get captured (again—for the millionth time), but when did he become an Extraordinary?
FireStoned 20:45: WHY ARE YOU STILL INSISTING THAT SHADOW STAR IS GAY AND IN LOVE WITH THIS LOSER? HE IS STRAIGHT. NOT EVERYTHING IS GAY BECAUSE YOU WANT IT TO BE. THE RAINBOW DOESN’T BELONG TO THE GAYS. GIVE IT BACK AND MAKE SHADOW STAR STRAIGHT AGAIN. STRAIGHT PRIDE!!!!!
ReturnOfTheGray 21:21: SHADOWSTAR744, NO.
* * *
ShadowStar744, yes.
6
“Okay!” Nick exclaimed to no one in particular, seeing as how he was alone in his room at six o’clock in the morning. “Think. Think. First things first. When one decides to become an Extraordinary, one must throw away all they know about their lives in pursuit of their dream.”
And—though he tried not to focus on it too much—when one is being love-stalked (possibly) by the world’s best Extraordinary, one must come up with a plan that ensures the ensuing origin story is for the ages. This part threatened to overtake his thoughts, but since he was certain of his newly formed plan, he only considered the love-stalking for thirteen minutes.
The problem with deciding to have an origin story and becoming an Extraordinary is that there were so many different ideas on how to go about it. This, of course, made Nick immediately overwhelmed, given the enormity of the task.
It didn’t help that he couldn’t talk to his father about this. He didn’t want Dad to worry, especially if Nick ended up needing to do something dangerous in order to become Extraordinary. It wasn’t that he was necessarily concerned about his own well-being, but more so that he didn’t want his plans to be curtailed before they even began. What Dad didn’t know wouldn’t hurt him. Hopefully.
He pulled out a notebook from his bag and sat on the edge of his bed, toes digging into the carpet. He tapped his pen against the blank page before deciding on the perfect way to begin. He wrote:
IDEAS FOR BECOMING AN EXTRAORDINARY
It was a good start. Nick was impressed with himself. It showed initiative and follow through. He’d set his mind to something, and by god, he was sticking with it! He’d gotten the hard part out of the way and now all he needed to do was fill in the rest. Easy.
“Okay,” he mumbled. “You got this, man. I believe in you. How can you have the best origin story so that Shadow Star doesn’t see you as a liability and instead judges you on your lay-ability?”
He blushed, because he was still a prude and because puns were the lowest form of humor.
Shadow Star would probably be gentle. And romantic. Like, flowers and junk. Candles. The long ones they got at fancy restaurants in movies. Nick could deal with that. Boys could give boys flowers, right? It wasn’t only for girls. Nick didn’t know for sure. Which meant he had to look it up on his phone. He felt badly for all the generations that had come before him, unable to access queries immediately such as if it was okay for boys to give other boys flowers.
Two minutes later, he was somehow reading a Wikipedia article on the Women’s Cricket World Cup, unsure of how he got there.
“Focus,” he hissed to himself, putting his phone back in his backpack. “If you’re going to commit to this, you need to do it right. Think, Bell.”
It couldn’t be that hard, right? Sure, it wasn’t quite clear on how Extraordinaries got their powers. They made up such a tiny percentage of the population that no one was even really sure where they’d come from. Many believed that Extraordinaries were born, not made, a twist of genomes that was almost like a defect. Others claimed they received their powers through government testing.
The first verifiable Extraordinary was a man in California in 1947, near the dawn of nuclear power. He’d been super strong and had gone by the name of the American Patriot, his costume essentially one gigantic flag of stars and stripes. But, as it turned out, the forties had been filled with misogyny, racism, and homophobia, and the American Patriot had had some terrible ideas about what constituted being an Extraordinary, so much so that he only fought to promote the power of straight white men. He’d lasted as a hero for sixteen days before deciding that a life of crime as a villain paid far more than doing good.
Which led to the reveal of a second Extraordinary, Primate Girl, a young woman with really large forearms and gorgeous