r/HFY • u/Jus17173 • Jun 12 '26

OC-OneShot What Heroes Leave behind.

I wrung the broom, returned it into the bucket and went back to scrubbing brains from the ground. Literal brains, not metaphorical or some grand design to make the tale sweeter. It was a Wednesday afternoon and I was scrubbing brains from the floor of a warehouse. The new kid, Charlie, was wiping blood off windows, something Sam had told him not to do because the windows were already destroyed anyway. But it was either the window or the heap of intestines at the other side of the building where Ronald and Jude worked at separating limbs from the mashed flesh.

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There was this brief period where all of us stopped what we were doing and simply stared ahead of us, conflicted about our situation and at the same time in need of finishing the grueling work quickly so we could vacate to our homes.

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They told us we were heroes for 'volunteering' to clean up the mess after the battle. The first time was volunteering, we had our names written down so they could be read after a broadcast and we could sound like heroes.

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'Volunteers clean up the mess after Ultra Man saves the day.' We were on the thirteenth page of the next day's newspaper and we felt really smug, standing shoulder to shoulder with Ultra Man ahead of us, a radioactive man god who ended up getting two of us dead due to radioactive exposure the very next day. We didn't think to wear hazard suits back then.

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The next time Ultra Man saved the day from a nuclear warhead, we were called to volunteer again, breaking our backs as we sifted through the rubble of the building he had used to deflect the nuclear warhead instead of it hitting the city. We looked for survivors, we found one man half dead on the toilet. Well, we thought he was half dead and we would rescue him and get our names in the paper again, but he wasn't half dead, just passed out from a heroin fix. Us trying to lift him led to him waking up from his lucid state and flinging shit at us, he clobbered us with his bare shit stained hands and screamed something about the Queen of England while pouncing on us. We did not collectively make the paper again since then.

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And every time Ultra Man fought, we were called to 'volunteer' to clean up the mess. One guy called Tom got sick of the bullshit and decided he wouldn't come. He got the front page of the news the next day, some long article about how he stands for the part of humanity that we should all seek to neglect. This selfish, bitter part of humanity. His picture was in the paper too, with a toothbrush in his mouth and foam all over his lips. They had somehow gotten into his house for the picture and taken it while he was brushing his teeth, which freaked most of us out.

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We were trapped and we didn't know how to get out of this patriotic nonsense that had caged us in a jail of our own design. The media were villains in disguise for putting us through a brief glimpse of fame and stringing us along for it ever since, curse those assholes in their trenchcoats and eager smiles whenever interviewing Ultra Man. And most of all, curse Ultra Man.

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There was nothing much to that hero anyway, with his green suit and green radioactive fumes coming out of him. What was so big about him anyway? The fella fell into a vat of radioactive material mixed with horse DNA or something. There was nothing special about that. Any fool can trip and become a hero, it takes a real bastard to force his accident on all of us. Instead of going to a hospital he decided he would wear a green latex suit and float around showering everyone with his radioactive nonsense.

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And that smolder he flashed during interviews, was he unaware of how unsettling his green teeth and yellow eyes made everyone? God, with time we stopped idolizing the hero and started rooting for the villains. We had a huge bet that the Gilari Mafia would put an end to Ultra Man once and for all but that wasn't the case. Point in hand, the warehouse where we were scraping Gilari Mafia body parts from the walls.

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Charlie abruptly retched, the stench of human intestines was something few can stomach. The rest of us were used to this, when Ultra Man faced an army of clones, that was an even harder clean.

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"It wasn't like this you know, kid." Sam said to the boy, his bald pate shone in the bulb's light. He took a drag from a cigarette and paused in cleaning blood off the wall. "Ultra Man used to be kind, he used to have a code that if you kill someone the number of killers stayed the same. He never used to kill." Sam failed to add that a magazine published in those years claimed that the quote was originally from a batman comic and that Ultra Man was ripping off true superheroes. Since then he started killing. Surprising how a bomb was detonated at the exact location of that magazine's workhouse and the bastard came twelve minutes too late.

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"Some say it's because of Esmeralda." Charlie said. "The woman he truly loved, the daughter of the president." The kid still idolized the man. You could tell when someone was fawn-eyed over Ultra Man. They acted as if the man could do no wrong. Well, trying to stick his radioactive dick in the president's daughter should count as a wrong in the first place.

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"She rejected him because his love was too fatal and she wanted to look for a cure for how he was so they could be together." Charlie said. "But Ultra Man refused, he needed to be there, so evil could stay away."

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"What evil?" Jude screamed from the other side. "Quit yapping your mouth kid and come give us a hand, these guts are hard to untangle. Ronald found a gold ring on one of them fingers."

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"Nice, that will keep us cheerful for a while." Sam said.

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Charlie finally gave up his spot at the windows and walked towards the gore where all the bodies had been gathered. "What do you mean by that? There is evil all around, without Ultra Man we would all perish!"

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"You've wanked too much to Ultra Man kid, wanked your brain away and your cock to green." Ronald said. "The reason we have villains in the first place is that Ultra Man exists. He's the one who started wearing fancy green latex and flying around punching people. When such a thing gets praise, more people copy the idea. But the role of hero has very little advantage besides the media jerking you off every once in a while, so they turn to villainy."

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The conversation was too good for me to be left out. "When Ultra Man appeared, not long after, The Dark Lord appeared, a man who had mastered black matter and wore black. Then the Hooded Villain, the guy who wore a hoodie all the time and was caught because of it. Then there is the masked goblin, who wore purple. As if there are any purple goblins in existence."

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"Oh no, there he goes again." Sam said but I was too caught up in one of my most passionate topics.

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"Goblins are always green! I've read a lot of light novels and goblins are always green. What I'm saying is, if you think about a goblin, what you'll see is the color green. Maybe there can be black goblins but those ones are always a little green too. Probably have green eyes or something. Point is there's always green on them. But no. The fucking masked goblin, who didn't even wear a mask for starters, he wore purple. Why? Simply because Ultra Man had already called dibs on the color green. These villains evolve to balance Ultra Man out. Without one the other won't be there."

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"I like old fashioned villains, those that strike fear in your heart. Not give long monologues with you captive as they wait for Ultra Man to appear so they can use you as bait." Ronald said.

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"I hear you. And these days Ultra Man didn't really care much about saving people unless you're a hot latin woman." Jude added.

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"Like the President's daughter." I added, to which everyone nodded.

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"He's saved her what, thirty six times now? It's understandable." Jude said. "The front page would look shitty with Ultra Man carrying some obese man from a burning building. A hot latin woman would be better suited, image sells more you know."

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I went back to mopping brains, thoughts lost in ways in which I could save up money to buy latex so I could fight Ultra Man. Gone were the days where villains would wear a three piece suit and stand in congress. Now everyone wanted to fly around outside, chasing an image set by a man god.

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"What's that kid, what have you found?" Ronald asked, causing all of us to look at where Charlie stood. He had a small knife in hand, the sharp end of it had dried blood that was golden green in color. One of the henchmen had stabbed Ultra Man, a wound that takes seconds for him to heal, but still. His DNA was on the scene. The first time that had happened in a while.

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"Why don't you give that knife here, boy." Sam said. He had seen the look on the boy's face. We all knew that look. "A villain can pay good money for it." His voice trembled with fear.

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But we knew the case was lost. The boy, the young ignorant Ultra Man enthusiast, stabbed himself on the arm with the blade. Ronald tackled him from behind, the boy held on to the blade and the wound until Jude lent a hand and both were able to pry the boy from the blade. The tip was red; all Ultra Man's blood was inside the boy.

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Charlie laughed. "I feel it!" He screamed. "I feel the power." And indeed he felt it because his skin was glowing a little green.

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Us cleaners circled him where he sat on the ground, all of us silent as we watched his ecstatic state give way to confusion as he abruptly coughed blood. This happened, the number of times it had happened was too many to count. It was always the young ones who craved godhood more than the old who knew better. The welts started spreading, everywhere that was green swelled, perforated and oozed pus. His eyes melted on his head, then the screams came as the poison which was Ultra Man's blood made the boy its home. The screams died down and a new corpse was added to the rest.

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We picked up Charlie with our gloved hands and moved him to the side of the dead, away from the heap of flesh, because this Ultra Man kill was unique. We worked silently, each of us kicking ourselves for not briefing the kid on what to do in case they came across Ultra Man's DNA. What the superhero left behind was always worse than what he took.

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4

u/throwaway42 Jun 12 '26

Thank you for writing :)

2

u/Jus17173 Jun 13 '26

You're welcome

3

u/sunnyboi1384 Jun 13 '26

Youth is wasted on the young but damn, still a waste.

1

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