Fragments of a Superhero Breakdown

The more I thought about her possibly being the Iris Pirate, the worse it got.

I hate the Iris Pirate.

But I don't hate the girl.

That means I love the Iris Pirate...

I've never been more attracted to anybody in my life.

And I've never hated anybody any more, either.

-----

The boy is young.

He's a bit chunky.

He's wearing his white shirt and pink tie. His blue blazer is over his lap. The tips of his black leather shoes tap on the floor as he kicks his legs, still too short to completely touch the floor. The rubber on the bottom of his shoes makes little black scuffs on the floor.

Red blood under his nose and over his lips stands out against the white of his shirt and his blue jacket and shorts.

The school nurse is in hysterics, almost crying.

"Let me get this straight," the dean says. The boy can hear his voice, and the guy has to be trembling like a leaf, "He took his hand and made a fist..."

"AND HE HIT ANOTHER BOY!" the nurse screams, "HOW MANY TIMES DO YOU WANT TO FORCE ME TO SAY IT!?"

"He hit him... With his fist?" The dean swallows so loud the boy can hear it from the hallway outside the room, "Like somebody hitting a nail with a hammer?"

"YES HE HIT HIM!" the nurse dissolves into sobs.

"And the other boy... Hit him back?"

The nurse just wails.

In a world of scientists, dreamers, and inventors, nobody had invented fighting.

Not until now.

The boy smiles with bloodstained teeth.

-----

Maybe she's out there. Maybe it's not my girl at all. The Iris Pirate. Maybe the Iris Pirate just moved to a different town.

No.

No, it can't be a coincidence that they both showed up at the same time.

That's impossible.

I look at myself in the bathroom mirror and I take off my eyepatch.

Patrol can wait another night. Just one more.

-----

"They made us!" The sick gray thing yells, "And this is our destiny!"

It's been a year. The boy with the bloody nose is older now.

"They didn't make us to do this!" The boy screams. He stands amidst the destuction and he looks helpless and lost.

"Chassit," The boy's name is Chassit, "If this isn't what you're supposed to do, then WHAT!?"

"I'm supposed to stop guys like you," Chassit says.

Then they're rushing toward each other, fists drawn back.

Like the hammer of a gun.

These fists are Iceland's first weapons.

No, the boys.

The boys are Iceland's first weapons.

The first and the last.

-----

Laying on the floor with the costume on. I'm close to the door. I could go on patrol.

But what if I run into her?

Do I fight her?

Do I tell her I know?

Even if they're not the same person...

I think I love the Iris Pirate.

Either way, I think I love her.

-----

The worst part is hitting the ground, he thinks.

Not the feeling as much as the sound, wet and thick.

If he was anybody else, he'd have been dead 100 times over.

Chassit climbs from the hole, dazed and confused. His pink tie is loose around his neck and his white shirt is on fire. He pats it out and looks up at the stars.

They sent him away...

He saved them and they sent him away...

He hears something coming.

Some sort of hovercar, but with wheels. There are lights on the front.

Wait, wheels?

Wheels!

Whoever heard of wheels on anything but a child's toy?

The aliens inside stop closeby and get out of the car.

"My God, Mike... it's a boy," The woman alien says.

-----

I haven't put the tie on in a week.

The eyepatch... I don't even remember where it is.

I take my eye out twice a day to clean it, but that's it.

The shirt lays crumpled on the floor.

I hear sirens and I start to get up.

I sit back down.

Let the cops get it...

-----

Chassit has amnesia. He doesn't know where he came from.

That's what he tells everyone.

But Chassit knows what he is.

He rolls his sleeve up in his new bedroom, years later, and he traces his fingers over the symbol there.

XIX

"How could they give a child a tattoo?" Dwana (Mom) had said.

Mike (Dad) just shrugged.

-----

Chassit goes through the schools on Earth and learns very little other than the planet's culture.

On his planet Iceland, he lived in the City of Inventors, Sector 17, Workers' District.

On this new planet Earth, he lives in America, Indiana, Vincennes, just a mile from the district called Downtown.

He fights very little, for fear he'd destroy these weak things that call themselves human.

He grows older and stronger and, when he turns 16, the sick gray thing appears again in a public bathroom between here and somewhere.

Nowhere.

He may have saved the world again. A different world, but a saved world all the same.

The papers call him a hero.

The police call him a menace.

And there in that place between places, the Punchernaut was born.

Chassit had found his place.

Here a fighter was not an abomination.

A fighter was a hero.

-----

In the bathroom mirror again.

The eyepatch was down in the couch cushions. Now it's where it belongs.

The tie is knotted perfectly.

Open palms slap the white fabric over a strong chest.

"I'm a machine!" The Punchernaut yells.

SLAP!

"I'm an animal!"

And he bursts out the front door like a torpedo.

He rips through the air so fast it burns.

He grins that maniac grin like when little Chassit invented fighting on the playground in grammar school on the tiny planet Iceland. The lights from the city below create their own perfect little galaxy.

"THIS IS MY TOWN!" The Punchernaut bellows.

Half the town hears and they all look up from what they're doing.

The paper reads the next day:

"PUNCHERNAUT: BACK IN ACTION"