So strong and clear and matter-of-fact was the voice that Billy could feel his hands beginning to obey all by themselves. Startled by the realisation of what he was about to do, Billy instinctively tightened his grip. Years of training prevented him from popping the teen like a melon with his powerful grasp but the youth would discover some rather alarming finger-shaped bruises the next day.
Having dropped off the rescued youngster with the adoring public, Billy don’t-thank-me’d his way through the crowd in full Major Crisis mode while his heart hammered in his chest and his mind reeled at what he’d very nearly done. Having basked in the adulation for the shortest possible amount of time to maintain his squeaky clean image, Billy made his excuses and left, doing a quick couple of supersonic laps high above the city before settling on his favourite rooftop perch to think.
Where had that thought come from? Maybe it hadn’t been his own thought at all. Mind control. It could be mind control. It had certainly happened before. After all, what self-respecting superhero hadn’t become the unwitting puppet of some monstrous arch-fiend at one point or another? In fact, now that Billy thought about it, this had all the hallmarks of Hypno Mesmeria. He was pulling stuff like this all the time. Although maybe it wasn’t him. He was currently dead*, after all. This didn’t necessarily prevent villains from returning to wreak their terrible revenge but it had only happened three weeks ago and convention held that you tended to lie low for a little bit to give the death maximum impact before making your “surprise” comeback.
Billy knew deep down that this wasn’t the answer. It hadn’t been an outside influence. It had been him. OK, he thought, so maybe it was just a one-off. It could be that he was just over-tired. He had, after all, just spent the last week trapped in a counter-dimension with the Super Defence Force while they battled their evil duplicates. That sort of thing always left him a bit drained. Yeah, maybe that was it.
Four days later, when Billy was speaking to a sweet old lady whom he had just reunited with her missing dog, he discovered that he had the strong urge to just place his hands on either side of her head and squeeze until it popped. He began to realise that he may well have a problem.
Who could he talk to about it though? It wasn’t as if there was a handy helpline for heroes with power anxieties**. He couldn’t just wander into any old therapist’s office and start talking about it either. They’d either think he was mad and clap him in a straightjacket or, worse, believe him and throw him in The Pit with half of his enemies. Plus the whole secret identity thing would be shot to hell.
There was no way Billy could go to the other heroes with this either. Sadly, there tended to be a fairly standard formula to these sort of things. There’d be some form of initial misunderstanding, fighting would break out, a small detail would make realise they were on the same side leading to a frantic rush against the clock*** before everything was wrapped up with a neat and tidy resolution. It wasn’t so much that Billy objected to the process; he was Major Crisis after all. It was more the fact that his particular problem didn’t seem to fit that format and he severely doubted that there would be a neat resolution at the end. Most of his compatriots tended to like problems that they could punch their way out of in some shape or form and Billy just didn’t think that was going to work.
There was one other person that Billy could turn to, of course. The light of his life, the lovely Lily Langden. He’d confided that one defining secret of his life with her and they were going to share their life together. This really should be something that he should open up to her about. The only problem was that Billy could picture the look. The look that would cross her face. The look of fear. It may only be fleeting and she might not even realise that she was doing it but it would be there. And not just when he told her. No, it would permanently there, lurking just underneath her lovely smile. How could it not be? How could she not be afraid if the one person in her life she was supposed to be able to trust implicitly was telling her that he not only may suddenly develop the urge to drop kick her into the sun but was also capable of doing it? No, he couldn’t tell her. It would destroy everything.
Billy would just have to pull himself together, be the man and do the traditional manly heroic thing - suppress, suppress, suppress and just act like everything’s fine. For a while that seemed to do the trick. Billy carried on being Major Crisis and doing Major Crisis-y things. Any time that the pesky imp of the perverse threatened to rear its impulsive little head, Billy gritted his teeth and forced some shiny, happy thoughts front and centre. This all worked perfectly well up until the cat.
* Death was not always a permanent affliction in Billy’s line of work.
** This does seem to be a gap in what is sure to be a burgeoning market. Ripe business opportunity there.
***There was always a frantic rush against the clock regardless of whether or not there was actually a life-or-death deadline involved
To Be Continued
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