me I would need to contact my credit card company, and they would be in contact.

Grant went off to work and recommended I call off for the night. Truth be told, I felt alright after a bit of time and copious amounts of caffeine and painkillers, but I was never one to turn down a day off from work.

Gary was surprisingly cool about the whole mugging incident and told me to take as much time off as I needed. I really did give poor Gary too much hate.

Grant messaged me about picking up a new comic he had ordered from the store nearby. I was just about to load up a new game, but reluctantly, I agreed.

It was still midday, and the street was abuzz with cars and people. I saw the alley from the night before and crossed the street to avoid it.

I found the store and entered. Old-man Ray had opened the store in the 80s and it had been here ever since. Ray was an elderly man who had emigrated to the US from South-Africa, and he was the most American man I have ever known. He loved to talk of the prosperity of America to anyone and everyone who would listen, and the man could recite entire comics of Captain America from memory.

“What happened to you?” Ray asked, barely sparing me a glance from his latest comic addiction.

I took the time to explain what had happened, and Ray listened with careful consideration, giving me a knowing nod as I told my story. He didn’t interject, not even once.

When I was done, Ray gave me a handshake and a pat on the shoulder. “You will be alright, with time.” His words and voice spoke to his experience. That was Ray’s way in matters of reality; he was a man of few words, but talk about comics, and he suddenly would become an unstoppable force of conversation.

I was browsing the store, and I noticed a new item sitting on top of a pile of boxes. It was a silver amulet of sorts, flowing in an elegant sort of way, but in the middle, it appeared as if a serpent's eye stared out at me.

Something about the amulet compelled me to take it, a divine pull of sorts. I thought little of it at the time, and went to leave the store, but my mind kept drawing me back.

Reluctantly, I turned to Ray. “How much for the amulet back there?”

“What amulet?” I pointed to the corner with the boxes that the amulet laid upon. “Oh, the dragon’s eye? You can take it.”

“Really?” I asked, surprised. “But why?”

Ray shrugged, “Because I feel like giving it to you. Found it at some second-hand store anyway. Didn’t cost much.”

I thanked Ray, and grabbed my prize, along with Grant’s comic. I didn’t know why I was drawn to the amulet, but Halloween was around the corner and, at the very least, it would make for an interesting accessory to a costume.

I made my way home, and the world shone just a little bit brighter.

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