Heroes

Chapter 46: sob story

George POV.

As far as I had heard, every hero and every hero and every villain had themselves a tragic ‘sob story’. Some tale of ultimate woe, which inspired them to become motivated to fight crime. I knew that what I had been told wasn’t always true, but it seemed that it was.

Peter Parker witnessed his Uncle Ben’s death because of him. Bruce Wayne saw his parents get killed when he was a kid. Clark Kent’s entire home planet was destroyed, and he was one of several survivors. Tony Stark was kidnapped and forced to create weapons.
The list goes on and on, and it seems that a lot of my friends followed this same pattern.

I had become a hero after hurting my parents and running away from home. Bad became a hero after he was thrown out by his family who thought he was evil. Karl was a lone survivor of a terrible accident, his teleporting having saved him from a car crash. Techno became a hero because… well I think Philza actually told him to become a hero so he didn’t get into trouble.

As Quackity continued to ramble on about things I couldn’t focus on I looked around the room, trying to figure out the sob stories for all of these villains. The breaking point that made this of all things their career choice. Some of the more common ones were ‘terrible childhood’ or ‘treated like the bad guy so became a bad guy’.

The only two people in the room that I had no idea on was the unnamed man, and Dream himself. It made me curious. Maybe Dream had the usual criminal story of the troubled childhood making him become who he was, but that didn’t suit him. The person who knew most about Dream was his nemesis, the one and only Technoblade, but I couldn’t ask him right now.

Eventually the group was dismissed, another bit of evidence that Quackity was practically just a normal teacher on cocaine, and everyone stood up. Some of the group all started leaving the room, already seeming disgruntled that they had to spend longer than they expected here while waiting for Sapnap, while others all started talking to each other.

Dream was part of the second group, he slipped between the people standing around talking and walked over to Quackity before I got the chance to follow. I decided what to do, and I had come up with three options.

The first was that I could follow Dream, walk over to him and Quackity and try to overhear what they were saying to each other. The next was for me to interact with the other people in the room, and I could try and find out about them, but this seemed riskier than the first option. The final option was to just sit here and see what happens, which is what I went with.

I just stayed sitting down, looking at everyone around the table and listening to whatever bits of conversation they said in a voice loud enough for me to hear. Some were basic things, plans for dinner, or talking about their current wives and mistresses. There was also some chatter about some more interesting stuff, planned robberies, murders, kidnappings, etc.

Without seeming too conspicuous I managed to take mental note of several things which I could tell Philza about later. Just as one of the people started telling someone else about something particularly interesting someone put their hand on my shoulder.

My first thought was that it was Dream, but he was still on the other side of the room talking to Quackity, however the blond’s eyes were on me and whoever was standing behind me, touching my shoulder. I couldn’t help but shiver under the cold gaze that the sociopath was sending in my direction, although I know it wasn’t directed at me.

Being slow and cautious, I looked over my shoulder to see the unnamed man who was smuggled into the city yesterday. He was staring down at me with a curious expression on his face, looking at me as though I was some foreign animal. “Can I help you?” I asked quietly, wondering what he might want.