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Description
Picture the scene. You're in a hospital, lying on a bed, in the most extreme pain possible, and the next 20-odd years of your life will be filled with even more stress than usual, especially the first few of those years. That's right, I'm talking about the horrifying mistake of nature that is human childbirth. A lot of pain followed by many years of stress... And in the case of Mister and Mrs. Ruthless, even more. The couple was now pregnant with their second child, their first being their first son Rex. Rex Ruthless was only five years old but was already a billionaire due to him having discovered his natural talent: plagiarism. He had made his fortune stealing the scientific discoveries of other people and making money off them, then buying out sweatshops in China for the sole purpose of plagiarising even more scientific theories. At this moment in time he had elected not to attend the birth of his new sibling, due to being in Cambridge, MA, peering over the shoulders of hopeful students at MIT and pondering which one’s life’s work he wanted to render totally worthless. Anyway, back onto the topic of the Ruthless family. Mrs. Ruthless and her husband Mister were about to welcome into the world their new son Clark. And then scream in terror as the doctor’s head exploded.

As it transpired, Clark Ruthless was no ordinary boy. He was also no extraordinary boy. That previous statement was also a lie. Clark Ruthless had been born with a most interesting psychic power... though that power was limited to doing one thing and one thing only: Making people's heads explode. He did it everywhere he went, exploding the heads of total randomers because he found it fun. It took quite a lot of persuading to convince the baby boy that exploding heads was bad. However, quite understandably. it did not take long before Mister Ruthless decided enough was enough and decided to put the child up for adoption. So it came to pass that Clark Ruthless, after only one year of knowing his parents, was thrust into Madam Cashcow’s Home for Weird and Unwanted Little Shits and forgotten about. But a few years and several new matrons later, a man came to visit the orphanage who would change Clark’s life forever.

“Alright you little sacks of shit, today’s the day.”

The 227th Matron of the past two years entered the kid’s playroom, stepping over the corpse of a headless maid, followed by a man who looked to be way over the bad side of 40, with a blond toupée and a squashy face like a more bored, more American Boris Johnson. This man was Ronald Pump, President of the United States, five-time most flatulently-named member of the Republican Party, and one-time most thinly veiled political parody ever to appear in a parody superhero story. This was the man who had run America into the ground twice and still somehow maintained his popularity in spite of several assassination attempts, some of which had actually been aimed at his toupée. But Clark did not know or care. All he knew was that someone else was going to be picked to be the President’s son. Or so he thought.

“Which one of the kids did THAT.”

President Pump pointed questioningly at the dead maid, with an interest in his eyes that only the most dangerous of rulers would have displayed in the prescence of a dead body. All eyes and fingers in the room pointed at Clark, who gulped and accepted his…
“I’l have you!”
But before the writer could describe the ruminations that Clark had been feeling at that moment, the POTUS had scooped him up and carried him out of the room, depositing several wads of cash into the matron’s hand and carrying the dazed boy out of the room. “What’s your name, lil’ fella?”
“Clark.”
“Well Clark, I like you. How’d you kill that maid?”
“I made her head explode…”
“Really…?” The President’s eyes widened in interest. “How did you do THAT?”
“I can just… do it.”
“Ya mean like in the comic books? Now THAT is something I can use! A child that can blow people’s heads off with his MIND! Now that’s cool.”

The conversation went on like this for some time until it became apparent that Mr. Pump was in fact walking on the spot rather than towards his car, hence why the conversation had gone on for so long. With help from two of his advisors the President stepped into his car, which promptly started moving towards Clark’s new life… Or some cliché thing like that. Heck, I dunno. I’m just a writer. I write things as they happen. I have to take tiny little descriptions of superheroes and flesh them out into whole backstories, and I only have a few days to do that! I mean, how boring is this? Haven’t you ever seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Man, that movie was shit! I mean, HOW did they screw up--

The writer was then forced to stop ranting and get on with the story. but he vowed to make it quick, once again citing X-Men Origins: Wolverine and how boring that was as his reasoning.

A year passed. And then another year passed. And then some more years passed until we get to a certain point in the story. This certain point being the point at which we find ourselves now. By this point in his life, Clark Ruthless has had dreams of being the world’s greatest dancer, given up on those dreams, received a small loan of a billion dollars from his father, and then some fucked-up shit which the writer could not be arsed to expand upon for reasons already explained above (*coughxmenoriginscough*) happened which ended with Clark becoming Editor, then Editor-in-Chief, then Supreme Ultimate Editor-in-Chief of the Ill-Informed Weekly, a dreadful tabloid newspaper which so happened to be the best-selling paper in all of South America, and most of southern North America. The paper was particularly popular with the white trash just across the Mexican border, due to its heavily politically charged right-wing content. Depite this it’s still headquartered in Argentina for some reason. It usually based its articles entirely on rumours, and often made them up entirely. And now South America has an inferiority complex due to thinking its populace is made up entirely of freeloaders.

Anyway. Clark worked seven till six making up news stories mostly involving immigrants and religion, and all the while being worshipped by the grateful employees due to being the first editor to actually pay them. It was during his tenure that the Ill-Informed Weekly started sponsoring Ronald Pump’s new film, An Inconvenient Truth 2: Why We Need to Build a Wall. Partway into filming, however, another thing happened which would change Clark’s life again. I will never stop with that cliché.
“Clark…”

Clark woke up sitting on a bed of clouds… and promptly fell through it because clouds can’t support human weight, obviously. He then landed on an actual bed, which was floating in the middle of… Somewhere cloudy. He realised quite quickly, when he knew he should, that this world was made up of this brotherhood of man… wait, no, that’s Four Non Blondes. I meant to say that it was made up of very little but these clouds, and the bed which he was now lying on. And the massive, glowing THING that was presently standing over him. Clark was so befuddled by this turn of events that he uttered the first words - well, the FOURTH words technically speaking but the first words in the form he’ll be in for most of the series he had ever spoken in this series of comic book parodies: “What in the ass?”
“Hey now, don’t swear in front of your God.”
“Holy shit… You’re God?” Clark gasped.
The hitherto-unreferenced mysterious voice that had been speaking to Clark took on an indignant tone. “Oh, so I’m just ‘god’ now am I? I don’t even have a name, I’m just ‘God’? Well, hello, MAN. Nice to meet you, MAN! I’m God!”
“Jeez, dude, no need to get so damn testy! You coulda just told me which one you were…”
“For the record, I am Zeus.”
The massive glowing THING dimmed a bit to reveal a large man wearing a white and gold toga and holding a massive lightning bold-shaped staff… Well, that’s the best word I can describe it with. It was made of gold and shaped like a lightning bolt. It was probably a staff. Anyway. The man also had muscles so massive that if this was a movie people would start saying they were CGId on, a wizened face, small, beady eyes, and the BIGGEST, BUSHIEST BEARD you’d ever seen, seriously, it was like right down to his waist like a DUVET made of hair! This man out-bearded Charles Darwin, you honestly could SLEEP under that thing, it was so--

The writer was once again told to stop rambling and get back on track as Zeus opened his mouth again… And swallow a bit of cloud, making him cough, before speaking again. “Anyway. I have come to you in your dreams to--”
But Clark had many questions, and interrupted the god mid-sentence. “Zeus? As in, THE Zeus? The one from Greek mythology? I thought it was all made up!”
Zeus sighed as he prepared to answer yet another bombardment of questions. As if he didn’t get this enough with all those newly-qualified drivers having near-death experiences, let alone the prayers. “Yes, THE Zeus. But not the one from Greek mythology, it IS made up. So’s the Bible. And all those other ones too. I forget the names.”
Clark’s questions continued. “Oh… Even Thor?”
“Yes, Thor is made up.”
“Damn… Apollo?”
“Him too.”
“Hercules?”
“Sort of.”
“Hades?”
“He IS real.”
“Perseus?”
“He isn’t.”
“Jesus?”
“Again, sort of.”
“Wonder Woman?”
“Now you’re just fucking with me.”
“I thought you said not to swear in front of you.”
“I can swear, you can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because shut up.”
“Oh, alright.”

Zeus decided to end the conversation there, refusing to answer any more of Clark’s needless questions and getting to the damn point already. “Let’s get to the damn point already.” He said forcefully, raising his lightning bolt staff thing. “Clark… You were born into this world for a purpose. It is your destiny to become a great hero, the saviour of mankind! You shall assemble a team of the greatest heroes known to man, lead them in the fight against The Armies Of Evil™! Yes, Clark Ruthless, this is your divine mission: To assemble a team of talented heroes to rid the world of corruption and chaos! Or some shit like that, I mean, I dunno. That’s just what the script says.”
“Wait wait wait wait, you trademarked the term The Armies of Evil?”
“I didn’t, your dad did, for his damn movie.”
“You mean An Inconvenient Truth 2?”
“Yeah, It’s not even in the script, he just trademarked it for the sake of it.”
“Goddamn it dad! By the way, could you repeat all that? I kinda spaced out for the major part.”
Zeus was becoming increasingly exhasperated and unsure that he’d picked the right guy for the job. “Basically, find superheroes, band them together, make a team like the Avengers. But not the Avengers. They’re not real, Also, no big damn crossover wars.”
“Oh, OK.”
“Got it this time?”
“Yep. But do i get a superhero name?”
“You can’t think of one for yourself?”
“Nope, I can’t be bothered.”
“Fine. You’re now Sparkly Boom-Boom Man.”
“Seriously? That’s a shit name!”
“You asked me to think one up!”
“I can’t go about calling myself Sparkly Boom-Boom Man! Superheroes are meant to have credibility! I deserve a name like… Sergeant Exploder!”
“Then that’s your name.”
“Okay!”
Zeus breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, that was over with… “Now, return to the realm of the living or something… I have a hot date in a few minutes with some cute college chick.”

As the great Kenny Everett once said, suddenly, it was tomorrow. Clark woke up in bed in a cold sweat, because that is what happens when you have a weird dream. Slowly rising from the soaked sheets, he put on his bedside lamp, illuminating his massive bedroom encompassing the entire 297th floor of Pump Tower. “What a crazy dream…” He mumbled as he heaved his heavy bones out of bed and nearly tripped on a piece of parchment lying on the floor which wasn’t there before… Picking it up, he unfurled it, revealing six words:
“That wasn’t a dream, ‘Seargent Exploder’.”
At that moment, Clark looked up and realised something. “OK, this is all starting to get a bit cliché. Next I’ll be shown searching high and low for heroes only to find none, then on the brink of giving up find a couple in the street. God damn, can’t I have a more original story?”

The writer then poked Clark with his pen and told him to shut up before hitting himself for using too many meta jokes, then continuing with the story.

Five minutes later, after a breakfast of pancakes, a slice of butter and a glass of communists’ tears, Clark stood in Pump Tower’s elevator, heading down to the bottom floor, ruminating on how he was going to find superheroes to carry out this mission he had apparently been given. It would have been quite tough to get an audience with them, considering that they never revealed their identities despite half of them not wearing any facial disguises at all and thus had no contact details, and their secret hideouts were always impossible to find, let alone get into. On second thoughts… they were always out on the streets, saving people… He knew quite a few that usually turned up around this part of the city. Woman of Bronze, Scorpion-Boy, Australia-Man… There were plenty of superheroes to be found! This was going to be a cinch!

...until it actually came to interviewing them. They were usually too busy saving people, or being rich, to actually give a damn about him. And when they did it wasn’t in the good way. When he tried to talk to The Tartan Wanderer, he got a set of bagpipes to the face and a stern warning to “nae mess un mah buzznuss ageen!” The interview with Canada-Boy went on for almost four hours because he kept apologising. And as for Pierre le Petomaine… you really, REALLY don’t want to know. All that matters is that the area had to be fumigated later.

Dejected, Clark sat on the sidewalk, wondering if he was ever going to find any superheroes for his team. “Fuck this,” he proclaimed, “I’m never going to find any superheroes…”
Then he had a brainwave.
“So I’ll wait for them to come to ME! That’s how the cliché goes, all I need to do is wait on this sidewalk and keep looking dejected and eventually some superheroes will turn up, take pity on me and want to join me!”
So he waited. And waited. And waited. And got bored and went back home, but the next day he waited again. He did this for about a week, until finally, on the seventh day, his lack of hard work paid off.

One evening, two superheroes did arrive at Clark’s designated waiting spot. One was a Japanese girl wearing what looked like a school uniform, covered in blood and wearing a large smile, hanging off the arm of the other - a long-haired, blunt-wielding stoner who did not seem to be aware of the fact that he was being held onto. He was, however, quite able to see Clark looking deliberately dejected.
“Yo… That dude looks totally bummed, yo. Ya think he wants some weed?”
“Whatever you think, Senpai~”
The Stoner approached Clark and lit up a spliff with a green flame emanating from the tip of his finger.

Clark’s eyes lit up. His plan had worked! This man had to be a superhero! The fire coming from his finger proved it! He jumped up and rounded on the stoner, smiling maniacally. “You! You’re a superhero, aren’t you?”
The Stoner seemed bewildered at what was, to him, an unsolicited outburst from Clark. “Yo dude, chill!”
“Sorry. Got overexcited. Let me try that again… are you a superhero?”
“I’m so high right now dude... I dunno which ones are mine…”
The girl immediately sprang forward. “I am too! This is Darren and I’m Yuki! Isn’t he just a dreamboat~? Ahuhuhu~”
Clark was somewhat bewildered by this girl’s obsession with this toker… The stench of cannbis emanating from him was almost as intolerable as Pierre le Petomaine, but he needed superheroes and superheroes these two apparently were.

“So… what are his powers?” Asked Clark, an eye row raised.
The girl, apparently Yuki, indicated to Darren and put her hands under her chin in excitement. “He’s so cool! He can control fire! And even better he can heal people with the power of peace and love~!”
“Oooooo Kay.” Clark would not have been convinced had he not seen Darren use that power a second ago. “And you?”
This time it was Darren who spoke up. “Dude, this chick is wicked fast… Faster than a… a… I dunno.”
“Faster than a speeding bullet? Faster than a hummingbird’s wing?” suggested Yuki. Darren nodded and thought for a second before saying “Yeah… humming bullet speed wing, yo.”, which prompted another giggle from Yuki.
Clark figured he should get to the point right about now. “Anyway. I’m on a mission to put together a superhero team. Wanna join?”
“Uhhh.. Sure dude, sounds rad!” was Darren’s reply. Yuki, on the other hand, pondered for a while longer.
“Will there be any other girls in this group…?”
For once, the Japanese schoolgirl dropped her cutesy demeanor, suddenly looking inquisitive. Planning. Cunning, even. That glint in her eye was positively maniacal… that was a glint that Clark knew well. That was the glint that his father’ eyes had displayed when he’d seen Clark’s power firsthand. The glint of a true psychopath. Darren, of course, was clueless and didn’t pick up on this at all.

“No. No girls in this club.” Clark replied firmly, causing Yuki to immediately drop the demeanor. “Yay! It’d have been soooooo annoying if there were others vying for Senpai’s heart~”
She once again held onto the clueless Darren, who was having another toke. “Ohhhh man… I can hear the code, dude. I can SEE the sound of the street…”
Yuki kept talking. “Oh, and by the way - We already have our hero names, so don’t worry about them~”

Clark smiled warmly. He had finally started his superhero team. And perhaps made some friends, despite having only just met these guys. But the sentimental sap was not important right now, what was important was that he had to find a super secret base of operations. He thought he knew a comic book store which would do. With that settled, and with his new team in tow, he began to walk down the streets of Expanded Universe City, towards his new destiny… or some cliché shit. I mean, how can I end it on a non-cliché note in such a way as--

The writer was told to stop writing before he started rambling or making any more meta jokes. That was the REAL end of this story, thank God.

Description
Picture the scene. You're in a hospital, lying on a bed, in the most extreme pain possible, and the next 20-odd years of your life will be filled with even more stress than usual, especially the first few of those years. That's right, I'm talking about the horrifying mistake of nature that is human childbirth. A lot of pain followed by many years of stress... And in the case of Mister and Mrs. Ruthless, even more. The couple was now pregnant with their second child, their first being their first son Rex. Rex Ruthless was only five years old but was already a billionaire due to him having discovered his natural talent: plagiarism. He had made his fortune stealing the scientific discoveries of other people and making money off them, then buying out sweatshops in China for the sole purpose of plagiarising even more scientific theories. At this moment in time he had elected not to attend the birth of his new sibling, due to being in Cambridge, MA, peering over the shoulders of hopeful students at MIT and pondering which one’s life’s work he wanted to render totally worthless. Anyway, back onto the topic of the Ruthless family. Mrs. Ruthless and her husband Mister were about to welcome into the world their new son Clark. And then scream in terror as the doctor’s head exploded.

As it transpired, Clark Ruthless was no ordinary boy. He was also no extraordinary boy. That previous statement was also a lie. Clark Ruthless had been born with a most interesting psychic power... though that power was limited to doing one thing and one thing only: Making people's heads explode. He did it everywhere he went, exploding the heads of total randomers because he found it fun. It took quite a lot of persuading to convince the baby boy that exploding heads was bad. However, quite understandably. it did not take long before Mister Ruthless decided enough was enough and decided to put the child up for adoption. So it came to pass that Clark Ruthless, after only one year of knowing his parents, was thrust into Madam Cashcow’s Home for Weird and Unwanted Little Shits and forgotten about. But a few years and several new matrons later, a man came to visit the orphanage who would change Clark’s life forever.

“Alright you little sacks of shit, today’s the day.”

The 227th Matron of the past two years entered the kid’s playroom, stepping over the corpse of a headless maid, followed by a man who looked to be way over the bad side of 40, with a blond toupée and a squashy face like a more bored, more American Boris Johnson. This man was Ronald Pump, President of the United States, five-time most flatulently-named member of the Republican Party, and one-time most thinly veiled political parody ever to appear in a parody superhero story. This was the man who had run America into the ground twice and still somehow maintained his popularity in spite of several assassination attempts, some of which had actually been aimed at his toupée. But Clark did not know or care. All he knew was that someone else was going to be picked to be the President’s son. Or so he thought.

“Which one of the kids did THAT.”

President Pump pointed questioningly at the dead maid, with an interest in his eyes that only the most dangerous of rulers would have displayed in the prescence of a dead body. All eyes and fingers in the room pointed at Clark, who gulped and accepted his…
“I’l have you!”
But before the writer could describe the ruminations that Clark had been feeling at that moment, the POTUS had scooped him up and carried him out of the room, depositing several wads of cash into the matron’s hand and carrying the dazed boy out of the room. “What’s your name, lil’ fella?”
“Clark.”
“Well Clark, I like you. How’d you kill that maid?”
“I made her head explode…”
“Really…?” The President’s eyes widened in interest. “How did you do THAT?”
“I can just… do it.”
“Ya mean like in the comic books? Now THAT is something I can use! A child that can blow people’s heads off with his MIND! Now that’s cool.”

The conversation went on like this for some time until it became apparent that Mr. Pump was in fact walking on the spot rather than towards his car, hence why the conversation had gone on for so long. With help from two of his advisors the President stepped into his car, which promptly started moving towards Clark’s new life… Or some cliché thing like that. Heck, I dunno. I’m just a writer. I write things as they happen. I have to take tiny little descriptions of superheroes and flesh them out into whole backstories, and I only have a few days to do that! I mean, how boring is this? Haven’t you ever seen X-Men Origins: Wolverine? Man, that movie was shit! I mean, HOW did they screw up--

The writer was then forced to stop ranting and get on with the story. but he vowed to make it quick, once again citing X-Men Origins: Wolverine and how boring that was as his reasoning.

A year passed. And then another year passed. And then some more years passed until we get to a certain point in the story. This certain point being the point at which we find ourselves now. By this point in his life, Clark Ruthless has had dreams of being the world’s greatest dancer, given up on those dreams, received a small loan of a billion dollars from his father, and then some fucked-up shit which the writer could not be arsed to expand upon for reasons already explained above (*coughxmenoriginscough*) happened which ended with Clark becoming Editor, then Editor-in-Chief, then Supreme Ultimate Editor-in-Chief of the Ill-Informed Weekly, a dreadful tabloid newspaper which so happened to be the best-selling paper in all of South America, and most of southern North America. The paper was particularly popular with the white trash just across the Mexican border, due to its heavily politically charged right-wing content. Depite this it’s still headquartered in Argentina for some reason. It usually based its articles entirely on rumours, and often made them up entirely. And now South America has an inferiority complex due to thinking its populace is made up entirely of freeloaders.

Anyway. Clark worked seven till six making up news stories mostly involving immigrants and religion, and all the while being worshipped by the grateful employees due to being the first editor to actually pay them. It was during his tenure that the Ill-Informed Weekly started sponsoring Ronald Pump’s new film, An Inconvenient Truth 2: Why We Need to Build a Wall. Partway into filming, however, another thing happened which would change Clark’s life again. I will never stop with that cliché.
“Clark…”

Clark woke up sitting on a bed of clouds… and promptly fell through it because clouds can’t support human weight, obviously. He then landed on an actual bed, which was floating in the middle of… Somewhere cloudy. He realised quite quickly, when he knew he should, that this world was made up of this brotherhood of man… wait, no, that’s Four Non Blondes. I meant to say that it was made up of very little but these clouds, and the bed which he was now lying on. And the massive, glowing THING that was presently standing over him. Clark was so befuddled by this turn of events that he uttered the first words - well, the FOURTH words technically speaking but the first words in the form he’ll be in for most of the series he had ever spoken in this series of comic book parodies: “What in the ass?”
“Hey now, don’t swear in front of your God.”
“Holy shit… You’re God?” Clark gasped.
The hitherto-unreferenced mysterious voice that had been speaking to Clark took on an indignant tone. “Oh, so I’m just ‘god’ now am I? I don’t even have a name, I’m just ‘God’? Well, hello, MAN. Nice to meet you, MAN! I’m God!”
“Jeez, dude, no need to get so damn testy! You coulda just told me which one you were…”
“For the record, I am Zeus.”
The massive glowing THING dimmed a bit to reveal a large man wearing a white and gold toga and holding a massive lightning bold-shaped staff… Well, that’s the best word I can describe it with. It was made of gold and shaped like a lightning bolt. It was probably a staff. Anyway. The man also had muscles so massive that if this was a movie people would start saying they were CGId on, a wizened face, small, beady eyes, and the BIGGEST, BUSHIEST BEARD you’d ever seen, seriously, it was like right down to his waist like a DUVET made of hair! This man out-bearded Charles Darwin, you honestly could SLEEP under that thing, it was so--

The writer was once again told to stop rambling and get back on track as Zeus opened his mouth again… And swallow a bit of cloud, making him cough, before speaking again. “Anyway. I have come to you in your dreams to--”
But Clark had many questions, and interrupted the god mid-sentence. “Zeus? As in, THE Zeus? The one from Greek mythology? I thought it was all made up!”
Zeus sighed as he prepared to answer yet another bombardment of questions. As if he didn’t get this enough with all those newly-qualified drivers having near-death experiences, let alone the prayers. “Yes, THE Zeus. But not the one from Greek mythology, it IS made up. So’s the Bible. And all those other ones too. I forget the names.”
Clark’s questions continued. “Oh… Even Thor?”
“Yes, Thor is made up.”
“Damn… Apollo?”
“Him too.”
“Hercules?”
“Sort of.”
“Hades?”
“He IS real.”
“Perseus?”
“He isn’t.”
“Jesus?”
“Again, sort of.”
“Wonder Woman?”
“Now you’re just fucking with me.”
“I thought you said not to swear in front of you.”
“I can swear, you can’t.”
“Why?”
“Because shut up.”
“Oh, alright.”

Zeus decided to end the conversation there, refusing to answer any more of Clark’s needless questions and getting to the damn point already. “Let’s get to the damn point already.” He said forcefully, raising his lightning bolt staff thing. “Clark… You were born into this world for a purpose. It is your destiny to become a great hero, the saviour of mankind! You shall assemble a team of the greatest heroes known to man, lead them in the fight against The Armies Of Evil™! Yes, Clark Ruthless, this is your divine mission: To assemble a team of talented heroes to rid the world of corruption and chaos! Or some shit like that, I mean, I dunno. That’s just what the script says.”
“Wait wait wait wait, you trademarked the term The Armies of Evil?”
“I didn’t, your dad did, for his damn movie.”
“You mean An Inconvenient Truth 2?”
“Yeah, It’s not even in the script, he just trademarked it for the sake of it.”
“Goddamn it dad! By the way, could you repeat all that? I kinda spaced out for the major part.”
Zeus was becoming increasingly exhasperated and unsure that he’d picked the right guy for the job. “Basically, find superheroes, band them together, make a team like the Avengers. But not the Avengers. They’re not real, Also, no big damn crossover wars.”
“Oh, OK.”
“Got it this time?”
“Yep. But do i get a superhero name?”
“You can’t think of one for yourself?”
“Nope, I can’t be bothered.”
“Fine. You’re now Sparkly Boom-Boom Man.”
“Seriously? That’s a shit name!”
“You asked me to think one up!”
“I can’t go about calling myself Sparkly Boom-Boom Man! Superheroes are meant to have credibility! I deserve a name like… Sergeant Exploder!”
“Then that’s your name.”
“Okay!”
Zeus breathed a sigh of relief. Finally, that was over with… “Now, return to the realm of the living or something… I have a hot date in a few minutes with some cute college chick.”

As the great Kenny Everett once said, suddenly, it was tomorrow. Clark woke up in bed in a cold sweat, because that is what happens when you have a weird dream. Slowly rising from the soaked sheets, he put on his bedside lamp, illuminating his massive bedroom encompassing the entire 297th floor of Pump Tower. “What a crazy dream…” He mumbled as he heaved his heavy bones out of bed and nearly tripped on a piece of parchment lying on the floor which wasn’t there before… Picking it up, he unfurled it, revealing six words:
“That wasn’t a dream, ‘Seargent Exploder’.”
At that moment, Clark looked up and realised something. “OK, this is all starting to get a bit cliché. Next I’ll be shown searching high and low for heroes only to find none, then on the brink of giving up find a couple in the street. God damn, can’t I have a more original story?”

The writer then poked Clark with his pen and told him to shut up before hitting himself for using too many meta jokes, then continuing with the story.

Five minutes later, after a breakfast of pancakes, a slice of butter and a glass of communists’ tears, Clark stood in Pump Tower’s elevator, heading down to the bottom floor, ruminating on how he was going to find superheroes to carry out this mission he had apparently been given. It would have been quite tough to get an audience with them, considering that they never revealed their identities despite half of them not wearing any facial disguises at all and thus had no contact details, and their secret hideouts were always impossible to find, let alone get into. On second thoughts… they were always out on the streets, saving people… He knew quite a few that usually turned up around this part of the city. Woman of Bronze, Scorpion-Boy, Australia-Man… There were plenty of superheroes to be found! This was going to be a cinch!

...until it actually came to interviewing them. They were usually too busy saving people, or being rich, to actually give a damn about him. And when they did it wasn’t in the good way. When he tried to talk to The Tartan Wanderer, he got a set of bagpipes to the face and a stern warning to “nae mess un mah buzznuss ageen!” The interview with Canada-Boy went on for almost four hours because he kept apologising. And as for Pierre le Petomaine… you really, REALLY don’t want to know. All that matters is that the area had to be fumigated later.

Dejected, Clark sat on the sidewalk, wondering if he was ever going to find any superheroes for his team. “Fuck this,” he proclaimed, “I’m never going to find any superheroes…”
Then he had a brainwave.
“So I’ll wait for them to come to ME! That’s how the cliché goes, all I need to do is wait on this sidewalk and keep looking dejected and eventually some superheroes will turn up, take pity on me and want to join me!”
So he waited. And waited. And waited. And got bored and went back home, but the next day he waited again. He did this for about a week, until finally, on the seventh day, his lack of hard work paid off.

One evening, two superheroes did arrive at Clark’s designated waiting spot. One was a Japanese girl wearing what looked like a school uniform, covered in blood and wearing a large smile, hanging off the arm of the other - a long-haired, blunt-wielding stoner who did not seem to be aware of the fact that he was being held onto. He was, however, quite able to see Clark looking deliberately dejected.
“Yo… That dude looks totally bummed, yo. Ya think he wants some weed?”
“Whatever you think, Senpai~”
The Stoner approached Clark and lit up a spliff with a green flame emanating from the tip of his finger.

Clark’s eyes lit up. His plan had worked! This man had to be a superhero! The fire coming from his finger proved it! He jumped up and rounded on the stoner, smiling maniacally. “You! You’re a superhero, aren’t you?”
The Stoner seemed bewildered at what was, to him, an unsolicited outburst from Clark. “Yo dude, chill!”
“Sorry. Got overexcited. Let me try that again… are you a superhero?”
“I’m so high right now dude... I dunno which ones are mine…”
The girl immediately sprang forward. “I am too! This is Darren and I’m Yuki! Isn’t he just a dreamboat~? Ahuhuhu~”
Clark was somewhat bewildered by this girl’s obsession with this toker… The stench of cannbis emanating from him was almost as intolerable as Pierre le Petomaine, but he needed superheroes and superheroes these two apparently were.

“So… what are his powers?” Asked Clark, an eye row raised.
The girl, apparently Yuki, indicated to Darren and put her hands under her chin in excitement. “He’s so cool! He can control fire! And even better he can heal people with the power of peace and love~!”
“Oooooo Kay.” Clark would not have been convinced had he not seen Darren use that power a second ago. “And you?”
This time it was Darren who spoke up. “Dude, this chick is wicked fast… Faster than a… a… I dunno.”
“Faster than a speeding bullet? Faster than a hummingbird’s wing?” suggested Yuki. Darren nodded and thought for a second before saying “Yeah… humming bullet speed wing, yo.”, which prompted another giggle from Yuki.
Clark figured he should get to the point right about now. “Anyway. I’m on a mission to put together a superhero team. Wanna join?”
“Uhhh.. Sure dude, sounds rad!” was Darren’s reply. Yuki, on the other hand, pondered for a while longer.
“Will there be any other girls in this group…?”
For once, the Japanese schoolgirl dropped her cutesy demeanor, suddenly looking inquisitive. Planning. Cunning, even. That glint in her eye was positively maniacal… that was a glint that Clark knew well. That was the glint that his father’ eyes had displayed when he’d seen Clark’s power firsthand. The glint of a true psychopath. Darren, of course, was clueless and didn’t pick up on this at all.

“No. No girls in this club.” Clark replied firmly, causing Yuki to immediately drop the demeanor. “Yay! It’d have been soooooo annoying if there were others vying for Senpai’s heart~”
She once again held onto the clueless Darren, who was having another toke. “Ohhhh man… I can hear the code, dude. I can SEE the sound of the street…”
Yuki kept talking. “Oh, and by the way - We already have our hero names, so don’t worry about them~”

Clark smiled warmly. He had finally started his superhero team. And perhaps made some friends, despite having only just met these guys. But the sentimental sap was not important right now, what was important was that he had to find a super secret base of operations. He thought he knew a comic book store which would do. With that settled, and with his new team in tow, he began to walk down the streets of Expanded Universe City, towards his new destiny… or some cliché shit. I mean, how can I end it on a non-cliché note in such a way as--

The writer was told to stop writing before he started rambling or making any more meta jokes. That was the REAL end of this story, thank God.