The Hero's Roster

Forty years later, a team of superheroes meet regularly to discuss the good ol' times.

Raucous laughter filled the bar, even though its only occupants sat huddled around one massive table tucked away in a lonely corner. Unlike the other tables in the bar, this one had a stylized letter H with angel’s wings sprouting from either side carved into its dense mahogany surface.

“Are you kidding? ” Tommy “Thunderstroke” Turner slammed his empty pint glass down so hard the rest of the crew leaned away from the table, and the laughter stopped. The other white-haired old men gathered around were used to keeping their distance from that mountain of a man, because with Tommy, a well-meaning pat on the back could lead to a broken shoulder. “I did the Chameleon a favor when I broke Gecko’s spine. He got out of the game real fast after that.”

“Holy s**t, Tommy!” Chester “Crackmaster” Cleary lifted the edge of the heavy wooden table, and it buckled like a tent. “I mean, Jesus Christ, buddy. You hug your momma with them arms?”

“It was gonna happen sooner or later,” said Roger “Racetrack” Redmond. “He’s been breaking this table little by little for years.”

“Yeah,” Chester agreed. “It was already on its way out when I joined up with you guys.”

“That was over forty years ago,” said Thunderstroke, donning a broad and drunken grin. “That means you weren’t even there the day I broke Gecko and ended the Chameleon’s career.”

“Be happy you never had to deal with that psycho,” chuckled Dave “Defender” Denning. “He used to go to whatever lengths to beat us. He’d plan s**t for months.”

Chester smiled.

“I’ve dealt with my share of crazies in my day,” he said.

Chester was the only one who even bothered to wear the same colors he used to for this little reunion. Bright green and blue spandex with reflective yellow exclamation points wasn’t something any sixty-three year old man should wear, but the straight yellow tie he’d carefully chosen for today stood out against his black dress shirt, the knot at the top standing like a dot on the wrong end of his punctuation.

He still wore a whip, but not the same brightly-colored one that would let off puffs of shimmering gas with every crack. He’d had a laughing gas, a truth serum gas, and a gas you couldn’t see through without specialized goggles. He’d even had one he used as a last resort, a neurotoxin that in large doses could shut down all of a criminal’s motor functions while keeping their mind wide awake. Of course, he only used that one very rarely and in extremely small doses to keep particularly tough enemies off the streets for a few weeks.

This whip wasn’t special in any way, except that it was the one he’d used three months ago to chase off the group of thugs in that alley who clearly had no idea who he used to be.

They’d even laughed when he unclipped it from his belt, pointing their guns at him and calling him names it made him tremble with anger to remember.

Chester looked around the table. So many of them were gone now. Redclaw, Doctor Justice, and Captain Smite were among those absent, and he had visited Synapse in the hospital only a few months ago after a stroke had threatened to take him off the Hero’s Roster as well.

Thunderstroke, whose left hook had once sent King Kobra flying through three entire office buildings, was still laughing sleepily as his massive body shuddered and then came to rest on the table he had broken nearly in half.

After a minute, his fingers slipped from the handle of his glass, and Chester could see that it was done.

“I knew you would be the last to fall,” he said, almost to himself, as he straightened his tie and stood.

He took stock of the old men sprawled around him, vestiges of the Golden Age of Neon City, when criminals like those mouthy thugs who had accosted him were still afraid to roam the streets.

Now look at them.

He had spent thirty-two years fighting crime alongside them, living as one of them. Now they were finished.

He began to cry. He laughed, too, unsure of the correct emotion to express. He’d been laughing for far too long, playing the role of the group’s clown. It had served him well, and now the evidence showed that no one ever suspected him. He’d been worried a time or two, but here, at the end, he knew once and for all that his dedication to the role had paid off.

And now it was finally over.

“I have a question for you all,” he said, carefully calculating each word. “Raise your hand if you know the answer.”

He chuckled to himself. “Oh, right.”

Laughter was clearly the correct choice, given the circumstances. Finally, real laughter.

He tiptoed with caution around the bodies that hadn’t stayed in their seats, making his way over to Twister, whose face was tethered to the table by several thick streams of yellowing saliva. Rubbing his back, Chester felt the knots and clumps of scars from the lifetime he’d spent putting himself in harm’s way for others.

So foolish. Such a waste of potential.

He continued on, circumnavigating the table, letting his fingers gently scrape across the conscious but unmoving bodies of his comrades.

“Did you all know that Gecko wasn’t just the Chameleon’s minion?”

He arrived finally at Thunderstroke. Leaning in to him, running his hands down those massive shoulders and around to the barrel chest, as firm as steel, Chester felt for signs of life.

He couldn’t feel breathing or a heartbeat, but as he buried his face in the big man’s back, he heard the shallow pumping of a superhuman heart.

Chester hissed into his quarry’s ear loud enough that everyone could hear, pulling the whip tight between his hands and around Thunderstroke’s neck.

“He was the Chameleon’s little brother.”