MONSTEROPOLIS EPISODE 1:
Heroes and Villains

By Hadrian (Hardman) Howell

Chapter 4

-Master Morbis High School, Class of ’97 Homeroom 4
-February 14th, 2096 AD
-Account Subject: Kevin Keene

This year RULES. So far, I’ve won two regional video game championships, been on no less than two dates with Lana Miyamoto, and when that eventually goes south, there’s like four other hotties ripe for the pickings in this classroom alone!

I tell you, life doesn’t GET better for the Game Master.

That’s what I call myself. That’s what I AM, really. I’m the best, bar none. First Person Shooters, Racing games, Simulation, Tactics, Puzzle games, you name it, I’ve beaten it. With the added bonus of I’ve probably beaten someone ELSE at it, too.

Plus, giving myself a handle that cool really puts a damper on the name calling.

My schedule this year is full of advanced placement classes. AP Biology and Computer Programming, along with what I think is an unhealthy dollop of Calculus. Fortunately, my best friend Percy Icarus is a whiz at that stuff, so anything I don’t get right away he can help me with. I think he puts up with me because he knows he’s smarter than me, but I’m okay with that.

My class schedule is full of other things too: The aforementioned hotties. First and foremost, there’s Lana Miyamoto, my current, dare I say, girlfriend. She is both drop dead gorgeous and a snappy dresser. She’s been beating the guys off with a stick, sometimes literally, since junior high. That’s been made easier by the fact that she usually has bodyguards somewhere on school grounds, being the Mayor’s daughter and all.

Then there’s Lisa Morrigan. She could be a bit too Goth for my taste, but the girl has legs and KNOWS how to use them, if you catch my drift. Then there’s Felicia Stalker, her best friend, who turned a love of cats into a kind of crazy little fetish-gone-wrong thing, but when it comes to girls that pretty, I’m VERY understanding.

Kalinka Cossack fills out our ‘exotic hottie’ requirement, being vaugley Russian or something. Her dad is on the STC, and she throws these wicked parties about once a month when he’s working late. Here’s hoping he never finds out I’m the guy that was sick in his vase collection.

The last hottie was Vivian Alans. She’s a bit bookish and a little creepier than the average girl my age, but there’s something so inaccessible about her that makes the teenage male mind curious. Not high on my list of chicks to bang, admittedly, but on the list none the less.

There’re guys in my class too. They are less important to me, but should probably be introduced all the same. First off, there’s uber-nerd Lincoln ‘Link’ Alandorf. He’s a LARPer and, get this, he’s PROUD of it. You wouldn’t catch me dead running around one of the numerous city parks with a foam sword and shield. That’s just lame.

Then there’s Winston Malkil, better known to just about everyone as ‘The Wizard’. He has a magic touch with computers. After two days, he could make the latest Overlord Inc OS sit up and beg, and that was widely regarded to be one of the most unusable pieces of software since Windows OS7XP2000V. If I have a problem with my AP Computer programming class, this is the guy whose shoulder I look over for the answers.

Sonny Hedgerton, who had the misfortune of being born to maybe the last two hippies left on Earth, does his best to leave his name behind by being a cool-cat jock. I’ll give him this, he’s fast. Track and field and cross country are his bread and butter. I think he wants to take a shot at the Olympics. He sucks at video games, though.

So does Darius Caine, another STC kid. Being the only child of an old guy, he’s quiet, but smart. A catch-all genius, and almost certainly the guy I crib essays off of more than anyone else. We get along, but he gives off this weird vibe I just don’t like. It gets under my skin.

Right now, things were a little less awesome than usual, but that’s because I hate my Sociology class. Our teacher for this class was Mr. Layton, and I hated him. He was one of those teachers that was so far out the other side of convinced he was smarter than anyone else that anyone who proved otherwise brought his ridiculous wrath down on the rest of our heads.

Remember when I told you we have two kids of STC scientists in our class? Yeah, he hates us. He hates us a lot.

That hate was currently showing up in the form of a discussion on the nebulous nature of good and evil. This, of course, prompted by that bastard Megaman and that dirty sneak attack he pulled on Captain Commando. That was what I thought this was about anyway.

Turns out it was. “I trust you, like the entirety of living breathing people, have heard about the… scuffle between this newcomer and our local hero yesterday?” There was a general noise of agreement. Every newspaper this morning had been plastered with one of the clearest pictures of Megaman anyone had ever seen, with a smaller one of him punching Captain Commando in the face with his own fist.

“So I believe we shall see, today, which you think is good, and which you think is evil. Is it the man who comes out of nowhere to ambush a public servant? Is it the servant who devotes his life to the city he loves? Or is it some other way around? Could it be that Captain Commando isn’t being entirely honest with us? Has he committed some private wrong Megaman has seen fit to right?” Layton cast his gaze around the room. “Who’d like to go first?”

Lincoln didn’t bother raising his hand. “Is it okay to see them BOTH as evil?”

“An interesting thought,” Layton admitted. “Why would you form such an opinion?”

I winced. Link was in trouble. To Layton, the world was organized into fact and fiction. Opinion was a dirty, dirty word because it straddled the line between them. He sensed it too, given his hesitation at pressing on. “Well, Captain Commando can be seen as kind of a selfish glory hound. He’s kitted out in all kinds of cool gear and he beats up downtrodden poor people who’ve been forced to work for the mafia families to put food on the table.

But Megaman might be worse. Surprise attacks, stealing weapons, and not even bothering to explain his motives? He might be some sort of super hit man or something. If this is a case of bad versus really bad, nobody wins, right?”

Yeah, like I said. Link was weird. I don’t know if YOU followed that, but it didn’t make any sense to me. And I said as much. “Captain Commando is a hero! He saves little old ladies and kittens in trees! He beats up bad guys! How can he be evil?”

Layton smiled. “Ah, Mr. Keene’s… keen (ha ha) sense of right and wrong. Tell me why you think this is such a black and white issue, Kevin.”

“Well it’s obvious,” I shrugged. “Megaman steals stuff. He stole Captain’s weapons, and then beat him up with them, and all for no reason. He’s a thief. A bad guy. And when Captain Commando catches up to him, THAT’S the fight I’M gonna wanna see.”

“What about good against good?” Percy, honestly my best friend, piped up. “I mean, okay, Captain Commando is obviously a good guy, but what if this Megaman guy has good intentions?”

“The road to hell is paved with such,” Lisa Morrigan laughed.

Layton smiled again as well. “Indeed. Good intentions do no a good person make. Some of the worst crimes committed in human history were enacted by people with ‘good intentions.’”

“But what if someone lied to him?” Percy pressed on. “Come on, what if someone told a new guy in town that Captain Commando was a bad guy, and he thought the crowd was being threatened or in danger?”

“That still doesn’t counter the theft of his stuff!” I told him.

“But what about that Hudson Manfred guy?” Percy asked.

“Ah, the Bomberman,” Layton clapped his hands together. “I was so hoping one of your tiny minds still contained that interesting tidbit of information. It was Megaman who brought down that criminal, remember?”

See, this is why I hate Mr. Layton’s class. It’s like a maze with no way out or a puzzle with no freaking solution.

“The Bomberman caused over four million in property damage before his battle with Megaman,” Darius finally spoke. “And it’s safe to assume that if he hadn’t been stopped, he would have caused more. In that regard, Megaman can be seen as a hero.”

“And yet, less than a week later, he attacks another powerful person and is branded a villain,” Kalinka shrugged. “We don’t know for sure if he acquired some piece of equipment from Bomberman in the same way that he did from Captain Commando, but if one assumes he did, then his goal becomes clear: Power.”

“And through observing one’s goal and their methods, one can determine intent, and it is only through intent one can truly divine good or evil,” Darius nodded.

Layton started to open his mouth, but Kalinka cut him off. “If one assumes he is acquiring power simply for the sake of having it for use against someone else, then his method is brutal, measured, and planned. He catches opponents off guard, when they are weak, and uses their own strengths against them. If power for power’s sake, then that makes him, for lack of a more specific term, evil.”

“If however,” Darius raised his voice to drown out an objecting teacher, “we assume that he plans to use this power to protect us from some greater threat upon the horizon, then these sneak attacks become the actions of an outcast visionary who is the only one to see the real threat looming while other ‘heroes’ beg for our attention and praise. In acquiring power from those that could be seen as less than worthy of bearing the mantle of hero for the betterment of the city at large, then he could, of course be considered good.”

Mr. Layton was visibly red in the face as Darius finished, and stopped grinding his teeth and opened his mouth just in time for the bell to ring. I snatched up my bag and bolted out of the room before he could explode in an angry tirade of self-gratifying upper brow name-calling.

Tomorrow was gonna SUCK.