xx49.07.27 | 07:59 | Still Sunday

Had kind of a big argument with Daniel, it really embarrassed C2. Probably because it was about her. Apparently I'm not quite so okay with her and Daniel being friends as I thought I was.

Also...

No, I don't want to even write it.

C2 and I are in the lounge now, technically I should be on monitoring duty but I'm just not in the mood, I'll do an extra hour tonight to make up. We're watching news footage of Powerstone City during the Sniper siege. It's awful, but we're nearly up to the bit where

[ENTRY TIMED OUT]

xx49.07.27 | 08:57 | Still Sunday

I ran away. I really wanted C2 to see the whole thing but I just couldn't bear to watch it myself, not right now when I'm still feeling tense and shaky and a little bit weak from this bullet wound thing (it's starting to hurt again, maybe because I got worked up). Even thinking about it makes me cry—C2 as well, she was already a little teary just from the footage of the first reports, when I peeked in she was sitting in a little mound of used tissues.

Basically ... well, basically, my dad is a hero. Sniper was a supervillain, technically he was a hero first, but never a REAL hero. You know the type. Anti-Hero. Did some good but did it in a bad way ... I don't know, it's true that he helped to protect a lot of people, and he took down some of the worst supervillains by himself ... not just supervillains, either. Some of the regular villains that he killed didn't really deserve to live. I'm not saying they deserved to die, just ... I can't say the world was better off with them still in it.

I'm getting into a dark mood now. Back to my dad being a hero.

After Sniper turned bad—I mean truly bad—he did some ... weird stuff. He killed Red Rocket, he says it was a shoot-out but ... I don't know. Nobody knows. Both Red Rocket and Sniper had Unconscious Ballistic Calculation as their power. Maybe Sniper wanted to test himself against an 'equal'. It's pretty much universally agreed that he was completely insane by that point. Mum said it was because someone died, the only person he cared about. It's weird, her honesty curse should've made her tell me who that person was, but it didn't. Maybe she didn't know.

Anyway. Maybe it doesn't matter why Sniper did what he did. He did it, that's all. This was pretty close to The Event, in the Dark Age, when everything was ... complicated. And messy. And ... and not so nice.

So how it went was Sniper was in a building. In the middle of Powerstone City, near Galaxy Tower. With a collection of high-powered rifles and enough ammunition to last him basically forever. And with his power ... with his power, he couldn't miss. Before that a lot of people called UBC a bottom-rung power, because its applications were so limited. Even legendary supers like Trigger Harpy didn't really rely on it, they made their reputation in other ways. Red Rocket always said that even if he didn't have his power, he'd still be adventuring, because it was what he loved. He even joked about it, said that if he'd wanted to he could've been the greatest basketball player in the world, making trick shots and winning games without even trying. But of course he was a hero, and so he would never have done that. Maybe it was because of Red Rocket that UBC was seen as a 'joke' power, because he was so, well, jokey.

Then Sniper did what he did.

After that, nobody thought of UBC as a joke.

Four hundred and twenty-seven people died, because of him. Most were innocents, just normal people. Some were police, or military, or private mercenaries.

Two were supers; Span, one of the Dust Brothers, and sWitch. They were there when it started—nearby, anyway. They did their best to stop him, even though sWitch was a supervillain and Span was never that much of a hero. But they failed. And they died.

I read there were some smart people who studied cases like Sniper. They thought that maybe this was a psychological thing. They called it Limit Syndrome. Apparently sometimes a super will feel like there's nothing to do but push their power to its absolute limit. Just to see how far they can go, before someone stops them.

It took Dad an hour to get there. Mum already had Daniel at that point, and she was pregnant with me—just a few months. They'd already semi-retired, they weren't actively adventuring, just ... just in special cases.

There was no way to get to Sniper safely, even the roof of the building was wired with explosives. He had a clear field of view in every direction. He picked his spot well. He prepared carefully.

There was a supervillain called Vii, he was the first to be able to phase-shift, and a hero called Proud Eye, he had a variant of Perception Clarity that let him slow his perception of time, he could have dodged the bullets ... maybe. Others, like BigBad and Ironhide and Blood Diamond had limited invulnerability, more effective than Dad's super-toughness ... but they weren't there. None of them were there.

Dad was.

But, no, it was more than that. He chose to be there.

A villain acted.

A hero reacted.

He didn't even try to hide. He walked straight towards the building where Sniper was, and he took every bullet that Sniper sent at him. He took them all and he didn't fall, not once, although in the middle, when he's halfway there, he sinks to one knee and for a moment

Can't keep writing this, I'm crying already. It would've been easier to just watch the footage. No it wouldn't have.

I'm writing this in the toilet, by the way. I ran back in here, I didn't want to let C2 see how upset I am. It's just ... it was just so pointless. Sniper killed all of those people for no reason ... for NO reason, I don't care if he lost someone he cared about, how is that ANY kind of excuse? It's NOT an excuse, it's not even a REASON, it's not FAIR that all those people died, I hate it, I hate that it happened...

There's only one good thing about the whole situation, one single positive from a mountain of negatives; my dad stopped it before it got worse. Lots of people criticised him—criticised all the heroes. They said we should have known, that we should have...

I'm depressing myself writing this. Going over all this history with C2, it's making me remember all the bad stuff. And the nearer you get to The Event the more bad stuff there is. Dad always said that, I know, but ... but maybe I was never ready to hear it. Not until now. Watching it with C2, with someone who didn't grow up with it all around them, maybe that's helped give me a new perspective on everything.

I think it's affecting her, too. I love seeing her think—really think. Her eyes go ... I don't know how to describe how they go but it's amazing to see.

I've been in this toilet for too long, I should go back out. I'm feeling a little better now. My eyes are dry, at least. I don't even know why we watched the siege today, talk about skipping ahead.

Anyway. C2's waiting.