Michael Van Dagger

Better to Die a Hero Michael Van Dagger

Sometimes smart kids, good kids, the type of kids that you think would know better, do stupid things. Steve Pierce is an overweight eighteen-year-old with a propensity for daydreaming. His best friend Bryan, voted class clown, is gangly with a gift for mimicry. Their beautiful acquaintance Nora usually runs with the popular crowd. When Steve thinks back to the moment he and his friends held their innocent tea ceremony, when they dissolved the powder into the water, he cannot fathom why he drank it. Nora Chan was at his house earlier in the week when he?d opened the crate of antiques, an inheritance from a father he?d never met. It was in that crate they discovered the powder. Nora?s ninety-year-old grandfather identified the substance as a Chinese health remedy. Still, judging from the antique container, the contents were at least a hundred years old or older. The substance is a mystical compound and it endows them with great power. On the powder, the three take to the Bronx rooftops where they vault alleyways and delight in super strength, and enhanced reflexes. They create costumes and play at being superheroes; but really, how many crimes occur in any given neighborhood on any given night? None. And, what?s the use of being strong when there are no super villains? Still, a properly motivated superhero living in New York should be able to find a worthy adversary, and then regret it. You always remember your first super villain, provided you live.