Title: Hero’s Legacy

Rating: T (or PG-13, whichever you prefer)

Summary: We’ve all seen stories about Superheroes. Now, from Aquarius Studios, comes its take on the crazy world of these people. We are proud to present Hero’s Legacy; the story of a dark hero and all his problems. Enjoy.

Warning: My Superheroes are not (always) spandex-wearing polite idiots. I prefer the realistic kind, who get to laugh at the other kind. So be prepared for some mild cursing from various characters and things like that. High School style, you know?

Note: THIS IS NOW VERSION 2 OF THE STORY. CHAPTERS ONE THROUGH ELEVEN HAVE BEEN EDITED SLIGHTLY FOR IMPROVED QUALITY.

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First

I was tied up. No, not in some diabolical villain’s secret underwater laboratory, though I had a bet going with my computer’s A.I. that such an event would happen in less then two months. Instead, I was tied up with the true enemy of all teenagers: Homework. I’d have preferred the villain.

“Boy, you’d better pass that test!” my father roared from downstairs. I didn’t reply, but merely groaned. Okay, sure, I was smart. Smart enough to not let people know I was smart. But the problem was that my school, nice as it was, gave out a lot of homework. I literally had a three-foot-high pile of books I needed to read before Friday. And they were all written in small print.

Who am I, and where the heck did I get my powers? And what exactly are they, you ask? Sure, I’ll answer that.

My name is James. I’d like to keep my last name a secret, for the obvious reasons. I’m pretty sure I’m fifteen, and I’m a Sophomore at Jura Academy, a private instructional institute in my area. Nice place. Most of the time, I’ve got dark brown hair, hazel eyes, and a face my mother says is handsome. I don’t trust her. My girlfriend says I’m handsome enough for her, though, so I suppose I look decent enough. I wear casual, black clothing. Not Gothic stuff, though, just black stuff. My skin’s abnormally pale from sitting in front of my computer so much.

My powers? Well, I don’t know their full extent yet, to be honest. But I know that I can transform into either an angel or a demon form, both of which I’ll describe later. In Demon Form, I can use dark magic at a very advanced level, and my physical skills are heightened to incredibly high levels. And in Angel Form, I actually don’t know what I can do yet. I haven’t had time to experiment, see? In both forms, though, I can use a special blade, which appears at will. Nice, quality, incredibly sharp blades.

Yes, yes, I know, how’d I get these sweet powers? Well, to be brutally honest, I have no idea. Some petty thief cornered me in an alley one day, to kill me and take my money (all five bucks of it). I fought back, I transformed, I won, and I got the heck out of there so I could change back. Preferably with nobody knowing what had happened.

Now, like I said, I’m pretty smart. I very quickly calmed down and determined that I had some type of Superpower. Hence, to my parents sudden shock, an immediate and fanatical interest in the exploits of every major hero on the planet. I paid special attention to what they said to ‘kids who have powers but don’t want others to know’, as Ryuna would say.

Ryuna being one of the world’s foremost and coolest heroes. It should be noted that he has never worn spandex; he has robes that actually look good.

The advice, of course, was to make absolutely sure that you didn’t use your powers around other people. And if you transformed, you shouldn’t do it in a public place. Like a Phone Booth.

Naturally, I listened to this, and very quickly figured out how to control my abilities. I took trips up to some deserted mountains every other week to practice controlling them, of course. It wasn’t like I was dumb enough to do it in my parents’ house. So as far as they were concerned, I was an average boy who likes Heroes and Hiking.

Hah. Suckers! Like most parents, they were relatively easy to fool.

Anyways, that’s the back story, severely shortened. Now we can get back to the main part of my story’s beginning, which is when I finally met another Superhero face-to-face. Gotta admit, wasn’t what I was expecting.

“JAMES!” my mother called, pounding on the door. Grumbling under my breath, I moved over and opened it. “Come on! You like Heroes, right? There’s one on TV right now! Live! It’s a fight!” I bolted downstairs, taking the steps three at a time, and stared at our television. Right there was a female superhero, pretty young (around my age, I noted, with great interest) taking on about five hundred black-suited idiots. But I recognized where they were. It wasn’t far from my house at all, actually.

“I’m gonna go see it in person!” I yelled, running out the door before my parents could stop me. Once I’d gotten to a safely deserted area, I took a deep breath and held up my hands. Hearing something, however, I stopped and threw myself into the shadows. A car drove by. Trying to calm down, I stood up again and put my hands together, and concentrated. Immediately, I felt my body change into a much stronger form. Nobody would ever know it was me, probably because my skin was now black.

Not black as in black people’s earthy, brown-ish skin. Black as in BLACK, the complete absence of all other colors. As in the only way it could be darker was if it was Dark Black. And my hair was white. Pure white, like snow. And it reached down to my waist. My eyes, I knew, were bright red, my teeth and ears pointed, and my clothes pretty much a more advanced version of what I normally wore.

“All right.” I said, grinning. “Time to get down to business.” With that, I took off running, enjoying the speed of my Demon Form. It didn’t take me very long at all to reach the scene of the fight. By now, the chick heroine was starting to get worn out. Shrugging, I charged right in, breezing straight through the underling-type enemies.

“Who are you?” the girl snapped, looking very cautious. I couldn’t exactly blame her; I looked evil. Of course, at that moment, I was paying very close attention to her appearance. She had long, bronze hair, a very cute body (I have a girlfriend, but I can look, can’t I?), and she wasn’t wearing a spandex bodysuit. That was a good sign. “Are you the leader of this group of weaklings?”

“Uh, no.” I said, laughing. “Actually, believe it or not, I’m not evil. I’m of the transforming type, you know? Not exactly my fault I look demonic.” she still looked guardedly at me. Sighing, I slammed a fist into the enemy who was charging at me without even bothering to look at him. “And if I was evil, would I just be standing here talking to you?”

“Yes.” She pointed out. I sighed.

“Man, this isn’t going well at all.” I said. A fist slammed into the back of my head. “Hold that thought. I’ll be right back.”

What happened next would have been described as a massacre, but I didn’t actually kill anybody. The International Superhero Code of Conduct forbid unreasonable force, and I was kind of bound by those rules, when I actually bothered to listen. The two of us quickly mopped up the thugs (hey, they were normal people, so it wasn’t hard) and moved out of the way of the cameras.

Immediately, the girl grabbed me and slammed me into a wall.

“I still have absolutely no proof you’re not evil.” She said, narrowing her eyes. “I wouldn’t put it past a single one of you villains to sacrifice a group of men just to try and look good.”

I stared at her and sighed. This really wasn’t how my first time meeting another Superhero should have been going. We should have hit it off immediately and gone to a restaurant or secret underground base to chat. Or something like that, anyways. Getting slammed into a wall and called evil wasn’t my idea of a friendly greeting.

Unless said greeting was to a villain, which the girl still presumed I was. I ran through the options in my mind, and finally grinned.

“But you haven’t done anything outright evil yet, so I’m not allowed to hurt you.” The girl added, letting go of me as she turned to move off.

“Oy! What’s your name?” I asked, wondering if this would count my girlfriend would get mad if she ever found out about this. I doubted it; it wasn’t like I was asking this girl out on a date or anything. Or asking for her number.

“Don’t have one!” she replied as she ran off. “You?” she called over her shoulder.

“The same! Can’t come up with anything that’s not lame!”

I heard her laugh as she moved off. Then I realized she was laughing for two reasons. One, I was in the same boat as her. Two, there were a dozen TV cameras pointed at me.

“Oh crap.”

The next morning, I woke up very late. It was a good thing it was Saturday. Groaning, I stumbled downstairs, got the newspaper, and looked at it.

“DARK HERO OR DARK VILLAIN?” I asked, reading the headlines as I stared at a giant picture of my Demon Form face. “Ooh… I knew this was going to happen.” So now my face would immediately be published on every Hero site online in the world, and my portrait given to every Hero in case they met up with me.

The newspapers reporters weren’t convinced that I was good. I certainly didn’t look it, after all. At least, not as a Demon. Sighing, I took the Newspaper upstairs, booted up my computer, and looked at the A.I. a friend of mine had gotten me.

“Oy, Eddie. If I do Angel Form next for saving people, think the papers’ll get confused?” I asked. The screen brightened for a moment, and laughter came out of my speakers. Quietly, of course.

“Absolutely, retard.” Eddie replied.

“Hey!”

“Well, you are!” my computer bleeped at me. “You chose Demon Form for your first crime fighting spectacle? You look like the most evil being on the planet that way! So if you go out and never use that form, just the Angel Form, people will think you’re somebody else and eventually forget about your Dark Side.”

I glared at my screen, but thought for a moment. People would think I was different from the mysterious, unnamed demon, and my computer agreed on that… I slowly grinned.

“Perfect.” I said. “I can talk to her in Angel Form, and she’s sure to like me a lot better that way.”

“You already have a girlfriend, stupid.”

“You’re the stupid one!” I hissed back. “I’m not trying to date her or anything, I just want to find out more about her! We’re both teenage superheroes, after all!” my computer let out a sigh, and I glared at it. “Stupid thing. If you were in my shoes, I’m sure you’d want to become friends with other superpowered teenagers.”

My computer blew a raspberry at me.

“Well, I’m not in your shoes, doofus. Anything I want to know I can just look up online.” I glared at my screen again, wondering why I had programmed in such a bizarre personality. Maybe it was to help keep me sane.

“Looking up information online is cool and stuff, but there’s no substitute for truly meeting others in person.” I explained to my computer. “Now help me find some more information on her.”

I had to put up with my computer laughing at me for the next ten minutes as I ran searches online to find out more about the girl hero before I met her again. It was always best to be prepared, right?

But, of course, things are never that easy. Ever. Which is why, after three hours of sitting in front of my computer, listening to its snide comments, I had a grand total of no information whatsoever on her. Which told me one thing; she was just starting out, like I was. Sighing, I shut down my computer, stretched, and flopped onto my bed.

Immediately, my door was thrown open.

“James!” my girlfriend squealed. I nearly fainted in shock; she never squealed. That was SO unlike her, it wasn’t even funny.

“Who are you?” I asked, reaching for a random blunt object. “My girlfriend doesn’t squeal!”

She hit me on the head.

“Oh, can it. You know its me.” She said, sticking her tongue out. “Were you watching that fight yesterday?” I nodded. “Of course you were, you wouldn’t miss something like that.” She spotted my newspaper. “Ah-hah!” the girl said, pouncing on it as she held up the large picture of me in Demon Form. I tried not to cringe. “Whaddaya think of this guy?”

“Well, he looks evil.” I said, wondering if I could at least convince her that I wasn’t some demonic overlord. “But from his actions, he’s probably actually a good guy, who’s just being misunderstood.” She stared at me for a few moments, before sitting down next to me and peering at the picture very closely.

I had no idea if that was a good thing or not.

“Hmm…” she said.

“Uh, Arianna?”

“Yeah?” she asked, turning to look at me.

“What do YOU think about this guy?”

“Well, I don’t trust him.” she said, sighing. “But he did help fight off those grunts, so I guess it’s only fair to not judge him by his looks. If I were that heroine girl, I guess I’d give him another chance.”

At three that afternoon, to my extreme luck, I encountered the heroine again. Or, to be honest, I saw her using what looked to be telekinesis against some sort of upper-level villain. So, naturally, I slipped off, turned into my DEMON form (not my Angel one, as planned), and quietly moved into the battlefield.

“Two on one?” the girl spat out. “That’s kind of sad, don’cha think?”

I glared at her. “Hey, I’m on your side, even if you refuse to believe it.” I said. My distraction cost me, because the villain (who, by the way, was a stereotypical human-turned-into-giant-gorilla-by-radioactive-chimpanzee) slammed his fist into the back of my head and sent me straight into a wall.

I’m tempted to say I just shook it off and beat the crap out of him, but that would be a lie. It HURT getting hit like that, and I was stunned for about two minutes, effectively ruining my planned heroic entrance.

Figures.

“Hey, monkey man!” the girl called. I managed to raise my head enough to watch her pound him into the ground and keep him that way. When another three minutes passed and he didn’t get up (but I did), normal people slowly moved out onto the street again, thanking the girl. She smiled as she looked at the crowd.

And then, wouldn’t you know it, the monkey got up, crept up on her, and raised a fist.

“DUCK!” I roared. The girl did so, nimbly avoiding the monkey’s attack. I sprang forward and kicked the monkey/gorilla-guy/whatever in the back of the head and sent him slamming into the ground. This time he was definitely out.

There was an awkward silence.

“Uh… Okay, fine.” The girl said. “I’ll believe you’re a good guy. You just saved me from getting into a world of pain.”

I grinned. That was better.

“All right! Now that we’re straight on that, should we leave before the police get here or stick around and get interviewed again?”

“I’ll leave.” The girl said as she began moving off. “See ya, demon boy!” suddenly, however, she paused and looked back over her shoulder at me. “I finally picked a name! It’s Myria!” with that, she bounded off.

I grinned and quickly hurried away from the crowds. So now I had a super-powered friend (or at least acquaintance), had helped take down an abnormally strong being (Super Gorilla zip, Myria and me one!), and had firmly established myself as a good guy.

Not bad for a first (second?) adventure. Shame the next one didn’t turn out so well.

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Author’s Corner:

Whee! First chapter done! Anyways, I hope that this intro part of Hero’s Legacy was enough to make you interested in reading more. My goal is to create a world where the heroes are actually believable. Unlike certain spandex-wearing, ridiculously noble, invincible musclemen of a certain company. Shifty eyes

The reason the main character lacks a superhero name is because I haven’t come up with one that isn’t lame yet. I won’t ASK you to send in suggestions, but if you do that, it’s not like I’ll ignore it. You can if you want to; I might just listen. But if you actually want to do something like that, don’t make it lame.

Reviews, please?

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