Humanity Man drops both his cape and The Weapon’s hood onto the floor. He looks down at Susan’s sprawled body and smirks as he steps over her, towards me. He slowly slips off each of his bloody gloves. It’s like he’s toying with me or something. It reminds me of a house cat that has finally caught its mouse but doesn’t want to begin devouring it yet.

I slowly climb to one knee, not wanting to make any sudden motions. I’m grasping Susan’s wedding band in my bare hand as tightly as I can muster.

“You know, I thought for sure my work was done with Doc Crimson,” Humanity Man says coldly, “But then you and Susan had to get the bright idea to investigate.”

“I don’t understand!” I shout, still remaining on one knee. I’m surprised that the pain is already subsiding and I no longer feel any blood building up in my throat.

“Of course you don’t. None of you SPECs understand what it’s like to be me,” he pauses, crosses his arms behind him and looks up at the destroyed ceiling, thanks to me. “None of you.”

Oozing confidence, he turns his back on me and walks towards Susan’s body. I can still feel her presence in the ring, but she’s remaining as silent as I am. Both of us want to hear the truth, and I know a monologue coming a mile away.

“Has my wife ever told you how my powers worked?” he asks, looking over his shoulder.

“Well, she—” I’m interrupted almost immediately.

“The reason I called myself ‘Humanity Man’ isn’t because I look out for the idiots who believe to be in control of this world. It’s because, as fate would grant me, the more people that are around me, the more powerful I grow.”

It’s just like I told you, Zach. It’s why he prefers to work within large cities. Susan adds to her ex-husband’s point.

“I’m stronger, I fly faster, I can hear better, I can see better when I’m surrounded by more people. Everything about me becomes more powerful when there are more people within only a few miles of me. And when I work within a city as bustling as St. Mignola?” he lifts his arms and poses for extra dramatic effect. I can feel Susan’s spirit roll her eyes in disgust, “I am a god.”

No wonder he supported the increased employment rate when Mark Silverman’s company bought out both Vanderton Industries and the Man in Pink’s corporate empire, Susan explains in my head, it wasn’t to support his fellow hero, Dark Steel. It was to become more powerful than he had before!

Suddenly, I’m not in control of my own voice. Susan’s voice booms through me, via the ring, and overcomes my ability to speak for myself, “Of all the arrogant, selfish—”

“S-Susie?” Humanity Man finally makes eye contact with me when he turns on his heels to look directly at me.

My eyes glow warmer, as I can feel Susan glaring at Humanity Man through my eyes. “Yeah, Tom. Congratulations. You killed the Shatterpack, nearly destroyed the Fortress, put to risk thousands of people .Oh yes, and killed your own ex-wife!!” I hear myself shouting with Susan’s voice. She adds a little bit of oomph when saying “ex”.

“What did you do to my wife, you filthy low level SPEC?!” Humanity Man grabs me by my spandex shirt and lifts me high off the floor.

“I said ex-wife, Tom! Ex!” Susan shouts through me, “But you never understood that, did you? Not when I moved out. Not when I gained full custody of Alaya. Not when I started dating again. You never got it, did you?!”

Humanity Man shakes me with a never before seen fury. I hear the fabric in my collar and cowl stretching, tearing. “Shut up!!”

“This is just like you, isn’t it, Tom?” Susan’s voice speaks through me. “Dropping things out of the sky? You’ve dropped things throughout your whole life! Dropping out of High School, dropping out of our marriage, dropping your own daughter out of your life! What you’re doing isn’t anything new. You gave yourself the wrong name. You should have called yourself Typical Tom.”

“You know what? I’m glad I killed you, you bitch!” he shouts at me, throwing me back first against the desk behind me.

Susan’s voice leaves my throat and my head as I lose my grasp of the wedding band. I watch it roll across the destroyed floor and come to a stop at Humanity Man’s feet. He looks down at it and picks it off the floor. He blinks as I’m sure Susan is giving him a piece of her mind.

“I’m scared of death?! What about you, Susie? Hiding yourself in my ring, hm?” he shouts at the ring, holding it up like Hamlet holding up Yorick’s skull.

I climb to my feet again, which is starting to become an old habit now. Humanity Man is having a shouting match with Susan’s old wedding band. In any other situation, this would be quite the comedy sketch, I bet. It’s too bad that I’m feeling just a little out-gunned here.

“Fine,” he smirks, looking at me with extreme prejudice, “You think he’s so good, why don’t I reunite you two? You know this trick, don’t you, honey?”

Humanity Man shifts the ring in his fingers and without another pause, he flicks it towards me. It speeds towards me like a bullet. There’s a slight glow coming from the ring that I can only assume is Susan’s spirit within. The air screams around the ring as I’m frozen to try stopping it.

And then snatch it out of the air in a mere second. It feels like catching a mosquito. My hand doesn’t even hurt from the catch.

What did I tell you, Zach? Your powers have more potential than you may never know! Susan’s voice returns to my mind. I’m just starting, I tell her. I can feel her spirit grin.

“How,” Humanity Man looks perplexed, “How did you—”

“I told you. A vat of radioactive integrity,” I flick the ring in the air like a coin and catch it again, “Something you seem to be sorely lacking.”

Humanity Man’s snarls in frustration and lunges at me. He’s faster than even my powers or Susan could ever warn me of. In an instant, his hands are around my throat, lifting me in the air. He flies high into the air and smashes me headfirst into the ceiling of the conference room. My head rings obscenities at me. I can vaguely hear Susan screaming in my mind.

“Don’t you understand?!” Humanity Man hollers at me, trying with no success to tighten his grip around my throat “We’re not supposed to be in this world! We’re abominations! All of us!”

I wince at his hand closing around my throat. My powers, wherever they actually came from, have given me some extra invulnerability, I think. Something tells me that not even a day ago, my windpipe would have been crushed just as easily as The Jazzman at the Vodka Room. The thought of what the musician said to me immediately goes into my mind.

“Sell-out,” I whisper through my teeth at Humanity Man.

With all of my might, I use my free hands to push against the ceiling and send myself and Humanity Man crashing back down to the floor. The entire Sky Fortress trembles from the impact. There’s a large, circular metal indent in the floor where we crashed. I climb to my feet and see that I missed Susan’s body only be a few feet.

Stop worrying about my body, Zach! Get him! Susan screams in my mind. I tell her that I’m trying to respect the dead. She says nothing to that.

I climb out of the self-made pot hole and crouch at the edge of it. Humanity Man is already starting to get to his feet, as well. He’s chuckling to himself. He’s actually amused by the challenge that I’m giving him.

“You know,” he stops chuckling, brushing himself off, “we’re actually doing the world a favour by helping to wipe out the SPEC population. All SPECs in the world are simple false gods that are looking for immortality.”

I stand defiantly at the edge of the crater, “And the people? What did they ever do to get caught in the crossfire of this so-called cleansing?”

“They worshipped the SPECs like gods. They’ll die of the worst sin of all.” Humanity Man stretches both of his arms out to the side like a priest giving a sermon, “Idolatry.”

“You do realize that I have to stop you,” I take a step towards him into the crater, “There’s no telling the amount of lives that could be lost, civilian or SPEC.”

“You?! A level two SPEC that’s probably only getting a helping hand from my wife?” he grins an evil grin, “I invited you to the Shatterpack for three reasons: as a joke, as a favour to Susan and to have everything I needed to destroy under one roof.”

“And if I don’t stop you, millions of people are going to die, aren’t they?”

He nods, smugly, “Most assuredly.”

“And the only way to stop you and help these innocent bystanders would be to kill you?”

“Hmph,” he chuckles, “Yes.”

“Then that’s all my powers needed to hear,” I grumble.

I crouch down in the crater, only a few feet away from Humanity Man and touch the dented metal floor. I close my eyes and concentrate as best I can. I hope to everything that’s left to hold dear that I can pull this off.

“Heh, what are you doing? Praying to the gods?” Humanity Man smirks, “Don’t you know that the true gods don’t listen to people like you or I?”

I continue concentrating, Susan remaining silent in my mind. I can tell that she wants to know what I’m planning but she’s giving me my space to do it.

Humanity Man sniffs the air around him. “Is that the best you can do? Make the room smell of roasting chestnuts? Some hero.”

“No, I’m continuing to respect the dead, first,” I tell him, matter of fact.

He turns around to see where the smell is coming from. Sitting behind the judge’s desk surround the room, is the electrocuted body of The Armadillo. His body slumps, his head hits the desk with a thud. My concentration nearly cuts out when I hear a very faint wheeze coming from The Armadillo. Was there a chance that he was actually still alive? I grit my teeth and keep pushing.

“Teleportation,” Humanity Man nods and seems to be mildly impressed, “That’s a new one for you, kid.”

“Whoever said that I’m done?” I tell him.

I can hear the sound of grinding metal all around us. The conference room rumbles as I continue to concentrate on doing what will probably be the hardest thing I’ve done to date. My eyes are closed but my powers allow me to see what is going on around me. It’s another new power, a vision power better than x-ray vision that my powers are giving me. It’s just in case Susan’s ex-husband decides to attack and so I can see what I’m doing all around me.

Humanity Man, confident as ever in himself, is standing in front of me with his blood-stained arms crossed. He’s ready for anything that I could possibly bring. He’s fought evil overlords, criminal masterminds and alien armadas.

He’s seen nothing yet.

From outside the conference room, screeching metal is louder than a rock concert. The torn roof is letting all the sound outside into the conference room. Humanity Man looks up at the open skylight and I’m sure he recognized pieces of the Sky Fortress all coming together high above us like a giant jigsaw puzzle. Metal pieces are flying together in unison, forming a large metal ball in the sky. It swirls, gathering all of he metal from the Fortress into one giant ball. As it spins, the ball gets larger but continues to compact itself. It spins faster and faster, the entire Fortress, with the exception of the conference room, is now a giant, compacted swirling ball hovering high in the sky above us.

My new vision briefly shows me what’s going on outside. The conference room, now only a hovering oval-shaped object, hovers in the air. Above it is the large ball of metal, still swirling faster and faster, shrinking as I mentally compact the metal.

Finally, the compacted ball of metal, which is probably about ten times my height, explodes in a shower of sparks, disappearing from sight. A small sprinkle of it hits the outside walls of the conference room but does no damage to it.

I open my eyes and stand back up. I’m not even breathing hard from the effort of compacting the entire Sky Fortress.

“How did you…what did…” Humanity Man tries to muster something.

“I just compacted and incinerated the Sky Fortress,” I tell him while his mouth is agape, “In fact, I went a step further and just sent the metal back into the earth at a metal mining facility a few miles away from the city.” I pause and can even feel Susan’s spirit in shock, “I needed to take my concentration away from holding up the whole Fortress. Plus, don’t you think it’s good to recycle?”

“You just...” Humanity Man runs his hands through his blonde hair, grabbing it in clumps from shock and frustration. He looks at me coldly, “What are you?!”

“A better hero that you ever were.”

“NO!!!”

He flies towards me with a speed that I still don’t see coming. With one hand, he grabs me tightly around the throat. With his free hand, he lifts up all fifteen feet of the marble judge’s desk that is around the room. Without any effort, he lifts it up and smashes it into the right side of my head. Marble bits and dust fly as my ears are ringing.

“You’ll ruin everything! His plan was flawless! I was to have a haven where no one would ever want to live! I could have peace and quiet!!” Humanity Man screams at me in anguish. Tears are running down his face. I’m not sure if they’re of defeat, humiliation or sheer anger.

My concentration is still on holding the conference room in the air. I tell my powers to respect the dead one last time. With my new overall vision, I see both Susan body and The Armadillo’s teleport down onto the street below where medical help was still there for Roadblock and Hightower. My vision shows me that Hightower has shrunk back down to his normal seven feet and is receiving medical assistance. Good, at least there’s one life saved today. Maybe two, if The Armadillo is lucky.

Now it’s time to save everyone else in the city and maybe the world.

“My powers! They increased too much in St. Mignola but I had to work here!” Humanity Man continues to scream at me. He’s nearly incoherent in his shouting now. “I had to work in the city all the time! And the population was so large that I could never turn off my powers!”

By the goddess, Susan exclaims in my mind. He went mad!

He slams me up against the wall, smashing the marble desk directly into my face. I hear the crack and feel my nose break. My mouth tastes like a combination of chalk, sweat and my own blood.

He’s too fast. I can’t stop him, no matter how strong I might become. The marble desk has been shattered down to about ten feet. If he gets through me, there’s no telling what he might do to this city. As soon as I give thought to getting him far away from here, I feel my powers doing…something. I don’t know what, but something tells me that my powers are working on something to get us away from here.

“Of course I went mad! And don’t think I can’t hear you when I’m this close to the ring, Susie! I can hear them, all of them! All the time! From the shouts in the street to the whispers in their homes! I could smell all smells within the city from the fresh baked bread to the farts of an overweight man!” Humanity Man is shaking me by the throat while I try to gain any kind of composure. “I couldn’t shut any of it off, don’t you understand!?”

I had no idea, Zach! He cheated on me with a female super-villain named Clean Slate! She could take away anyone’s sense! He visited her in prison as a conjugal visit! That’s when I found out that— Susan’s voice in my mind goes silent. I could feel her spirit gasp. Doc Crimson told me after the warden told him.

“And then I found out about Doc’s other little investigations and was told that I had to clean it all up! I had to cover all tracks of information before the bomb arrived in the city!” Humanity Man screamed, tears rolling down his face.

“Who?!” I shout back, “Who told you?!”

He doesn’t response. Instead, he lets go of me. But it’s only briefly, to slam my heard hard into the metal wall that he’s pressing me against. I see a sparkle of lights in my eyes and I fight darkness. I feel marble slammed into my forehead as I’m fighting from becoming unconscious. Between these brutal shots (that I have no idea how I’m surviving) and the couple’s argument, I feel like a child stuck between two rivalling parents.

“Tom, please.” The words come out of my mouth, but out of my control. I feel a warmth in my bloodshot eyes as Susan tries to speak to her ex-husband. “Who gave you those orders?”

Humanity Man’s grip loosens around my throat, but he still has a firm grip. I cough for air, spurting blood that spatters on my attacker’s forearm. I use my new vision power to check outside. The oval-shaped remainder of the Sky Fortress is zooming through the clouds. I don’t know where we are or where we’re going, but we’re definitely far away from St. Mignola or Integrity City. I tell my powers that I need to know where we are or where we’re headed; some kind of bearing, at least. I feel a new power buzzing in my head that’s not unlike a compass, but the buzzing is telling me that it’ll take a bit of time to get a proper bearing.

I look at Humanity Man in the face. His hair is frazzled, his eyes are wild and froth is spewing from his mouth. For the first time, I see who he has become.

“Tom, please.” I beg him, starring him in his wild eyes. They’re barely able to keep focus on me.

“Rrr!” he growls, actually growls, at me! His grip around my throat tightens and I can barely breathe. He heaves all ten feet remaining of the marble desk and heaves it forward at my head. He’s going for a kill shot. Susan’s voice is screaming in my mind, but this time, I see the attack coming. I raise both arms up to block the desk, which likely weighs upwards of three hundred pounds. I close my bloodshot eyes and flex what muscles I can. I feel marble meet with my forearms as it smashes into them.

My ears ring as a booming explosion and sounds of sifting sand fill my eardrums. Susan is still screaming at me. My eyelids flicker open and all I see is a cloud of grey dust. I feel Humanity Man’s grip loosen again and I slide down the wall, my feet finally touching the floor. I cough and frantically wave a hand in front of me, trying to clear away the dust. I see Humanity Man’s figure still standing in front of me. The dust begins to thin and I notice we’re both covered in a grey and purple dust, from head to toe. I look at my forearms to see dozens of little cuts and scratches.

I take a step forward, looking Humanity Man directly in the eye. I stand my ground, not showing fear, and quite honestly, not feeling any.

“Who gave you the order?” I ask slowly, letting each word sink in.

Humanity Man grimaces as if he unable to tell reality from fiction anymore. He grabs his head with his right hand, causing the small slab of marble left in his hand to drop to the floor. He groans, trying to force the information out of himself.

“Puh-Powerhouse,” he starts to snarl through his teeth, “Lord Powerhouse.”

My new compass power comes to life and I find out that my powers have flown us as far as Canada, around Calgary. I had been telekinetically towing the entire Sky Fortress the whole time. This is what my powers meant when they were going to get Humanity Man away from here.

My powers were telling me what I should do next. As soon as the idea entered my head, so does Susan’s voice.

Do it, Vance. Susan’s voice calmly tells me. I know you can’t kill him but this will be for the best.

Humanity Man looks like he could pounce on me again at any minute. He’s hunched over, pulling at his hair and frothing at the mouth. I need to do this quick before it’s too late.

“I’m sorry, Tom. I have to do this.” I say with a heavy heart. He was, after all, one of the greats.

“I know. I’ve gone too far. I can’t beat you,” he says. He stands up proud and straight. For a moment, I see a glimmer of the man he used to be. Or the kind of man that society always assumed he was. He lifts his head high, expecting the killing blow. For him, it may never come.

My feet leave the floor as I slowly take flight. Humanity Man watches me as I float up and past him, towards the smashed skylight.

“What are you doing?” he howls at me, “KILL ME!!”

“I can’t. Unlike you, it’s just not in my nature.” I tell him bravely. I don’t even notice but I’m now naturally using a deeper voice. It’s not a forced, fake heroic voice like all the times before, “What I’m going to do is make sure you’re never a threat to anyone ever again.”

Susan’s voice speaks through me, “You’ll be close enough to just enough population that you won’t die, but you won’t be strong enough to get out.”

“What,” Humanity Man tries to say, “What are you going to do?” He looks around him, trying to see something, anything, but only sees the cold, metal walls. I realize now how quiet it is. For Susan’s ex-husband, the silence must be unnerving.

“She loves you, Tom,” I tell him frankly, “You killed her in cold blood with the one sign of her devotion to you and she still loves you. I can’t kill you but this is going to make you wish for death.”

The metal around the Sky Fortress’ conference room screams as my telekinesis begins to compact it. The metal around the skylight swirls around the bullet proof glass as I force it to shrink. The glass heaves and then pops out, falling to the destroyed floor a few feet away from Humanity Man. I leave just enough of an opening in the skylight for myself.

I look with my new overall vision for the right spot in Alberta. My compass senses tell me that there are acres upon acres of farming area that would be perfectly isolated. There are some small, rural farming communities in some areas, but there are others that are very independent of towns. It’s those areas that I focus on and find the right spot.

I telekinetically fly the entire now sphere-shaped conference room over one large acre of farming. There’s a small, quaint farm, surrounded by forest. It’s isolated enough that the nearest populated town is several miles away. There are just enough rural housing that would keep Humanity Man alive with his population-using abilities but not too much that he has access to his powers. He’ll no longer be a threat to any population.

I aim in the middle of what looks to be a field with rows upon rows of some kind of vegetable. My powers aren’t interested in telling me what kind is buried. My telekinesis digs a large hole that’s at least thirty feet deep in the center of the field, large enough to fit the sphere conference room. My powers do the job of evenly sorting the vegetable in the ground so as not to disturb them once everything is done.

The sphere hits the hole and flies far down into the ground, stopping with a soft thud into the mud. The sunlight is barely shining through into the skylight.

“This is the best I can think of, Tom,” I apologize, “If I were a better hero, I would think of some better form of justice.”

“No,” he says, looking up at the sunlight one last time and then at me, “This is what I deserve: a god to be buried where no one can ever worship him.” He smiles that evil smirk, “Lord Powerhouse would be pleased. This is very poetic, Zach.”

Just go, Zach. You can’t do anything more for him now.

I fly out of the skylight and far up the deep hole made. My telekinesis seals up the top of the skylight, leaving Humanity Man in the darkness for however long. My powers continue to dig the earth back to its original form as I fly out of the hole and into the Alberta sky. I can even tell that my powers are putting the vegetables back in their proper place in the field.

Come on, I tell my powers, I need to go home. There are funerals to be arranged now.

Let’s go home Just before the hole seals up completely, my heightened hearing detects one last thing from Humanity Man, “Just think, kid. You could’ve been a great sacrifice to the call.” I hear him laughing at his own joke as the hole is sealing up, “We could’ve renamed you The Martyr!”