Ace

Prologue

Every superhero has a story. Most of them had an accident that gave them superhuman abilities, and others are aliens from another planet. Or an alternate timeline. Maybe even a different universe. Or they have some genetic mutation that makes them super. That’s what I am. Scientists call us mutatio-homosapiens. Reporters call us mutants. Pedestrians call us freaks. The law has no place for us. But who even is us? There’s only me. Sure, I’ve heard of others like me on the news, but the problem is, none of them really are like me. For one, they all seem much older, and for another, none of them live in cities with crime rates as low as Vancouver’s. They always have crimes to stop and people to save. Here, there is rarely anything that the police can’t handle, leaving me to deal with unarmed masked men who steal bags of potato chips from the convenience store. There’s never anything exciting, but then again, maybe that’s a good thing.

Most hero’s stories start with them discovering their powers, coming to some self-realization that they want to help the world, then hiding behind a mask while they struggle to grasp what it means to be a hero, and all the secrets it entails. But I’ve had my powers since I was born, and never got the chance to keep it a secret. My parents figured it out before I did, and it was only a matter of time before my closest friends witnessed my powers in use. Many of the choices and questions that people with powers struggle to make and answer have already been made and answered for me. I never truly got the chance to learn by experience because there was always someone there to help me when I was lost. Whether it was my parents, Kalina, or Mr. Hathaway, I was never left to solve my problems on my own. Is it wrong for me to want to deal with my own problems without anyone there to guide me? To be able to make choices and face the consequences of those decisions myself? How else am I supposed to become a better hero? But I could never tell my parents that. I know that they only want to see me safe. It took a long time for them to be okay with the idea of me fighting crime. Even now, when I sometimes come home with blood smeared on my black jacket I can hear their silent signs and see their pained faces. As much as they hate it, they accept the fact that I am not a normal teenager and they have long since given up on talking me out being a hero. But then again, not all parents had a child who could beat the crap out of a pro wrestler without breaking a sweat. They didn’t have any reason to worry about my physical well-being unless there was a world-class villain on the loose, in which case they were often in more danger than I was. I was more than able to defend myself, even against other supers.

I have a weird superpower. There’s no name for it, no way to describe how it works. The best way for me to explain it is to say that I can never fail. At anything. As long as I put my mind to it, and actually try to do it, it will come to me eventually. Sometimes it takes longer, like that time it took me three whole months to beat the Pacman machine at the arcade. I sure did waste a lot of time and money on that. But I’m not one to back down from a challenge. It’s like my body has some sort of advanced adaptation system which allows me to accomplish virtually anything. I can easily hold my breath underwater for over 10 minutes. And while the world record is more than double that time, it only took me two and a half weeks to accomplish this feat. Anything I want to do, my body will be able to do. It’s like the whole “practice makes perfect” thing, except I really do get it damn close to perfect, and it takes about 2 percent of the practice. And it’s not only physical skills. I can teach myself advanced astrophysics concepts that most 16-year-olds can’t even begin to grasp an idea of. That’s where my superhero name comes from. I never miss and I never mess up. Acacia Curan is my real name, but that’s no fun. You can call me by my super name, the name that is used by those who are kind enough to avoid calling me a freak. You can call me Ace.