They used to call us superheroes.
I dropped out of
my levitation, and then turned in a circle to survey the wreckage of what had
once been a downtown city street. If I hadn’t known what it had been two days
ago, before my fellow superhumans blew through this place, I probably would
have thought somebody had dropped a bomb on it. Two days ago the sidewalks
would have been abuzz with human conversation, and the scents of tacos and
burgers and coffee wafting out of the nearby shops. Tonight the asphalt was
torn into chunks, most of the buildings reduced to piles of concrete and broken
glass, and the streetlights bent and mangled like dead weeds.
Standing in the
middle of such vast destruction, it was easy to see why normal humans had
demoted us. What kind of a hero left the city they claimed to save in a state
like this?
Once upon a time
the fights might have been about some kind of heroism, or a higher calling to
protect the general public from superhuman terrorists. But if those motives
ever existed, they had long since devolved into a web of bitter,
intergenerational vendettas that fueled the mass destruction of today.
It almost hurt to
think about. This wasn’t the first city street I had seen torn to pieces. It
wasn’t the first time I had seen thousands of livelihoods destroyed after a two-hour
fight. It wasn’t the first time I’d spotted a single scuffed shoe lying on the
ground, and wondered if its owner escaped the chaos alive.
I inhaled, shut my
eyes, and lifted my arms above my head. I could sense the loose chunks of
concrete and asphalt and metal on the ground. I pictured them rising up, and
from the strain on my telekinesis I knew that they were obeying. And then I
pictured the city street that had been here two days before. I imagined the
pieces of rubble rotating and moving through the air into their original
positions. I imagined them fitting together, the seams between each separate
chunk disappearing, leaving a whole and complete structure in their place.
And when I opened
my eyes, that was what I saw. Downtown probably had not been this quiet in
fifty years, but it was whole again. The streetlights had come back on,
lighting my handiwork up in sodium orange. Tall glass-and-concrete buildings
lined a uniform sidewalk, and a smooth road ran down the middle. A light breeze
picked up, waving the leaves in trees along the sidewalk. Cars sat parked along
the edges of the street. The only thing lacking from this block of downtown was
its citizens.
I smiled and
turned a slow circle. The rest of the street looked the same: deserted, but
intact.
I had done good
work, but I still couldn't give everything back. I couldn't bring back the
people who had died in the fight. I couldn't give the public what they think a
superhuman should be: a catchy code name, a flashy costume, a personal tagline.
If they saw anything of me, it would probably be grainy security footage of an
unmasked girl in jeans and a white t-shirt.
But there is
something that I want to give them, someday. I want to bring back the hope that
not all superhumans are merely superhuman, and the hope that maybe, just maybe,
some of us are superheroes.
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