Meta Man

That’s the thing about this city, normal people don’t survive for long.  I don’t remember when I first noticed it, but it must have been sometime around the third or fourth world-ending clash between good and evil. I had been living in Super City for 5 years at that point and was starting to feel it. It turns out that superheroes and supervillains make it way harder to do normal people things like be alive and live and not die. If you are an average person there’s a higher chance you’ll die walking to work than if you’re a hero fighting for your life. Heroes and Villains go crashing through buildings and are shot at with lasers, and all they deal with is ripped clothes. Just buy pre-stressed spandex if it’s going to happen every time. But if you are within 5 miles of a fight, you will probably be hit by debris or a stray energy blast and die. And yet any of the big players just walk it off. They don’t even have to have powers. The mayor has been in office for 30 years, and he gets kidnapped once a quarter. They have to budget for it at the start of each fiscal year. They plan on him getting kidnapped, and he still never dies. You won’t live past 40 if you are nobody special in Super City. If the world at large doesn’t know your name, write your will early.

There were a few patterns like this that I realized at first. Avoiding them helped me stay alive as a normal for as long as I did. No big crowds. I avoided any large gatherings or mass transportation. So, no galas, no ferries, no trains. I rode my bike as often as I could. When guys with super strength start using cars as weapons, they don’t always check that they're empty. I’ve yet to see Wonderguy throw a 10 speed at DoomLord, so I was safe in that regard. I avoided all sentimental moments. I didn’t get engaged or achieve lifelong goals or play with my [nonexistent] son. Nothing like that. I lived my life like an extra. You might have seen me eating at a café with a woman, sure. Was it a date? Were we married? Secret affair? Who knows and who cares? I just pretended like I was in soft focus and paid in cash. Finally, and most importantly, I didn’t use banks. If I had to interact with one, I was solely online. Why do people keep going to banks? I’d rather go streaking in Chernobyl than wait in a teller line in this city. Banks here get robbed every week. I usually have sympathy for the normal people who get killed here, but if you aren’t part of a credit union for the interest rates alone, you deserve to die at this point. Spotting these patterns helped, but it wasn’t enough. Friends I knew who were doing the same still got carried off by demons or killed by aliens or were crushed by gentrified rent (not part of the superhero issue, but still something worth talking about). Nothing was 100%. The only consistent thing was that everything revolved around someone important. And the important someones never seem to die. To truly get the best chances of survival, I had to become relevant. 

At first, I thought about becoming a goon. It’s good work if you can get it. Gooning is a union job, and on the lower end of relevancy. They don’t usually die, just get roughed up. It seemed like a cheap and easy way not to risk death every day, but then I found out about the insurance premiums. I’d be paying half my salary just to be able to get ER visits. I don’t know how those guys work that job. It really has to be a job you’re passionate about, and I was only in it for the safety. Props to those guys. To goon is a work of heart. So, I gave up on gooning and started to look around for some martial arts training just to have some edge on any interdimensional beings I might have to fend off. I looked around the city, and couldn’t find a single place not reeking of plot-point-based danger. The first place I visited was a boxing club that I swear had a blue/green filter permanently installed to the aura of the property. I don’t know how they did it. The minute I walked in, I was greeted by two things. 1) The coach offering me a week of lessons for free and 2)the haggard, experienced boxer pacing at the speed bag. 

I pointed to the older boxer in the corner, “What’s his deal?”

“That’s Lou. He’s training. His last fight is in a couple weeks.” the coach told me, and began to get out the sign up paperwork.

I glazed over during his sales pitch because I knew that I was one answer away from walking out of there and burning the clothes I walked in wearing.

“Last fight?” I asked. “Did he bet any money on it?”

“Him? No.” the coach responded. “But rumour has it that the Mancini’s put a ton of money on the guy he’s fighting. Don’t know why they did. Last I checked Lou was pretty tight with them. Doesn’t matter anyway.”  

I took a deep breath. “Ok, so this lifelong boxer is going into his one last fight against a guy who his mob buddies bet a ton of money on?”

“Yah, if you want to use laid-man’s terms.”

“Ok, cool, I’m going to get the hell out of here. Thanks for your time.”

And that was it. I’ve seen chemical reactors with less chance of becoming the location of an origin story. I’m not going to be in the showers while Super City’s next revenge arc gets started. I’m just not. But it really seemed like I might have to. Everywhere I went to learn to fight, melodrama stuck out at me. I couldn’t even find a karate class where the current sensei hadn’t killed his former master. Even the YMCA’s instructor was the lead suspect in a hit and run before they decided not to press charges because the DA wound up dead. Cause of death? Blunt force chops. It was ridiculous. I couldn’t learn to fight, gooning was out of the question, what was I going to become? I couldn’t seem to get anywhere in this city without running into what clearly traced back to some significant person’s life story. The worst part was, no one else seemed to think it was weird. It was like no one had read a book in their life. I mean, why would they? Enough stuff goes down in this city to keep you occupied for life, however cut short it might be. No one felt like the 4 nuclear power plants were just a little cliché. No one felt like the constant conquests for world domination were maybe a little derivative. No one else could see it, not regular people, not the villains, not even the superheroes. Only I could. When I realized that, I found my ticket out of the regular person rat race. I had to become a hero myself. A hero above the heroes. A man who can see above these constant, unending stories. I became a Meta Man.

That was a couple years ago. I’m not dead yet, so I feel like it’s been a bit of a success. It was difficult at first, but once you know what you’re looking for, you get into a routine. I usually check out all the local orphanages once or twice a week. Lots of heroes start off there. It’s uncanny. But, by finding the ones that can blast holes in the ceiling, I save the city a lot of money, and give the next generation of Power Pals a head start. I just sort of carry a lot of locks with me now. Most of the time when people end up getting powers can be avoided if someone just locked the door. So, whenever I see a biohazard label, I just slap on a padlock. Some days are harder than others, I’ll admit. Sometimes I wake up and everything is a shade darker and I overhear the one PG-13 allowed “fuck.” I know that means Gritty Reboot is in town, and I’ll have to tread a little more carefully. A hero's moral compass is about to be tested, and when the conscience of someone who can level city blocks with their mind gets twisted into a knot, it usually ends up poorly for renters. So, I keep tabs on those quandaries for them. I have a lot of Kant downloaded onto my kindle and we usually just go from there. It’s a pretty good gig. I have a great chance of not dying, and all the big heroes know me, so even if I die, they’ll probably come up with something to bring me back. I’ve got a good thing going. My name is Billy Bright. I go by MetaMan most of the time. My powers are a BA in English and having watched all the episodes of Mystery Science Theater 3000. I’m an after school tutor in Super City by day, and its greatest protector by night.