Let me just say, retirement is boring.
About two years ago, I retired from heroing. My nemesis Stone Cold was in the clink, and there were plenty of other heroes around to save the day. Millennium City was just full of them.
It was also full of the down-and-outers like myself. I hadn’t saved for my retirement. I got a small pension from PRIMUS, enough to pay for the apartment and cable, my Social Security check, enough to pay for food and utilities, and no discretionary or leisurely income to speak of.
Though I could always scrounge up enough money to pay my bar tab at Sherry’s. Otherwise Lou-Lou the bouncer (ex Red-Banner cultist thug) would send me ass over heels out the door the hard way.
I was at Sherry’s when it opened most days, and stayed until it closed, being a permanent fixture on the back wall. I’d start with Everclear and work my way down the second shelf, ending the night with a shot of Jim Beam or me passing out. One of the other heroes would take pity on me and dump me in front of my apartment complex at night, where I would wake up in a puddle of piss and the moon high in the sky.
Yep, those were my days and nights. One afternoon I picked up the paper. Page 3 was usually “these people saved the world while you were sleeping” stories. Instead they had a feature story of a young up-and-coming hero, with broad wings. They had two pictures: one of him with his costume, and another of him modeling.
The article was biased, saying that the young man should be a hero, not a model. Since when should you have to quit your day job to be a hero? There just wasn’t enough money to be made in heroing to sustain someone. I was a case in point.
The young man was involved with an all-male group called Teen Guardians. I knew of them. The leader was a villain-gone-good, married to a philanthropic rich young hero in semi-retirement. I wondered…in my day, being gay was a no-no. You kept that kind of thing under wraps and didn’t tell a soul. You attended gala events with some girl on your arm and then either faked it or part ways after the event. I had faked it too many times.
To be open about it and proud about it–though that angle wasn’t discussed in the article–made me sit up in my drunken haze and take notice. I wondered, too, if they could use me, not as a member of the team, but as a teacher of sorts. I still had my powers. I could burn down a building and freeze the pipes in them to explode. I had full control over my powers, wasn’t all that psychologically unbalanced, and could probably develop a curriculum to help these guys with their abilities. I’d worked with telepaths, telekinetics, firebrands, ice mavens, fought against the same and more.
Time to brush off the resume, I guess.
