The Paragon (Powers, Masks & Capes #2)

Coffee? Tea? Water?

Of course, suit yourself. We just wanted to make sure you’re comfortable. I’m sorry, this is a bit awkward for us. We don’t give interviews, as you know. Statements, press conferences, occasional speeches, but we don’t take questions certainly. Over the decades we’ve been doing this, we’ve never really done an interview. Too many questions, too many secrets.

But recent events have forced our hand. I think it’s about time we explain things to y’all, to the public. We finally reached an accord on this, all of us. It’s not something that we do lightly, informing the world. There’s some concern that doing so would do even more damage than letting you all continue guessing. But I, we, think it’s time.
Time to tell you the truth.

That we’re just tired. So… damn… tired of it all.
Now, where should we start?


***

The man that you know as Ultra isn’t really a man. We are multiple men. And some women. You see, our Power is not exactly what you think it is. We are an amalgamation of multiple individuals, absorbed into a single form, given life and strength. We are a combination of minds and souls and, yes, Powers.

Maybe it’ll help to talk about the first of us—Ultra Prime, if you will. His name is Andrew Hassell II and his Power is what makes us Ultra, what allowed us to become who you see before you. It was his Power that gave us all the chance to grow and develop. That damned and saved us all. In so doing, he also sacrificed the most.

You must understand, Andrew was born in the early 1800s. In addition, you should understand that he is what you would term neurodivergent. We’re not entirely certain to what level, and to what form. Yes, he’s still here. Sort of. We’ll get to that. It’s simpler to say his personality, his nature, has faded. What little we see, what little we talk to or experience from him, it comes only in flashes.

What we’ve pieced together was that Andrew was an orphan, one that grew up in one of the many orphanages in Britain during that period, working for a living until he was thrown out. Luckily for him, before he starved to death on the streets, his Power activated. Or it could be that it had been active even before that, but opportunity and fate never allowed it to show its worth.

Lord Pembroke was who Andrew found, who he connected to his body. At that time, Lord Pembroke’s Power had been mostly unknown, just a minor gift for strength. After all, back then, Powers were but legends and myths, tall tales. Maybe one in a million or ten million had one, and even then, it was so miniscule that it was nothing more than what a gifted athlete might have. This was the case with Lord Pembroke. Everyone thought that he was just gifted, so when the street urchin stumbled into him, when the dirty vagrant vomited all over his clothing, and then when he was beaten and bloodied and dying, reactively forced Lord Pembroke to combine with his body, it was considered a scandal.

You have to understand, we only know the next part from the records of the British Ministry of Supernatural Affairs. Supposedly, the formation of what would be the second version of Ultra was a truly disgusting event, one that caused a minor riot as the bodies flowed together into a single, fleshy cocoon. If not for the fact that the Ministry had been recently formed and was desperately searching for a reason to exist, Ultra as we know it might have ended then and there when the mob calmed down and burned the bodies.

Instead, they took the bodies of Lord Pembroke and Andrew, the two congealed together forms and placed them in a secure location, deep in a Ministry warehouse. And waited.

What came out was the beginning of what would be us, Ultra, a mixture of the genes of both individuals along with the memory and personalities of either individual. Of course, as a child and neurodivergent as he was, Andrew was not in the driver seat at that point. Lord Pembroke was. And so began the short-lived adventures of the Masked Gentleman.

Traveling through the streets of London, dealing out justice and testing out the extent of our Powers under the jurisdiction of the Ministry of Supernatural Affairs. Dealing with French saboteurs, killing German spies, and wondering when the next Power would trigger. If the next Power could trigger.

It happened when we fought who would become our arch enemy, the French saboteur and spy Francois Lovell. Francois was adaptable, suave, socially cognizant of everyone in the British government’s layers of bureaucracy and their foibles. He worked the nobles as part of his job, and every time the Masked Gentleman found him, they fought and he would lose.

Release Date: 1. März 2021

Pages: 40

Genre: Superhero Fantasy

eBook ISBN: 9781989994535

Language: English

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