So I finally updated this. Yay! Okay, so the science part of this I am kind of making up and stretching, but you know, superhero things never really make much sense. And sorry, no House or anyone else from the team in this chapter, but they will return in the next one!

After a long, tiring day, Taub finally arrived at his home. The case that they had had that day proved to be challenging with all sorts of symptoms, and it turned out to all be due to a simple sinus infection and everything could be cured with antibiotics. Not only was his work day hectic, but Chris Taub's injured shoulder had been killing him all day, making him wince every time he moved his arm too quickly. And of course, Kutner would not shut up about his encounter with The Bamboozler, making Taub uncomfortable, the whole time fearing that Kutner would figure out that the superhero he admired and the plastic surgeon were the same person.

It was an annoying day indeed.

Sighing and shutting his front door behind him, Taub walked quietly in the dark so he would not wake his wife; but it was no use.

Rachel Taub flicked on the lamp next to her, illuminating Taub's mid-way trek to the bedroom. His wife was sitting in the recliner in her pink fuzzy robe, arms crossed and a scowl on her face.

"Hey," Taub said, trying to sound surprised and nonchalant. Something was wrong, but he didn't know what. "Why are you waiting up?"

"It's past one in the morning," Rachel stated. "You missed dinner."

"Uh…sorry?" Taub bit his bottom lip, trying to think of something to say. "Aren't you used to that by now? I am a doctor you know…"

"Yes, I know that!" Rachel snapped. She picked up the remote and flicked on the television, Taub experiencing the sinking feeling of knowing what was coming.

There on their living room television was a still picture of him, as The Bamboozler on the screen, and even though the sound was muted, Taub could tell that the news program was talking about him and his heroics from today.

Taub smiled weakly. "Yes…?"

"Chris. We talked about this."

"Yes. Yes, we did."

"And we decided that you wouldn't do this," Rachel said, making wavy motions with her hands, "anymore."

"B-but, it was a friend, and I had to-," Taub stammered, but his wife interrupted him.

"And you just happened to have your costume with you?"

"It's a super suit!" Taub yelled. Why does everybody insist that it's a costume? Rule number thirty-one clearly states that it is not.

"Whatever." Rachel shook her head and looked away from Taub to the television. A reporter was now standing in an alley that Taub recognized to be the one where The Bamboozler had had the encounter today.

"It's not my fault," Taub said quietly, looking at the floor. "Just when somebody's in trouble, I have this…this urge to go and help them. It's been really hard to not help everybody I see or hear that is in danger. I guess that's why I like this job at Princeton so much. It's somewhere where I can actually help people when they need it instead of fixing up rich people that have no self confidence."

"Chris…don't…"

"No. We decided that it would be best for me to stop going around as the superhero so it wouldn't endanger you or other people that are connected to me. Because you know the villains always come after the people that the hero loves." Taub squinted his eyes and looked up at the ceiling. Rule number two: Don't let the evil people use the ones you love against you. And sadly, it always happened with superheroes. The girl would always be kidnapped or something, and then the villain would use them to lead the hero to their lair for the big epic battle. "Even though I've never had an arch-nemesis…"

Rachel chuckled. "Do you want one? Because maybe I could arrange for that."

"No thanks."

Rachel stood up and shuffled across the floor and shyly looked up at her husband and placed her hands on his chest. "I'm sorry, it's just-,"

"I know."

"And I know it's what you want to do, but you know how I feel-,"

"I know."

"And I do love you-,"

"And I love you too," Taub said, brushing a strand of blonde hair of out his wife's face. "But I had to."

"That's what you always say."

"Well, I haven't gotten media attention in what...three years or so?"

Rachel shrugged. "But now, everyone's going to be all hyped up again…"

"Let them be hyped up."

"You like it," Rachel said, playfully punching Taub on the shoulder. Taub gritted his teeth, his cut still painful. Rachel's entire demeanor changed; she had been lightening up a bit, but she had returned to anger again. Taub could sense it.

"What happened?" she asked.

"Oh, it's nothing. Just a little cut." Taub looked over as Rachel unbuttoned his shirt to reveal the nasty slash that the man had given him from earlier today. Rachel sighed and shook her head.

"That's another reason why we decided it was best for you to retire. I got tired of you coming home with all of these injuries that I had to clean up."

"That's to be expected. And I had got to the point where I would rarely get hurt," Taub pointed out.

"Yeah. Rarely." Rachel sighed and ran a hand through her hair. "Fine."

"Fine what?"

"It's okay if you want to go off and…be a super hero. Just don't let it consume your life, 'kay?"

Taub grinned. "Yes, of course!"

"And make sure that you don't get too hurt, okay?"

"That's my plan." Because you know, that's rule number twenty: Stay alive.

---

Later that night, Taub was wide awake in his bed with his wife snuggled into the crook of his arm fast asleep. It was such a relief to know that Rachel now allowed him to return to his superhero lifestyle. Well, not allow per se; Taub could have done whatever he wanted to do, but it felt better to have his wife agree that it was okay for him to start back his other, more risky job.

Actually, now that Taub thought about it, he didn't know which job was more dangerous; the one as The Bamboozler or one as a doctor on House's team. Sure, as The Bamboozler, he faced criminals and situations that he wouldn't encounter as a doctor, but on House's team he had the possibility of getting arrested by the things that House made him and the other doctors do. Either way, they both were interesting and never left him with a boring day.

Taub thought back to when he first acquired his special powers. He was not born with them as many had speculated, and he did not come from another planet as the majority of people thought. His mom and dad were humans, from planet Earth. Not Krypton. And there were no such things as Mutants, and Taub wasn't bitten by a radioactive spider either. He was just a normal guy, until that one day.

It was like any other day on that fateful July afternoon in the year 1996 – the year slap bracelets were the raging style and the popularity of CD's were on the rise. Chris was the young age of twenty-five, in the stretch of completing his medical degree and was engaged to the love of his life. Everything was great.

Or so it seemed.

Chris had been studying abroad in Germany during the summer as an extra boost in his medical program. He had thought that he would have loved studying in another country, but the truth was that he hated it. Not many people spoke English, and the ones that did would snub you once they found out you were an American. Transportation was a joke, he had no money, the hotel room smelled weird and the classes were hard. Chris was miserable, and wished he had listened to Rachel when she had said that he wouldn't like it over there.

Two nights before they were set to leave, the rest of the group that was with Chris decided to go out and have one last drunken night before they headed back to America. Chris didn't want to go, but Marcus, Chris's roommate, convinced him to go. "You deserve a break. Get your big nose out of those books," Marcus had said. Chris eventually agreed to go along; he guessed it wouldn't be that bad. The beer was cheap and he was not going to let Marcus get away with criticizing his nose without buying him some drinks.

But that night did go wrong. It turns out that the bar that the group had ended up going to was being used for an unlicensed pornography studio. (He couldn't remember that much, but Chris has this feeling that he did end up being in some obscure German porno as a confused tourist. Ironic.) The group, including Marcus, ran out as soon as the police arrived, leaving Chris to wonder around drunk in the unfamiliar streets by himself.

Before he knew it, Chris was outside of some large mysterious building. Even though the building had an essence that it wouldn't be a good idea to enter, Chris did anyway. Maybe it was the booze, maybe he never learned that trespassing in strange buildings never ended up with a good conclusion. But hey, the building was open, so why not find out what was in there?

The room was dark, and Chris could hear his footsteps echoing throughout the room. He felt against the wall, looking for a light switch. Chuckling as he felt his fingertips brush across a switch, he looked around the room as the overhead lights slowly flickered on.

In the center of the room was a platform with bars hanging from the ceiling with chains dangling down, as well as chains rooted to the floor of the platform. To the right, there was a sealed glass chamber with what looked like a control panel inside, and looking up, Chris saw a huge propeller that was right above the platform with the chains, and there were some unidentifiable steel rods that ran from the ceiling to the floor of the platform.

Closing his eyes, Chris took a deep breath. Okay, so the chains were obviously for a human, or some other living being, and this was some kind of experimental science laboratory. If he quickly turned around, he could just get out of there…

But of course, he had to do something stupid. Like tripping and falling against the wall, hitting several switches on the wall. Horrified, Chris turned around to see the propeller on the ceiling beginning to turn. He stumbled to stand up, and tried to open the door, but it was no use in trying – it was locked.

Thinking quickly, Chris ran towards the glass chamber, but when he got halfway there, he felt his body resisting his forward movement. Instead, he felt himself being pulled backwards towards the platform in the center of the room, and then tried using all of his strength to force himself away from the possible death trap. However, after a few seconds of struggling, he lost hope and let the force that was being made by the spinning propeller drag him to the center of the room.

As soon as Chris got to the platform, the chains bound around his wrists and ankles, and to his extreme disappointment, the unidentifiable steel rods turned out to be charged with electricity, and began to shock him.

Well, this is an interesting way to die, were the last things that Chris thought before he drifted off to nothingness due to the pain racking his body.

The next morning Chris groaned as he opened his eyes to find out that it had not all been a dream; he was slumped on the floor of the platform. It took a second to realize that he was in fact alive and not fried by electricity, but then he doubled over in pain that radiated throughout his body. Grimacing, Chris looked up and noticed something he had not seen the night before. Dragging himself across the floor, Chris went to the small switchboard that was a few feet away from the platform.

Chris pulled himself to the switchboard, and looked over the controls. The most curious thing was a beaker of a liquid that was sitting awkwardly in a slot in the board, as though it wasn't supposed to fit there. He had no idea what that, or any of the other controls did, but he did rip off what he assumed were instructions in German that was taped to the side of the board, and took a sample of the liquid in a test tube that he found on the floor and stuck in a stopper that he also found thrown carelessly on the floor. Whoever this laboratory belonged to, they didn't do a good job at it.

Chris did manage to find his way back to the hotel room, and collapsed once Marcus let him inside the room. When asked where he had been, Chris threw the paper that he had taken from the room at Marcus.

Seeing how ill Chris seemed, Marcus called over some of the other members of the group and helped a shivering Chris into his bed. Shay, who had picked up some German while staying during the summer, translated the paper that Chris had given to Marcus.

It turned out that Chris had stumbled upon a particle accelerator, and by being on the platform, the subject would get their particles mixed around due to the high magnetic field and electricity of the equipment. Of course when asked, Chris denied that he had been a victim of the machine, because the way they explained it, he was lucky that he was still alive. Marcus announced that the mystery liquid was ether after he came back from the school's laboratory where he had gone to identify the substance. Shay said that from what the instructions said and where Chris said he had found the substance sitting, the high solvency of ether would intensify the particle accelerator's effects.

Hearing this, Chris threw up again. Thankfully, he was able to blame his sickness on a hangover and food poisoning.

Arriving home, Chris still felt odd from his encounter in Germany. Rachel asked what was wrong, but he insisted that it was nothing, he was just stressed. But weirder things started to happen. He could hear things that he normally wouldn't be able to hear and he swore that his vision was sharper than before. Chris didn't know if he was imagining things, but he also felt that he could feel what people were thinking – like their emotions. Just by being in somebody's presence, he could feel their joy or anger radiating off of them.

Then something happened Chris couldn't ignore; he found out his ability to manipulate the force of the things around him. He discovered this by stopping his neighbor's crazed dog from attacking him. First, the Doberman was hurtling towards Chris and he put his hands up in defense, and the next thing he knew, the dog stopped in its tracks. Shocked and terrified, Chris ran all the way home and told everything to Rachel.

At first Rachel doubted her fiancé's story, but after he proved his powers to her by doing the same thing to their pet iguana that he had done to the neighbor's dog. Amazed and determined, Rachel helped Chris in his quest to help him refine and control his powers, leading to his ability to manipulate the pheromones of other people and made his power of being able to control the degree of the force around him into an art.

That September, Chris made his first appearance as The Bamboozler. He didn't even intend for it to happen…there had been a fire, and he knew that he could help. So he tied a piece of black cloth with eye holes cut out around his face to hide his identity, and the rest went from there.

And the rest of Chris's life fell back into order; he married Rachel that winter, and he graduated from medical school the next summer, and lived happily as a husband, doctor, and superhero.

And now, thirteen years later, Chris wondered if he could do it all again.

Reviews please? Thank you!

-Revengent