Eventually, the woman named Alice returned to the kitchen, and two more individuals came with her. One was a woman in her mid-twenties. Compared to the others living in Ashburn Luxury Apartments, she seemed jarringly normal. Everyone else I had met over the past hour looked like a superhero who was off the clock, but this woman actually looked like a normal person.

  The man standing next to her, however, was the exact opposite. He stood at seven feet tall, even while stooped over, and his dimensions simply looked odd. His arms and legs were too long, and I could swear his left arm had one too many joints. In the shadowed kitchen, he looked like a monster from a horror movie.

  “That’s Alice; she can control time. That’s Veronica; she can do magic. That’s Vick; he’s immortal,” Frank said, quickly introducing us. “Guys, this is Kevin, the new spoon-bender.”

  The others waved to me hurriedly, though they seemed much more interested in the Chinese food than me. Vick reached into one of the bags and began voraciously consuming the food held within. The sound was horrifying.

  Moments later, the other three residents of Ashburn Luxury Apartments - Hana, Claire, and Jason - entered the kitchen. Hana carried a heavy hunk of metal, which she placed on the kitchen’s island with a resounding clank.

  “What happened to the island?” Hana asked as she noticed the cracks.

  “Testing the new guy,” Frank answered gruffly.

  Hana sighed. “New rule for everybody: don’t make Kevin use his power in the building if you want it to remain standing.”

  “He’s that strong, eh?” Jason asked.

  “Hold on a second, was he?” Claire said.

  They were going to figure it out in a second, so I figured I might as well be the one to tell them.

  “It was me. I killed the kaiju in the harbor.”

  Jason walked up to me and slapped me on the shoulder. “Hell yeah, man! Way to make an entrance!”

  “Well done,” Claire said, smiling.

  “Imagine what you can do with that power,” Veronica said. “You could wipe out the Brotherhood of Evil or the Ephemeral Troupe in a day.”

  I hadn’t considered using my powers in that way before, but Veronica’s suggestion made me visualize the carnage. City blocks could be leveled with a thought. Individuals could be rendered into ragged meat in a second.

  There was no one in the world - this one or the last - that I hated enough to kill. But what of obligation? If a man could only be defeated by me, was I obligated to kill him? Killing a human being wasn’t something I could do without a thought. Not yet, anyway.

  “Maybe,” I said, smiling to prevent the disgust I felt from appearing on my face. “I don’t know enough about those groups to know if they deserve to be wiped out.”

  “What?” Veronica asked.

  “Amnesia,” Hana said briefly. “He doesn’t remember anything from before noon today.”

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  “Well, they deserve it,” Veronica said. “I won’t say what they did right now, since we’re eating. Their list of crimes gets… visceral.”

  Vick turned as if someone had just called for him. Seeing his reaction, Veronica said, “Not you, Viscera. Sorry.”

  Oh, right. Vick was short for Viscera. Seeing him up close was definitely a harrowing experience. He covered most of his body with loose-fitting clothes, but the small portions of his skin that could be seen made me want to vomit. Parts of his body had scales and others had feathers. Viscera was a poorly-made tapestry of human flesh and animal meat. Jesus, if he was what passed for a Hero in this city, I was terrified to meet the villains.

  “Okay, good, it’s all set,” Hana said once she finished using a kitchen knife to fiddle with the internal structure of the large metallic object sitting on the kitchen island. “Jason, put your hands here, and hit the battery with twelve volts.”

  “Clear out,” Jason said. He held his fingers out, and small sparks began to arc between them. Everyone took several steps away from the island as Jason placed his hands where Hana told him.

  “Okay, it’s charging,” Jason said, though I couldn’t detect a change. He just stood there with his hands on the battery. “How long do I have to keep this up, Hana? You know I don’t like using my body as a circuit.”

  “Don’t be such a baby,” Hana said. “You’ll be fine as long as you pass the charge through your abdominal muscles.”

  “You try getting zapped in the stomach and tell me how it feels,” Jason muttered.

  “Okay, that’s enough,” Hana said. She took some pliers and tied two fuses together. There was a spark of electricity as the circuit was complete, and Jason pulled his hands away.

  “Am I just a source of electricity to you?” Jason asked, though the smile on his face and the mirth in his voice made it clear that he was joking.

  “Right now, you are,” Hana said as she lifted the battery and hurried out of the kitchen.

  With Hana out of the room, I looked around at the other six individuals present and asked, “How many active Heroes are there in this city?”

  Frank answered. “There’s me, Deadeye, then there’s,” he began pointing at the others present, “Viscera, Severina, Countess, Thunderbolt, and Europa. Of course, there’s also Sparrow. We’re basically the B-list that handles stuff behind the scenes. The big names in this city are Kingfisher, Calypso, Akuma, and Seraph, though Kingfisher and Calypso aren’t really active. I’d say there are nine Heroes in this city that you’d expect to see deal with crimes committed by Enhanced Humans.

  Frank scratched his chin, thinking about what to say next. “Viscera and I aren’t on the official rosters, and the A-listers spend most of their time doing… I don’t know… other stuff. Realistically, when somebody calls 9-1-1 and says, ‘a man made of rock just robbed me,’ one of five people will show up: Severina, Countess, Thunderbolt, Europa, or Sparrow.”

  “What about you and Viscera? What do you do?” I asked.

  “I’m technically an Antihero, a vigilante. I go after whatever criminals I want, but the government doesn’t pay me. Deadeye is technically a criminal with a warrant out for his arrest, but the government secretly approves of what I do, so nobody actually tries to arrest me. Viscera is the same way, but not by choice. He’s just… uh… not marketable.”

  “Excuse me? Marketable? What do you mean?”

  “Right, you wouldn’t know about that,” Frank said. “To become an active Hero, you have to sign a merchandising deal with Kingfisher Industries. They’ll typically sell replicas of your equipment, and you get a percentage of the profits. Replicas of Ragnar’s axe sell like hotcakes.”

  “But you don’t do that?” I asked.

  “Not anymore,” Frank said. “I don’t hold it against anybody else. After a few years, I couldn’t bear looking at kids running around wearing my mask and pointing ‘child-friendly’ versions of my gun at each other.”

  Loudly, Jason cut in. “He’s selling himself short. Frank here is the only real hero in New Kinsington.”

  Viscera grunted in annoyance.

  “No offense, buddy. You’re definitely number two. What I mean to say is that Frank doesn’t care what Kingfisher says. If an organization needs to be destroyed, he’ll do it even if the government says not to.”

  “Remember, I’m also the poorest hero in this city,” Frank said with a faint smile on his face.

  “And we love you for it,” Jason said.

  The lights flickered silently for a few seconds before turning on completely. A few of the people in the kitchen cheered, and I saw the kitchen clearly for the first time.