ARCHETYPE (Slowburn Superhero Progression)

For a while I sat on The Shops pub counter stool and let my thoughts drift.

George's head half blown apart from a Pied Piper bullet, his corpse floating within a large tank in the Wedder Gorge facility laboratory.

I shook my head and tried to think of something else.

Holly having her throat pierced through with a stake of wood by Walter at the Wedder Gorge facility inside the exercise area.

Okay, I thought, something not Wedder Gorge related.

Me leaping full tilt to escape the Pied Piper officers at the World War 2 bunker. Me diving head-first into a Pied Piper Task Force jeep.

The phantom sensation of the glass which had embedded into my face returned to me. And a moment after I recalled what it felt like to punch the Pied Piper Task Force officer who had been in the middle of driving the jeep – how I had punched the officer hard enough I was sure I had killed him. If not that, then the resulting crash.

I found, as I sat sipping my fruit drink, and helped myself to another, that all I could think about was horrible things.

Losing control to the Fox-Frog-Monster the first time. Snapping a Pied Piper officer's knee underfoot.

Ripping apart an entire corridor of Pied Piper officers whilst not in control of my own body, the scent of their blood filling my powered enhanced nose.

One of those Pied Piper officers, I had known through my heightened smell, had bacon and eggs and hash browns for breakfast. And had been chewing gum about half an hour before their death.

The corridor at the abandoned textile factory had stunk of blood, but also the sharp electric scent of fear. My jaw clenched as I remembered the sensation of biting into the neck of a Pied Piper officer; and how the Fox-Frog-Monster had delighted in the crunching and tearing.

Think of something else, I told myself, no longer casual about it, but demanding.

Bleeding out on my back outside the den close to Sisterslake. Having to choose between living, and letting the Fox-Frog-Monster take control of my body, or dying, despite having the power to prevent myself from bleeding out.

In the present moment, my body became rigid, the corners of my mouth tugging downwards.

My mind cycled through more horrors I had experienced first hand. There was enough for a lifetime already.

Joanne. Graham. Rodger. The family I had helped.

This memory kept the others at bay.

Joanne's skin had been charred to a crisp. No doctor in the world could have kept her alive in the state the fire and collapsed building debris had reduced her to.

But the power had brought her back. And I had used the power to bring her back - with Clang and Miss Toontastic's help.

My thoughts drifted back to the negative in the blink of an eye.

I recalled Tiffany crying whilst sitting at Robert Hoffman's special dinner. And me realising she had no intention of turning down Robert Hoffman's PUNCH program offer.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to the original site for the genuine story.

Before I could think of something else the memory of Tiffany and I sat in her room in the hotel in Lintern Village sprang to mind. I remembered the moment she and I had decided to look out for each other moving forward.

A sudden anger took hold of me, and before I could think better of doing so I crushed the glass bottle in my grip. What juice remained in the glass leaked onto the countertop along with the shards. Thankfully, my hand was tough enough that not even glass shards could cut through the skin. At best it was just a mild discomfort.

I let go of the glass and rubbed the remaining pieces from my hands.

My hope that breaking the glass bottle might put a stop to the bad thoughts was short lived.

I gave up trying to sit with my thoughts because clearly that was something only an older version of Burgess could do.

To fill my time with something I moved over to the leather sofa, the one which wasn't broken by Clang, and turned my attention to the TV.

Though the TV was on, I couldn't pay attention to the UKBC 24-hour news for more than a few minutes before losing myself in thought again.

The dread wasn't going away. The panic wasn't stopping either. Through the power I had transformed myself into someone dangerous, and powerful, with improved looks to match. And

yet the memories of everything which had happened since the evacuation were haunting my waking thoughts.

Need a distraction, I thought.

But what? I had already used transforming myself, and training with Snap, as ways to distract myself from the pit of dread bubbling up inside me.

I thought transforming would make me feel better, I thought.

But it hadn't. I felt the same. Still worrying. Still Burgess. There was a small comfort in that, because, I noticed, I hadn't changed so much that my usual overthinking had been replaced like my old face, and height, and unimpressive body.

It was then my thoughts drifted to something else. I thought about what new uses of my power I could try.

To bring myself to the present moment I looked at the palms of my hands, which had small black pads on the fingertips. With a mere thought I changed the dark colour of the pads to a clear transparent whiteness.

I willed the power to create more resin, and right away a resin ball, like a tennis-ball-sized marble, formed in each palm.

Freeze, I thought.

The ball in my right palm froze, the resin-ball hardening and growing heavier too. I chucked it into the air and caught it again, and did this several times.

Then, holding the ball, I thought of a new command: soften.

The hardness of the ball diminished. I threw the ball and it bounced like rubber against the wall, perhaps a little too close to the TV, and it bounced right back into my palm.

I threw it again, and again. Then, realising I really enjoyed this little game, I made the second resin-ball in my left palm rubbery too.

Da-dum-da-da-dum-da.

Two balls were good. I made a third. And a fourth. Until I had six balls in total bouncing across the room, striking the wall, and then back to my hands, to then be thrown again. I did this with the kind of speed and precision one would expect of a machine. The drumming of the resin-balls had a satisfying quality to it both in the sensation of throwing and catching, but also in listening.

Da-dum-da-da-dum-da.

The dread which had filled me before had eased. It was still there but, I noticed, playing around with the power was keeping it at bay in a way that simply trying to think positive thoughts hadn't.

I thought of little Burgess then, and the ideas he had drawn up on his pieces of paper. My new look, with the visor and the scar-like lines which framed my face and reached the corners of my mouth was due in part to the designs Little Burgess had drawn.

A genuine smile reached my face, because I remembered that special drawing Little Burgess had made. The one he had drawn in the hopes of me using a very new, and very special technique.

One that was sure to make Clang mad was I to master the technique the way Little Burgess imagined it.

Pap-pap-pap-pap-pap-pap!

I caught all the resin-balls with one hand, each ball sticking to the one beneath it, and the first sticking to my palm. With a mixture of willing the power and moving both hands to sculpt, I reshaped the 6 resin-balls into one large resin-ball about the size of a football.

I had just started to toy with the new technique when my ears pricked at the sound of Snap and Clang returning.

Ah, I thought, It'll have to wait.

With one last command I willed the resin back into my body, which wasn't something I knew I could do until I did it, finding it cost me very little mental effort to draw the resin back into myself.