The Not-So-Heroic Life

Hey, all. Today, I would like to bring to you a side of being a hero that most heroes do not like to admit exists: failure.

Most heroes would like the public--and especially, the bad guys--to think that they always succeed with stunning glory. Every mission ends with a lot of heroes celebrating their victory with high-fives and dancing on the bodies of their fallen enemies, right?

Unfortunately, as you can see from the number of bad guys still out there, from street thugs to powerful archvillains, this is not always the case. Sometimes a hero even contributes to the failure of a mission or battle.

I think the closest call I have ever created myself was about a year ago. I was on what should have been a cakewalk of a mission. All we had to do was retrieve a stolen list of police officers who worked undercover on a high-profile organized crime case. In our group, we had a light controller who made the entire group of us invisible, and another hero who lent us all hover belts so that we could move through the building in absolute silence.

We knew that the list was somewhere in a four-story office building, so the four of us picked different floors and started silently searching. I maneuvered in and out among what had to be dozens of a mysterious group that called themselves "Malta Operatives." I was hovering down a hallway towards the last office on the floor when all of a sudden, one of the Operatives started pointing right at me and yelling, "There! Metahuman!" The way my assault rifle was hanging over my shoulder had caused it to stick out past the refractive horizon of our light controller's invisibility shell.

Now at this point, you have to realize that I am actually not a metahuman. I'm used to being called various things by enemies such as a hero, "cape" (which is funny, since I do not wear one), and some things that are unprintable here, but I think this is the first time anyone had called me a metahuman. And at the time, it did not occur to me that an invisibly obscured floating normal flesh-and-blood person would seem as if he were a metahuman to these people. So naturally, I spun around to find out what type of metahuman the Operative was yelling at, completely obvlivious that it was, in fact, me.

To add insult to injury, when I spun around, a pin on one of my web grenades caught on the hoverbelt I was wearing, and before I knew it, I was smack in the middle of a congregation of enemy Operatives, completely covered in strands of sticky glue and unable to move. I was suddenly enveloped in a bright blue light and passed out due to extreme weakness, and the next thing I remember, I woke up in a hospital with a young pretty nurse still pulling globs of goo off of me with a pair of forceps.

As if that weren't embarrassing enough, I looked around and saw the other three members of my team in the next three beds over. When the Operatives were alerted to my presence, they locked down the building, including the stairwells and elevators, and started searching floor-by-floor with infrared goggles. Since we were split up across floors, my team members were sitting ducks, and the only reason we're still alive now is because of the city's medical transporatation grid.

It ended up that the list was sold on the black market, and eight undercover officers had to leave the force and go into a protection program because of my blundering mistake. The ruined lives of those eight officers and their families still haunt me to this day, and this mission's failure is why today, I treat every single mission, no matter how easy it may look, as if it is the most important mission in the world.

Sometimes failure isn't limited to a hero's mistake, and such failure is quite possibly the most frustrating part of being a hero. I was on a special task force last week assembled by none other than Positron himself. It was a dream team of heroes, including such renowned names as Exskotia, Lily the Blade, Rainbow Aradia, Sycorax, U-232, Tyger Paw, and the Princess Bratt. After about five minutes, we managed to iron out the confusion over calling U-232 by the letter "U" over the comm channel (seven heroes responding to what they thought was someone shouting "Hey you!"), and I thought we were ready to kick some serious butt.

For several long hours, we battled all manner of enemies. We especially had a tough time with some Vahzilok, considering my ealier experience with them. Still, we persevered and were on our way to rescue some FEMA workers from Rollister, a powerful Circle of Thorns mage, when as far as we could tell, the entire universe "blipped." We still don't know exactly what happened. Some have theorized that it was due to some unexplained side effect of portal use. Some even believe that it was ripple effects from a great battle between the lost Omega Team and the Rikti on their homeworld. Whatever caused it, the entire city was thrown into confusion for several minutes during our battle with Rollister's minions, and it was enough time for Rollister to escape. The comm channels were dead silent and several members of the team lost contact with each other for around half an hour. When things returned to normal, we contacted Positron to find out what he wanted to do. He said that in the confusion, we needed to stand down and wait until another day to fight Rollister.

I cannot help but feel that it was a waste of a fantastic team's talents and hard work, but Positron is known for his insight and intelligence, so we split apart in the hopes that we may some day, on this team or another, be able to complete the mission we were assigned.

So if the hero's life looks like nothing but glamour and glory, I hope you realize that while it can be personally rewarding, it can also sometimes be extremely frustrating. At the end of the day, when all is said and done, the bodies being danced on just may be your own. I am very glad for Paragon City that we have heroes that fight on and manage to find reward even in the midst of failure.

Toño "News Man" Vasquez