The Brotherfly laughed, slapping his knees in exaggerated delight. “You gots to admit, Squirrelly-man, Kareem just put the Bzzzt! on y’all!”
Kareem switched his gaze to Omnipotent Man and Iron Lass. “Five times more people live on the mainland than on the island. I even told you two to clear a path for CycloTron to get onto Centurion Bridge so we could sink it there. Did you even consider moving into position?”
“For all you know, Kareem, even if ve’d destroyt ze bridch, CycloTron vut haff continuedt rollink out of ze vaater. Dit you sink about zat?”
“X-Man, hold up there a minute,” said Wally. “What if Bird Island got flattened, and then th’entire economy crashed? Then all the mums and dads in Langston-Douglas woulda lost their jobs! Well then how they supposta pay their mortgages?”
“Wallace, have you ever even set foot in Stun-Glas? You think the people there have mortgages? You think half the people there even have jobs?”
“Now jess round up yer rangers a spell, Kareem. Jess last week I got a ball off the roof at one a them Langston-Douglas midnight basketball dealies. And don’t be saying they don’t have jobs, no sir. I saw lots a fine automobiles there with some very shiny, expensive-looking hubcaps, an that means hardworking folks, car loans an auto dealerships fulla happy employees. Gracious jiminny, th’folks down there even try t’dress like superheroes—evra-one wearing red or blue—”
“This monolithic level of ignorance about life in Stun-Glas,” said Kareem, imploring the ceiling itself, “is exactly why the F*O*O*J lost its HUD contract to police the neighborhood in the first place, and why the L*A*B picked it up and protected our homes, reduced crime to almost nothing, and earned the loyalty of the people there—”
“Maybe, Kareem,” said Festus, “if your L*A*B wasn’t such a bunch of spear-sharpening, whitey-hating, race-fixated reprobates, they would’ve kept in HUD’s favor. But then they wouldn’t be the League of Angry Blackmen anymore, would they?”
“You hear that, Doc? Where’s your whistle now? Festus, those sheets you ride around in at night—they made of satin, or silk?”
“I don’t have to take that from you, Edgerton!” said Festus.
I blew my Mind Whistle™, and the bickering ceased as quickly as the migraines sucked everyone’s hands to their skulls.
“Ladies and gentlemen, we went over the rules yesterday,” I reminded them, while resentment skittered across my group’s faces like silverfish across a dinner plate.
“I’d thought we might go a few weeks at least before the whistle first had to be used, but…well. While controlled venting is a necessary part of the therapeutic process, aimless unleashing of antihappiness merely blasts psychemotional shrapnel into the vulnerable underbelly of our healing community. Your real task inside the Id-Smasher® wasn’t tactical training, of course, but to prepare you for postsimulation self-observation of how you are decapacitizing the life-potentials you seek.
“Your board of directors—pardon me, your Fantastic Order of Justice Leadership Administrative Council—was quite specific with me, and with all of you. Unless you six can resolve the problems that are making you, and I quote, ‘contentious in the extreme, dysfunctional, and impossible to work with,’ end quote, the F*L*A*C will terminate your employment with and membership in the F*O*O*J.”
I let the weight of my words rest like rhetorical cement blocks upon their psychemotional fingernails. Each hero was also still wincing from the beneficial operant conditioning of the Mind Whistle™.
“Now, while some of you are unconcerned at the prospect of losing your benefits and pension, either due to your personal fortune,” I said, nodding to the Flying Squirrel, “or due to your immortality,” I continued, nodding to Iron Lass, “I assume the real threat is that of dishonorable discharge from the Fantastic Order of Justice.
“And while such scandal might be a temporary boost in the ‘no press is bad press’ mode, dishonorable discharge from the F*O*O*J could severely damage a young heroine’s outside commercial endorsements,” I said, nodding to Power Grrrl, “distance oneself from the command of dedicated soldiers,” I said, nodding again to Iron Lass, “or from a community of friends and admirers,” I said to the young black man with the floppy transparent wings, bluebottled bug-eye goggles, and hairy antennae.
I finished by nodding to the thirty-four-year-old black man in his conservative black suit and tie. “And it would annihilate an ambitious man’s career aspirations.”
Everyone finally took their chairs in the circle, leaving the X-Man as the last man standing, since he’d been jockeying to avoid sitting near either Power Grrrl or Festus. Finally he sat on the opposite side of the circle from his implacable adversary, the Squirrel.
Perhaps ironically (for those untrained in psychoanalysis), the quietest of the group stood out the most. He’d made neither fuss nor folly during the just concluded mini-fracas, and he sat serenely resplendent in his blue suit, golden epaulets, red necktie, and cape. Were I not a highly perceptive practitioner of the healing arts of psychotherapy, I might have believed this man had no worries at all, with his massive brawn and his hands folded in his lap so immaculately they appeared to have been carved by Michelangelo himself.
But I did know better. For Omnipotent Man was as wracked with self-destructive pain as any of his comrades beside him.
Every Superstrength Is Also a Superweakness
As you just saw, conflict on a hyperhominid team is virtually inevitable. That’s because careers self-select for personality type. The irony, of course, is that success during the workday can mean severe interpersonal and psychological dysfunction at night.
Take Clifford David Stinson, HKA the Blue Smasher. His heroism demanded his willingness—indeed his eagerness—to smash anything, anywhere at any time. But during domestic disputes, he also smashed several of his own homes and vehicles as well as those of his neighbors in Los Ditkos’s upscale Royal Arch district. In 1988 he so flattened Bucksome Hills that the city council had to rename it Spinster Flats.
Eventually Clifford Stinson’s personal failings became professional ones. In 1983,
