Superhero Putting on a Facade

One day, a gigantic sea creature suddenly appeared near the city’s coastline and had the intention to reach its shore. A guy called Jack Legend sensed that the sea creature would obliterate the whole city within an hour once ashore. He was well-known and well-loved by all in his city as the mightiest superhero of justice. So once again, it was up to Jack to save the day. He stormed out in his most iconic suit and magnificent cape to challenge his oceanic adversary. When the monster saw Jack Legend approaching, it released purple fumes from its mouth. Few such fumes had seeped through Jack's nostrils and already it had taken its toll; it had weakened his superhuman strength. The purple fumes were comprised of deadly neurotoxins. The slightest dose could easily cause humans to have their organs bled and corroded at an accelerating rate before they die in agony. Fortunately for the city's only superhero, Jack Legend had a completely different biological construct. Although he looked like a human, he was in fact from a distant planet. But despite his body being able to neutralize most of the toxins, he knew that a prolonged battle would have detrimental consequences to his health and even lead to his demise. He had no choice but to use his special finishing move.

       At that moment, a wild tornado was fast approaching. Jack had recalled that the observatory did mention on television about a tornado. But he paid no heed to it. After all, he was Jack Legend, the hero who had the power to conquer countless foes whose sizes surpassed him by various degrees and whose mere existence posed a threat to human survival far greater than any natural disaster. But the observatory did not tell him that it was not an ordinary tornado. In fact, it wasn't a tornado at all but a wormhole of unknown origins. And it had already collected lots of electromagnetic waves at its core. Jack at least managed to deliver the giant monster the final blow before he got sucked into the wormhole.

       When Jack woke up, he found that he was lying in a country park. He tried to fly to the sky but failed. He realized that he had lost all his superpowers and could only muster the strength of a normal human being, It turned out that the moment he punctured a hole through the sea creature's body, it didn't drop dead like other foes he had defeated and let the Kaiju Disposal Squad deal with the corpse. It literally exploded as if it was made out of an overly-inflated balloon, bursting out all its toxic fumes as a result. And Jack had involuntarily inhaled a great deal of it. It was simply a miracle that he survived this. After he had spent hours roaming around aimless in order to find out where he was, what he just discovered nearly made his eyes pop. This was his city alright, according to the overall landscape. But everything else was too unfamiliar, all too science fiction for him. Nowhere in his city nor elsewhere had he seen such crazy buildings. There were no buses or trams on the roads except for giant-sized vehicles. As he looked closer, he was shocked to see drivers and passengers of those vehicles were all large grotesque monsters. They did look similar to the giant monsters he had fought but they seemed more evolved, civilized. He clutched his fists tightly at the sight of it all but then he loosened his grip as he was even more shocked to find those people (fellow humans) along the pavement still continuing their walks of life as if nothing happened. They didn’t seem to care how their rights were seriously jeopardized by those large filthy monsters who have stolen their roads.

       An endless stream of unanswered questions bombarded his mind. What was going on? Why was my city turned out this way? Where did those monsters come from? Realizing his powerlessness and wanting to find out the truth behind all this, Jack decided to switch to his normal-citizen facade for the time being. The first thing he wanted to do was to head home by the subway, which was the humans-only transportation, and every train was jampacked with hundreds of commuters. Later on, he found out that his home was replaced by a grand luxury hotel of some sort, and the currency in his wallet was outdated for him to buy another one. Fortunately, there was an automated service booth run by a financial company that provided him with the money that was enough to pay the rent of a tiny subdivided flat. And later on, he found a job. Not his usual day job at a news agency but in an enormous department store.

       On his first day of work, he saw every fellow colleague were wretchedly thin and had dark circles around their eyes. And every commodity in the department store, whether it be furniture, clothes, electrical appliances etc, was either too big or not designed in a user-friendly manner.

       When the department finally opened up its doors and customers started coming in, Jack was shocked to find that all customers were all monsters. Although it shouldn’t be a surprise to him, Jack still couldn’t accept the fact that he had to serve three-headed wolves, gigantic spider-like creatures and man-eating cyclopes.

       “Don’t just stand there. Help out, will you?”

       Jack never expected to be scolded by a fellow human being for not serving those monsters that used to be their enemies. After working in the department store for a couple of days, Jack hated to admit that his colleagues’ work ethics were extremely remarkable. They were able to endure long working hours (13 hours per day at least), always putting on a smile in the face of grotesque-looking monsters, loading and unloading large bulky items that were more than twice their weight for those monsters. Jack could not imagine how a normal human being would put up with all that but they did it.

       A year had passed and Jack finally got his powers back, His ultrasense of hearing had detected that someone within the department store was in danger. It was a fellow junior assistant manager and he was sent to the general manager’s office due to the complaints caused by blunders the junior assistant manager had made on various orders. The general manager was a giant creature that looked like a lobster.

       “Wa ha! Ha! What have we here?” cried the lobster, licking his lips, “I shall invite you to my house after work. My wife is preparing a grand feast and so get your arse ready and prepare to be served. Not as a guest if you know what I mean. HA! HA! HA!”

       “NOooo!” cried the junior assistant manager.

       “Don’t you worry. Pepper, spring onion and rosemary shall be your company. HA! HA! HA!”

       Jack Legend knew what he had to do. It was about time to drop the 'good employee' facade and resume the role as the city's beloved superhero. He dashed straight into a nearby changing room and instantly stormed into the general manager’s office in his iconic suit and his magnificent red cape.

       The giant Lobster let out a great laugh. “So, you want to volunteer to be his side dish. How wonderful! So put down that petite little fist of yours, you insolent fool. You have no idea what you are up against! Do you know that I have the toughest armor according to the Guinness Book of Records and my pincers cut through steel as if it were paper. So why don’t you just…” Before the general manager got to finish his sentence, his head was smashed by Jack Legend with a single punch and the office walls were immediately filled with lobster juice. The junior assistant manager was in a daze for a moment and then after rushed out of the office without thanking Jack. Then, Jack Legend realized that he was calling the police that a murder had been committed. Is that guy insane? Then, Jack’s instinct told him that everyone else had that twisted mentality as that of the junior assistant manager. Every single colleague backed away from him as if he was a disease. Soon, big-sized police cars arrived just outside the department store. Jack had no choice but to break through a wall or two in order to escape.

       Although Jack Legend had defeated several other monsters from time to time, the humans were not very grateful. Instead, they were mad at him for making them lose their jobs as a result of Jack’s actions. What broke his heart was that many in fact made a rally outside the government central office and the police headquarters to send a petition calling for Jack Legend to be brought to justice. The government, of course, was run by monsters. The wormhole created a time-space distortion, transporting Jack Legend a long way into the future, the future where no one remembered what legendary deeds Jack had done. He loved the city. He loved its people. But in the end, with tears in his eyes, he flew off to a distant planet.