\u201cDoes it ever seem to you,\u201d Nathan sighed, \u201cthat our lives are just a little bit… bland?\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d Melanie blinked at him. \u201cBland? Nathan, you can fly at will and freeze someone in ice by looking<\/em> at them. Tim can stop time.<\/em> I can jury-rig anything I can imagine and some things I didn’t.<\/em> We spend our days stopping people who can start fires with a stare, walk through the walls of bank vaults, break into houses through the phone lines, and who knows what else. And you think our lives our bland?<\/em> My God, do you even listen<\/em> to yourself?\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cOkay, okay.\u201d Nathan held up his hands. \u201cBad choice of word. But think about it, Mel. Back when Lady M was still in charge, she’d take us all over the world, we’d see and do everything.<\/em> We’d put a stop to people raising actual zombies <\/em>with a wave of their hands, <\/em>not just turning computers into zombie boxes with a touch. We’d save cities,<\/em> and all at once, not just one convenience store at a time. Everything she did was larger than life, and the same was true of the ones she set out to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n He dropped into an armchair with a heavy sigh, peeling off his gloves. \u201cAll we ever deal with now is… everyday stuff. It’s good work, don’t get me wrong. Every time some family walks up with their kids and says ‘thank you,’ I realize they’d have been in serious trouble if we hadn’t come along, and it’s worth it.<\/em> All that training, all those hours waiting, all that adrenaline \u2013 I’d do it all over again, just to keep those people alive and happy. But think about it, Mel. Compared to where we were five years ago, this is all chump change. What the hell’s going on?\u201d He rested his chin on his hands for a moment, lifting it up just long enough to add, \u201cIs the world just running out of magic or something?\u201d<\/p>\n Melanie frowned, leaning against his chair. \u201cCome to think of it, you’re right,\u201d she admitted. \u201cI mean, at the time I was just as glad not to have the stakes running so high all the time. Glad not to worry that if we screwed up now that we were on our own, thousands of people would suffer for it. But if you stop and think about it… you’re right, the stakes have never gone back up. When it comes right down to it, we’re not dealing with any crimes the regular police wouldn’t \u2013 it’s just the methods<\/em> that are unusual. But nothing that’s a matter for the National Guard. Or an international task force.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cAnd that was the sort of thing Lady M lived<\/em> for,\u201d Nathan mused. \u201cDo you think that’s<\/em> why she gave it all up? That she just… didn’t feel necessary anymore, that someone who can outrun bullets, who can face an entire tank battalion and win single-handed, was just overkill? Most of our opposite numbers now are easy for us,<\/em> maybe even for any one<\/em> of us. Back then, it was all we could do, with<\/em> her, to pull through. Maybe she just felt redundant?\u201d<\/p>\n That question hung on the air for quite a while, and Melanie didn’t have an answer to offer.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The next generation of superheroes finds that their lives have been on a rather different level since their mentor’s retirement.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[25],"tags":[84],"class_list":["post-302","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-one-shot","tag-flash"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=302"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/302\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=302"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=302"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/furry-tales.net\/shurhaian\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=302"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}