Snippet #2480030

With a loud sigh John watched through bullet proof glass as the customer he had just sold a carton of cigarettes too exited the shitty gas station he worked at eight hours a day-Monday through Friday. It had been a rather slow day for some reason, only the occasional customer stopping in for a small purchase or two. It was days like this John especially hated. Sitting hours on end at the cash register in his bullet proof box left him far to much time alone with his thoughts, thoughts that had become increasingly more and more depressing over the past few months.

'ten years, six months, and two days.' John thought as he sat back onto the old worn out wooden stool that sat behind the counter, years of use had left the thing slightly rickety and a fading yellow color. That's how long it had been sense he had worn his old costume, that’s how long it had been sense he was a 'hero'. Now he was just normal, or doing his best to act like it anyways. As he sat there lost in his thoughts he noticed his own reflection in the thick bulletproof glass that separated him from any gun waiving lunatic that attempted to rob the store even though bullets wouldn’t do more then leave bruises on his abnormally thick skin. As he stared at the reflection the man that stared back was nothing but a stranger to John, from his balding head and slightly overweight frame to the depressed almost lost expression on his face-this was not the man John was, nor had ever been. He was once the mighty Bronze Bear, a fit super powered hero who patrolled the mean streets of Kansas Cities worst neighborhoods.

That was until the 28th amendment had been passed and hero's and villains alike were being gunned down in the streets by both law enforcement and fearful citizens, not to mention the Cape Killers. These days John honestly lived terrified, his fear having been growing and growing over the past ten years until it had become some huge monster deep inside him that not even his alter ego The Bronze Bear could beat back. Thinking of his old costume John was quickly snapped back into reality by the growing sound of a rapid 'whupwhupwhupwhup'.

It sounded like a helicopter but John wasn’t sure, pressing his face against the thick glass in front of him with his hands cupped over his eyes he did his best to peer out the front store window. That's when he saw the large helicopter, the thing was a huge gray monstrosity that looked like it was equipped for war-from the missle launcher looking devices that hung from two large wings on each side to the tiny figure manning a huge machine gun that John could just barely make out sitting at an open hatch in the midsection of the now overwhelmingly loud chopper blades.

Cape Killers.

Johns adrenaline surged as he stared transfixed. Had they finally come for him? How did they find out? All these thoughts and a dozen others raced through his panic stricken mind as he quickly ducked behind the counter-immediatley feeling like a coward.