I was seven years old when I first encountered a super. That day has been burned into my mind, a memory that would be replayed thousands of times. On the way to our apartment, my mom stopped by the local corner store, getting some last minute ingredients for dinner. The little shit that I was, I started sneaking through the store, stuffing my pockets with candy. That was when a powerful chill passed through the store.

  The first sign that Permafrost had arrived. I peeked out of the aisle, wanting to catch a glimpse of the man who entered. He wore a bright blue puffer jacket, with snow goggles that hid half his face. Every step he took, small patches of ice were left behind.

  The old cashier opened the register with a defeated look, pulling out a stack of bills. Permafrost snatched the money, a wicked grin on his face. He didn’t bother with uttering a single word. He just turned around and walked away.

  If that was it, maybe I would’ve gone down a different path in life. But, sometimes, a single moment shapes who you are for the rest of your life. The cashier grabbing a shotgun from under the counter was that moment.

  He aimed and pulled the trigger, as a gunshot tore through the air, causing me to wince as my ears began to ring. Permafrost was caught off guard, the pellets landing square on his back. But, he didn’t budge an inch. See, any normal person would’ve been turned into a stain on the wall, but Permafrost wasn’t a normal person. He was a super. When you’re a super, you play by different rules.

  Before the old man could get another shot off, Permafrost spun around, ripping the goggles off his face. As he stared, ice began to creep up the man’s body, quickly encasing his limbs. He screamed, panicked and afraid, but there was no one who could help him. In just a few moments, he was entombed in ice.

  That was when the world that I knew was shattered. The conversations with cops and school counselors are a blur compared to that moment. Everyone knew about supers, those gifted with amazing powers, but to actually see one was something else. It was an insight to a world that I never knew was possible.

  My mom had always tried to keep me away from bad influences, but that night killed who her child once was, who her child could’ve been. Before I knew it, I spent every waking moment studying supervillains, from local gang leaders to foreign dictators. I still remember staring at the abandoned Dendra spaceships, floating through the night sky, and praying to wake up as a super.

  One day, that dream came true. I was fifteen, having left school early to go back home. I remember laying on the couch, scrolling through the super forums for anything interesting. After a while, I decided to turn on the TV for some background noise.

  I stretched my hand out, trying to reach the remote on the coffee table. It was barely out of reach, but I was far too comfortable to actually get up and grab it. That was when it happened, the remote flew into my hand like magic. That was the second moment that shaped my life.

  After staring at the remote like a dumbass, processing what just happened, I realized that I was a super. So, naturally, I started testing out my powers. By the time my mom got home from work, the house looked like a hurricane had come through. Thankfully, I avoided getting punished due to being passed out on the floor, exhausted from overusing my powers.

  When I woke up in my bed the next day, I got to work on figuring out every detail about my powers. Since the day I saw Permafrost, I’d gotten addicted to learning everything I could about supers, namely how their powers work.

  After you use your powers for the first time, you gain access to the system. People could go their entire lives with the potential to be a super, without ever activating their abilities. The system itself was odd, a floating blue screen that reacted to your thoughts, while giving you information about yourself.

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  In the beginning, the system isn’t too useful, especially for a super working on their own. But it told me what my powers were, and it gave me a super name. One that was mine and mine alone. And that was more than enough for me.

  My new name was Taker. It took some getting used to, but that didn’t bother me. I was finally a super. Access to the system also gave me super resistance, a buffer to any damage I might face. Scientists still aren’t sure how it works, but it was convenient.

  However, none of that mattered as much as my powers did. This was what made you super, what put you above the rest of humanity. I was only given one power to start with, a version of telekinesis, an admittedly rare power.

  [Take]: You can pull small objects into your hand.

  Unfortunately, it was the world’s shittiest version of telekinesis. I could attract small objects to my hand, anything that I could normally carry. That was it. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t awaken anything past that.

  Do you know how depressing it is to watch Void make entire cities vanish, while your power is the equivalent of one of those grabbing tools that old people use? It’s soul crushing. My dream had finally come true, but I was given a practical joke of a power.

  So, as my school counselor would put it, I was failed by the system. I left school and home at the age of sixteen, wanting to leave behind my old life, hopefully make some name for myself as a villain. But nothing panned out, and I never ended up leaving South Rain City.

  I spent a few years living on the streets, surviving through whatever means necessary. And it took some real work to survive. South Rain had thousands of murders every year, and every day put me at risk of becoming a statistic.

  But being a super, even a weak one, was still far better than being an ordinary. While it wasn’t enough to make things easy, it let me sleep at night with some sense of safety. I spent four years of my life like that, lashing out and fighting with anyone that approached. Whether they were a threat, or someone that wanted to help.

  But, things change. That’s the one thing life always does, it changes. You never know when one of those moments that change your life will happen. The moment just happens, and it only becomes important afterwards.

  I was sitting in an alleyway, hungry and cold. Now, there wasn’t much I could do about the cold, but there was something I could do about the hunger. There was another homeless man in the alley, with a bag of Arby’s fished out of a dumpster.

  I have higher standards than Arby’s, but when you’re starving, you get desperate. So before he could open the bag, I used [Take] and pulled it into my hands. It was about as subtle as just walking up to him and grabbing it.

  So it should be no surprise that he walked up to me to try and grab it back. You would be surprised how quickly an argument over what it means to own something turns violent.

  He pulled out a pocket knife and lunged at me. His blade went straight for my throat, but I ignored the threat as I stood up. His knife failed to even scratch me, my super resistance blocking his slashes, and I used [Take] to grab the knife for myself. The fight ended in the only way it could have, another body left to be cleaned in the morning.

  Little did I know, that wasn’t just a fight for who gets to eat. A few higher ups of a local gang, The Disciples of Agony, had been watching the fight from across the street. As I tore into my beef ‘n cheddar, they approached me with a job offer.

  It wasn’t much of a choice, all things considered. Not only would I escape where life had left me, but I would be joining in with one of the biggest gangs South Rain City had ever seen. That was another moment where my life changed, and I was put on a path that I could never have predicted.

  It took me years of being a fuckup, but I finally had a place where I could try to prove myself. The next couple of years passed by like a drunken blur, where I tried my best to become someone worth being. But even at my lowest, I never forgot my dream. To become the greatest supervillain this world has ever seen.