Max. 

What a beautiful ranch. 

Gideon's old family property has shattered windows, spray-painted obscenities on the walls and an inch of water in the soupy, vinyl floors. But there's a skeleton of what was once beautiful; big arches for doorways, the jewel-less, sad arms of a full chandelier in what has to be a dining room. Under it,  a long mahogany table stretched out and etched with drawings of saints, angels, and devils.

My hands are full. Of alcohol. Now, I won't say I robbed a store. I won't tell you that I strolled in, punched a hole in the cash register, watched the lady's mouth fall open, and asked her if I could help myself to her merchandise. And if I did say I did that, I'd mention that she nodded, and so as far as I'm concerned, it's not robbery, gentle reader. Or, well, maybe it is. But this is how superheroes lie, so let me lie like them.

Now, I did buy the three or so strobe lights. With my own money. So that's a point for me. While I unload my cases, I think about his pretty ranch. 

There were so many houses I'd use for my nefarious purposes. I live in a country filled with millions of empty houses. Taken away by banks to sit with no one in them, or shifting, dangerous houses the city has forgotten to demolish. But this ranch has a soul. Like I can hear the laughter of the family inside it, can see Gideon's shadow flickering like the wings of a happy bird. Hear the family's melodic prays and the pouring of warm liquid into icy glasses.

And then the first couple of kids shamble into the old home. I flick on the moody lights, toss them a lager, take a swig of something that I know I won't be able to stomach. My buddies can drink, watch the world spin and spin, laugh and climb rooves and vomit. I can't. 

 Percy would say something about moderation and I would see my dad, quietly drinking in the middle of the night. Would see him scribbling in his notebook, his eyes watery and shifty. Something scary, something dangerous. And I see that while I take a too-long swig of rum. See him while I choke on it and it burns down my throat. 

"Supers," I say, as more people trickle in. I kind of didn't have a plan? I just figured, you supply alcohol and a place for people to destroy, that they would have to like you. Kind of like you feed a pet in a video game and they follow you around the whole time. I guess that's what I thought would happen. "They're kind of authoritarian figures, aren't they?"

Someone in a cut-off vest turns to me and gives me something between a glare and a considering glance. More and more people crowd in, lobbing together in what's becoming a crushing horde, and I remember that I don't have a speech. My heart is pounding. I take another swig of rum. 

And then someone screams. 

Kids are gathering, circling something. And I can't tell what. "Excuse me, excuse me!" I push and prod, duck under arms and press against ribs.

There's this dude, his hair's white; his eyebrows, slight scruff, it's all white. He's half-collapsed on the ground. Legs stretched out on the ground, waist sticking straight up. There are two things sticking up from his head, white, fleshy mounds. His eyes are blue. And I don't mean like blue eyes, normal, handsome blue eyes. I mean there are no whites. Just blue with black slits in the middle. Some kind of inhuman sound wells up out of his throat.  His big friend grabs his shoulder. "Gats? Gats buddy?"

I'm still holding the rum bottle by the neck. "What a fucking freak." I can't help it. Or maybe I can and I choose not to. It's all starting to swim. The room, the people, the guy, who probably fell into a big bubbly vat of some super-inducing-toxic-waste-thing. And I'm starting to like saying what I want to say, not worrying about what it means and if I'm being an asshole. The guy looks at me and his inhuman eyes narrow. He tries to say something and it comes out this mangled, high-pitched sound. 

His friend yanks him to his feet. "Let's go." That friend must be over six feet tall. He's muscled, and his long black hair is in a neat ponytail. There's a heavy, flat lump stretched across his back, and one of his eyes is...purple. Flickering. Like a light's coming out of it. 

Another super.

"And you think you're any better?" I take another swig. "You're gonna kill someone. Look at you. I bet you're a supervillain."

He narrows his eyes at me. "I don't want to get into a fight with you. Leave us alone."

The world is moving at half speed around us, like I stepped into a videotape on slow motion.  Nothing feels like it matters. And it feels good, to be faced with proof of this questionable thing I've been preaching. Viscerally freaks. 

"I can fix you. I can take your powers from you, so you won't scare everyone around you and you won't do something terrible." The big guy tenses and his little friend's scary eyes go wide. "Cause that's inevitable, isn't it?"

"I'm fine, I don't need fixing. Gatsby doesn't need fixing. Fudge off." His voice is getting growly, one of his knees dips and his foot shifts toward me. He's switched into a fighting position that comes to him effortlessly. I decide that's enough proof he's already a supervillain, and I decide it's okay to hate him. 

"What are you going to do, hit me?" And I don't know what possesses me to yell at him, whether it's the proud display of his superpowers or if it's my need to hurt someone who isn't soft and shatterable. "What are you going to do, you super? Use your powers like you know you're going to? You're gonna be a villain. You're gonna hurt people." And I grab him by the collar of his white tee-shirt, yank him down to my eye-level. He wheels backward, squeezing his friend's shoulder. The rage is alight in his furrowed brow and curled lip. His friend yelps and the kids are starting to press in, the mood lights start to hurt my brain, like they're burning, melting it. "You're gonna hurt me aren't you, super?"

"Don't make me." His angry electric eye settles on mine. His chest is heaving, but he doesn't touch my hand. Doesn't even look at it. He just looks at me, this freak, and it's too much. It could be the alcohol, but when I look at him, I feel like I'm looking into an invisible mirror. I see myself in the calm, abominable, almost handsome face. See the superness reflected back at me, like I can see who I could become. Who I might be underneath. 

"Fucking do it, then!" And I'm digging my hands in so deep into his collarbone that blood wells up to my fingertips. And he won't fight me. He just glares at me, black and purple eyes blazing. 

Someone shouts. Everything is moving slowly, so I see the flicker of the movement out of the corner of my eye, enough to register that it has a color, and that the color is purple. And I have enough time to realize that I've done this to myself when her fist connects with my jaw, so fast that I feel a thousand cracks split my face, feel my body go limp as I bowl over a bunch of people, feel my hand let go of the rum bottle and I hear it shatter.

I hit the ground hard, and I can't feel my face anymore. Like my eyes are just sitting there in empty space. I feel her weight on my body, feel her armor pressing into my chest, feel her foot on mine. I see her lifted fist over my head. I spit up blood and laugh.

"Can't take any criticism? Beat up anyone you don't agree with?"

Sirens wail in the distance. She looks up, breathes angrily against her visor. "Go home," she says to the crowd. "Go home or you're under arrest."

"Boo!" It's not something I expected from the crowd. But my brain is swimming, swimming, I hear the boss say PR, PR, PR. How bad it must look, this super beating up this kid. I curl up under her, let out the most painful whimper I can, and start shouting.

"Let go of me! You can't do this! I have rights! Please! I don't have any powers! He scared me! You supers can do anything to us! It hurts."  

She doesn't catch on. She's growling at me. "How dare you! Don't you ever lay a hand on my friends ever again! Don't you ever mess with supers! What you're doing is dangerous! What about that do you not understand? You're about to hurt so many people!"

I lean up to her, I whisper against the cool metal mask. "When I'm done with this city, none of you will be left at all."

She slams her fist into my stomach. I can tell she's holding back. Can tell she's trying, really trying, not to tear my organs apart, can feel it in the slackness of her fingers and the slight tremble of her bony knuckles against my flesh. Still, the pain rings through me like a gunshot. Like someone shoved my innards all the way up into my chest. I howl, shaking.  The world is spinning. Hands grab her wrists.  Kids shout obscenities, toss bottles at her armor. Bits of glass clatter off her helmet and land harmlessly on the sludgy floor. The sirens wail louder, now.

"She just hit him, this powerless kid, over and over, because he didn't like supers!"

"...There's no freedom..."

"She's a tyrant!"

"No, no!" she ways, shaking off the hands, the glass. Her eyes are wild behind her mask. She's never been hated like this before, mobbed be people willing, suddenly very willing to put her head on a stake. Someone grabs Gatsby, the freak-kid, yanks him down into the mob, and Galaxy rips herself off me. Drags the freak out of the crowd, grabs her other friend, the lumpy mass on his back snaps out. Wings. Black, burnt feathers. Beautiful. And I bite my lip, hating myself for seeing beauty in what must be horrific. 

I duck into the crowd. Galaxy grabs her super friends and flies off in a huff, leaving me to stumble through them, grip the broken, mahogany table, and drag my bleeding, broken body up on to it. I'm back again to that place of being angry and scared and bleeding, I feel like a king, presiding over a court of powerful, angry soldiers. My blue and pink lights cast the kids as ethereal, brightly colored beings in a bleak, gray world. And they're mine.

"We need to get rid of superheroes," I say. I'm slurring. My tongue is so big in my mouth. "We need to get rid of powers."

And as if it were all a dream, the crowd murmurs, but they're not booing me. Not hating me, trying to tear me off my stolen pedestal. Someone says something, something about danger, something about some kind of prejudice or something. That person gets kicked. Blood dribbles down my face, and the sirens become louder. But the kids are agreeing. No more powers. No more heroes. 

My father would be so proud, and I think about that, the big grin on his face he'd have. The big old hug he'd squeeze me into. And I try not to think about the calm eyes of the super I was hurting reflecting back at me. I try not to think about how angry and yet how controlled he was. I try not to think about him, or the thing with powers shaking inside me. 

It was all theoretical before. And now it was becoming very, very real. 

***

Three boys watch from outside a window. Chip grips the sill, bits of stucco digging into his trembling, aching hands. Kai squeaks. Finn's mouth falls open and hangs there, his short gaspy breaths lingering in the warm air.  

"We need to stop him," Finn says. He blinks over and over as if waking up from a long nap. "Lord have mercy, we need to stop him."

And the three boys look on, listening to the slow, slurred speech, all three of them hoping they're stuck in a nightmare. They each hope they'll wake up back at home. And while Kai and Finn imagine the villain locked up somewhere deep and dark where he can never escape, Chip wishes he was just Max again. Happy, smiley Max.

"We'll get him," says Chip, even though Max looks like a force of nature, standing there. Like a king, like something more powerful put him there to elegantly and bloodily rule. Something evil. The knife is heavy, the rope hums against his hip. "We have to."

But it feels like he's not fighting a man anymore, but fighting something much bigger than all of them.