Personal Diary: Feb 15, 2017 - Introduction

My name is John, and I am immortal.

I’m also a superhero, but that’s sort of a superficial to the whole ‘immortality’ thing. See, I can’t be killed. At least, not for long. Don’t get me wrong, I still feel pain and all but I just don’t stay dead. There’s no magic regeneration, no special effects... My body dissolves and I appear somewhere else where nobody is looking.

I do other stuff too. I don’t age. Well, I used to but I stopped when I hit eighteen. That was... Some time ago. And I don’t get sick. Cold, flu, chicken pox, acne, malaria... Nothing works. I don’t have any finger prints, although theoretically I can be identified by dental records or tongue print... I hope nobody has tried that last one. But apart from these abnormalities I have some powers:

1. I’m slightly faster than I should be, and have a much smaller reaction time than most people. But I still move at what is only really peak human speed; so don’t expect me to dodge any bullets.

2. My senses are sharper than a normal person. I can hear things from further away, see better, pick up scents almost like a dog. I need to actively focus on this though, so I don’t get sensory overload like in some B-Movie about a werewolf.

3. I’m strong. I mean, I have decent muscle mass but it’s almost like I’m a human ant. I can do serious damage to people if I hit them, like any good boxer, but I can’t smash through brick walls or anything. Wood, no problem. Doors, down they go. Unless they’re reinforced.

4. I have an odd weight problem. Unique, in fact. When I need to be, I’m almost feather light so I jump a lot higher than I should. If I brace, I might as well weigh a few tons for all the good it’ll do you trying to budge me. No idea how this works, to be honest.

5. I’m tough. Real tough. My skin is resistant to damage, harder to burn or scrape or cut. Blunt trauma is still a real pain, though. And bullets mess me up like any guy. More so, perhaps, since they’re unlikely to pass right through so I have to pull out the metal. Unless I die.

6. I’m smart. I can remember lots of things, little facts, and work out difficult puzzles very fast. I’ve always been like that. I don’t know why, it just happens. I see something and it’s almost as if the answer floats in front of my eyes.

7. Last, but not least... That’s pretty much it. No flying, no lightning from my fingers, no wall walking. I can’t move stuff with my mind or teleport. I’m just strong, smart and tough. Oh, and immortal.

And I have to help people. It’s a biological need. Nevermind want, if I’m not out there helping someone or saving someone I start to get all weak-kneed and queasy. It takes a couple of days to kick in, though. So that’s why I’m a hero. It’s all pretty normal, though. Where I come from heroes are an everyday thing, as are supervillains. Seems like there’s a guy with a plot to destroy the planet once a month. Cities or countries are a weekly thing.

This is where I come in, see? There’s this regulating agency for heroes, the government figured we might as well be registered. We sign up and get paid for taking out criminals. Damages attributed to us are taken off our reward money. Of course, there are always those who try and play the system from both sides, setting up to profit from crimes then thwart them. I like those guys. They pay triple.

Not that I need the money, really. I just get food, weapons and some entertainment stuff. I live alone in a crappy apartment with a reputed day job as a software engineer. I come, I go, and nobody cares. I get a secret identity, for all the good it does me.

See, I don’t have a recognizable face. Brown hair, brown eyes, average sized nose, ears and brow... If I was put in a line-up of brunettes you wouldn’t know me from any of ‘em. So they remember the costume, such as it is. It is... Odd. I don’t know how I came up with it. Basically: I style my hair down so I’m less recognizable and slap on a pair of sunglasses. Next, a sleeveless shirt and these two arm-thingies. Both are white, except the sort-of sleeves have a black line at the bottom. I’ll try and take a photo. After all, I want people to recognize me. I wrap bandages over my hands so I don’t accidentally lacerate myself if I have to smash some glass. And it looks cool. Same for the ones around my mouth, although that’s also so people can’t read my lips. Next: white long pants and sandals. It is terrible getting the blood off all these. I have a black holster on my right thigh, it holds a gun and a few magazines (Larger than it looks), and finally a long black scarf that billows dramatically in lieu of a cape.

Weaponry: I have a gun, and use it proficiently. A Beretta PX4 with 9mm rounds. Nothing fancy, just your good old Type C. Bonus points if you know what that means. Yes, I do shoot to kill. Always have, always will. But most of the time I prefer not to shoot at all. I have two knife holsters built into the back of my boots, and two butterfly-knives in them, so I don’t stab my own feet. Another two are embedded in the soles, just in case. I have no martial arts training whatsoever; I’m just fast and strong. It works for me. If I draw my gun, you know that something has gone wrong.

That’s how this whole mess starts. Me drawing my gun. Same old day... Sitting on a rooftop with an earpiece, listening to the police scanner. Well, sort of. See, police are a touch more efficient here. The actual police frequency is top secret, but they have another one just for heroes. We listen in to it, looking for work. Better than want ads, and I swear half my ‘colleagues’ are illiterate. Anyway, I was responding on a bank robbery. Normally the cops would handle it, but there were hostages. Normally that would put it in the realm of some sort of Armed Defenders team, SWAT or some such... But there was another complication. A supervillain.

This was what I like to call a techno-villain: Some small time crook gets lucky and goes on a spending spree. Some of ‘em get even more lucky, and even break into the big leagues. This was one such guy. He had some sort of exo-frame, boosting strength and speed. I suspected electronic implants. The team were a touch nervous before I landed, but just having a hero made them feel better. I’d be working with them on this, not instead of them. I’m one of the few heroes who does that.

Anyway, this villain. They’d got a good heat scan on him, and the results weren’t good. Energy cells on his back, but shielded and feeding two nozzles above his hands. I guessed energy weapon or flamethrower. We knew he was strong from security footage, and that he had an automatic ballistics shield. Half the time I wonder why the team never gets this stuff. Then I remember that, A) It’s probably a few hundred thousand per unit and B) That’s why they have us. I do rather like my job.

The other guys were just goons in ski masks, eleven of them. They had good old fashioned AKs and Uzis, both very capable of hurting me. My skin could maybe – maybe – stop a slug from a pellet gun, or air rifle. Those guns? I’d have to try very hard not to get hit. My dry cleaning bills are large enough already. I elected to take a temp radio and head in via the vents. The classic way, of course. The team would wait for my mark and keep me posted. Routine. I just had to distract the guards and take out the villain, they’d do the rest. Easier said than done.

As I said, I can’t dodge bullets. I can dodge people, though, since they don’t always aim too fast or too accurately. So here I am, crawling through the vents, when I hear a voice. “The Boss says they ain’t gonna move. He says to scrag a hostage to show ‘em we mean business.” I nearly swore, and flicked my radio on. “Mark, mark, they plan to kill a hostage. All teams move.” Just as the guy said, “Hey, you hear something?” I smashed out of the vent in accordance with all dramatic conventions ever made. Everything became slow, like we were wading through jelly. I’d removed my pistol before breaking through.

I had placed my back to the vents entrance, grasped my pistol with both hands and kicked off, hard. So, as I hit the ground in a painful manner, I twisted the gun sideways and snapped my fingers down. The first mook jerked back as the second raised his weapon treacle slow. The recoil carried my barrel to the next target, a trick I’d figured out for these situations. Another snap and my legs kicked off the ground. I was upright by the time the second man had hit the ground. Undoubtedly I’d been heard, no silencer on this gun. So I had to move fast. I heard rapid, but brief, gunfire break out towards the front. Glancing around, I noted I was in a corridor. The team reported the four in the front dead, and hostages evacuating under riot shields. That made six down, five left. A voice in my ear announced six unidentified heat signatures further in to the bank, the remaining men and their boss. From what the technician could tell they were taking up defensive positions. Time returned to its normal pace and I busied myself examining the men’s bodies. No ID, but the Uzis used the same ammunition as my Beretta, I reloaded and waited.

The team came through shortly, seeing me leaning against a door with two dead guys to the side of me. My gun was pointing at them, and to their credit they actually began to raise their weapons before I lowered mine. “Sorry.” I said. That was it. “We have one villain, five mooks in the vault room. His capabilities are unknown. From security footage we can assume the remaining mooks all have AKs. I need smoke, stun and flashbang grenades.” I got all three, after all I was the hero. And I had no utility belt or Bruce Wayne style research laboratory. I hook the pins around three of my fingers. “Here’s the deal: I’m the most resistant to gunfire so I’m gonna take a riot shield, go up to the door very quietly, pull out the pins, count to two and toss ‘em in. Then, once I’ve hit the floor, you lot fire over me and through the door to a count of three. Then I go in. Alright?”

There was general agreement. After all... I was the hero. Perhaps not the best, but possibly one of the nicest. Cops liked me because I didn’t waltz in all bulletproof and save the day. I worked with them, I helped them and we saved lives together. I was relatively small-time too, no airs and graces. To put it in perspective, two of the missions I passed up on to come do this were: Giant robot wrecking bridge and tidal bomb threatening to wipe out city with tsunami. Yeah, and I chose the bank robbery. Yay me.

The plan went off without a hitch, exactly as described. Grenades went it, boom, people died, I smashed through. Then it got... Worse. There was one man left alive. No problem, snap goes finger and one dead man. But through the smoke I couldn’t see the villain. If it weren’t for my sharp ears, I would have died then. Not that it would have been much of an inconvenience except... It can take me days or even weeks to return and I can appear miles away. I also turn out naked. So... yeah. Tough to explain. As it was I heard a click in the smoke and dived sideways as a stream of plasma sprayed past my head. I tucked and rolled sideways, coming up with one hand patting out the fire in my hair and the other firing my gun into the smoke.

It made perfect sense, in hindsight. Those tanks on his back, little electric arms on the sides, the hoses... I just assumed that it was an energy weapon. But plasma... Grab some rocks, heat ‘em up and you have fuel. He couldn’t really run out of ammunition. At this point it occurred to me that he was impervious to bullets and I dived the other way as another stream of incandescence seared a stone wall. Stupid, stupid, stupid! I prepared to dive again and muttered into the small microphone by my mouth, “Do not engage. Plasma weaponry. Pop more smoke inside, cut power.” Then leapt aside to dodge the next stream. So... He couldn’t detect me except by noise. And could only fire short bursts, probably so the nozzles didn’t melt. That made sense, since the tanks would be made from something built to siphon off the heat but the tubing needed to be flexible.

Where did that excess heat go? Then I got it, like a flash. The shield. It was pure heat, radiated at any bullet that the computer detected. It would become gas in an instant. Nigh perfect, efficient point-defence but worthless without the computer. The room became suddenly dark. That would make it that much easier.

I feel the need to point out that many of you are probably screaming: “EMP! EMP” There are two crucial flaws in that idea. Three actually. One: EMP Shielding was possible, and probable. Two: I’m not Batman. Three: Neither is the assault team. So... I had knives and a gun and myself whereas he had plasma streams and an expertly made HPD. Probably. Only one thing to do.

More smoke was flooding the room. I’d closed my eyes long ago, letting my ears take over. If I believed in any gods I would be thanking them that I wore bandages over my mouth and nose. I knew there was a reason for those. As silently as I was able, which is pretty damn quiet, I slipped toward where I assumed he was: The vault entrance. He perhaps thought I was a more dangerous hero. Or so I thought. I hate being wrong. I also hate not having any real powers. Or fancy gadgets. Or magic. Never been able to get the hang of that stuff.

So: My awesome-fail plan. Not one of my brightest but, even if you regenerate miles away in the nude, being immortal makes you a touch reckless. The whole thing about being really light? In full effect right now. I was practically gliding across the ground. He was exactly where I thought he would be, just inside the vault door with one arm pointing out. I could see better through the thick smoke and darkness. He just had a targeting computer, no visual software. I guess he figured that the plasma was enough. One thing I did like was being smarter than my enemy. Always good.

Here it was. Moment of truth. If my theory was wrong, I’d die. Again. If it was right, ka-ching! My rent was paid one month in advance, since my longest time to regenerate, ever, was two weeks, one day, seven hours. I didn’t count the minutes. My furthest is nine and a half kilometres, so I have clothes stashed around the city at varying intervals. Sometimes it pays off, other times not. The brilliant plan? Slip past the guy and hold a butterfly knife to his neck. What I was hoping was that, in order to not vaporise anyone trying to merely pat him on the back, the point-defence system checked for items with a velocity sufficient to cause harm. Or something along those lines. I don’t like technology much.

He froze when he felt the cold metal point pricking his neck. I’d slid past him with ease, and removed my well-oiled blade with barely a whisper of metal. Then... Things took a turn for the worse.

“Ah... Flair. I thought it would be you.”