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There are two things you need to understand about Jeremiah Heere:
- He is, in his mind, painfully incompetent, an absolute mess, a barely functioning member of society, and, frankly, a disappointment to anyone who’s ever bothered to get to know him. This is a fact that is reflected in many things, from his scrawny form that refuses to bulk up regardless of how many hours he trains, to his only slightly above-average grades despite his very much above-average efforts in school, to the power he’s had since birth. The power in question: the ability to manipulate probabilities. Which, on paper, sounds a lot more useful than it actually is. In theory, Jeremy’s ability to do anything at all to manipulate reality is limitless. In practice, Jeremy’s not able to do much more than tip the scales by a scant few percentages, resulting in an outcome that is more often than not completely negligible. Half the time he can’t even make a coin flip go his way, let alone be of any use to anyone fighting the forces of evil. “It’s like real-life plot armour,” Michael had tried to argue once, “you know, you have protagonist luck! You’ll probably never die except for from old age!” Jeremy’s never really been in a life-or-death scenario so he can’t say for sure, but given how poorly his power performs in day-to-day life, he’s understandably reluctant to test Michael’s theory.
- He has wanted to be a hero for as long as he can remember. He used to dream about it as a kid—Jeremy and Michael, hero partners who save the world! Michael was never as into it as he was, and now that the both of them have grown up, Jeremy doesn’t begrudge Michael’s desire to pursue civilian life instead. However, the dream of helping people never really let go of Jeremy.
As you can see, these two things do not bode well when mixed together into a singular human disaster.
And these two things are why Jeremy is where he is now. He’s just finished the application to become a volunteer hero for the local (and only) hero agency of their tiny New Jersey town, feeling about as bleak as the dusk sky above him. Since he’s still a college student, it’s the only position he’s legally allowed to register for. The process includes a live demo of each applicant’s powers as well as a written and physical exam. While Jeremy is pretty sure he passed both exams, it’s the demonstration that probably killed any chance of his being accepted. Sure, everything that he’d planned to show had (somehow) gone off (mostly) without a hitch, but Jeremy’s so used to being told how useless his power is (by bullies and well-meaning authority figures alike) that he still doesn’t think his prospects are all that promising. The application, which had taken the better part of the day, is why he’s currently walking home in the darkening hours of the evening, in exactly the wrong place at the wrong time to hear something that has him slowing to a stop.
“—the money I was promised?”
It’s probably nothing, Jeremy knows. He should just walk past and pretend he never heard a thing. But something about the unknown speaker’s tone has him shuffling closer to the alleyway (of course it’s an alleyway, he thinks sardonically) where the voice originated, morbidly curious despite his better judgement.
“I don’t see how that’s any issue of mine,” another voice says, colder but with a sense of deceptive calm. “If you have problems with the business we conducted, you should have said as much beforehand. I would advise you to contact the—”
“Don’t fucking try pulling that shit on me.” It’s the first voice again, sounding as venomous as they are terrified. “You’re the head of your department. You know exactly what you owe me.”
“Actually, as far as the law is concerned, we never owed you a thing,” the second voice replies, smugly flippant. “But we were generous, and now you come crawling back because what? You want more?”
“You’re a fucking son of a bitch, you know that?” the first voice hisses, seeming to lose the last of their nerves.
“Not the first time I’ve been called such. Now, if you would—”
“Shut up. Since you won’t listen to reason, I guess we’ll do this the hard way. Hand over all your money right now and we’ll call it even.”
And that’s when Jeremy, in all his well-meaning, impulsive bravado, steps forward and calls out loudly in a voice that’s probably shaking way too much to be intimidating, “H-hey! Stop right there!”
The two figures in the alley turn to face him. Both are surprisingly well-dressed for what Jeremy expects out of an altercation in an alleyway, one of them even wearing a suit jacket, the other—
Ohholyshitwaitthat’sagun.
Jeremy was not expecting the gun.
In all honesty, Jeremy has no idea what he was expecting when he actively made the decision to interrupt something that was presumably about to turn into a violent mugging, but, you know, he’s taken self-defence and combat classes, and done well in them too. What aspiring hero wouldn’t? He knows how to handle someone with a knife. In theory. A gun, though? And at this distance? Well, he’s at a clear disadvantage here.
“What the fuck?” the man holding the gun says, swinging it around to point in Jeremy’s direction. “Get outta here, kid, befo—”
Before Jeremy can even blink, the other man in the alleyway, the one wearing the suit jacket, takes two steps forward, closing the distance between himself and his assailant, then strikes him swiftly in the back of the head. The other man staggers momentarily. He turns to point his gun back in Suit Guy’s direction, but Suit Guy effortlessly disarms him, cocks the pistol, and then shoots him twice in the chest.
“Well, that was unnecessary,” Suit Guy remarks as the other man collapses with a wet gasp, blood starting to pool in a dark puddle at his feet. He turns to Jeremy, who is still standing frozen at the mouth of the alleyway, and says, almost apologetically, “I’m afraid I can’t let you walk away after witnessing something like that.”
A smarter man would plead for his life, promise to not say a word, or just run away and do zigzags down the empty street hoping none of the bullets hit anywhere fatal.
Jeremy, instead, stands there and says in a shocked voice, “Y-you… you just killed him.” He thinks he might throw up, if he wasn’t busy being terrified.
Suit Guy cocks an eyebrow, unimpressed, as if to say yes, and? He looks down at the crumpled form at his feet. The dying man in question wheezes, claws weakly at the dark, bloody patches on his chest, and curls in on himself before falling still. “He’s quite dead, yes,” he agrees calmly. “I should thank you for distracting him. His power would have been…” the man wrinkles his nose in distaste and, for a moment, his eyes get a faraway look like he’s seeing something that didn’t happen, “… far more inconvenient to deal with had you not stepped in. In return, I’ll ensure your death is swifter than his.”
He raises the gun, points it at Jeremy’s head, and fires.
Jeremy squeezes his eyes shut and waits.
The shell casing clatters on the asphalt, a soft tinkling noise that Jeremy thinks wouldn’t be so bad as his final memory.
And then silence.
Jeremy opens one eye, then the other. He looks down at his unmarred body. Raises his hands to his face and feels around his skull for any holes or blood. He’s… alive?
“You missed,” Jeremy says dumbly.
He looks up to see the other man staring at the gun in his hand as if it had personally offended his family before taking a shit on his dining room table.
“Huh,” he says. “So I have.”
He glances back up at Jeremy with a calculating expression. Jeremy has barely enough time to register that his eyes are an odd, bright shade of blue before the man raises the pistol and fires again, Jeremy flinching with every shot as they ring out in the silence of the evening.
One.
Two.
Three four click.
‘Wow,’ Jeremy thinks, ‘Why am I still just standing here letting him shoot at me, what the fuck am I doing? I guess I’m lucky this guy is a terrible shot.’
The man lowers the pistol. “Empty,” he says, in the same tone one would use to make a scientific observation. “How unfortunate.” He doesn’t sound disappointed at all as he tosses the gun aside.
“Um.” Jeremy’s pretty sure he should be running away now that there’s no chance of him being sniped in the back of the head, but, well. The gun is no longer a concern. A murderer (the actual murder was technically in self-defence but he did also just shoot at Jeremy so murderer is probably the right term to use) is right in front of him, and he does know how to fight, pretty damn well if he does say so himself. And really, what sort of hero would he be if he runs away the first time something truly dangerous happens to him? Heroes risk their lives all the time, and Jeremy should have no reservations to do the same. “Can I… uh. You’re under arrest?”
The man chuckles, rolls up the sleeves of his fancy jacket. He smiles a handsome, wicked smile. “Cute,” he says. “Very cute.” And then he’s across the alleyway and Jeremy’s blocking a punch aimed at his face.
The ensuing fight is a blur. Jeremy thinks he gets a good number of hits in, but the other man is bigger and stronger and definitely has more experience with fighting other people and winning. He eventually manages to get Jeremy in a chokehold he can’t break out of, and then it’s all over.
Jeremy is surprised when he wakes up later to find that he is, in fact, not dead. He doesn’t know why Suit Guy decided not to kill him while he was unconscious and vulnerable but he’s definitely not gonna complain about the man’s apparent change of heart, weird as it is. During the ruckus with all the gunshots and fighting, someone had called the hero agency. So Jeremy ends up spending the night being interviewed by the very same people he was assessed by not half an hour before they found him beaten up in an alleyway. Then it turns out that the person Suit Guy had killed was some goon associated with a state-wide network of villains, so the questions Jeremy is subjected to are endless and probing. Jeremy is quite drained by the end of the whole process. Needless to say, the members of the agency who conduct the interview are none too pleased with his actions and he gets the lecture of a lifetime about risk assessment and knowing when to run and get help. It’s only then that it dawns on him that his hopes for being recruited by the hero agency have been completely dashed by his own recklessness, but he’s decidedly too exhausted to properly freak out about it until he gets home. A public breakdown is never a good look for anyone, anyway.
But then, as Jeremy tiredly watches the sky lighten outside while waiting for his dad to pick him up, the mousy secretary shuffles up to him and quietly asks if he’s Jeremy Heere before handing him an official acceptance letter for his application as a volunteer hero on-call.
When he looks up at her, astonished, she winks at him and says, “Looks like someone up there’s on your side, huh?”
For some reason, his mind flashes back to that alleyway and the suited man with bright blue eyes and a deadly grin.
“I… I guess so,” Jeremy says. “Thanks.”
She waves cheerily before heading back to her desk. Jeremy watches her go, then looks down at the letter in his lap, smoothing his hand over the paper. It’s still warm from the printer, humming with promise.
His phone vibrates in his pocket. Thinking it’s his dad or Michael, checking up on him, he pulls it out and glances at the lock screen. To his confusion, it’s a text from someone he doesn’t remember adding as a contact. Their name is listed as just “S”.
The text reads: “It was delightful meeting you last night. I had such a wonderful time; we should arrange to meet again soon. In the meantime, try not to die, hm?”