(no subject)

[plasmaslinger]

It was a clash of titans. On the side of everlasting and overwhelming good was the hero, his cape a flourish of violet in the air as he battled the evil Mr Maleficent. They circled around each other in a blur of fist and spandex. The crowds who had appeared underneath the struggle cheered our hero on, blocking out the noise of the police sirens and schreeching tires of new onlookers. Evening News cameras were threaded through the crowd. The orders of policemen were ignored as the hard-working citizens of the city rushed to their newfound superman. And all the while, two gentlemen in capes and costume were trying to throw each other into nearby buildings.
Mr Maleficent pushed the hero away, and then adjusted his tie and dreadful black hat for dramtic affect before speaking to his opponent.
“What do you call yourself, masked vigilante?” he said with notable malice.
“What?”
“Do you have a moniker? What is your name?” snarled Mr Maleficent.
“Shut up.” said the hero, and socked Mr Maleficent with a super-powered right hook to the jaw. Mr Maleficent floated backwards, decellerating until he lost consciousness and fell limply onto a car parked in the street below him.
The hero made a pose. He levitated downward slowly onto the pavement and posed again. He had his picture taken. He shook hands with the crowd, and kissed a baby. An Evening News Team got to him before the police could muscle him down to the ground, and the people all round them closed off any opening the police could get through.
With a mere flex of the hero’s muscles, the crowd was pushed backward ever so gently, the concrete pushed downward and cracked from the simple force of his power. They all grew wide eyed at his masculine wonder, and then quieted when the news reporter fastened a microphone to his yellow outfit.
“This is Jenna Johnson with The Evening News and we’re here at the intersection of Hawthorn and Third, where a super-battle has just taken place! Mr Maleficent had just broken into the City Bank’s money bin minutes before when this brave hero appeared on the scene-”
“I am the Mighty Fantasmo!” thundered the hero.
“The- ah, the what?” asked the interrupted reporter.
“That’s my superhero name. Let all evil who hear it tremble! I will bring justice to the meek! I will bring liberty to the enslaved! I will work out vague politcal loopholes! I will lower the price of gasoline! I will use my massive intellect to invent a more efficent system of trade than one based on abstract amounts of money!” he bellowed.
“Oh, well, that’s great!” the reporter said.
“Naw, man, I’m just messing around. About the only things I can do is tear things apart with my superhuman strength! Oh, and I can fly. And there’s the heat vision and… I think I had ice breath at one point. Actually, I’m not too sure how many powers I have. Oh yeah, I have lasers that shoot out of my joints sometimes. They don’t really do anything; they just look cool when I’m walking around at night. And my name is Tom. I made up that Fantasmo part.”
“Oh…” said the reporter.
Noone said anything for the next few minutes. It was a little awkward on the whole, and a few people left to go drive back to work. Unfortunatly, Tom possessed no sense of the great social balancing act and attempted to keep right on with his ramblings and recitations.
The reporter who had been interviewing him made a signal to the other news crew to pack up for relocation to whatever headquarters indicated towards. Behind the rubble of the battle, the sound crew shut down power to the camera which had been pointed at Tom, which was now being capped and folded.
Tom grew angry at this; he had been thinking about telling this story for weeks. He loved to tell stories and realized that he could use his great powers to attract attention to himself for the purpose of storytelling.
“Wait, I wasn’t finished yet.” said Tom, trying to contain his displeasure.
The reporter glanced at him, and put on her trained smile. She attempted to explain to him that they could not listen to him because they had to be other places, and possibly back to the news room to edit his interv-
“You’re going to CUT OUT parts of my story?” Tom yelped.
He let loose with a great snarl, and his whole body shook. A nearby streetlight shattered, and the people who had been surrounding him, already creeping away, began to flee. The reporter attempted to do so, along with her cameraman (still trying to fold away his equipment, and seemingly more concerned with it than his personal safety), but Tom rushed at her, picked her up, and threw her across the street.
The cameraman took a moment to consider which needed more attention: the electronic devices he was burdened with or his colleague, who appeared to be bleeding on the pavement across the street. He elected to place the equipment in the van while yelling into the van that the sound crew needed to call an ambulance, and then finally rushing to her aid. This seemed, to him, to be a thoroughly clear and morally balanced plan of action. However, Tom heard these screams of Ambulance and Emergency. He decided to overturn the cameraman’s actions by rushing at the Evening News van and flipping it over, then flinging it across the street. This van probably hit a building.
Tom was a little calmed down, but then someone shot him. Of course, since he is Tom, the bullet simply disappeared before it projectiled itself into his shoulder. Tom looked over to see a squad of policemen with guns who had blockaded his escape by foot with police cars and themselves. Tom walked up to them in a brisk walk.
“You could have missed and killed someone, you know.” he said. The policemen looked confused, and after a few seconds, a chuckle broke from the lips of one of the younger officers, who could not resist the absurdity of the man in the purple cape and the yellow jumpsuit.
“Who said that?” he asked them. The policemen didn’t move.
“You know, I know who said that. I’ve got superhuman hearing.” he said.
The young officer who had chuckled shifted a little, and with super-sonic speed he appeared before the young man. The led to a bit of conflict within the officer’s protocol: he would have shot if he had seen him move, but he did not.
“The policemen are threatening to arrest me, or even kill me, but I beat up that villan who robbed the bank.” Tom said. Tom really did not have to worry about the policemen’s gun, but he wished to see how the situation would resolve itself. He decided that it would be best to show the policement he could be trusted as a fellow do-gooder and keeper of the peace.
Tom rushed back to Mr Maleficent, who was now unconscious, and lifted his body back into his arms. There didn’t seem to be much injury, just a super-dislocated jaw. The car Mr Maleficent had landed on sustained more damage than he had.
Tom looked at the money he had been carrying; there were only two bags that he could see full of cash. He regarded these with a little interest, but decided it would be much more heinious to steal Mr Maleficent’s wallet. Tom rummaged through Mr Maleficent’s pouch, which was kept on his utility belt, and found it. It contained everything- a large amount of bills, a library card, a drivers liscence, and even his social security number (or at least it looked like it, since it gave no indication that it was but people often do this)- a crime most henious.
Tom walked back to the policemen, and one of them yelped when they saw him coming around the corner. They shot at him, and the bullet hit Mr Maleficent in the leg.
This made Tom angry. Pretty soon many things were on fire and the policemen weren’t feeling very well.
Tom took Mr Maleficent to a hospital through the air, and had to evade a few police helicopters in the process. The attendant who took Mr Maleficent in right away was paid a handsome tip from Mr Maleficent’s wallet. Police cars had followed him, however, but Tom was in a good mood, so snuck out of the hopital through one of the office windows in the back of the building.

That night, Tom was looking for a place to stay. He was new in the city, and didn’t have the patience to deal with rocks and grass as bedding. He thought about this as he flew through the grey-blue evening clouds, the sun just a fading glow in the west. Below him were many lights- they indicated that he was still over a city area. As he flew, the flecks of light began to move apart, and he realised he needed to find a place to stay quick before he lost sight of the lights altogether.
It was nine-thirty in the evening, and many people were getting ready for bed in their homes, too. One family in particular, the Smiths, was going on with their teeth-brushings, their pajama-wearing, and their sitcom-watching. Little Johnny, whose room was in the basement, was listening to his music and painting a picture for his art class the next day. It was a picture that he had been painting for quite some time, not only as a project, but as a present to his girlfriend now that they had been dating for a year.
Now, Johnny loved comic books. It was where he had learned to draw the human body. As a result, the men he drew were always a little too pumped, the women a little too buxom. This was evident in his painting, which included many designs and elements and icons but culminated around a portrait of him and his girlfriend. To him, however, it looked perfect, and I am sure his girlfriend would have enjoyed it as well.
Johnny Smith heard a crash, and his paintbrush sloop! struck a bold black line through his painting entirely. The poor boy did not know whether to burn the picture in fury or cry for a good hour or two. He left the two notions to debate and sought to find the origin of the noise.
He crept quietly through the darkness, passing by a bathroom door. He performed a double-take and realised the light of the bathroom was on, seeping underneath the door in a smooth stretch of brightened carpet. He thought about what the polite thing to do would be, and chastened himself when he thought not to knock on the door. He did so.
“What?” came a voice from within the room. Johnny jumped. The voice said: “Hello? Who is there?”
“It’s Johnny. Dad, is that- is that you?” he asked. He heard a toilet flush. He also heard a sink run, and then stop. Then, the door opened.
“Son! I didn’t even know I had one! This makes me so happy! Can you, uh- you know, you’re not like the other kids. Did your mother ever tell you that?” said the man who appeared at the door.
The man who had appeared at the door was definatly not his father. The man who had appeared at the door was Tom. He shuffled up to a befuddled Johnny, and gave him a hug that lasted an uncomfortable amount of time. Johnny was particularly uncomfortable with the fact that Tom smelt like dirt, old sweat, blood, and for some particular reason, ozone. Johnny stumbled back a little when Tom decided it was time to break off the hugging.
“You’re not my dad, my dad is upstairs. Who are you? Did you break in here? Was that the big crash I heard… and felt? You know, you forced me to completely ruin a painting I’ve worked on for months!” fumed Johnny.
“No, son, you’re confused- that’s not your real dad, but… well,” sniffed Tom,”If that’s the way it has to be, I understand. It’s hard to, you know, switch gears like this all of a sudden. But I hope you know this: I’ll always be there to advise, and listen to you, and go fishing with you, and all that sort of thing.”
“No, I didn’t mean to call you dad, I thought that my Dad was in the bathroom down here for some reason. Look, I know you broke in here. I’m going to go get my parents- just, you just stay here, okay?” said Johnny.
Johnny slowly backed away from Tom, saying, “Look, I’ll only be a sec, just- stay there. Don’t move.”
“Alright, son! Bring them down! I want to meet everybody!” said Tom.
Johnny disappeared up the stairs. Tom navigated his way through a nearby living room with his night-vision, and found a couch to relax on. He sat down, and let out a whistle.
“I’ve got a son! Oh… oh no, I didn’t even ask what his name was! Well, that goes to show you, you know, I’m not cut out for that fatherhood bit.” lamented Tom.
The Smith family, which included Mr Smith, Mrs Smith, Jane Smith, and Johnny Smith, all came downstairs cautiously. Mrs Smith turned on the light to the adjoining living room, and gasped.
“That man on our couch is the man who killed people today downtown on the Evening News! Oh, my God!” she said.
Tom looked with wide eyes upon her. He looked about his person, and dusted off his costume, tried to straighten some wrinkles out of his great purple cape. He looked a little nervous.
“Uhm… look, I thought that- well, you know, I didn’t expect this to happen. He looks like a great kid, though. I don’t see much of me in him, but… but maybe… maybe that’s for the best, you know?” he said, a little bit forlorn.
The Smiths were fairly confused. Johnny smacked his forehead, and explained that Tom thought that he was Johnny’s father. Noone seemed to understand why or how this could of happened, but resolved to accept this detail and discuss it later once they could figure out whether or not this man had broken into their house.
“Of course he broke in, you guys! What, could he have just snuck in here with the neon yellow jumpsuit on? The man certainly looks… well, I guess he looks like a robber.” pondered Johnny.
“Where would he have gotten in? We’ve got an alarm system on everything.” said Mr Smith. Just then, Rover Smith, the Smith Family’s golden retreiver, trotted up beside Mr Smith, whimpering for attention. “Wait, I chained you up in that back thirty minutes ago- who let-“ but Mr Smith saw a chain attached to the dog’s collar that led out of the room to further areas of the basement. He decided to follow it, and everyone, including Tom, followed him out of the room.
This chain led to a giant, gaping hole in a wall. Johnny pointed to the wall, and asked Tom if this is where he got in. Tom nodded.
“I need a place to sleep. I don’t like sleeping in forets.” he said, simply.
“Don’t you have a home?” asked Mr Smith.
“No.” he said.”Can I have this one?”
The Smiths didn’t understand.
“Well, you know, I really need a place to sleep, and this place is fine. You guys are keeping me up, so you’re going to have to go. Really.” said Tom. He gathered up all of the Smiths in his colossal arms and ran outside. He jumped into the air and flew into the sky. The Smiths were all screaming and the rackett was driving him crazy.
Tom moved quickly; he stayed low to be able to find his way back, and set the Smith Family outside of town in a field on an abandoned farm. They would find their way back eventually, he thought, but at least he’d get a good night’s sleep.

Tom woke up on the floor of the Smith’s kitchen covered in boxes of food and vomit. The smell stung his nostrils, and he tried to roll over onto his belly to get up. A carpet of plastic wrappers and crumbs stuck to his face and arms as he decided it best not to get up. Tom coughed. He heard footsteps pass by him, and the slurp slurp slurp of the Smith’s dog, Rover. Tom smiled when he remembered feeding Rover the frozen turkey Tom had microwaved with his microwave-jazz hands. Rover liked Tom a lot now.
Tom sat up, folded his legs, and hovered above the mess. He tried to pull his cape out of the filth but he gave up.
Tom floated throughout the house like this- indian-style, if you will- passing through Jane’s room with it’s pop-star posters and bright pink furniture, a bathroom with a bland nautical theme to it (though including an octopus showerhead attachment), and finally coming upon a grandiose master bedroom. He let his feet pitter-patter onto the carpet, dripping with whatever muck his cape had collected, and walked casually up to a bookshelf. He pulled out a volume at random, and read the spine: Friedrich Nietzche’s Thus Spake Zarathusa.
Tom sat on a nearby leather chair and read through the book for the next few hours. He thought the book funny; this ‘ubermensch’ gig wasn’t a theory, he was living proof that it could work! He was nearly through with a second read-through when he heard, through the mesh of sound he had gotten used to hearing from the surrounding area, the voice of a policemen: “This is the house. Yeah- 1453 Edgemont Street, that’s right? Jesus, the lawn is trashed.”
Tom knew this meant no more peace. The house wasn’t his anymore, unless he felt like fending off the police force, and then the army- he had gone through these motions before.
He rushed out of the back door, taking Rover and a bottle of vodka. Then, he thought about Johnny. He figured that since Johnny was his ‘son’ and all it’d be proper to take him on as a sidekick and teach him the ways of the superhuman. He lowered himself to the ground, let Rover run off into the woods, and walked back into the house through the hole he had made last night.
“What to bribe him with? Food would work normally, but this kid seems a little attached… I need something to break him.” mumbled Tom to noone. He pushed past the furniture and into Johnny’s room.
The inside of Johnny’s room was plastered with posters and drawings he had created, along with a few rough drafts of prose tacked to the wall. Every thing that could be painted black was black and everything that couldn’t was as close as it could get. There wasn’t much difference between a lighted Johnny’s room and a lightless Johnny’s room, except for the painting he had been making for his girlfriend. The painting seemed to contain a swirl of images, realistic and dreamlike both; in the center stood Johnny and, according to a cleverly placed subtitle, Alicia. Her image in Johnny’s painting was beyond flattering, a form and figure you could expect from only the most dedicated of admirers. The images of gifts and ideas and idols radiated outward from the two in a fashion one could only describe as embracing. Of course, Johnny had struck through all this and it ruined this affect very much; one could see why exactly he had been so irritated at Tom’s intrusion the previous night.
Tom didn’t really stop to consider this artistic accomplishment, but did keep Alicia’s face tucked away in his super-photographic memory. Tom looked through Johnny’s bookbag, his computer, to finally a notebook entry dated April 5th, 2005:

…and she talked to me today, gave me a phone number and address:

After which was given Alicia’s phone number and address. Tom noted this all also. Tom heard the policeman who had entered the house earlier sneaking up behind him, and whipped out an arm to grab the policeman’s gun. The policeman, whose name was Randall and was not expecting resistance to a loaded gun, looked on in surprise. This was followed shortly thereafter by a gasp of terror as the policeman recalled the yellow and purple costume from the stories the boys at the station had relayed to him. Randall wasn’t sure what to do, and didn’t have much time to think about it before he was disarmed and embraced by Tom.
Randall felt a few of his bones snap as Tom flew through the ceiling, along with the next few consecutive ceilings, with the shocked policeman in his arms.
Tom had expected more police cars in the front of the house; now that the policeman had seen Tom burst out of the husk of the house they would surely call for more.
“J-jesus, man- I thought you were a good guy. Those people’s house is falling down!” yelped Randall as they both looked down on the house, now falling in on itself.
Tom took Randall by the shoulders, and asked, “Do you know streets around here? I need to find someones house. They, ah-“
“No, I will not! I’m an officer of the law of this town, and I’d be betraying my sworn, er- duty if I let you,” began Randall before he was thrown to the ground.
The three other police officers who had arrived in the other cars began to shoot at Tom, and one got in his car to chase Tom as he flew away in a slow, stedy line. Randall stood up and screamed as he tried to support himself on broken legs. The two other officers looked at each other, unsure of what to do. One rushed to Randall, trying to get him to lie down so as to let his bones stay in place, and the other followed. The officer who kneeled next to Randall shook his head and made a phone signal with his pointer finger and pinkie, to which the other officer ran back to one of the parked cars.
“He’s back- that F-FREAK is BACK.”

Tom was busy, meanwhile, trying to find Alicia’s house. He heard the other police car behind him, and allowed the man to follow him a little while, but then grew bored of the siren and laser-eyed the car’s engine. The car exploded, and Tom thought to listen for Johnny’s voice.
He heard it, far away and almost indistinct. With it, he could make out a voice that wasn’t Jane Smith; he presumed Alicia. Tom flew towards the lilting voice, over the trees and electricity pylons, over the rows of identical houses and labrynthine streets, and finally to the only thing he seemed to give a damn about at the moment.
Tom nearly knocked the house down as he burst through the walls sealing off Alicia’s room from the great, overwhelming void of everything. Alicia screamed, but Johnny screamed in a higher pitch. Tom was unsure of what to do at first, because he forgot what he was doing. Alicia and Johnny has presumed immenent death and so made no motion to flee.
When noone moved, Tom still floating in the rubble of the upper floor of Alicia’s house, Johnny and Alicia’s screams fading, Tom asked himself out loud:
“Why did I come here? What was I doing?”
Johnny glared at him, and Alicia whimpered when Tom glanced at her.
“Son? If- if you don’t be my sidekick, then I’m going to take her!” Tom said. He realized immediately afterwards how stupid this sounded, and asked, “Uhm… well, what do you say?”
“I’m not your son, Tom. I’m Johnny Smith. In fact, the only relationship you have with me at all is that we shared an incident last night in which you broke into my house, made me screw up Alicia’s anniversary present,” and at this Johnny Smith cast a loving beam upon her, “and took me and my family out into the middle of nowhere.”
“And, I destroyed your house!” Tom exclaimed.
Johnny said: “Go away, I don’t care what you can do to me, I don’t even know who you are! I don’t want to be a sidekick, you’re not even a hero! You’re just a superman, a useless superman.”
Tom thought about this. It seemed about right. He waved goodbye to Johnny and Alicia (to which the bewildered Alicia gave a half-hearted return smile) and floated away.

Then, his rage came back to him, and Tom rushed back to Johnny, and brought him up, past the roof, past the trees and the electricity wires, past the sunset and the clouds and the blue, into space. He flung Johnny out into space. Johnny’s last thoughts were of Alicia and the infinite black he’d always wanted to feel.
Later, Tom would go to jail for Johnny’s disappearance, which had no conclusive evidence, and for killing several policemen, along with many dollars of destruction charges. Tom couldn’t be put to death- he was give capital punishment but nothing worked. He never spoke after the incidents, never ate his meals but was always in top shape, and could not be forced to do anything in the prison yards.
Tom had no records, no fingerprints, and no reports of criminal activity related to his level of destruction and associated with his name. It was as if he had been spontaneously generated out of nothing.
One day Mr Maleficent, whose name was actually Rupert Browning, approached Tom. He asked him if he could use his powers to get him out of jail. Rupert was asking the question out of delirium, but Tom took it seriously. He let Mr Maleficent go, prying him from iron bars and dropping him off someplace in Prague.

Thus, a hero began to form. A single being and existance which was higher and more righteous than Earth had known before. Tom had many more adventures, and took on the name Fantasmo, but that all took a while and cannot be told in the space alotted.