The Golden Raven Returns: Chapter One

Blue lay on the street, the hot pavement sticking, taking a million tiny bites out of him as he slowly crawled along. The Glorious Marvels were handling the situation as best they could, but he could help. He was one of them. He had been doing this for years. He knew this place, but every inch of him hurt and it hurt so bad. Although he managed to crawl a few feet, he passed out from sheer pain.

He woke a few hours later to the worried face of Century, who, although he could shoot out lasers from his eyes and hands, was nervous to even look at him.

 "Where I am?" said Blue.

"You're in the hospital."

"Oh, that's good."

"Blue," said Century as the doctor came in.

 "Smith, you can just call me Blue," said Blue.

"First of all, me and the rest of the doctor team would just very much like to thank you for your sacrifice in doing this great service and saving our city." He waved them off.

 "I've been looking over your records and you're going to need to stop this."

"No."

"You see, at least for a while. You need to recover for at least a few years."

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"Oh, no! We must stop this evil villain!" said the man in the big foamy suit.

Blue was not a particularly good skater. Having a real superhero in these sideshows is always a plus. As he inch by inch skated through the ice, barely touching the big foamy representations of old villains he used to fight and that would gently fall over, the 20 or 30 people who had come all clapped, but it was apparent nobody was really paying attention to the show.

As the show ended, and he, victorious again as always, got dressed and went into his cramped Nissan Sebring, he started to search on his phone for an appropriate thing to listen to on the two-hour drive he had to do to get back to his small apartment. He had finally settled on a half-listened podcast.

His phone rang. "Oh, is this Blue Smith?"

"Yes."

 "My employer, Leo Flanders, would like to talk to you," said the man on the phone.

"Oh. Well, to arrange an appearance, you have to go through Party Fun Time Superheroes."

"No, this is not for that. He's sending a car to your current location. You'll see it soon," and the man hung up. Right after that, somebody knocked on his window. He saw a stretch Humvee.