We never played catch.

Not for a lack of trying. It was made to be that way - a super-soldier and chucking a ball at a 10 year old kid at speeds nearing mach one don't mix well. It was vivid, I guess. Traumatizing, really. I just remember my dad with his all-american grin cocking his huge canon arm back and then not even seeing the throwing motion. Like I zoned out in the cinema and skipped the entire action scene, and I did, but that was after the ball knocked the wind out of me.

Then I just saw my dad's pitcher glove hit the grass and two feet hammering towards me in between blinks.

That was, incidentally, the first of my many visits to the ER. I know my dad didn't mean to pulverize two of my ribs and fracture another three, he just thought I could take it. All strong as shit, holding back isn't really holding back. I still dissect this 'accident' in my mind from time to time and try to work it out like it is a math problem or something. But... I can't blame my dad for wanting someone who was more like him.

Mom was overjoyed after the docs released me home, but our household was quiet for a long time after that.

I don't remember my first kill.

I mean, I obviously do. My point is that I shouldn't. Mom pulled some of her costume strings and had a telepath hide the memory inside my own mind. Most likely because what dad told her genuinely horrified her. "Where there's a will, there's a way.", my old man used to say. And let's just say that I was really eager to know about this hush-hush in the back of my mind.

Anyway, this took place a few years after the rib incident. I was fourteen and my dad... his hair started graying around the sides but other than that he didn't look a day over thirty. One of his greatest passions was hunting. He really liked to hunt deer up in Pennsylvania in the winter and I just wanted to spend some time with him. So we packed our stuff and went together that one time.

Now that probably has you thinking: "You killed the deer.", right? But I didn't. My dad tracked this beautiful doe over a few days after I clumsily scared off the big game. And we were there, just peeking over a snow mound. Dad handed me the bolt-action, a Remington Model 798 with an oak finish, and guided me all the way through the process until I pulled the trigger.

The doe pranced back into the woods again that night.

Dad was furious at first, I could see it in his remaining eye. Glinting like the eye of the storm. He really was. I wasted three days worth of rations and work after all. Then he heard a post-mortem flop behind him. My first time with a gun and I managed to shoot a divebombing golden eagle out of the sky. Those &*@!ers can actually carry a deer in their talons, average upwards of 150 mph when diving and yet I managed to shoot it right through the eye socket. "Unbelievable.", dad muttered into the cold wind and I didn't know whether to cry or smile...

Was that my super-power?

Maybe I would've enlisted a bit sooner. If dad kept what happened to himself, but he told mom the same night we returned home and it didn't sit with her to say the least. They argued until the morning and escalated over the next few days until mom's friend arrived.

Dad left us a few weeks after. "It's in his blood."

Over the next couple years I had a growth spurt and became really good at rolling with the punches. Nurture over nature, you could argue. Because mom nurtured me into a grade-A [:insert vagina synonym here:].

I used to get the living shit beaten out of me atleast thrice every odd week. Twice on even weeks because the jocks had football practice then. I was such a bitch that I considered that even Wednesday a goddamn vacation.

Not like I would spend it efficiently anyhow. My only hobbies were excessive amounts of video games accentuated by romantic evenings with my right palm.

That's about as complex as my social life ever got.

The formula never changed: I'd excell in class then I'd get bullied by a jock named Chad then I'd get my goddamn lunch money stolen (cliché'd, right?) by some other asshole. By the time I'd finally make it home it would be just to lock myself in my room.

That's what I did for most of my high school.

What made it worse was the fact that my mom talked to the other parents about it, but it never made much change. She was too good for this world. If only they knew how many times she had saved their lives in the past.

And it wasn't the bruises that hurt the most, it was that. Seeing her just... decommisioned. Like a she was suddenly disavowed.

But where there is a will, there is also a way.

Or rather, where there was anger there was an escape. And I had plenty of anger canned inside of me over the years. Then, one day the jocks just topped the coan and it all came spilling over the brim.

Snap. I didn't black out like people always say they do. Matter of fact, for the first time in my stupid life I felt in control. As I executed emergency dental removal on the football boys, my mind was clear. Every hit knew it's place and everything in my vicinity suddenly had a purpose. I could've stopped at any time, but I didn't, not until they were all knocked down. Down to my level.

This was my superpower.

The fleeting night sky hummed a sorrowful tune, the revving of three infantry carriers emanating from the blackened veil of the sky. Each held two dozen men, each man sat silently strapped to his seat waiting for the gates of Hell to open beneath. Good men, each and every one. Old vanguard with a will of iron. They all knew what they signed up for. The battering ram that was to breach the Atlantic Wall for their allies. So they sat in their enclave, focused on the thundering speed of the aeroplane instead of on their thoughts. They tucked them away for safe keeping, because they know this war is a disease. Passed through blood, spilled by warriors. Minds hemorrhage soon after contact.

Over the comms they heard: 'Just a few more kilometers to the coast. Just a few more.' and then they caught only the drumming of Anti-air salvos exploding in the distance. The German war-machine, the Nazi bloodhound, on their trail. But the pilots were seasoned men, they dodged and strafed their hulking planes away with the finesse of a sparrow.

For a moment all seemed well for the three Skytrains in the sky, until morn arrived and sunrays bent against metallic plumage. The small flock reduced by one, then reduced by two and finally the flock was no more; just two planes hurtling towards the ground and a star-sprangled trooper hurtling down among the wreckage.

Passed through, blood spilled by warriors.

The mission was a failure. Good men fell from the skies, their pilots managed emergency landings with grizzled grace. By nose they drifted to the shore just in time to meet with the first amphibious landings in Normandy. From high above the no man's beach, the falling man plummeted into the ocean...

This wasn't a war, but the breaking of seals, the undoing of life itself manifested in the roar of automatic gunfire and canned explosions.