Summer was ending in 1989 and time was ticking on to a new decade; this was a milestone year. Simon saw the coming decade clearly, simply. Arpanet was finally dying, the concept, developed in Academia and refined by decades of government funding, would be funneled into the hands of multinational conglomerates. This was an unfortunate necessity as government red tape and disagreements among leadership made public advancement of the technology impossible for the near future. Other technologies, mostly miniaturized and perfected versions of what was available would be made available to the people. He knew this not by way of prophecy, but by subtle manipulation.

Placing his datapad on his rough workbench, oddly trashy given the massive private/public partnership the Zorman Corporation had with multiple state governments, Simon closed his eyes and interacted with it using only his mind. The Black Box implant in his gray matter was working perfectly, as he knew it would, making for a much more secure life moving forward. In the past preserving his consciousness would be reliant upon a wired connection, on Simon being present and conscious in the Zorman building’s sub-basement, level 4, a floor inaccessible to all but a trusted few.

Or, perhaps, trust was the wrong word. His interface granting him an odd kind of omniscience that worked only when he focused on it, Simon realized he wasn’t alone. It was aggravating as the interloper hadn’t just arrived, rather, he’d been observing Simon and Simon did not know how long that had been going on. Hopefully, as time went on, his brain would adjust, letting him see through all his cameras without closing his eyes.

“So, were you ever going to come out of hiding or did you plan to just keep skulking until quitting time?” he asked, turning towards the shadowy figure. In answer the figure, ill-defined, in one of the few darkened spots of the lab, started to glow. He’d have to do something about the lights in that section so as to know when the Solar Scion was present.

“I’m sorry, am I interrupting something? Some insane, possibly illegal experiment maybe?” As usual he was grim-faced and exhausted in appearance, a recent exam revealed that he’d scarcely been sleeping for months, owing to a lingering paranoia.

“It’s not a matter of interruption, Stan. You didn’t just now walk in; you hid and observed. It’s … odd…” Pause. Simon sighed deeply. “As for the legality of my experiments; you’ll recall that many of them are on behalf of the government and, thus, incapable of being illegal.”

“Politicians are not above the law, Simon.”

“True, but the bodies that employ them are. Those bodies make the law and, in the case of malfeasance, can excuse unlawful behavior.” Smirking, Simon shook his head. Surely Stan, the Scion, had to know better than this.

“And if I were to start asking questions?”

“It would be a very interesting waste of your time and, likely, reflect very badly upon you. You’d be demonstrating knowledge of information above your clearance level and poking the bear of institutional power.” Standing, Simon thrust both thumbs in his hip pockets. “But, by all means, make some calls.”

Stan hovered forward, tracing a round path around Simon’s desk to face him, coming to rest with his palms resting on the former supervillain’s desk just opposite. “What do you think you’re doing? Hm? That this is some sort of life insurance? That I won’t make a move against you because I’m afraid?”

“Stan,” Simon retorted. “You and I both know that’s not my life insurance. Your origin story, the real one, where you’re not actually an alien from another world here to save us, that’s my life insurance. Project–”

“Don’t say it. Don’t even say it.” Stan snapped, jaw set angrily. “This isn’t a joke.”

“Oh no, it’s deadly serious, that much I can see. Whatever it is. So it’s nothing you’ve seen down here then, eh?”

“No, Simon. Keep your AI, your clones, your humanoid robots, all of it. Just tell me what I want to know.”

Simon blinked a few times, removed his thick, black nerd glasses, cleaned them with a microfiber cloth and put them back on; pushing them up by the purely decorative tape in the middle and leaned in, peering deeply into the Scion’s eyes. “You … are scared. What scares the most powerful Altered man on the planet? I … oh… Oh no.”

More anger flashed across Stan, the Scion’s, face. “Oh yes, Simon. Out with it.”

Simon took stock of Stan for the first time since noticing his presence; sweatpants and an athletic shirt, no shoes. Middle of the day and not only was the man not in his field gear but he wasn’t properly dressed to face any day, let alone one in which work was involved. He sniffed. “Have you been drinking?”

“Tell me where he is!” In one motion Stan grabbed a coffee cup off the desk and flung it off the inner wall of what might be considered a bunker designed to survive a nuclear was but, to Simon, was nothing but a laboratory. The sheer volume of his outburst was deafening, the Scion’s pure power leaking out through his voice, and a resonance lingering in the air testified to that power.

“He escaped us all, Stan. We never knew the full extent of his powers, but, apparently, something about him overloaded the Pattern Inhibitor. In the two minutes it took to get the power back on he disappeared, utterly, as if teleported from the facility.”

Stan’s breathing was over-loud as he struggled to contain himself emotionally. “World’s greatest genius and he can’t find one stinking vagrant. One drain on society among the throng. What good are you?”

“‘World’s Greatest Genius?’ Well, at least you read my mug before turning it into airborne particles of silica. As for Johnny … if he doesn’t engage his powers I can’t track him. You know that.”

Still facing away but turning at the neck enough to give Simon an angry side-eye, Stan fairly choked on his rage. “You said he had the potential energy of an atom bomb.”

“Actually, I said ‘nuclear’. That’s much worse.”

Abruptly Simon found himself careening backwards before being rammed into the far wall, hard. The impact was enough to drive the air out of him and he choked as the Scion pressed him against the wall. “I didn’t … didn’t mean.” Stan had a look of shock on his face, like someone waking up from a bad dream.

“Get.” Simon grunted, struggling. “Off!” The words came hard and his back ached, his first attempts at inhaling were painful. Straining, all four limbs pushing, he managed to create a little room between himself and the Scion.

“You! You should have died just now!” Scion shouted. “How are you alive!?”

“No one is helping you hunt that boy down, Stan! Let it go!”

“How are you so strong!?” madness grew in the Solar Scion’s eyes and the glow he threw off while using his powers grew greater, a sure sign that he was going to do something very bad indeed. Something that involved Simon becoming ash.

Through sheer will Simon pulled away, dissociating his body; eyes rolling back as he flowed his consciousness into his supercomputer to take control of the lab surrounding them. Panels dropped from the ceiling, bombarding the Scion in blue light.

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“What? No!” shouted the Scion in shock, sinking to the floor, releasing Simon in his sudden loss of focus.

Having done what he wanted to do Simon snapped back to, reaching across to grab Scion’s wrist, gooseneck it pull him aside before kicking his knee out from behind and stepping on him to put the ‘hero’ face-fist into the dusty concrete floor. “Your paranoia is becoming a serious problem, Stan! These Inhibitors were put in ten years ago in case one of our enemies broke in and endangered me! Little did I know that the real danger was you!”

“N-not affecting you. Why?”

“Why are the fancy lights that turn off powers based on energy patterns not rendering me ineffective you ask? Why, I’ve been using gene therapy to make more dominant certain beneficial genes while minimizing the general vulnerability of humanity in myself. In short; I am the potential of the human species, Stan! A real ubermenschen, not you, you Paperclip freak!” Simon took a step back, breathing hard. He could tell that his impact with the wall had done some real damage but he didn’t dare let on. Even weakened, Stan was still a huge threat in these close quarters.

His inner light dimming, the Scion came up to his feet, unsteady as a man might be if he scarcely ever touched foot to ground, unused to the contact, and swung around to face Simon. “You were preparing for this fight! Well, fine, finish it then! Kill me! How long’s it been? I can’t even remember!”

“I could, couldn’t I?” Simon stated, a smile creeping across his face. “I mean, here I’ve been keeping your secrets out of fear of your wrath but in this moment I’ve won utterly. When you attacked me any concordance we’d established would certainly be dissolved, any contract we had you’ve violated.”

“Still talking! Unbelievable.”

“Yes, Stan, these past thirty years, I’ve prepared for every eventuality but, no, these lights, my … enhancements, they were done without considering you. At all.”

Something about this dismissal hit the Scion like a ton of bricks. He avoided eye contact, voice cracking. “Please. Just tell me… Tell me where he is.”

Simon looked at the Solar Scion with pity. Here he was, this great hero, his reputation legendary, holding on by a thread. “Nobody in this building is going to help you hunt down that boy, Stan. Even if you hadn’t been acting erratically for months, you admitted after losing the fight you started with him, you said you wanted to kill him. That he was ‘too powerful’.”

“And you think he’s not? After he demonstrated that he could crush the Grip, batter me, knock aside all the other members of the Nine, you think he’s no threat?” Collapsing into Simon’s office chair Stan held his face in his hands.

Contemplating, Simon chose his words carefully. “I think he’s only a danger in as much as he is forced to be. The only real hostile he’s faced he destroyed, utterly, a giant monster that killed a few hundred people and proved immune to military weaponry. In friendly, or, rather, a controlled environment, no real risk of his own death he stopped of his own volition. With you laid out … he stopped again. I think if we come at him en mass that people will die and one of those might be one of us.”

Stan shook his head and scoffed. “You think that action will cause death, I think that inaction will. How do we know who’s right?”

Grabbing up a chair Simon slid it into place to face Stan, their positions becoming like those of a potential employer and employee. “Now that you’re calm, Stan, I want you to listen carefully. Eyes up. This is serious.”

Tired, his powers on a low ebb, Stan lifted his head just enough to make eye contact. “I know. I keep telling you.”

“No. Not that. It’s been weeks, nothing has happened. The only incidents have been when you attacked Johnny, threatening his life and when you attacked me here, today, threatening my life. You need help.”

This woke Stan up a little again. “Another manipulation? Make me the one at fault for all the destruction?”

“Dammit, Stan, look around you! Who else is here!? You’re not even supposed to know about this space. It’s my sanctum, man. You invaded it.”

“This explains … this explains why you’re never in your quarters.” Stan nodded slowly, finding some understanding of something not previously addressed.

“What? You’ve been watching my quarters?”

“Your fake quarters, yes.”

“And why do I need fake quarters, Stan!? Ever think of that? Maybe because a massively powerful Altered man threatened my life in 1959 and I believed him, living only by making a peace that, apparently, only I believed in.”

“But I’m … I’m a hero.” Stan’s brow knit in confusion. “You attacked me in Time’s Square with a giant robot. You’re the villain. I stopped you.”

“That’s over thirty years ago!” Simon shouted. “I … I was a fan of yours as a boy. They called me a ‘technological prodigy’, then you were fighting that … that German with the bizarre name…”

“Uberschwanz. Lukas Verhoeven. Toughest fight of my life … had to pull out all the stops.” Stan seemed wistful, far away.

“Hmph. Toughest? This is the first time we’ve talked about this. So he was the toughest?”

“Yeah. He … he was this hand-to-hand expert, trained from a young age by an abusive father. Former Nazi who insisted his son be the toughest in school. Never expected the boy to become seven feet of Brick.”

“A former Nazi?”

“Yes.”

“And how did it come to be that you destroyed my home lab in the suburbs of Yonkers? Hm?”

“You have to understand; I was losing. I wasn’t used to losing. I’d cooked the brains out of a dozen Kaiju by this point, all before they touched one red, white and blue hair, keeping the citizenry calm. Criminal gangs, I barely had to do anything; maybe melt a few guns or trash their escape vehicle. If they even had a Brick, the bruiser was never in my league. Lukas … he disabled my Solar Glare. Said he’d blind me if I blasted him with it again.”

“Whoa. And you believed him?”

“I did. Any time I tried to fight him toe-to-toe he not only could hit me at will, he could find the nerves. My eyes, I could barely keep them open, my face was spasming. I had only one advantage … I could fly, he couldn’t.” Stan looked away, scanning the lab area.

Simon waited as long as he thought was polite before speaking up. “Still with me, Stan?”

“Yeah. Yeah, Simon. Just thinking. I was desperate. I managed to land an uppercut on Lukas; he’d jumped after cratering me into the ground. We were close to Yonkers at this point, maybe even outside of NYC entirely, but I was half blind, losing my sense of direction, so after knocking him high up and getting a lucky grip around his waist from behind, I kept the arc going. We were, perhaps, five-hundred feet up when I started pushing him straight down. He was hammering my hands, my grip was coming loose, so I just … stepped on the gas.”

Simon glared at the hero. He was finally owning up to his greatest sin from Simon’s perspective. “Go on.”

“I knew the asphalt, the soil, nothing on the surface was going to be hard enough to hurt him; he had to hit bedrock. Understand, I didn’t hit your home, Simon. I know it was hard to tell in the aftermath, but I drove him into the earth, made sure his head broke the stone a hundred feet down, and yes, several houses came apart. It couldn’t be helped.”

Simon grit his teeth, but it was pointless. He had to remain focused. “And what about Johnny? His situation? Can it be helped?’

Stan, the Solar Scion, after months of paranoia, finally seemed to understand. Eyes big, he compared in his mind Uberschwanz and Megadude. “I … I guess it can.”

The pair sat in silence for a moment. Again, it was Simon breaking the silence. “I’m glad we could finally put that to rest. Now, Stan … I want you to leave my sanctum. Forget it exists. You do that and I forget this incident; the threats, the violence, all of it. Are we clear?”

It was a big ask of a man used to being in control. Standing but bent, Stan found his voice. “I’ll go now.” was all he said.

Simon took his regular seat a few seconds after Stan vacated it. Sitting there, watching him go, he realized that this wasn’t over. Even if Stan could get over this one wannabe hero who had more power than he, something else would arise. The rage he felt subsided only when his powers were negated, like a runner hitting a wall and losing adrenaline. No, he thought, pulling up camera views that showed Stan heading up stairs, through the service door that led here, up a few flights of stairs before getting in an elevator, that he had to remain on guard and, no matter how long it took, the Solar Scion would have to be dealt with…