“Ah’m gettin’ too ole fer dis shit..”
Hopefully, my quiet grumbling didn’t ruin the image I hoped I was presenting as I strode through the rubble that used to be the SouthBank Centre. I stepped around a few suspicious stains (there had been a game on when it was destroyed, so naturally there were plenty of suspicious stains). The walk I was doing was one I knew looked menacing. I leaned forward a bit in that Army slouch I picked up back when I was just a regular hero to red-blooded ‘Muricans instead of a super hero to all. I scowled at the blur before me, confident it would resolve into something sensible by the time I needed it to. My fists were clenched at my sides. I know from watching old footage of me in my glory days that this particular walk looked badass.
Of course, I tripped.
Not even just once. I tripped like six times walking through that rubble. Don’t judge me, I’m 64 years old and drunk as shit. You see, that’s my superpower. The more I drink, the stronger I get. I can fly, I’m super strong and tough, and I can even mimic other super powers I see. I’m Drunk Stan, the first superhero.
I thought I’d retired a decade ago, back when some superbeings stopped being villains and started following my lead. It was nice. I was cleaning myself up (6 years sober, with a 3 year stretch before that), I’d settled down with Alyssa, one of my former groupies, and we had a couple of awesome kids. But then the supervillains got their act together.
They banded together, called themselves the League of Evil (because apparently an 8 year old won their naming contest) and started taking out the heroes one by one. First they got Dark Wing, because he didn’t have any real superpowers, just a bunch of awesome gadgets and more MMA skills than half the UFC. I wasn’t too worried back then. But then they came for the others. Draco, Toaster Boy (what a shitty superhero name for a guy who could shoot flames from his hands), Duke Nuke (A much better name for a guy who shoots microwaves from his hands, but still kinda treading on thin copyright grounds, yanno?) and the Mistress of Pain. I always liked the Mistress’ BDSM theme. It went well with her ability to light up a person’s nerve endings.
I was getting a little worried by that point, but I had a family and my own sobriety to think of. I didn’t get off my ass until they took out Captain Truth.
Now, the Cap was a special case. He had the same basic set of powers I did, though his were on all the time. And he was an annoyingly all-American Good-Old-Boy with a strict sense of right and wrong that would drive you nuts in a political conversation, but made him a great choice for a super hero. We all thought he was invulnerable, but we were wrong. The villains came for him, last.
They fought for hours. Cap must have taken out two or three dozen superbeings, not to mention countless mooks. Where the hell do they even recruit the mooks from? I’ve always wondered that. Is there really a whole group of kids telling their parents “I want to be a disposable, nameless, faceless henchman when I grow up!” ?
But, they eventually got to him. It turns out he was highly allergic to peanuts. Hell of a way to go.
But anyways, that brings us up to why I was back in the battle-bottle at 64 years old, striding through the ruins of a stadium towards the giant monolith the League of Evil set up as their headquarters.
The city was in ruins around me. Anyone who wasn’t a mook or a looter had long since left, which was really saying something as the population had been about 6 million before all of this. I wasn’t wearing my former costume (it had gotten a little tight around the middle, yanno?), but rather a pair of blue jeans, a Metallica T-shirt and a brand new backpack with my trusty utility belt, stocked exclusively with flasks of 190 proof Everclear, at my waist. I used to keep a variety of spirits in there, but a tough fight with a giant rock gorilla monster I liked to call George taught me that it was better to keep the proof as high as possible, in case I need to quickly juice up.
The occasional mook noticed me and would shout out or take a potshot at me. I ignored them for the most part. I’d consumed at least four bottles of Everclear and the entire contents of my local liquor store’s vodka shelf. This time, I paid Samir in advance. He tended to yell and curse my lineage less when I did that. The bullets the mooks fired my way shattered against my skin. One group had gotten an RPG from somewhere, but it didn’t even singe my eyebrows. I was drunker than I’d ever been in my entire life, because I planned to seriously fuck some shit up.
By the time I reach the Tower of Evil (seriously, who the fuck is in charge of names?), the whole city was a beehive of mooks and minor supervillains. One giant dude with more muscles than I’d ever seen on a living being in my entire life had come straight at me. I pulled his intestines out and strangled him to death with them. I had wanted to choke him to death with his junk, but it turns out those bits didn’t scale with the rest of his body. At least I understood why he’d turned to villainy. I’d be angry too, if my pecker looked like a five year old’s pinky.
My first kick shattered the door. It had been built to withstand being hammered on by a super, but nobody had planned for a hammered super (heh heh, get it?). Twisted metal groaned and squealed and sparked as it flew apart, the biggest chunk flying straight down the halls, taking out a few mooks and a guy in a chicken suit.
To this day, the question of what that chicken suited guy’s powers were still haunts me.
I took a swig from one of my flasks (by swig, I mean: I drank the whole fucking thing) just to top off before the real fun began. It was a good thing I thought of it, because it was mere seconds after I entered the Tower of Evil (yanno what? Fuck calling it that. It shall henceforth be known as the Tower of Stupid Fucking Names) when the League of Stupid Fucking Names assembled in front of me.
“Drunk Stan. I thought you’d retired.” I recognized that voice. Kraven the Killer Klown; hero of internet edgelords and founder of the LoSFN. Supposedly, he didn’t have any superpowers, either. But I remembered taking him down a few decades ago, when he took a punch from me and managed to stay conscious. He definitely had some power, even if it was just super-toughness.
“Hey,” I slurred. “Ain’t seen yoo in a while, Eric.” Kraven hated it when I called him by his real name. “Whassit been, like thirty years? Forty? Ya look like shit, I gotta tell ya.” He started to say something else, probably to bitch about me using his real name, but I cut him off. “Hey Eric, didun nee-one ever tell ya dat ‘craven’ means coward?”
“My name is spelled with a K!” He shouted, angry now. I laughed. “Oooookaaaaay, Karen.”
“What are we waiting for?” Kraven turned to the assembled host; the baddest of the bad. I saw Gator Man and the Withering Gaze in there. There were a bunch I didn’t recognize, too. “He’s the last one! The first, and now the last hero. KILL HIM!!!”
Those who had powers they could project started firing them at me, while the rest charged. I noticed Kraven stuck to the rear. Smart, but ultimately futile. You see, when I say I’m the drunkest I’ve ever been, I meant it. Sure, back in my heyday, drinking an entire shelf of vodka wasn’t too out of the ordinary. But I’d also had four (or maybe five, it’s all a bit fuzzy) bottles of 190 proof.
And I’d been mostly sober for a decade. My tolerance had shrunk to the point that I got a buzz from my very first swallow. The power coursing through my system was like nothing I’d ever felt, in all my years of being a superhero.
I’d formed my plan while I was still sober, and memorized the steps. I followed them now by rote. As eldritch energies, lightning, flame and lasers flashed around me, I tossed several pre-programmed drones into the air. They, in turn, started posting mini GoPros all over the place, while filming with their own cameras. All the footage was being livestreamed and recorded on my Facebook page (and I had a couple thousand fans still, so word would spread quickly).
Some of the drones disintegrated in the maelstrom around me, but most made it through. When my backpack was empty, I straightened out. The first of the up-close-and-personal baddies had already reached me and started pounding, stabbing, slicing, burning, freezing and whatever else they could do. I hadn’t even noticed.
I grabbed the first villain -a tall, gangly guy with claws for fingers- and plucked off his limbs one by one. He was hung more impressively than the giant outside, so I took that, too. For the next one, I copied a flame-shooting power I’d seen years back, and let it out in a trickle. Third degree burns soon covered the entire front half of his body, and his screams began to fill the air.
I caught a glimpse of Keito the Ninja and went for her, next. Her revealing outfit was easy to spot in the mix. Seriously, who in their right mind would wear a string bikini and a ninja mask and think they’re being stealthy? I grabbed her by her belly (and noticed it was quite a bit flabbier than I’d remembered, alas the ravages of time) and called up a shaped force field power I’d seen someone use back in… Well, I can’t remember when, exactly. Or whom. Drunk Stan, remember? I put the forcefield between her skin and muscles, and then I gave a light tug. I took her whole skin and outfit with me. She dropped to the floor, shedding lipids and blood as her screams joined those of the burned guy.
Stomping on Keito’s knees as I strode forward, I set my eyes on The Obliterator. His powers were kinda hard to pin down, something to do with decay. He could make metal rust and wood rot and make people grow old and frail. He was probably trying to use those powers on me. Ha, jokes on him. I was already old and frail.
One thing I remembered about him was that he was just virulently homophobic. He liked to call his victims “faggots”. I knew what I wanted to do to him. A while back, I knew a superhero by the name of Mr. Flexible. He could change the size and shape of his body at will.
Ignoring the pummeling from those villains nearby and the swirling energies of those still keeping their distance, I grabbed Obbie by the knee and gave it a squeeze. It shattered in a satisfying way, dumping him on the ground. I knelt down, bent over and whispered in his ear “Hey Obbie, I ever tell ya yoo got a purdy mouf?”
I rammed my dick in his asshole, then started growing it. First, I went length-wise. He squirmed and screamed and begged, but I kept going. Seriously, did he think I was gonna stop? After a few seconds, the tip came out of his mouth and his cries became muffled gagging noises. Then, I started growing in girth. Rapidly.
The explosion of gore spattered the whole room and everyone in it. The commotion stopped, everyone staring in shock. The only sound came from the pair on the floor screaming. Drunk Stan may have been a weirdo, but he’d always been one of the good guys. Watching me fuck a man until he exploded was not what any of them had expected.
It was, however, exactly what I’d expected. Rather than give them their moment of shock, I grabbed one younger gal I didn’t recognize by the ponytail and ripped her head off with a jerk. It was a cleaner death than she deserved, most likely.
It went on like that for some time. I aimed to kill each one in a way that was poetic, but my main goal was just to make their deaths as horrific as possible. Before I was even halfway through, I was covered in blood, chunks of tissue, bile, shit, piss, melted fat and other bits of chunky salsa. I’m not proud of what I did that day, but I don’t regret it either.
At the end, it was just me and Kraven. He shot me a couple of times with a comically oversized revolver as I stalked towards him. The last pull of the trigger sent out a little flag on a stick that said “bang!”. Jesus, didn’t this guy ever get any new jokes?
I grabbed him by his green hair, being careful not to kill him. It was difficult, with all the alcohol in my veins. I looked around and spotted a drone, then used a little psychokinesis to bring it down right in my face.
“This wuz jus’ the warning.” I told the camera. “I’m fukkin sick a dis shit. Ahm sixty fukkin fiv- Five? No, sixty fukkin four years old, an’ I jes wanna enjoy my retirement an raise my fam’ly. But nooooooooo, deez lil fukkers hadda get all uppity an shit.
“So dis is da warning, mudderfukkers. I’m offishally SEMI-retired now. Erry fukkin soopervillen I so much as hear about poppin up is gonna join lil Eric here in my basement.” I lifted Kraven up by his hair and gave him a gentle shake for the camera. He squirmed and squealed satisfyingly. “Ahm keepin this lil shit-tard fer a hobby. Ahm gonna make him suffer fer the rest of ‘is long, long life. An’ ahm more’n happy to give ‘im some company.
“So from now on, dem’s da rules. No. More. Soopervillens. Yoo wanna be a bad guy? Ahmma put you in my basement.”
I left, then. Kraven cried and begged and blubbered and giggled as I dragged him away. Whenever he seemed to calm down a bit and resign himself to his fate, I gave him a little flick, leaving massive bruises and ramping up his struggles again. I really meant what I said. I was gonna torture this little fuck for as long as I could keep him alive, and god help anyone who tried to stop me. I planned it all out in my head as I walked away.
Shit. How was I gonna explain this to my kids?