Villain's Redemption

My name is Ivan Charpentier. The world has never seen someone quite like me. A six-foot-two, broad-shouldered and muscular young black man clad in a long black leather duster over a red leather jacket, red leather pants and black leather boots. Complete with stylish sunglasses. In case the outfits got you wondering, the answer is yes. I am in fact bisexual. I don't just look good in fancy leather outfits, I can also do things most people can only dream of. I've got superhuman strength, super speed and the ability to fly at near-light speeds. I'm not invulnerable but quite durable. Fire, bullets, knives, they can't hurt me. My body is quite resilient. However, a nuclear explosion could possibly kill me. As for those things which might harm me, I usually evade them simply because I can become intangible and phase through basically anything. Sometimes, I can teleport myself across great distances but it drains me so much that I hardly ever use it. I'm the most powerful man in the world. And I work with The Master. The one who will bring the world of man down to its knees and usher in the Golden Age of Superhumans.

A long time ago, before I discovered my powers, and long before the President of the United States ordered the U.S. Army and police officers nationwide to hunt down all superhumans, I was just a guy with a dream. I lived in the city of Boston, Massachusetts. I had the misfortune of being born into a truly dysfunctional family. My father Lester Charpentier is a tall, stocky black man who commands respect in many circles. He's a captain with the Boston Fire Department. A hero in the eyes of many. What most people don't know is that he's also a genetic anomaly. A mutant. He was born with the ability to manipulate and control fires. Fire can't hurt him. He can literally burst into flames and fly in the heavens like a bird, thanks to his thermodynamic capabilities. As a mutant, he's classified as a Pyrokinetic. He starts half the fires he's credited as heroically putting out. Just a little-known fact. That's my dear old pops.

As for my mother, Rachel Midland Charpentier, she's a small, plain-looking, bronze-skinned woman of Puerto Rican and African-American descent. Don't let her appearance fool you. She's Psionic. Dear old ma has the ability to read minds. She can also move objects with her mind, a talent called Telekinesis. Her specialty is getting inside people's heads and trapping them in their worst nightmares. Most of her victims end up comatose, or dead. Oh, and she's also a beloved professor of psychology at Boston College. Isn't that cool? My big sister Annabelle is a tall, caramel-skinned gal with the most mesmerizing body most people have ever seen. I don't mean to sound weird since she's my sister and all. I'm just trying to describe her accurately. The irony is that this angelic-looking young black woman is so evil on the inside that she could scare Satan himself. Rachel has the ability to fly. She's invulnerable. And she's also got enough raw strength to lift two trucks and fly around with them before tossing them like pebbles. Currently, she's in an artificially induced coma at a top secret facility owned by the United States Government. I ran away from home as soon as my legs could carry me. I attended UMass-Amherst and earned myself a bachelor's degree in business. I tried to lead a normal life. All I wanted was a cool boyfriend or hot girlfriend and I'd be one happy guy. Unfortunately, the universe had other plans. The whole world went nuts, and I got drafted into a war of the species.

A war which opposed ordinary humans and superhumans. There are lots of superhumans out there. Some of them are as evil as my parents. A few of them are quite decent. I don't know how come there are so many of us. We started popping up all over the place. And that's when the U.S. Government took notice of us. A super-powered woman named Jessica Vega stormed the police department in the small town of Brockton, Massachusetts. Apparently, she was mad at them for killing her brother Marius during a bank robbery gone bad. This five-foot-three, 130-pound black woman moved at superhuman speed and slaughtered dozens of policemen and policewomen in a matter of minutes. Her grisly predations were recorded by the police station cameras. It was broadcast all over the news. This is how America discovered that people with super powers existed. As in ancient times, a woman opened Pandora's Box and unleashed hell upon the world.

A group of local superhumans took out Jessica Vega and handed her over to the Massachusetts State Police. Their way of showing the humans that not all superhumans were maniacs. But it was already too late. The President of the United States ordered the creation of a special task force known as the Universal Patrol. They were to hunt down all superhumans. Apprehend them if possible. Kill them if necessary. It all started on February of 2009. Three years later, thousands of superhumans have been killed. Hundreds of thousands of us have been locked up in specially built government prisons. It seemed like our species was going extinct. Until the Master showed up.

Who is The Master? Purely and simply the next God, folks. When I first met her, I didn't know what to think. A five-foot-eleven, green-eyed and brown-skinned young woman who didn't look a day over twenty. I was in Detroit at the time. I was hiding in plain sight, working as a restaurant manager when someone snitched on me and alerted the authorities, telling them that I was a superhuman. I fled. But I had three Hunter-Fighters after me. What's a Hunter-Fighter? A small, lightly built flying machine that resembles an airplane but it's infinitely faster and more maneuverable. Also, it's equipped with enough firepower to take out a small country. Only the best men and women of the Air Force are selected to become Hunter-Fighter pilots. Their task is to hunt down and exterminate flying supermen and superwomen. It was one of them who took down my wicked sister. As the flying machines chased me all over the state of Michigan, I put up quite a fight. But they ran me down until I was tired. A missile struck me and I went down. I ran on foot, wounded. They sent men and women in armored cars and cornered me in the woods. I thought it would be the end of me. That's when the Master showed up.

An innocent-looking young woman who seemed like she belonged more on a Victoria's Secret Catalog than in army fatigues. She simply materialized right in front of me as the men and women of the Universal Patrol surrounded me. I thought she was one of them. But she smiled, and told me to trust her. I'm not the most trusting person in the world. Men and women have betrayed me at every turn in my life. So you'll understand if I told my would-be savior to go screw herself. She smiled sadly, then did something completely amazing. A blue energy ball shot from her hand, and next thing I knew the men and women who were after me fizzled and vanished. She had destroyed them. All of them. In less than a minute. How did she do it? Later I found out she reduced them down to the level of atoms. They weren't just dead. They had become less than nothing. To say that I was amazed would have been an understatement.

My savior introduced herself as Nicole Masters, she who in time would be known as The Master. As I stood before her, shaken, she offered to tend to my wounds. With a simple touch, she healed me. I had never met anyone who could do what she did. I was puzzled. She was willing to answer my questions, but first we had to get out of the woods. Made sense to me. Taking her into my hands, I took off into the heavens. And that's how it all began, folks. Nicole had the ability to absorb the powers of every mutant she touched. She didn't steal their abilities. She replicated them. The moment she touched me, she absorbed my powers of near-light flight, super strength, super speed and inhuman durability. She was determined to gather many other superhumans and free our imprisoned brothers and sisters from the yoke of human oppression. I admired her courage, and became her willing and eager ally.

Together, we began to liberate our fellow superhumans. In New York City, we freed three hundred of our fellow supermen and superwomen from a secret underground testing facility. We met a fellow who shared our beliefs. His name was Jackson Kent. A tall, burly Hispanic man who proudly served the United States during the Iraq War, then watched as his country turned against him merely because he was born different. Jackson Kent was a superhuman with amazing powers. He could control anything metallic. Or electronic. With his talents in our arsenal, listening in on the humans electronic systems was ridiculously easy. We learned of their plans long before they dreamed of enacting them. And we freed many more superhumans. Slowly, the tide of the war began to turn in our favor. And I watched my friend and savior become something beyond both human and superhuman.

Nicole Masters isn't just my beloved friend and fellow superhuman. She's not just the nearly mythical leader of the Superhuman Resistance Movement. I discovered that she was much more than that. All of the powers she had absorbed had transformed her into a new order of being. She could fly at hypersonic speeds. She was had the ability to regenerate, a talent she seldom used since she was also effectively invulnerable. She could generate electrical as well as fiery blasts. She could generate radioactive energy. She could control metallic and electronic objects. She could control the minds of humans, superhumans and animals. She could phase through solid matter. Merely by thinking about it, she could control the weather. She could also fly in space without needing air to breathe. She had become effectively immortal. Humans and superhumans have one thing in common. We're all mortal creatures. She wasn't. She was immortal. A breath away from divinity. One step below God.

We waged war against the humans, and superhumans worldwide rose against them as well. On January 1, 2013, we burned down the White House. Along with the rest of Washingon D.C. Then we traveled to Mississipi, where the Master teleported the entirety of the mightiest river in North America into the black emptiness of deep space. It was a feat worthy of a goddess. And the entire world watched it happen. Human and superhuman alike were amazed. Superhumans rejoiced. Humans quaked in fear. What followed was nothing short of a massacre. As superhumans took over the planet, the humans were slaughtered. However, we were still outnumbered. So a superhuman scientist came up with the ultimate weapon. A virus which would attack ordinary humans and leave superhumans unscathed. It was unleashed on December 2013.

I've never questioned the Master's decisions, but I wrestled with my conscience as she decided to wipe out the humans. I'm not a genocidal maniac. I wanted to make the humans pay for hunting and hounding my superhuman brethren. They put us in cages like animals. They experimented on us. And those of us who helped them got treated like criminals. I had no love for humanity. But I didn't think genocide was a good idea. It seemed a little...crazy. I voiced my doubts to Nicole Masters. I thought she'd understand. Big mistake. They say power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely. Nicole Masters wasn't the decent woman I once knew. She hadn't been a person, human or superhuman, for quite some time. Immortality made her cold and unfeeling. And power-mad. When I dared to question her, she decided to smite me. I knew I couldn't take her out. I wasn't a god. Plus, she had over three fourths of a billion superhumans who thought she was somewhere between Jesus Christ and Gandhi. I took off.

Folks, Nicole Masters literally set the sky ablaze trying to kill me. I took off for the laboratory located on what once was a space station manned by ordinary human men and women. It belonged to the Resistance, and it was where we kept the virus which would one day destroy humanity. I put on a space suit, and flew. I had never flown in deep space before. It was quite different. I went to the space station, and took the virus. Unfortunately, I also activated the alert mechanism. A fleet of spaceships operated by superhumans took off after me. I took the entire station, and flew faster than I'd ever flown in my life. Where could I go? I knew the moment I asked myself the question. Where could I go that no other could follow? I teleported myself and the entire space station to the only place where no one could touch us. Inside the sun. Where nothing could survive. I'm a villain. I've killed men and women, human and superhuman. But I will not simply watch as an entire species is destroyed. Even if it's a species I've grown to detest. It's not who I am. I'm out. Peace.