Chapter 3

Johnny remembered the day he got sick too clearly. It had first started with a mild cough. Then the feeling that he wanted to throw up. He couldn’t sleep either, all he could do was cough. The next morning, large black circles marked below his eyes. Then he started to cough up blood. Johnny’s parents took him to the hospital. After several examinations, a nurse came into the room with a sympathetic look on her face. “I’m sorry,” she said softly. “Johnny has Cystic fibrosis. If you aren’t careful about what you do, your body can shut down from all the substance in your lungs.”

From that day on, Johnny vowed to do whatever he could to dance as close to the edge of death as he could. Last year, he had jumped off the Stratosphere, learned how to fence, and held a few large birds (one almost broke his arm). Now he was sitting in his room with some of his other daredevil friends.

“What are the odds,” one friend was saying to another friend, “that you ask Swift out?” News about a rush of new superheroes (and villains) had affected everyone in the nation, even Johnny and his friends. They had been in a phase of dares related to superheroes, and some of the dares were so wild none of them agreed to do them. The craziest dare that had been executed was to vandalize a part of the S.W.O.R.D. superhero dorms (Johnny did it, of course). He had gotten in a little bit of trouble when he was caught spray- painting a shark eating a surfer on a wall. Other than that, the dares were so crazy everyone opted out of doing them.

But when they played What Are the Odds things got a bit different. No matter what, if you lost, you had to do it. So that’s why everyone was leaning forward in anticipation when one of Johnny’s friends belted a completely ridiculous, yet crazy dare.

“1, 2, 3, 4-7,” the friends said. The friend who had said the dare slapped his knee in disappointment, and the dared friend let out a long sigh of relief. “My turn,” the dared friend said. He stared at the friend who had dared him. “What are the odds you make out with Peregrinator?”

His friend, once cocky, now melted into a state of desperateness and despair. His friend’s dare had beat his by far. They started to count, despite the friend’s hesitation. “1, 2, 3, 5-9.” Both of them sighed, for different reasons. Then the friend who had been dared first turned to Johnny. From the sound of the dare, it sounded he was out of crazy ones.

“What are the odds you do a GM?”

Johnny never stirred, even though he had wanted to do a GM for a while. He had never told his friends that. “1, 2, 3, 7.” Both Johnny and the darer widened their eyes in shock and realization. “You have to do a GM!” the other friend exclaimed.

Despite his excitement, Johnny just shrugged. “Just my luck.”

About six months later, Johnny was saying the same thing when a certificate stating Congratulations You Have Been Chosen for a Genetic Modification had been thrust into his hands. Soon after celebration and Johnny’s mom crying over him, he was taken to an interrogation room, where he gave his name, birthdate, and preferred powers. Afterward, Johnny was taken into training, to cope with his powers when he first got them. One of the S.W.O.R.D. officials, by the name of Jason, said that most mutants discovered their powers in an accident, and most of the time they had a very hard time controlling them. Jason was a average-sized man with a stocky build, and from Johnny’s knowledge he had been there when Agent 12, Peregrinator, and Swift discovered their powers and were taken to S.W.O.R.D. Johnny preferred Jason over most of the other officials, he was friendly, empathetic, outgoing and understanding of some of the ‘rebel’ heroes’ feelings. The other officials seemed to just be there for the money, taunting the heroes, or to confirm juicy gossip going around. They were cold and hard, and intimidating. Jason, on the contrary, greeted everyone with a smile (even villains held captive) and was approachable any time.

The day of the GM, Jason knelt down to Johnny’s height (who was short for his age) and spoke in a low voice, eyes darting around to see if anyone was watching. “Johnny, I hope you understand I won’t be the one GMing you.” Johnny nodded in understandment, and Jason started into a long speech that grownups usually did, with a few “uh huhs” and “oks” and “sure Jasons”. After the speech, Jason scuttled away, a distraught look on his face. “Huh,” Johnny said to himself. “He’s never been that skittish.” Then Johnny was escorted into a dimmed room, with a hulking machine in the back wall. There was just enough space at the center of the machine for a grown man to walk in and stand comfortably. It looked like a huge monster with its mouth wide open. There were straps hanging from the top and laying on the floor at the bottom. As it happened, Johnny had to be sat on a stepstool to reach both straps comfortably. He was hooked up to a sundry of tubes branching off the monster-machine. Several scientists crowded around a panel as a glass wall lowered between them and Johnny. There was a low hum as the machine started up.

Just then, there was a crash outside the room. The scientists peeked up from their work. They started to go in a frenzy as several masked men with rifles burst in, pointing the barrels every which way. As the scientists were backed up against a wall, one bumped a few buttons on the panel. The machine started to whir faster and faster. Johnny had started to frantically undo the straps that connected him. He had just gotten free when the machine exploded, sending him through the glass. A shock reverberated throughout his body, then abruptly stopped as he was disconnected from the machine.

The next thing Johnny remembered was an ache on the side of his head. He groaned and reached out to hold it, but he grabbed something metal and cold instead. Alarmed, Johnny snapped his eyes open and realized one of the men that had burst in was holding a gun barrel to his head. His finger was resting lightly on the trigger. He could see a shoe of a scientist from across the room. It was a Converse shoe, and whoever it had fallen off of had a very small shoe size. Johnny checked himself. How did he know that? Some of the genomes used in the GM were from Peregrinator…

Johnny stiffened as the man moved his finger on the trigger. Collecting his senses, he then cracked a wry smile. “What happened to the hawk robber?”

Even from his sprawled out position on the floor, Johnny could tell the man relaxed his grip a little and raised his eyebrows in question. “What?”

While the man had his guard down, Johnny carefully rolled onto his back to face him. His smile stretched wider. “He got caught red-TAILED!” With this, the man frowned and pressed the gun against his Johnny’s chest. “Who are you?” “Why are you here?” “How did they bring you?” were some of the questions that man shot at him like bullets.

Johnny paused, his mind racing. “Who do you think I am?”

At this, the man’s face went red and he came within inches of Johnny’s face, and the gun pressed harder into Johnny’s chest. “Listen, kid,” he hissed. “If you don’t talk, I’m gonna have to call somebody in who makes painful for when you don’t.”

Johnny sighed, as if he surrendered. “Okay, I’ll talk,” he huffed defiantly. Johnny took a deep breath. “A duck walked up to a lemonade stand…”

The man dropped the gun and covered his ears. “No! Not that song!”

“I wrote this song before I knew how to rhyme…” The man screeched and bolted around the room while Johnny continued to sing songs off the top of his head. This went on for a while until S.W.O.R.D. officials burst in and took the man away. Jason came into the room, too, his hair mussed up and suit torn. He looked satisfied, impressed even. “How did you do that?” he asked when him and Johnny were alone.

“I don’t know,” Johnny answered. “But apparently he hates Bryant Oden.”