The Honermann was the first metahuman ever recorded. He appeared in 1939 and quickly laid waste to thousands of soviet tanks gathered in the Polish corridor. He tore his way east into Russia, destroying entire armored divisions.

Unsurprisingly, the Soviet Union sued for peace with Germany soon afterward when Honermann dispatched 12 leading members of the Soviet party, returning Upper Silesia, West Prussia, and the Poznan to German control to the overwhelming support of the citizens of those regions, who were almost entirely German.

After the immediate Soviet threat was ended, within two years the Nazi Party lost the support of the German people, to be replaced by the Gleppmen. Soon afterward, overwhelming numbers of involuntary immigrants were repatriated, and the United Nations was formed to prevent further Soviet and later Japanese hostilities.

Ten years later, after his execution, it was discovered that the supervillain Warlock had previously been the infamous Reichskannzler and Chancellor of the Nazi Party, and Germany, Adolph Hitler. His plot to destroy Russia was foiled, the dimensional portals he created to allow alien abominations into Siberia thwarted.

It was only later discovered, when those portals reopened, that his plot may have been successful after all. Every few years the portals reopen for a short time, spewing forth hordes of horrifying beasts that Proteus is tasked with destroying before they spread across Europe and possibly the world.

Historians argue that if the Honermann had not appeared, an attack on the Polish corridor could have resulted in a worldwide mobilization of force against Germany, who were discovered to have already developed early fission weaponry. It is conjectured that this would have resulted in ‘the war to end all wars', a second world war, that would have exterminated all life on the planet in an unending nuclear and superpowered exchange.

Quote from ‘The edge of atrocity. The story of the rise of Metahumans that Proteus doesn’t want you to read.’ published in 1989, the book was placed on the UN restricted list in 1990 and has since left publication. As of this year, despite tens of thousands of copies published, only a few remain in the hands of private collectors and war historians.

I looked at Antonia curiously, finishing up my notes as Ballclub left. “I am not sure exactly what Proteus wants from me besides figuring out if people have plans to wreck the teams. I mean, the guy had the potential to become a class D or even a class C meta if he worked on his control, it wouldn’t even take any power enhancement potions to unlock it, just training. Am I supposed to recommend the training? Use potions to help people unlock their potential or heal any outstanding issues? Or just note everything down and wait for instructions?”

Special Agent Andropolis looked thoughtful. “For right now, just write down each person’s abilities and your recommendations. Try to avoid anything that completely violates someone’s privacy. Someone in Proteus wants you here doing what you do, but aside from offering you protection and getting you from team to team, they have not offered a lot of suggestions for how you do it. To be fair, I think there’s a good chance that they do not even know what you can do other than the healing and power-boosting. So what can you do other than that and making drugs?”

I shrugged. I didn’t truly know what Proteus' eventual goals were other than the usual organizational drive to survive and justify its own existence, and while I sort of liked her I didn’t know what her bosses' motivations truly were, so I kept things simple. “Pretty much what you have stated. I have pretty good insight into meta powers, but not like a scientist, more like a nutritionist that notices someone is missing vitamins. That’s how I create my substances too. In Ballclub’s case, he needs to work on controlling his density, not just fighting skills and getting stronger physically. If he works hard, he could control his density so that he would be a powerful brick, a class D at least, and then lose the mass when he doesn’t need it so that he could interact like a normal person. If he works hard enough, he could even drop to a class C, able to reduce his density to fly or pass through tiny cracks, or even affect the density of other objects. Being able to make a tank weigh a few ounces, tossing it, and then returning it to full density as it leaves his fingers and being nearly immune to most physical attacks would qualify him as a class C.”

Antonia tapped her teeth with one fingernail. “What would he need to do to boost his powers to that level?”

I smiled a little, “You are going to think it’s silly.”

She shook her head. “I have seen a summoner spitting snakes out at nearly the speed of a bullet while riding a T-rex every time he drinks grape soda. I doubt very much any sort of training will seem silly.”

I nodded, “In his case, he is a bit of an adrenaline junky. It certainly helps him fight, and lets him push his natural strength, enhanced by his density, much farther, but he needs to learn to concentrate and improve his mental will. Yeah, he needs to sit down and work on feeling his power out, but most importantly he has to learn to force his brain to relax under stress and build his willpower.”

I sighed. “That means he needs to undertake active, physical relaxation training. The best, in my opinion, would be Yoga and maybe some Tai Chi.”

Antonia giggled, probably at the image of a guy built like a pro wrestler doing a downward dog. I got it, but I also looked at her seriously. “That and in less than a decade he’s going to be a heart attack waiting to happen. If he doesn’t learn to control his density more precisely, five or ten years from now he’s going to keel over when he goes into a fight, and a surgeon would have to work around the fact that his body is as dense as a rock. He will die unless a meta healer can get to him in seconds… and not just any meta healer, but someone who could actively alter and regenerate his body while he or she works. Yoga and Tai Chi could help push that out for quite a few years and being able to control his density would allow a normal surgeon or less powerful healer to save his life. I could use a potion to fix the heart issue, but my potions always have a price, and I don’t know what kind of price it would take to extend his lifespan, probably a big one he won’t want to pay, like losing his powers or something.”

Antonia nodded, “Are your abilities always like that?” she asked.

I nodded, “If I am in a hurry, yes. If I have plenty of time, I could probably find ingredients to lower the price to something tolerable, and trauma is seldom expensive to heal except in terms of my personal energy. Normal people are not supposed to have a gigantic gash cutting them mostly in half, so a potion to heal that has a very low price, such as a day of their lifespan or a period of pain while they recover. My burn ointment, for example, hurts a great deal but can save a life, but actually sacrifices from your physical resources like muscles and fat so it takes a while to rebuild your body if you have a lot of nasty burns.”

Antonia looked surprised, “Can your ointments heal anything?” she asked curiously.

I shook my head. “Stuff that is not natural is generally capable of being healed pretty effectively, but stuff like… Leukemia is a genetic proclivity. The price in energy from me, and the sacrifice to heal it, would probably kill either me or the victim. Sometimes sacrifice is like that. If your body is supposed to die, a potion will give you a few healthy days or weeks of life, and then the sacrifice would come due, killing you.”

I sighed and scratched my head, “That’s why I am not working for a hospital or something. A potion capable of healing some of the worst problems would utterly wipe me out for a long time, and the sacrifice part would make doctors chase after me with torches and pitchforks. I can mitigate it a bit, but that takes time and finding special ingredients to pay for the sacrifice. Curing a bullet hole in a muscle is easy enough since all it takes is something to speed up the healing process and prevent an infection, but I wouldn’t even begin to understand how to cure, say, Lupus, and even if I could I would spend a huge amount of time looking for symbolic ingredients and then days making the actual potion. A meta that takes a week to fix a heart attack, requires millions of dollars worth of components, and cuts the patient’s remaining life span is way less useful than a surgeon that can pop in a couple of stents and a physical therapist that can get them healed up and exercised to prevent it from happening again.”

Antonia looked at me curiously, “Couldn’t you be useful to diagnose stuff?”

I shook my head, “Not really. I went to college to try and break into medicine, but I was flunking. Sure, I can see what’s wrong with someone, but lots of metas can and do have that ability already, and without the medical know-how I can make a potion to help fix it in some cases, but I don’t really know what I see. Sometimes a specialist could interpret it, but usually saying something like ‘there are lots of bad things in their blood attacking their organs’ doesn’t give a specialist much to work with.”

That was not strictly true. If there were a test to become a doctor overnight, I could probably ace it. Specialists took years of special training, though, and while I knew I could learn it quickly, I wasn’t getting paid to track down and treat rare diseases. I wasn’t getting paid at all, to be honest, and I still had student debt looming in the background someplace.

The reality was if I were exposed to a problem I could probably fix it, but as I mentioned, the aspect costs to avoid an awful sacrifice were huge and might even be dangerous to retrieve, and could take a long time. I couldn’t be everywhere all the time, but I would help if I could, especially if someone else could diagnose the problem to give me a clue where to start. It might sound selfish, but I didn’t want to spend the rest of my life hunting down rare ingredients to cure hard-to-fix conditions. I would help where I could, but it was better for doctors to fix most problems and learn how to fix more than to rely on people like me to magic them away.

Antonia shrugged, “I can see why The Proteus people referred to you as the golden goose. Frankly, if I were a world leader and knew what you could do, I’d spare no expense to capture and put you under my thumb too. The Cartels were idiots, I mean, sure, you can make them thousands of dollars a day making untraceable drugs, but they were holding the villain ball when they could have been charging hundreds of millions or even billions to legally offer your services to rich, sick people.”

I scratched my head. I think she may have been right.

“This is all private, right?” I asked her.

She nodded, “Yes, Proteus is very careful about that.”

I smiled, “I am not worried about getting kidnapped anymore. Two years in prison gave me a lot of time to consider and work out contingencies. I could get stupid rich if I wanted to devote my life to it, but mostly I don’t want to get killed. I also happen to like people even though it’s hard to spend too much time around them. Mostly, though, I want to get to the bottom of why.”

“Why what?” she asked.

“Why superpowers exist. I mean, I know the story is that German scientists unleashed something that started creating metas back in the 40s, but it seems too shallow, and I never detected any kind of a virus or anything. Metas have a reason to exist and have since the industrial revolution, and I get a feeling that the reason is getting closer and closer.”

“You have a feeling about it? Is that part of your powers?”

I shrugged, “It might be. I have a pretty good feeling for potential and sacrifices, and whatever sacrifice we made to get people with superpowers is kind of looming, but we are too caught up in superpowered dick-measuring contests and politics to pay attention. Whatever it is, me getting rich and curing problems from elite inbreeding isn’t going to help.”

Antonia nodded, “It’s not an official policy, but there’s kind of a paranoia running around among the agencies about that too. I mean, in the 40s and 50s metas were like one in a billion, but the number has been increasing as time goes by. Lots more low-powered metas have been born in the last twenty years, and now the number of minor gifts is something like one in ten thousand, even though the greater gifts still hover around one in ten million. Metas don’t breed true, so it’s not just metas marrying metas and having kids.”

I hadn’t known that. That was very worrying and would explain why Proteus wanted to march their troops past me. If a lot more people had meta potential, they could awaken dozens. “Well, a lot of the low-powered gifted have huge potential, like Ballclub. How about we run some more through here? It’s been about 15 minutes and they are probably wondering if we took lunch.”

Agent Andropolis nodded and opened the door. “Next?” she asked.

It took most of the day, but I went through and met the majority of the new teams. One of the girls that called herself Phasor wasn’t a meta at all, and had zero crimefighting skills, but had somehow laid her hands on a phased-array metatech cannon. I had considered keeping the info to myself, but after a short conversation and a scan, I had realized that she was unbalanced, and was far more interested in getting pregnant from a meta than being part of a team.

Blackhawk was very interesting. He was a latent meta but had not been awakened. At 30, however, he had custom modified a set of metatech armor, trained himself in a dozen different martial arts, and claimed to have contacts everywhere in the criminal underworld. He was not a brilliant detective or anything, and in fact, might even be an ex-con, but his desire to help end the criminals at the docks, which he apparently needed help to pursue, was legitimate. He refused to take his glove off to shake my hand, but I was able to get a tiny bit of information even through his armor.

(Blackhawk)

Metahuman 0%, class G

Aspects: body, air, matter, energy

Current age: ???

I wasn’t sure exactly why he had not awakened, since he was well-known to have participated in dozens of battles, some of which he had barely survived, but I made a note to try and concoct something that could help with dozens of permanent scars, deep tissue damage and damaged organs. With that kind of dedication, he would probably be an asset to the team, and I’d find out later if he was interested in an elixir after we helped fix up the weapon he was used to using his body.

I dutifully noted it down, just like Jasper’s lung cancer and the fact that Cosmica was pregnant with twins. Metas were extraordinarily resistant to diseases and things like Cancer, but Jasper had likely had it before he was awakened. The problem is, his body considered it a normal part of his new meta metabolism, and while it was unlikely to kill him quickly, it was now a super-cancer. I needed to find ingredients that resonated with him.

The lady of the lovely long legs and minimal coverings was after that. She attracted my attention, but it was obvious that she enjoyed attracting attention, based on how easily she had played one against the other.

Mariah Consuela Lopez(Aquantis)

Metahuman 12%, class E(A)

Aspects: body, aquatic, metamorphic, mutagenic

Power: 132

Conditions: 18 days until menses

Projected lifespan: 145 years barring mishap. Current age: 20

healthy, aroused, fascinated, frustrated

Powers: improved endurance, improved durability, aquatic, improved camouflage

no current abnormal infections

That was a first. Class A potential? And she started as a class E. What on earth would it take for her to get to class A? Could an elixir do it? Should I create an elixir that could do it? The idea of a meta that powerful with abilities as ill-defined as metamorphic and mutagenic sent a cold chill down my spine.

Next up, we had a lady by the name of Victrix. She entered, and again I felt a little bit overdressed, but this time simply because I was wearing clothes. She was sort of wearing clothes if you consider a very small black crop top, bikini bottom, fishnets, thigh-high shiny black boots, long leather gloves, and a domino mask to be clothed. She was well-built but dressed more like a dominatrix than a superhero. She held out her hand to me.

“Victrix?” I asked curiously. “You need to remove your glove for me to get a read on you. This should not take long.”

She nodded, unzipping the glove slowly. It didn’t take a genius to notice that she was trying to make a spectacle of it. It was fun to watch, but I was not going to bite.

I reached out and took her hand, and was immediately assaulted by a severe mental imbalance. She was both terrified and enraged and smiled at me as I suddenly felt a charge through her hand. The pulsing of alternating current felt like getting kicked by a mule again and again, and in a moment I fell forward into a deep dark hole.

A splash of water woke me up. It took me a moment to get my bearings, and I realized that I was in a cage. One of the two men was screwing the cap back onto a bottle of water. I wanted to be enraged, or terrified, but I was mostly just tired.

Energy production and area teleportation. That’s what my gift had told me before she knocked me unconscious and kidnapped me. I was unclothed, yet again, and leaning against the side of the 4x4 cage. It was good solid steel and might take a minute or two to escape from if there weren’t two men in camo clothing holding what looked like AR-15 semiautomatic rifles watching me.

“Really? Again?” I groaned, noticing that Victrix was nowhere to be seen. It was a shame she had already taken off, as I had every intention of returning the abduction favor when I got out. I had two years to prepare for the inevitable attempt at kidnapping, I was simply surprised that they had waited until I got out of prison to enact a plan. “I don’t know who you guys are, but you really drew the short straw.”

The larger of the two men, a Maori from the looks of him, with a facial tattoo of dark patterns across his forehead, or moko, squinted at me for a moment and then shrugged. He was dressed in a Hawaiian-style shirt and printed shorts and looked like he weighed at least 400 lbs, but from what I could see of his arms his body fat probably concealed a lot of muscle. The other man, a shorter white guy with a goatee wearing sunglasses and a nice silver Armani suit, rapped the bars with the butt of his rifle. “Shut up.”

I smiled a little, feeling better by the moment. That zapping had done quite a number on me, but my regeneration was proving itself. I hated getting zapped since I had yet to discover a way for a human body to soak it easily. “I recognize you. Your name is Tino, right?” I asked the big guy.

He nodded, sitting on a nearby desk in what looked like some kind of small office. “Yep, Tino Nui. I would say a pleasure to meet you, but you’re probably angry right now. I cannot really blame you, but a job’s a job.”

Tino was a meta, who, like Ballclub, was a density controller. Unlike Ballclub, however, he was able to consciously control his density, and was a solid class D. He became larger and denser at the same time, and at his full height of twelve feet tall, he weighed more than an M1 Abrams. I think he actually picked up an Abrams once, which was a hell of a feat.

The short guy, comparatively, rapped the bars again. “I said shut up!” and I ignored him to talk to Tino. “I guess that means that Kjootoo set this up. That must have been a heck of a bankroll.”

Tino shrugged, “It wasn’t that bad. All Kjootoo had to do was ask Papa Legba who was in a position to get you, and we offered Victrix a competitive rate. Sanjira has her little boy, and the girl’s not stupid. She turned you over to Sanjira and both she and her boy are dead, but with ten million she could buy him back.”

Shorty banged the bars again, and yelled, “Shut the fuck up! I will shoot you!”

I sighed and shook my head. “No, you won’t. I am worth at least ten million dollars, and if you shoot me Kjootoo will happily sell you to Baron Samedi. Not to mention that AR 15, while certainly scary, is a delicate piece of equipment. The way you are banging it against solid steel bars, you will be lucky as hell if it doesn’t misfire and blow your hand off. If you are lucky you go to the Baron missing a hand, and if you are unlucky, Kjootoo has a lot worse things he can do to you for shooting his golden goose.”

I turned to Tino, “I have heard of you, but who’s this guy? Please tell me he’s not your boss.”

Tino shrugged. “He’s one of the distributor’s kids. Trying to work his way up, but he’s not a meta. I have heard a lot about you, and I heard you can heal real fast, at least according to the seven locks guards. Not a bad power, but if you force my hand, I will make sure you get lots of stuff to heal up, but I won’t break you so you cannot work.”

“Do you care if I talk?” I asked curiously.

Tino shook his head. “Got nothing else to do until Kjootoo gets here. He makes sure I don’t know anything but what I need to know, and what I needed to do was pay Victrix, get you in a cage, and keep an eye on you ‘til the boss gets here.”

Short stuff stomped away from the cage as I got more comfortable, crossing my legs and leaning back against the cage. “Do you mind particularly if I try to cut a deal?” I asked curiously.

Tino shrugged. “You can try, but I get paid well, get hooked up, and Kjootoo has treated me right. I doubt you will have much luck, especially since you don’t really have access to anyone or any money to try and bribe me.”

I chuckled. “Naww, not trying to buy your loyalty, just your life. You have decent powers, you follow orders, and don’t try to play the villain game unless you are paid for it. I saw you smashing up Rainbow Warrior last year, and you took a serious hit while trying to move the fight away from a kindergarten.”

He nodded slowly, so I continued. “Sooner or later I am getting out of here, and you will know it when I do. At the time, I am going to be way out of your league. I don’t want you to throw in the towel, but when you are getting beat just don’t play the last stand game. I like you, and when we meet next I can help you push your powers another step upwards to a C class. Once things are settled, come find me, and I swear you won’t regret it… I just don’t want your death on my conscience. Rainbow would have probably killed those kids if you hadn’t taken the hit, and while you may not work for the man, I appreciate a guy that’s willing to protect kids more than himself.”

He chuckled, “You are in pretty good shape, but I seriously doubt you are going to be able to beat me up. That’s kinda what we are counting on.”

I shook my head, “I didn’t say I would beat you up. I just said you will be overmatched. If you are losing, do it gracefully instead of trying to pull a suicide rush. I know you are loyal to Kjootoo, but some things just aren’t worth dying for. I don’t plan on taking him out if that’s what you think, but if it’s him or me I plan to walk away in one piece, even if he doesn’t.”

Tino nodded slowly, “I appreciate your confidence. If you can do what you say, I will buy you a drink.”

I grinned, “You could always get me a beer now. I am parched.”

He shook his head and chuckled, “Maybe later I can try. Kjootoo should be here soon, and you might be interested in his offer, and I doubt he’d appreciate you chugging a cold one while Rattler yammers in his ear about how disrespected he feels.”

I nodded. I kinda hope that the kid, Rattler, did try to talk Kjootoo’s ear off. Kjootoo had a reputation, and a Dick Van Dyke might be meeting Baron Samedi, the Loa or Voodoo demigod of death, sooner than he expected.

One of the biggest problems with Supervillians was a problem I liked to call holding the villain ball. I got the term from TV tropes, and it fit. I understand that if you played on the bad guy side, it often helped to maintain your rep by doing overtly evil things, even if those overtly evil things wound up specifically calling down the wrath of particular troubleshooters.

Kjootoo was a class C meta that decided not to play the hero thing, and in my opinion, he was certifiably way past insane. He was a summoner, able to use an ability similar to mine to create concoctions that could create powerful entities he referred to as ‘Loas’ as well as harm or possess non-metas from a distance.

He was convinced that these spirits that he created with summoning were legitimately the Loas from the vodun, or voodoo, religion and that they served his will. Haiti, where he made his home, considered him both a saint and a hero for occasionally dumping the results of his crimes into their banks, and also for helping liberate their island from the influence of modern slavers that had taken over in the 90s. I could get behind that, except that he made his reputation by publically and brutally murdering the families of the slavers by allowing his Loas to tear them apart in public places, like in the middle of Times Square or the Brooklyn Bridge.

He was a distributor for a number of illegal substances in Haiti and had a habit of finding and slaughtering DEA raiders when they showed up. He might have been only a class C, but because his summonings were desolid and only solidified the bits needed to tear his foes apart, he was dangerous totally out of proportion to his power rating. He had been captured and killed a number of times, but each time it had turned out to be a doppelganger.

Every once in a while he went out of his way to make sure all the other cartels feared him, sometimes burning his own bridges or contacts in the process. It didn’t help that the man wore a skull mask and dressed like a walking voodoo priest stereotype, in a top hat and tails with a bare, muscular chest with white ribcage tattoos. He had personally killed 6 class C metas sent to deal with him at one time or another.

“Hola Bokor,” I said as the walking stereotype drifted through the door. He literally drifted, since he liked to have one of his summoned spirits fly him around. “Are we here to turn me into a zombie today?”

Tino stood back up from where he was leaning against and straining, the desk. He nodded respectfully to Kjootoo.

“Please forgive me for not standing. I seem to be temporarily incapable right now.” I said, sticking out my legs and pressing the soles of my feet against the bars. They had taken my shoes, which I considered a smart idea, and my shirt, which I thought was just silly.

The priest looked at me and tipped his hat. “Of course not. Zombies lose all will, and with it their powers. I happen to desire your powers intact. Is it true that you can enhance even the strongest of superbeings to even greater heights?”

It was rumored that Kjootoo’s loas could tell smell a lie, so I was very careful with my reply. “I am glad you aren’t going to try. I would consider attempting to turn me into a zombie to be a very personal attack, and I’d hate to have to kill you when I get tired of being here. As far as being able to make someone like you stronger, I could create an elixir, but if you don’t have the energy potential it would simply destroy you. I have heard of what you can do, and I doubt very much that you have not tapped your potential already.”

I shrugged, “If you wanted or needed a particular power added to your personal abilities, that is somewhat more possible. But simply strengthening you past what you have already done? I wouldn’t even know where to begin.”

Kjootoo nodded, “I admire your confidence. Damballah has stated that you believe your words to be true, and that worries me. I paid Victrix to secure your presence, but Papa Legba is telling me that to secure your cooperation, I must deal with you as I would a Loa.”

I chuckled. “Loas can be bribed with sacrifices of chickens and lives. My price tag is considerably higher, especially since Victrix, at your behest, chose an uncomfortable method of delivery. She also teased and did not deliver, and that raises the price as well.”

Kjootoo nodded again, removing his hat for a moment and bowing. “Of course it does. Samedi is very excited at the possibility of unleashing your unhappiness, and while he would be crowing if he saw it causing my death, I have learned that his pleasure is often not the most prudent course of action for my ambitions. He is a most singular sort despite his many blessings.”

I tilted my head, “Then perhaps we can deal for a time. Is Victrix your property?”

Kjootoo shook his head mournfully, “Alas, she is not. She currently belongs to Sanjira, due to his hold on her offspring. But she could be reasoned with. Is her submission part of the price for our deal? Because I could have her fetched quickly.”

I laughed, “No, although the idea does have a certain appeal.” I still had to project a certain careless dominant confidence, or I was never going to make it out of here. The DEA had absolutely zero chance of arresting me again if I was stuck here, not facing the likes of Tino and Kjootoo, as well as whatever armies and metas he had available. I melted a tiny spot of iron essence out of each of the top four corners of the cage, and then lifted it while I stood up. It was heavy, but I regularly lifted much greater weights when I could get to a Gym. Kjootoo didn’t react as I carefully set the heavy grate to one side, and then stretched, glad to stop being so confined.

“Well, I have been inconvenienced. I am sure that we can negotiate if you know what it is you desire, but the price to begin negotiations is fairly simple. I find your methods crass, brutal, and overly theatrical, but it is tempered by the care you show for your people in the face of a similarly crass world, so I am willing to deal.”

“Oh?” asked Kjootoo curiously, with no fear, not that I expected it. In a meta world, a simple feat like dismantling a cage meant to hold you was not even slightly notable.

I nodded, “Yes, I dislike exposing myself when there are no lovely women around to impress. To begin negotiations, I would like a pair of pants, a well-cooked chicken, because I am hungry, and a bottle of rum.”

At those words, Kjootoo grinned hugely. “A chicken and a bottle of rum? Papa Legba’s wisdom knows no bounds, you do deal like a Loa.”