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re: Animate [ME] - A Superhero Story

   
re: Animate [ME] - A Superhero Story

There are stories about daring, buff alien men
who wear capes and save people from burning buildings.

This is not one of those.


There are stories about extraordinary archers,
who can pin a termite against a feather
from 3 miles away.

This is not one of those, either.

There are stories about warrior women
from a time forgotten,
who deliver the world from
the evil clutches of old gods.

Nope, not this one either.

This is one about the generation after,
the kids who grow up
in the shadows of superheroes.

The heroes whose capes
are heavy and whose cowls
are shrouded, whose stories

are the hardest to hear.



.:-+|~*~|+-:.

Our story opens upon an adolescent Damarus Ducet,
the son of a warrior no one remembers.
A bookish mama's boy, Damarus has one friend in the whole world,
Gwendolyn Downs, the daughter of two of the greatest
mages the world has ever known.
And it so happens, she's sitting close by the target of his latest quest:

A journal that doesn't belong.



I: Beginnings

It is sufficient to say that despite being above-average in intelligence, Damarus hates to read. Nothing is more loathsome to him than pouring through page after page of text, no matter how exciting the subtext is. He has never met a book he ever liked, and he has never liked a book he ever met.

So it should be defined as strange to find Damarus opening the door to Peregrine City's esteemed Public Library on a warm Autumn morning. Having just arrived into the season, the AC in the building blows cold. His darkish and mottled hair sways timidly in the chilling burst from the revolving door, and as he steps slowly in he presses his glasses back up the bridge of his nose. The maneuver is mechanical and subconscious—something he picked up from one of his many forays into video games.

He gazes at the high shelves, packed with novels, short stories, poetry, and his least favorite of all, history and biographies. He shoves his hands into his pockets, pretending to be digging for something important, and assumes a nonchalant air.

"Isn't it a little warm to be wearing a jacket and scarf, Damarus?" chides a high voice from one of the many tables near the front. Damarus swings his vision around to the greet the pair of eyes and nose ejected slightly out of a shoddy romance novel—the kind where ancient vampire boys steal the hearts of teen girls. He lifts his left nostril and part of his lips in disgust.

"Isn't it a little early to be a smartass, Windy? And aren’t you a little old to be reading that crap?" he fires back, changing from cool and uncaring to irritated and somewhat of an asshole.

"It's Wendy, you twit. And for your information," she snarls, mimicking Damarus's look, "This is the last book in this god-awful series."

"If it's so bad, why do you read it at all?"

"Because, dammit, it's a good book despite being written by someone with a twelve-year-old's grasp of language." She hammers her bookmark—an old, many-times-folded piece of writing paper with some silly doodles etched onto it—into the pages and sets it down flat against the table. "So what brings you, of all people, to this utopia of literature and written word?"

Damarus grabs a seat across from Wendy and plants himself down in such a way that he can steal the chair next to him for foot support. "As unusual as this may sound, I came to find a book."

Wendy laughs out a sarcastic, "Well, duh." Damarus gives her a serious look, which shuts her mouth promptly.

"I heard a rumor my dad's journal was in here somewhere. Thought I'd come by and poke around a bit for it."

"Journal? Damarus, I don't think they'd just allow anyone's journal to be open to the public, even if he was a hero." Damarus shrugs.

"I thought so too, but for some reason my gut disagrees. And it's not hunger—I just came from the hotdog stand." He grins and lets out a modest burp. "Gross... shouldn't have had mustard with it..."

Wendy laughs raunchily whenever she hears Damarus burp, even if—maybe especially if—it's in a public setting... and definitely if it's in a place where one should be quiet.

"Well, if you want me to help you find it, I can give you a hand..." He waves her off.

"Nah, I got it. You go back to your, uh... filthy-filth." He gives her a wink, stands, shoves his hands back into his pockets, and saunters off towards the non-fiction section. Wendy waves at him and picks her book back up, hating every word she reads the rest of the day.


.:-+|~*~|+-:.

II: The Journal

Peregrine City’s library contains everything under the sun when it comes to reading material: manga, romance, history. Graphic novels, art, psychedelia. Comic books. Textbooks. The smallest section, ironically enough, is the section on the History of Heroes and Villains, containing newspaper prints, handwritten journals and memoirs, and other boring memorabilia. Damarus waltzes on over to here first, figuring that if there’s anything on his dad, he’d find it here.

Oh boy, what I wouldn’t give to learn some more about Starzen Bars, he thinks sarcastically, scoffing at the row of books dedicated to the most famous member of the First Response. One would think the whole library would be filled with information about that stars-and-stripes wearing egotist. Unfortunately for Damarus, literally half of the library has some form of material dedicated to Starzen Bars or someone relating to him. Finding a lesser-known hero, if his father was even that, would be next to impossible.

Let’s see... More First Response junk... Serpence’s band of misfits... Wow, how does he have anything written about him? That guy’s a total failure! Hm...

The boy digs and he digs, going row after row after row. It’s hard to find a man whose name you don’t know, whose deeds you’ve never heard of, and whose legend no one knows. According to Wendy’s father, Cyrus, and his own mother, Damarus’s father is responsible for the way things are today, even if no one realizes it. Damarus always figured that if he was so damn important, he’d have a section to himself in the History of Heroes and Villains.

One would be inclined to think that, but that one would be wrong.

After an hour of searching long titles and boring memoirs, Damarus pulls one at random and out falls something that looks like a middle-schooler’s composition notebook. Now that’s odd. There’s no title on the damn thing. Shouldn’t even be in here. He runs a finger over the cover while bringing the book closer for a more thorough inspection. Along with several dirt stains and a puncture in the corner, the notebook smells of foreign places and old clothes. He flips through several pages and scans over the words:

I still don’t quite understand how I managed to live through that hell, or how an armed attack on a town manages to receive no press coverage and no news. It doesn’t make any sense. Whatever. I’ll guess this is Asheron Ducet, closing up for the night.

"That’s my last name! I’ve found it!" Damarus shouts cheerfully. A crackle rings over the intercom, and a loud protruding voice reprimands him for disturbing the silence.

"LOVELY. NOW PLEASE QUIET DOWN. THERE ARE OTHER PEOPLE IN THE LIBRARY BESIDES YOURSELF, YOUNG MAN."

Damarus stifles a laugh with his free hand, and raises up from the crouch he’d been sitting in while reading. What kind of idiot yells over the intercom to tell me to be quiet? Tucking the journal under his arm, he begins to saunter back to Wendy to display his prize.

I wonder what kind of hero my dad was... who he fought... how he died. I wonder if Mom knows about this book...

He spots Wendy, nose still buried in her crummy vampire romance novel. He shifts his pace to a slow, creeping shuffle, and quietly pulls out the chair he’d so recently sat in. Wendy either doesn’t notice him, or doesn’t care that he’s there.

"Pssst," he whispers, laying the journal down on the table. No response.

"Pssssssssst." Wendy ignores him further. Damarus twists his face in annoyance, and tries again, much louder this time.

"PSSSSSSSST!" Another crackle over the intercom, and the librarian's voice booms again.

"I WILL NOT TELL YOU AGAIN, YOUNG MAN. BE QUIET IN THE LIBRARY."

"Can’t you see I’m reading here, idiot?" she whispers, raising her eyes slightly above the pages. Her brows are furrowed in annoyance.

"I can, but this is more important I think," Damarus returns, sliding the journal closer to her. Wendy glances at the cover, then returns to her reading.

"It’s my dad’s old journal. Can’t believe it’s been in this library all this time."

"Uh huh. That's great. Lemme finish this page, will ya?"

"Ugh," Damarus groans with mock exasperation, and leans back in his chair while waiting for her to finish. After about a minute or so, Wendy sighs and lays her bookmark into place and closes the book. She swaps out her romance novel for the journal, which she flips open to a random page somewhere in the middle and scans the oddly straight handwriting. Something in the writing catches her attention, and her warm face turns pale.

"Um, Damarus? You may want to look at this..." She turns the opened journal to the boy.

"You looked spooked. What’s the mat... Why is the text shuffling around like that?"

Damarus’s hands begin to tremble as he watches whole sentences get rearranged, as if the journal couldn’t decide its own canon. Words delete, names turn into other nouns, and strings of letters evolve out of the white ocean within the journal. Wendy and Damarus share a look of both fear and excitement. Neither are aware of the implications of such a strange occurrence, nor do they understand how it could be done. Damarus closes the journal, his face the same color as Wendy’s. They share a long silence, hearing only the whispers of other library attendees, of other pages turning in books that do not rewrite themselves.


.:-+|~*~|+-:.





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