Submission for QLFC Round 11: This Seems Familiar
Keeper for the Chudley Cannons
Prompt: So You Think You've Got Superpowers (S8)
Word Count: 1167
A/N: Our team challenge this round was to write a villain, so I thought I'd try my hand at Tom!
Tom wasn't even sure how old he was when things started happening around him. It could have been anytime from when he was two to when he was four; that amorphous time when, unless one could recall specifics from within the memory, everything seemed to blur together.
So, he had always known that odd… things happened quite frequently around him, but the first time he consciously noticed something had happened because of him was when he was five.
Tom knew this, because when he was five, he was moved from one wing of the orphanage to another – to the side with the older boys, the ones who had never been adopted, and likely never would.
Nobody told them that, but they didn't have to when it was quite obvious the only children shown off were the younger ones. The older boys only ever left for school, and work, when they were old enough.
Still, Tom tried not to think of the move as a bad thing, because surely there were always exceptions, and there'd never been a Sunday mass where he went without pinched cheeks and stale hard candies from little old ladies. Tom had to believe he'd get out, because he hated living with the older boys. They were uncouth and loud, and although they didn't single him out for bullying, none of them tried to befriend him, either.
Not that he would've wanted that, but it was the principle of the thing.
The boy whose room he was moved into was fourteen, nearly aged out, and he didn't talk to Tom so much as at him, and with the filthiest mouth Tom had ever heard. His name was Billy, and from the moment he woke up to the moment he fell asleep, Tom was sure he never heard Billy stop talking unless the matron, Mrs. Cole, was around.
By the end of the first week, Tom was fed up with Billy, but it wasn't until the middle of his second week in the older boys' wing that a thing happened.
It was just before bed, as they were about to brush their teeth, when Billy pulled a face at Mrs. Cole's unsuspecting back. Honestly, Tom hated her, too, but Billy's actions abruptly made him fiercely wish that he would get caught and have his mouth washed out with soap. Tom said nothing, however, and contented himself with a glare that Billy didn't even notice.
But Billy did notice when his toothpaste turned into an unending mouthful of foaming soap. Choking, spitting, and retching, the boy leaned over the sink, coughing up the soap as Mrs. Cole frowned dispassionately at him. Tom watched on in shock, realizing that there was no other explanation for what had happened except that he had somehow done it.
Billy complained loudly that someone had put soap in his toothpaste, but Tom didn't get in trouble, and nobody else did, for that matter, because apparently Mrs. Cole also thought Billy's mouth had needed a good washing out.
Tom went to bed and lay awake after a grumbling Billy finally fell asleep. His mind was racing. He didn't know how he'd done it, but he knew that he'd thought of it happening, and then it had. He was a little scared, but mostly he was full of quiet excitement. He could do something nobody else could; something extraordinary.
Tom discovered that he could make a lot of things happen when he wanted them to, if he wanted it badly enough – and Tom found that it was very easy to make himself want things. He could make things move without touching them, make bad things happen to people when they were mean to him, and best of all, he could talk to snakes. He could do a lot, and he was always finding new ways to use… well, he wasn't sure what to call it, exactly.
That changed one day, months later, when he was walking back to the orphanage from school and a brightly colored paper in a bin caught his eye.
"Action Comics," the title read in large, bright blue font, and below it in a little box was printed: In this issue, another thrilling adventure of Superman!
Tom had no idea what a 'super' man was, but he couldn't help wondering if 'Superman' was like him. He nicked the comic from the bin and hid it in his schoolbook to read later.
Billy had been sent to Australia, and Mrs. Cole hadn't moved anyone else in with him yet, so when he was alone in his room, Tom eagerly pulled out the crumpled comic and began to read.
Superman, it turned out, had superpowers. None of them seemed like the same thing that Tom could do, but he liked the word. That was pretty much where the similarities between himself and Superman ended, though. Superman was an alien, for one, and Tom also thought that Superman was a big dumb idiot who kept getting lucky when he caught his 'villains'. The Ultra-Humanite was smart, and all Superman did was leap around and lift heavy things.
Although Tom was of the opinion that comics were a bit stupid, he couldn't help lifting a few shillings from Mrs. Cole's purse so that he could buy the next issue... and then the next.
Superman himself was pretty boring, but the villains were much more interesting, and Tom got a lot of ideas of things to try from them. Turning things invisible, for instance, or controlling animals' minds.
Tom got better and better at using his superpowers. It felt like, now that he'd put a name to it, he could do whatever he wanted. Whether he was simply causing his bed to make itself, calling a swarm of bees to attack a lady's flowery hat in the street, or taking Dennis and Amy down to the cave he'd found, every time he used his superpowers he felt a rush of exultation. Nobody else could do what he did; he was unique.
And then, the man in the plum velvet suit visited him. Tom thought at first he was a doctor coming to take him to the madhouse, because there were a few things he'd done with his superpowers that he hadn't been particularly discreet about, and he knew Mrs. Cole thought he was odd.
Instead, the man told Tom that there were loads of other people that could do what he did, and it was called magic.
He was a wizard, and there was so much more to learn about magic. Not all wizards could talk to snakes, apparently, but it wasn't enough to dampen the blow of the realization that he wasn't special or different – merely ignorant.
The old man set his wardrobe afire, flaunting what he could do with his own magic, and Tom resolved right then that he would do whatever it took to be the most powerful wizard the world had ever seen.
He would be super.