A Guide to Being Super

Rule #7

Rule #7: Have a nemesis. Every action needs a reaction, every push needs a pull, every superhero needs a supervillain. What's the point of having superpowers if you don't have anyone to push around? As a superhero, it is against our sacred code to hurt innocent people, but not everyone is innocent. Hence, we have supervillains.

"You want me to do what, exactly?" I said.

I was currently sitting in the "living room area" (I guess you could call it that) of Dan's lair. I had been in the middle of a solo training session when Dan had come in and told me to take a break because he had something to tell me. Since I had wanted a break anyway, I did as I was told. But what I didn't expect was for Dan to tell me that I was going to put on my uniform and come with him to fight Laser Linus. That so wasn't part of my job description.

"I want you to come with me the next time I fight Laser Linus," Dan said.

"But I'm not done with my training yet."

"I know."

"Then doesn't it seem a little stupid for me to come with you? I mean, you're already pretty stupid when you fight him normally and I don't think my being there will help matters."

"Come on, it'll be fine."

"No, I don't think it will," I said.

"Matt, seriously, what could go wrong?"

I stood up and pointed at him. "See? Right there! That is how I know that this is going to end badly!"

"Excuse me?"

"You said 'what could go wrong?'. Only bad things happen after someone says that!"

"You're insane, you know that?" Dan said.

"I'm not going."

"Yes, you are. Just agree now so I don't have to waste time waiting for you to come around."

In true Matthew Miller fashion, I did insist on dragging my heels wasting Dan's oh-so-precious time. That's just who I am and what I do, there's no way to get me to stop doing that. But even though I protested and refused, I still found myself in Dan's car the next time his bat signal device (I don't know what it's actually called, but it's basically a fancy police scanner) told him that Linus was up to something. I didn't understand why Dan insisted on driving since I could, you know, fly and even had the strength to carry his sorry ass but I guess he still didn't trust me to not fly to Hawaii or something instead (wait, why wasn't I flying myself to Hawaii? What a missed opportunity).

All missed opportunities aside, I still wasn't exactly excited over how I was spending my weekend. I had a feeling that even if I didn't embarrass himself, Dan surely would, and we would both be worse off because of it. The whole thing was just giving me a very bad feeling. And that bad feeling only increased when Dan decided to try to make conversation.

"So I think we should talk about what we're going to call you," he said.

"What we're going to call me?"

"Yeah, we need to give you a superhero name. One that can be reported in the papers and stuff like that. Something to help give you a relationship with the average citizen."

"All right..."

"Do you have any ideas?" he asked.

"Not really. I never thought about it."

"Well I think that we should think of names that alliterate. They just seem to work that much better."

"I suppose."