Chapter 11: Chapter ten

Nineteen years ago

 

It was a Tuesday and Oliver was teaching the candidates psychology, just as he did whenever he wasn’t out on other business. It was the one class that had a regular teacher throughout the week, as Oliver was one of the few Program employees who spoke all the languages that the candidates were expected to know. His classes often focused on manipulation, interrogation, predator-prey dynamics and inspiring fear, but he also taught the candidates about superhero tropes and how best to shape their superhero personas.

Today was such a class.

“Who is the best superhero?” Oliver asked the assembled candidates.

They had been studying the most well-known superhero comics and cartoons for the past week so that he could ask this question, so Oliver was not impressed by the nervous stares that he found as he surveyed the room.

“It’s not a trick question,” he said, mildly disappointed though not surprised. “Of the superheroes you have studied this past week, which is the best?”

“Spiderman?” Nine, a boy with sandy hair but a mediocre mind, ventured.

“No,” Oliver said, annoyed.

At least he didn’t say Superman, Oliver thought. If one of them said Superman, he might have to shoot them.

“Batman,” said Eleven and Twelve at almost the same time.

“Yes. Good,” Oliver said. “Why? Twelve?”

 “He’s just a normal guy,” Twelve said. “Flying and laser eyes don’t really exist, they’re fake. But a guy with the best equipment and the best training, that’s real. That’s what we are gonna be. He’s the best because he’s realistic.”

“That’s moronic,” Oliver said, feeling slightly embarrassed to have recruited Twelve in the first place. The boy showed a great deal of promise at a number of things, and he was as cold as they come, but that answer was about the dumbest thing he had heard in months.

Twelve looked sullen at that and Oliver realized he wasn’t being fair. Simply telling a student something was stupid wasn’t a good way to educate them.

Better to show them.

“Twelve, come up the front.”

Twelve obliged, dragging his feet only a little as he left his seat and walked to the front of the class.

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“Good,” Oliver said. “Now knock me down.”

Twelve looked slightly apprehensive. He was a lanky boy with a shock of black hair. One day he might well be taller than Oliver himself, but for now Oliver was two feet taller and a hundred pounds heavier. The boy had been trained in martial arts every day for a few years now, but Oliver was a master in several disciplines himself. In short, Twelve didn’t stand a chance.

To the boy’s credit, he didn’t hesitate long, he charged Oliver, fainted left, struck right and, though Oliver blocked the initial blow, followed it up with a vicious kick to the knee cap that, if it had connected, could have left Oliver crippled.

But it didn’t connect. And instead Twelve found himself on the ground with Oliver’s foot applying light but uncomfortable pressure to his neck.

“This is realistic. You take on an opponent that’s bigger and better-trained than you and you get beaten. People do not want realistic superheroes. They want larger-than-life symbols that can do the impossible. To succeed here, you need to be better than what’s realistic.”

He let Twelve up and motioned for him to return to his seat. The boy was getting awfully fast, he had almost caught Oliver’s leg with that kick. It might be less than a year before those kinds of demonstrations became unacceptably risky. Hell, with Eleven they might already be so.

He let none of that show. Instead he continued his lecture.

“Eleven, why is Batman the best superhero?”

“Because he doesn’t have powers,” Eleven began, “but he does it anyway. It’s not very impressive to stop a bank robber when bullets bounce off you, but doing it when you’re just a man is heroic. Fighting the same bad guys as the other heroes, but without any powers, and still beating them using just your skills and your brain, it’s more impressive. It’s more heroic.”

“That’s a much better answer,” Oliver said. “But it’s still wrong.”

Twelve’s face flashed with resentment. He thought that Oliver was playing favorites and that he and Eleven had essentially given the same answer. Which was a problem because the answers they had given almost couldn’t be further apart. Oliver ignored it for the moment and pressed on.

“The right answer is because he gives more up.”

That was met with more than a few blank stares.

“For Superman, being a superhero is no effort at all. He can hear all the major crimes happen with his super hearing. Then he can fly there at supersonic speeds, take out any criminal with one blow and be back before anyone even notices he is missing. Essentially, he can prevent almost any major, high-profile crime in Metropolis during a toilet break from his job at The Daily Planet. Heroism barely needs to eat into his schedule at all. The fact that he seems to take a long time to resolve a hostage crisis or a bank robbery in the comics or on T.V either shows that Superman is stupid or the writers are. And he works as a journalist, so he gets a story out of the deal while he’s at it. Spiderman too, he receives income by taking photos of himself. The X-Men are primarily concerned with mutant rights, in which they have a vested interest. But Batman is different. He has the money, charisma and intelligence to live whatever life he wants. He could do anything with his time. And, because he doesn’t have any powers, he has to devote considerable time and resources to investigating and apprehending criminals in order to produce the same results that Superman could get in a few minutes using super-hearing, X-ray vision, super-speed and his array of other powers, and, because Batman is just a man, he does all this at considerably greater risk to himself. And he doesn’t get anything out of it for himself, he doesn’t make money like Spiderman or enjoy fighting like The Hulk. He does it because he thinks it’s right. And this is all on top of extensive humanitarian work. In short: Bruce Wayne either has or could have everything most people could ever want out of life, but he gives much of it up, and risks the rest, to be Batman. The takeaway lesson here—for those of you who need this spelled out for them—is that the essence of being a superhero is self-sacrifice. The best superheroes are the ones who give the most of themselves for the sake of others.”

If he had told this to other children, they might have thought it was corny. But the candidates knew that Oliver was not giving them empty platitudes, he was instructing them in what would be expected of them in order to be accepted by the public as heroes rather than vigilantes.

Later Oliver would think back and question the wisdom of giving this lecture. Though he never spoke of it out loud, he often worried that some of the candidates might have taken this lecture too much to heart.

His worries were well-founded.

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