The Child Sidekick Program

Mr. Nifty turned his megawatt smile towards the news camera as two black-clad figures, one who couldn’t be older than 9, struggled with the police behind him. “And that’s when I apprehended Agent Crow and his little sidekick.”

The reporter followed Mr. Nifty’s face with starry eyes. “You heard it here first, folks. Mr. Nifty has saved our city once again! You’ve served the city for over thirty years, so I couldn’t help noticing. Who is your newest sidekick?”

Mr. Nifty stepped aside with a flourish of his cape to show a young girl dressed in similar garb, her pint-sized cape fluttering in the breeze. The girl beamed at the camera and flexed her noodle arms. “This is my protégé, Kid Peachy.”

Welly looked up from the television and called over his shoulder. “See, Mom, even Mr. Nifty has a kid sidekick!”

Professor Scare sighed heavily from the kitchen. “We’ve talked about this, Welly.”

“Just look at her! She's like ten. I’m almost twelve, and I bet I’m way tougher.” Welly stood up and mirrored Kid Peachy’s pose. “Yeah, my arms are twice as big.”

The Professor poked her head around the door frame and smiled at her son, the citron tassel on her velvet tam swinging merrily. “You’re getting stronger every day, too.”

“So why won’t you train me? I’ve been asking for years and years, and you keep saying it’s not right for kids to be sidekicks.” Welly crossed his arms, his lower lip sticking out in a childish pout. “But Mr. Nifty is a hero, and he has Kid Peachy. So how can it be wrong?”

Professor Scare entered the room and sat on the couch next to her son, muting the television. “Just because someone is a hero doesn’t mean they always do the right thing.” She tousled his hair with her one functional hand.

Welly swatted her hand away with a grin. “I don’t want to be a hero anyway,” he said. “I want to be your sidekick.”

“Life as a villain, Wel, it’s lonely.”

“But we have each other.”

“Yes, we do. Keeping you safe and away from fighting is the best way to make sure we keep it like that.” Professor Scare watched the silent images on the television as the reporter interviewed Kid Peachy. She shook her head and flexed her good hand. “It’s just not ethical to make children fight in battles started by adults.”

“But what if that’s what I want?” Welly countered.

“Being a villain isn’t a practical career path, Wel.”

“It was for you! And how are you a villain anyway? You don’t even do anything bad.”

The Professor looked at her useless hand, scarred and forever clenched in an open fist. “I didn’t have a choice.”

Welly curled his lip into a sneer. “And that sucks, doesn’t it, Mom? But you’re not giving me a choice either.”

“Honey, I-”

“Maybe it’s because you’re a villain, and that’s why you won’t let me do what I want.” He stood up abruptly, his hands balled into little fists. “I want to be a sidekick.”

Professor Scare reached for Welly’s hand, but he yanked it away. “Wel, please. I want a better life for you than mine.”

“I even came up with a cool sidekick name,” Welly continued. “Teaching Assistant Terror! Please, Mom. I’m ready.”

The Professor smiled sadly at him. “That’s a great sidekick name, Wel. I’d be honored to have you on my team.”

Welly gave her a well-practiced side-eye. “But?”

“But I won’t compromise my ethics and perpetuate this trend of child soldiers. If you still want to be my sidekick when you turn 18, we’ll discuss it then.”

“I don’t need your permission to be a sidekick. I can do it myself.”

“Wel, I-”

Welly turned his back to his mom and marched to the door. “And I’ll be a sidekick to a big, powerful hero, and then you’ll be sorry you ever decided to be a villain.” He slammed the door to the little apartment and ran down the building’s stairs until he burst outside, tears brimming at the corners of his eyes.

Billboards, each more flashy than the last, blotted out the view of the sky in his part of town. One massive billboard showed kids of all ages in various hero attire. “Register as a Sidekick Now!” the ad urged. At the bottom, in bright green Comic Sans, the ad listed the address for the Supers Registry Office downtown. He wiped his eyes on his sleeve and started walking.

A dainty bell rang when Welly pushed open the door to the Registry Office.

The registrar looked up as he walked in, greeting him cheerfully. “Why don’t you take a seat, young man? I’ll be with you shortly.” She looked back at the frustrated man standing in front of her desk.

“Have you made a selection?” she asked.

“Your suggestion sounds so stupid!” the man said.

“You can come up with something different if you like, sir, but Icicle Man is already a registered name.”

“I don’t want to come up with something different! I’m a man, and I create icicles! No other name makes sense.”

“As I said, sir, Icicle_Man is available as is IcicleMan123.”

“Ugh, those are ridiculous!”

“My apologies, sir. The name will remain unavailable as long as ‘Icicle Man’ is registered to a living super.”

A sinister grin spread slowly over the man’s face. “As long as he’s living, eh? Thank you for that information.”

As the man stalked out of the office, he fixed his creepy smile on Welly. “Good luck, kid,” he hissed, the bright-sounding bell over the door directly contrasting the man’s rapidly darkening aura.

Welly approached the registrar’s desk, stomach roiling and eyes wide.

She slipped on a tiny pair of glasses dangling on a beaded chain around her neck. “How can I help you today?”

“Did you see that?” he asked her, his breaths hitching as he calmed his thudding heart. “I think that man’s going to become a villain!”

“Heroes can’t be heroes without an equal number of villains,” she explained, waving her hand dismissively. “Lately, we’ve had an influx of hero registrations, so we’ve updated our policies to discourage new enrollment. This has the desired effect of angering would-be heroes enough that they choose a different path.”

“That’s horrible,” Welly whispered.

“In addition,” the registrar continued, “we expanded the list of undesirable disfigurements that would require a mandatory villain registration. Now, it includes moles.”

The registrar gave Welly a wan smile and quickly changed the subject. “So tell me, young man. Are you here to register for the Child Sidekick Program?”

He straightened his back and squared his shoulders to look bigger. “That’s right.”

“Excellent!” Her cheerful demeanor returned as she handed him a stack of papers and a pen capped with an unnecessarily large artificial flower. “Sign these forms, and then we’ll get you on your way to sidekick superstardom!”

The papers were printed with very small text, and Welly found himself squinting to read it properly. The vocabulary wasn’t entirely familiar as his 5th-grade education did not include contractual agreements. He was about to sign the documents rather than give himself a headache trying to read them all when a paragraph caught his attention:

By signing, I hereby assume all risks of being a child sidekick including, but not limited to, any risks that may arise from negligence or carelessness on the part of my assigned hero or his/her/their associated partners, from dangerous situations that may arise with or without provocation on the part of my assigned hero, or from the use of unsafe or defective equipment or property owned or maintained by my assigned hero. I acknowledge that neither my family nor I am entitled to any compensation in the event of my injury, dismemberment, and/or demise as a result of my child sidekick responsibilities, and I further acknowledge and accept that all rights to an attorney or other representation have been waived.

Welly frowned, and his pen stalled above the signature line. He hadn’t considered that he might get hurt or even die as a child sidekick. If he were working with a hero, surely they would never put their sidekicks in harm’s way. Then he thought back to his mom and her ruined hand. She’d never told him the whole story, but she had alluded once that she had been a sidekick for a hero in her early years.

He stood up and brought his stack of papers back to the registrar. “I’d like to think about this some more before I sign. Maybe talk to my mom.”

The registrar peered at him over her tiny spectacles, a spark of recognition in her eyes. “You’re Professor Scare’s boy, aren’t you?”

“I am.”

“She won’t let you be her sidekick?”

Welly clenched his teeth. “No.”

The registrar took Welly’s stack of unsigned papers and slid them into a cubby on her desk. “She must love you very much, then.”

Welly scowled at her and strode to the door. “You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he grumbled as the bell jangled happily over his head.

Welly flopped onto the bench next to the registry office. He looked up at the billboard across the street that featured his mom’s tutoring business for the children of villains. While he glared at her smiling face, a bright flash caught his eye.

A silver-clad hero landed in front of an unmarked storefront under the billboard. The hero, easily recognizable as Lord Gorgeous, was carrying a small boy in a matching silver outfit. The boy wasn’t moving, and blood dripped from his head to the sidewalk. Welly stood and was about to call out and offer help when a panel slid open in one of the storefront’s blacked-out windows.

Lord Gorgeous unceremoniously shoved the child into the portal before shooting back into the sky and disappearing behind the skyscrapers. Welly, curiosity piqued, jogged across the street as the panel sealed shut.

He ran his fingers along the glass in search of the seamlessly integrated panel. Welly tapped the glass lightly, testing for weaknesses. The panel slid open so abruptly that he gasped and stepped back.

A nurse’s frazzled face peered out at him. “Are you hurt, sidekick?” the nurse asked.

“I’m not-” Welly began.

“This clinic is for injured or maimed child sidekicks only. Please move along.”

Before the nurse could slide the panel back into place, Welly got a view of a bustling clinic housed behind the painted windows. Several children in heroic costumes were hooked up to life-saving medical equipment. Others were lying in bloody beds and moaning. Still more children sat in folding chairs, some with missing limbs and many with the thousand-yard stare of the broken. The child in silver lay crumpled on the floor, unnaturally still and ignored, as blood puddled underneath him.

The panel snapped back in place, blocking all view of the secret clinic. Welly stood in shock on the sidewalk, trying to process the scene he had witnessed.

For the first time, he wondered if the child sidekick industry wasn’t as broken as some of the bodies he had seen in the clinic. His mom’s face flashed into his mind, and his stomach twisted at the horrible things he had said to her earlier. He needed to get home and apologize to his mom, and the guilt quickened his pace. Welly was in a full sprint by the time he arrived back home.

The apartment door was ajar, and Welly tried to remember if he had closed it when he ran out. A crashing noise inside the apartment masked the sound of squeaking hinges as Welly opened the door. The hair on his neck rose when muted voices echoed down the entry hallway. He peeked around the corner into the living room.

Mr. Nifty’s imposing, cape-clad figure loomed over Professor Scare lying on the area rug among shards of the awkward vase Welly made in third grade. The television was still silently broadcasting the news, showing what looked like slow-motion reruns of Mr. Nifty’s earlier heroics.

Kid Peachy stood awkwardly next to Mr. Nifty and fidgeted with the hem of her cape.

“Do it, then,” Mr. Nifty instructed his sidekick.

Kid Peachy looked at him with huge, imploring eyes. “I don’t want to,” she whispered.

Welly couldn’t see Mr. Nifty’s face, but his tone had turned low and dangerous. “Professor Scare is a villain, Kid Peachy. A villain. If you want to be a hero, you must vanquish villains. Now do it.”

Kid Peachy took a small step forward. “This doesn’t feel like something a hero would do. Can’t we just arrest her?”

“Why are you so weak?” Mr. Nifty smacked a meaty hand against the back of Kid Peachy’s head, knocking her eye mask askew. “Do it, or I’ll tell the Registry about your horrible disfigurement.”

“I don’t ha-”

“Not yet, Peach. But the Professor didn’t either until she disobeyed me. You’ll be forced to become a villain yourself, and make no mistake. I will be the first person at your door to serve justice.”

Professor Scare lifted her head to meet Mr. Nifty’s eyes. “Don’t make her do this, Jim.”

Mr. Nifty silenced her with a kick in the ribs, eliciting a soft moan of pain.

“Mom!” Welly ran from the door towards Professor Scare’s prone form.

Mr. Nifty grabbed Welly’s arm and plucked him from the ground. “Do it now, Peach,” he hissed.

Fat tears ran down Kid Peachy’s face, but she drew a wicked blade out of her belt. Welly aimed a kick at Mr. Nifty’s ribs, and the hero pushed him down to the ground.

“You watch,” Mr. Nifty whispered. “You watch what happens to villains, boy.”

Kid Peachy took a deep breath and held the knife over the Professor’s neck.

“Welly...” Professor Scare croaked. “I love you, Wel.”

Kid Peachy’s blade bit into the Professor’s skin. Mr. Nifty released his grip on Welly’s arm when Professor Scare took her last wheezing breath. Welly sprang to his feet and threw himself at Mr. Nifty with a desperate scream.

The hero shoved Welly back to the ground and pressed his face into the rug. A pottery shard sliced into Welly’s check. “Careful, boy,” Mr. Nifty said, straightening back up. “That might scar.”

Welly barely registered Mr. Nifty confidently striding out the front door. “Come along, sidekick. We have more villains to exterminate.”

Kid Peachy lingered at the corner of Welly’s eye, her expression filled with deep regret. She wiped the tears from her face with her cape, and then she was gone.

“Mom!” He reached out and grabbed Professor Scare’s ruined hand. Welly pulled himself into a sitting position and gathered his mom’s body in his arms.

He wasn’t sure how long he sat there, but it was dark, and his tears had long since dried when he finally stood up. Mr. Nifty’s clean-up team would undoubtedly arrive soon.

Welly carefully removed his mom’s black doctoral robes and pulled them over his head. The hem pooled around his feet. Like the robe, Professor Scare’s tam was too large for him, and the soft citron tassel brushed his collarbone.

Welly touched his cheek then examined his bloody fingers. In the morning, he vowed, the Supers Office would register a new Professor Scare.