Chương 73: Mask

The one time I don't follow up with their stupid ideas to socialize. The one fucking time. The TV was broadcasting Hell on Earth. Technofiend was back, holding the entire place hostage. Tancred had stormed down to the common area, watching the broadcast with me.

"Why aren't you trying to contact them?"

"Sick fuck turned their earpieces off."

"And that's it? Just sit and watch? Let it all wash off your fucking back?"

"You kidding? I'm doing a lot more than that. I'm waiting on a callback from SIT."

"Huh?"

"Yeah. Nothing to be done. You're not set to come back. I have to tap in someone from the Patriot Project. I'm asking for Agent Houston." Wasn't sure what to make of that. All I could do was ask.

"Who's he?"

"Oldest member on the project. Think he could kill The Saint over a long enough period of time. Technofiend would be a cakewalk."

"Then why isn't he public?"

"Small hitch with having him do that."

"... What small issue?"

"His powers are all built on draining energy. Depending on how Technofiend works... he might end up draining the best sources of energy nearby. People. Like the others." My neck tensed.

"You'd risk getting them killed?"

"Infinitely regenerating murderbot who's now got an army of self-replicating, scrawnier murderbots. It's a risk we have to take for safety of a lot more than just that fucking arena, kid."

"You can't just-""I can. I will." My gaze snapped back to the TV. A flash of light, before May had been slapped away. My fists clenched to the point of knuckles popping.

"They're already dying out there, Tancred-""Leo. I already looked at the odds. Like everything, it's a fifty-fifty shot. Either they live or don't. I don't keep unlucky recruits." Nauseated, I couldn't even look at him. Couldn't watch them die. So I gave up. Went back to my room. Shivvy was oozing into a forced-open can of clams. Good, he can enjoy the meal without needing me. But next to him, still shining in the glow from the window into the water, was the mask and the letter. I didn't even know who wrote it.

Probably Sam. Was sick of looking at it, so I just ripped it open, just to get an answer on what it was. Once I knew, didn't matter what it said, I could trash it. It was scribbled in pen. Leo, I have opted to write this letter by hand, as opposed to typing it, for a duality of purposes. The first is that it would feel inauthentic if it were simply a printed font.

The latter is because I know my chickenscratch is to the human eye what dentistry equipment is to the human tooth, and I owe you some measure of spite by virtue of your attempts to spook me the other day. I noticed you left your mask behind at the training facility. I took to having it cleaned by a professional I know. She took out some of the nicks and wear from your past few encounters too. Fresh as the day it was made, now. As we handled its cleaning, I considered, for a moment, your position.

As alien as it may sound from me, there is a measure of lament I feel about what I have willingly put you through. I do wish to apologize for that. But I will not apologize for the fact you still need to be able to do it. You will be put through worse. I apologize in advance for that as well. This is necessary. You have the makings of a hero of a caliber that has not existed yet in this era. We have superheroes who can fly and save the day. But you are not a superhero. You are the wild man.

You are the great warrior. You are a wellspring of hate and violence that can be focused at needlepoint towards the greatest of evils. You are the hero that is both lauded and feared. Roland, Beowulf, and, well, Hercules. And we are enemies, you and I. I am your ultimate villain. Similar to how you iterate upon the heroes of old, who fought against evil and in retaliation to the imposing systems and structure of the world, I am its representative. I am the dragon. I am Koschei. I am Count Ganelon.

I am also just a man, and you are just a boy. In my deluded recognition of our roles in what is ultimately a story enforced by the tax-dollar, I have let the illusion supercede the reality. There are things I have done, and said, that you will never know, that will be the most vile things I have done to get you to this point. I will not apologize for them. I am your most evil presence who recognizes their necessity.

But you deserve to understand that, while I am your most maligned opposition, I do believe in your capacity for heroism. I have also been doing a little research into your family, after Eliza had informed me of what happened with your foster parents when you told her during your evaluation all those weeks ago. Why they didn't register you. Why they abandoned you without any life-transition programs. I think you didn't know because your powers don't make you simply not remember things.

I think they make you forget, too. I found it fascinating that I could not find your foster parents initially. That's when I realized — You were not from Richmond, Virginia. We were looking in all the wrong places. There's a little township on the Eastern coast of Virginia, across the bay, called Quinby, Virginia. It has a population of less than three hundred people. It has a post-office and a church and that's about it. That was where your foster home was.

They've since stopped fostering, the rest of the kids had been adopted out and the parents had gotten a bit too old for it. I privately interviewed them, and they revealed some things that I later independently verified. The first one, was that originally you were a very enthusiastic and sweet boy until you were a teenager. Sociable, articulate, and a bit ahead of the curve educationally, which is rare in orphans.

They initially didn't register you because Quinby struggles with getting communications out to the government, which I did verify. People were wary of your powers when you got them as a little kid, but you seemed to just smile through it. It didn't bother you. The second is a bit more important. Virginia, allegedly, in the past fifteen years has only had one kaiju attack, along the Southern coast. It was carried back into the water by The Saint. That turned out to be false. There was a second.

There's a delay on large-creature recognition systems of about five minutes. That happened in 2011. If your math is good, you understand that would be around the time of teenagehood, about 7 years after your powers first turned on. Apparently, this creature, which they described as an alligator whose head alone was the size of the church, started crawling onto the land while you were on a trip to Parramore beach. With tears in their eyes, they described screaming at you to run away as you approached it.

You didn't listen. You walked over and you just reached out to it, and the whole beast burst into blood and viscera of strange colors. This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. In the aftermath, you began bleeding profoundly out of your nose, eyes, and ears, and fainted. You were comatose for approximately six days, tended to by the nearby church as it was operated by a former doctor. When you awoke, your personality had drastically changed.

You were cold, distant, and didn't seem to recognize anyone directly. Initially they were worried you were possessed or something until some basic memories came back. Particularly, people's aversion to you. This practically reset your personality, took some of the wrinkles out of your brain. That, or it opened your mind to the fact you were more of a monster than family to these people.

Your brain temporarily gave up its ability to bond, and its memories, specifically to save people who otherwise feared and maybe even hated you a little. When they shut the door on you, they heard you had taken a bus out of town with what little money they gave you. That, I think, is when Leo Holt was really born. That is who I said had nothing in his mind except burning himself out to warm others up. You were willing to sacrifice so much of yourself for them. That is the making of a hero, Leo.

That is who was hunting the degenerates in Richmond. That is who went wild trying to protect May. Just because someone died does not unmake the hero you are. You may hate me. You may loathe me the rest of your goddamn life. But you don't loathe saving lives. I can't make you put the mask on. I can't make you become a hero any more than you want to. But don't tell me you don't feel that call in you. It's up to you to answer it. There was a hitch in my throat. All those things.

Like he dug his fingers into my fucking ribs and pried out my still-beating heart, just to wave it in my face. Always part of some fucking game with him. Nonsense delusions of grandeur about me. I'm not a hero. The lenses of the mask stared at me. I've never been a hero. All I've done was hurt and be hurt. Never been something any real hero had dealt with. And it was bullshit. I was never at any beach. They didn't take me out anywhere. I would've remembered it if it happened at least once.

All I had were those five memories. Those were the only moments I lived. The only times I was alive. Any other life I lived was between my ears. Fantasies about fighting monsters and saving the day, thinking that would be the start of my life once I was adopted. An adoption that never fucking came. The mask's gaze continued to bore into me.

"Fuck off!" I shouted at it, having heard not a single damn word from it.

"All you've done is make me worse! All you've done is gotten people hurt! Killed! I'm not a hero. You can't make me a fucking hero," I ranted out, my throat tensing up and my tonsils throbbing in my ears. The mask said nothing. Why would it? I was losing it. Thinking fucking rubber and metal could talk. I was arguing with myself. That's all I was doing. The mask was just my best excuse.

"I can't be a hero. Every time I've tried, I've gotten people hurt. Killed." My eyes burned.

"It takes things from me. I can't even feel like a human anymore when I do it. It's not like I felt like a human before, but it's taking every attempt I've tried to become one too. I can't." Its stare lingered.

"I can't."" You can." I can do this." You can be a hero, Leo." I have to do this." You can be Hercules." My heart was like thunder. My mind like lightning. I grabbed the mask. My mask. No matter how hard I squeezed, it wouldn't bend. Wouldn't break. It was stronger than me. It was the stronger me. Forcing it on over my face, I rushed for the rest of my costume. It practically slid on me like a second skin as I got dressed. In the corner of my eye, I could see Shivvy wad up. Staring at me.

He could watch all he wanted. Didn't matter. Storming out of my room, out to the common area, I saw Tancred. He turned to me, his face tensing.

"Take that fucking thing off, I told you already we're having SIT handle i-" WHAM No strength. I could put it all the way down. Felt almost clarifying to do that. I punched him like a man. He stumbled back in a daze as I pushed through the doors. I could hear his rambling in the background, cutting off from a loose "You motherfucker-!" Every staffer in my path steered clear as I stepped right out of the front door, into the rain that clattered upon me with every tear of those in danger.

I knew where the stadium was. Passed it in my patrols. Turning in that direction, I dumped all that strength that used to fill my entire body into just my feet. WOOM It launched me the furthest I had ever been in the sky. My body naturally curled up from the recoil, legs bent in the air. KRAKOOOM Lightning struck at the height of my leap, before I crashed down onto the roof of a building. Not enough of a jump. Harder. WOOOOOM Gave up a little bit of myself for that. Ended up being my hearing.

Just for a split second, just to put even more in. I rocketed through the air, the stadium in clear view. It was right in trajectory, and THOOM My gaze was obscured by all the dirt and dust I had kicked up, further flaring up as spotlights crashed upon me. The crowd was silent. Even Technofiend said nothing. But I knew what he wanted. He wanted me. He wanted payback. Well," Here I am." 6: 00 Technofiend stared at me for a few seconds. I expected some kind of banter, but his face... contorted. Some kind of rage.

Thrusting a clawed finger out, without a word, a swarm of those imp-like things flew towards me, piling all over me. I didn't move. I let them cover me. Their claws attempted to stab and slash at me, their fists smack and bash me. But I just put my strength into hardening my body. They couldn't find purchase. They'd have better luck bleeding a stone. 5: 21 After letting them vent their frustrations, I used that same strength in a split second.

Couldn't taste the iron in my mouth from biting my own tongue so hard for that moment. BOOM Loose bolts and wires and scrap metal sent clattering everywhere as I simply spanned my arms out. Finally, Technofiend spoke." WELL, PERHAPS YOU'VE BEEN UPGRADED AS WELL. BUT NOWHERE NEAR AS FAR AS ME." He was right. May couldn't burn him. When Jairo ripped him in half, he just pieced back together. There was no material limit on him. There had to be some point in him that mattered. Some kind of anchor.

If his mind was elsewhere, that anchor was how he controlled the body. Had to find and tear it out. 5: 19 He was in my face. Bastard was as fast as Jairo. But when his fist clashed with my face, I could tell he was as strong as me too. Full strength on and my bell was still ringing. Felt like when I was shot. But I kept on my feet, and took stance.

"Left!" Christian's voice. At the same time, a metal arm swung from my left side, which I swung at and tore it off. It was already reforming. Going for a follow-up strike, he actually weaved out of the way. Why did he dodge? He could heal- I was close to it. The anchor.

"Right!" As Technofiend's right arm came swinging in, I tore that one in half as well. A third arm lunged out from his chest, grabbing at my neck. VWOM Bright bluish-white light tore that one in half instead.

"His chest! Upper right shoulder! Your left! I can see it! X-ray!" May's voice. 4: 59 Now I had a target. Swinging again, he kept weaving out of the way. It felt like I was trying to tag Christian all over. Then, suddenly, he backed to a stopping point. Jairo, back in his monstrous form, hugging his legs." HERC! NOW!" Jairo's voice roaring out, lighting that fire back in me again. I don't know why I did it, maybe it was Casney's training. But I could've punched. I didn't.

With the power I wanted to put in, a punch would've taken the entire arena out. I bent my leg, swinging it up. My shin dug into his lower left hip, arcing up towards Technofiend, and- WOOOOOOM My shin cut clean through Technofiend's body. Right through the shoulder. And not just the shoulder. Behind him, I could see it. The clouds, split in half, from the force of my kick. And at that same moment... PFEEEEEEEEEEW PAH Fireworks. Brilliant, beautiful lights, welcoming me. I was finally at home.