The Good Bad Guy

Prologue

I met Blake Williams when I was 11, naive and impressionable; I was more in love with my cousin's boyfriend than she was. They came round to babysit and make out until I hooked my pudgy hands around his denim-clad legs and beamed my cherubic face at him, dimples and all, which convinced him to play Mario Kart with me as Sally pouted childishly in the corner. We became quick friends and I settled into the role of being his 'financial relationship advisor'. He was an integral cog in the Clark machine and he was closer to the woman I was pushed out of than me. The six years of friendship we've been through means that I know Blake as well as the back of my hand.

Blake wasn't like the other kids in my city. Blake wasn't like any other kid in the world. Years ago, the site of my city was a hotspot for nuclear testing, bombs and missiles rained upon the land and tourism skyrocketed as rumours spawned about the scientists getting powers, like comic book characters. Everyone dumbly inhaled the hype about being their own Superman, believing that helplessness and vulnerability would be things of the past and it would be the best thing since sliced bread.

The expected unexpected happened and the experiments suddenly stopped, the governments swept everything under the metaphorical rug and used their research to clean up the land effectively and efficiently. Conspiracy theories were rife but no one paid them any mind as they weren't justified bits of gossip. The tourists that hastily came to the test site in hopes of brighter futures set aside financial ruin and set up shop on the land and created the bustling metropolis I now habituate. If you hadn't guessed by now, the myth is bona fide and Blake is living proof.