Mod Superhero

Chapter 4.15 - Paragon 1

Sunlight penetrates the first six hundred feet of the ocean. Beyond that, there's negligible light from the surface. Past a half a mile, it's complete darkness.

Few creatures from the surface venture that deep, and it feels like even fewer make their home there. In many ways, the ocean is just another desert. Lonely and inhospitable.

A man floated listlessly in the black, two miles beneath the Atlantic ocean.

To him, it felt the same as being in space.

The chances of seeing another living creature were about the same. The chances of anyone coming to rescue him were similar. There's only a few human-made vessels that can reach that far down, and fewer still that were space-worthy. He knew of less than ten supers that could survive the crushing depths of the ocean or the vacuum of space.

No—there's no one coming. He might as well be on Mars.

The one thing Paragon had was time. He didn't age, didn't feel pain, the crushing weight of the ocean, or the vacuum of space. He didn't need to breathe or eat or drink. He would never get sick. Even if he were stranded and waiting for help, his body would hold out until someone found a way to reach him.

But he wasn't the one that needed saving. He would never be the one that needed saving.

Paragon felt the brush of a powerful psychic, marked by a ringing in his ears. He refused the connection.

He looked around through the inky black water with eyes that didn't need light to see, but he was utterly alone with his failure.

Just beneath him was the ruptured fault line.

So little had changed...

Even with Paragon's eyes, it was hard to see the edges of the faults. They were hidden by rocks and silt, but he knew where the line was. He'd committed his failure to memory.

One hundred feet.

That was how far the plates had slipped.

Paragon had slid between the plates, moving as easily through solid rock as he did through water. He'd wedged himself a mile underneath the surface, where the crust was still cool and solid.

Slowly, he'd dug his fingers into the stone and gripped, extending his influence through microscopic fissures. His hands and fingers stayed the same, but their power extended miles through tectonic plates. If he were just a man, physics would've made the feat impossible. Even if the man was strong enough, the rocks would crumble under their own weight.

Only a few in the Summit knew that secret. Poetically enough, Amarque was one of them. The handsome reality warper had sensed it the moment they met.

Paragon didn't know how much the two tectonic plates weighed, only that he had to hold them. He didn't know how long he would need to hold them together, only that he had to.

...He'd tried...

Even with Paragon's heightened senses, when the rocks broke—when his hands slipped—the plates moved with frightening speed. As soon as he felt that first slip, Paragon knew it was too late. He'd never find his grip in time. It was like trying to hold on to sand.

Ancient stone shattered like glass. Near-freezing water snapped to a boil. Reality screamed.

The world slipped through his fingers.

Paragon floated in the abyss, asking himself, over and over—

Did the rocks break? Or did I?

...Did it even matter? He'd failed. Again.

For the longest time, Paragon refused the title Savior of the World. It was gaudy—ridiculous, even. Whenever somebody asked why he shunned the title, those were the answers he gave.

In reality, he thought the title was a mockery.

It didn't matter how many lives he'd saved, or even if he had, in fact, saved the world. All Paragon remembered were his failures. When he wasn't fast enough. When he wasn't in the right place at the right time. When he made the wrong choice...

It took Paragon years before he finally, begrudgingly, accepted the title. Years before he stopped correcting people when they lauded him.

It was Wight who finally got through to him. Wight that convinced him the world needed a hero. That Paragon could lead and inspire. And that he needed to get out of his own way.

So Paragon did. He accepted the mantle. Put on a brave face... Just a mask by another name.

In his darkest moments, Savior of the World still felt like a mockery.

One hundred feet.

That was how little it took to change everything.

Paragon's ears rang and he refused the connection again. He already knew what they were going to ask.

The Deep Ones had struck at the surface world. They used magic to cause earthquakes. Right now, cities all across the world were suffering. Humanity was at war and plotting ways to strike back. Submersibles wouldn't be effective, nor would most supers. Nukes... Nukes would do more harm to the world than they would to the Deep Ones.

Paragon wished with all his being that humanity would ask him to help rebuild, but he knew they wouldn't.

Genocide.

That's what they would ask.

Genocide an entire race of intelligent creatures.

Humanity often forgot that Paragon was an alien. He wasn't human. He wasn't one of them, as much as he pretended and wished.

They didn't realize the true gravity of what they were asking him.

So he stayed at the bottom of the ocean, down where the water was still and it didn't feel like the world was about to slip through his fingers. The Savior of the World hid two miles beneath the waves. He hid from his adopted home and from the enemies that they had made.

He hid because he didn't know what else to do.

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