Can I be a superhero? (Mads)

[Kamillia Engel]

(backdated to the beginning of July)


Kamillia pulled into a parking space in town, it was nice having a car to get around places. It felt much nicer, and it didn’t take her an hour or something to get into town, and she didn’t have to keep bottles of water on her at all times. However she did keep some in her car, cause she never knew when she would end up going to the skate park. The girl practically lived at the skate park, so she enjoyed being able to get there faster. Living on the outskirts of town was not always fun.

Kam got out of her car and smiled at the comic book shop in front of her. With having graduated from high school, and it being summer break she had more free time. She figured she would get into comic books, and maybe manga too. She thought about going to the library, but she knew that place didn’t have comic books, and she really didn’t feel like reading actual books, where she was placed on a time limit to finish them. She much rather buy comics and be able to finish one or more in one sitting.

Walking into the store, feeling cold air hit her she felt overwhelmed as she looked around. Taking a deep breath she moved into the middle of the store, it was a lot bigger than she ever thought it would be.. But she guessed she should have figured that.. But where was she supposed to start? How did the store even work? Was there a section for each type of comic book series? She looked around, well less like looking around more like pacing. She felt lost in a sea of books, maybe this was a bad idea…

[Samuel Rixon]

Sam was still having a hard time with the fact that, come September, he would actually be starting college. He'd managed to pick up his grades enough to get into the community college, and had signed up for some general studies. He honestly had no idea what he wanted to do with his life. What kind of job he wanted to do. He'd spent so long messing around with Verax and not taking things seriously that he... really hadn't thought about it.

That was continuing even now. Rather than take the summer to think about it, he'd picked up more hours at the law firm he interned at for some extra cash, played video games with Vincent, and generally wasted time. He hadn't even really sorted out his living arrangements, as he was currently crashing on Vin's couch. He'd heard rumors that his brother might be renting an apartment in Burlington or Pilot Ridge to look for work, but he suspected, if it was true, that it was more his mother's idea of keeping an eye on him.

Well, if it was true, it was somewhere to live.

He was off work today, and had decided that it was high time to check out what was new at the comic store. It had been ages since he'd added to his collection, and damned if he wasn't going to do so now. So with Iggy on his front seat, he drove his beater of a car over.

Once there, he scooped his gecko up and popped him on his shoulder, where the reptile had long since gotten used to riding, and headed into the store. He was one-track-minded, but that track bent quite sharply when he spotted a pretty girl looking lost. Grinning, he sauntered over to her. "Whatcha lookin' for, babe? Need help?"

Because nothing quite said creepy stalker like that.

[Kamillia Engel]

Kamillia She sighed deeply; maybe she should have tried to find a friend who knew about comics to come with her. Then again, she didn’t think she had any friends who were comic geeks…

It soon didn’t matter when someone walked into the store, she looked at him for a second, wasn’t someone she expect to see in a comic shop.. Granted, people probably didn’t expect to see her in one either, at least the people who really knew her, maybe. Kam looked at the guy and smirked lightly, “Looking for? I’m really just looking for a place to start. You can say I’m a comic book virgin.” She winked at him, “As for the help, I would love some, if you really wouldn’t mind helping a girl out.” In this situation she wasn’t going to let her pride hold her back from saying she needed help, she figured she looked like an idiot walking around the place like a lost puppy who lost their head.

She looked at the boy’s shoulder; something was a little off by it. She smiled, “Aww! He is soo cute.” She said pointing at the lizard, “Is this little guy your wing man?” She teased, looking at him with a smirk, granted she was pretty sure not many girls would flip head over heels for a lizard like they would for a puppy. Kamillia was special in that case because she would get head over heels for any animal.

[Samuel Rixon]

Sam never really dressed to impress. Most of the time he looked like he'd just rolled out of bed and thrown on the cleanest looking thing. ... And 90% of the time, that was what had happened. This morning he'd done just that, even becoming just a little too thrilled over the fact his Jurassic Park shirt was clean enough to deem appropriate for public areas.

All in all, he didn't seem to scream 'comic book geek'. The only thing that even hinted at his affiliation with any sort of geekery came from his matching Pac-Man sunglasses (now pushed up on top of his head) and belt. He did, however, admire the girl's shirt. Anything Batman was always awesome, but worn like that? He approved. He also approved of her use of the word 'virgin', a little smirk creeping across his face. "I don't mind, darlin'," he said with a little bow, careful not to move too fast or low. It wouldn't be fun to have Iggy fall from so high up. Thankfully, the gecko simply adjusted and moved back to his safe stop when his owner stood back up. "Comic books are awesome. So's your shirt. Batman's the shit." Not all the adaptations were good, but Batman was always awesome.

As she noticed Iggy, Sam grinned and slipped the gecko from his shoulder, offering him out to the girl. "He totally is! Most girls think he's slimy or gross, but he's not. He's awesome. His name's Iguana, and he doesn't bite or nothing." And wing man was totally going to be added to Iggy's list of things he was. Pet, friend, listener, and now wing man. "I'm Sammy, by the way. And you're pretty." It never hurt to compliment a girl. Especially pretty ones.

[Kamillia Engel]

Kamillia would have been excited that she was making a good first impression with a fellow geek, if she knew she really was making a good one. Or at least she thought he was a fellow geek considering he was in a comic book shop, and what he was wearing. She looked him up and down, noting all the geek worthyness of his attire. “see if it wasn’t for the shoes, belt, sunglasses, and shirt I would have never pegged you for a comic geek, or a geek in general.” She guessed that’s why people should never judge a person by their looks. She raised an eyebrow at the bow, “what a gentlemen you are.” She smirked at his compliment, glad to know someone appreciated her clothing choice. “Thanks, I really like the movies, and the older cartoons of Batman. You’re whole attire is pretty awesome too.”

Smiling down at the little gecko, she really wasn’t sure if it was alright to hold him, so she simply stroked the little lizard’s back with her index finger. “Iguana? How ironic.” She wondered why he named the little lizard that, but some people named their dogs bear… So there wasn’t much of a difference there. Kam blushed, and gave a small smile, “I’m Kam, and you are handsome.” And it didn’t hurt to flirt a little, or a lot. She held her hand out to shake, a simple friendly gesture. “So comic guru, have any tips or suggestions of where to start?”

[Samuel Rixon]

Sam honestly wouldn't classify himself as a geek, per se. Sure, he loved his comics and cartoons, but geek? He preferred... not a geek. Mostly because his best friend would probably run wild with it. But they both loved superheroes, comics, and generally stupid things. They both gamed like champions, but that was mostly because they both had a competitive streak a mile wide. Sam was comfortable in his interests, though, and frequenting places like comic stores was always a blast and a half. "Hey. Heeeeey." He held his hands up in mock defeat, before closing one fist, save for his index finger in a sort of 'one' gesture. "I ain't a geek. I'm..." Come on Sam, use your words. "Awesome." He copped a cocky grin and tilted his head. "But thanks!" It wasn't often he was called a gentleman by any stretch of the word, unless he was using it on himself. Not that anyone actually believed he was capable of being one.

The definition of irony was lost on Sam. As such, he blinked before grinning again. "It's an awesome name, right? Right." It didn't really help that he'd named the little guy during his 19th birthday party, which had not only been a wild night at Vin's apartment, but had also involved copious amounts of alcohol. Iguana had just seemed appropriate. "Y' can hold him if you want to. He's nice." Iggy was generally used to being manhandled by his owner, so other people doing it didn't seem to bother him much. And if Sam's ego hadn't been inflated enough, now he was being called handsome? Hells yes. Best day ever. Smirking, he took her hand and, like he'd seen in so many chick flicks he'd been forced into watching, kissed the back of it before letting go. "An' you're gorgeous. I'm Sam. But Handsome works too." Winking, he glanced around the store. "Weeeelll. If you like Batman, let's go look at those!" He could always do with a few more for his own collection.

[Kamillia Engel]

Okay, so maybe not a geek might be on the dork side, but really who wasn’t on the dork side? Well the stuck up rich kids who have stick up their asses all the time, maybe… Those types of people leaned more toward the dark side of the universe than anything else. Kam could game with the best of them, she had a topnotch gamer score on the xbox, and kicked ass with PS games too. However, money had become an issue lately so she couldn’t upgrade either station when the new ones came out. Which was fine with her for the time being, since the companies were still making games for both the xbox 360, and PS3. “Bullheaded seems more of the appropriate word. By the way, there’s nothing wrong with geeks. They end up being the more gentlemanly like.” She smirked, and gave a smile shrug, “girls love gentlemen.”

“It’s pretty awesome, I named one of my rotties Beast, and I think it fits him pretty well.” Kamillia laughed a little. Such ironicness. Kam was not drunk when she named her Rottweiler though, she had been quite sober. Kam raised an eyebrow at the Lizard’s owner, “If only I could talk to reptiles too..” She mused, mostly to herself as she reach to pick up Iggy. She cocked her head to the side, ever since she manifested she had always wondered what other type of animals thought. She could only communicate to mammals, which meant fish, reptiles, and birds were out of her power range, and bugs, but she didn’t often wonder what they thought about. The redhead watched as Sam kissed her hand, and gave him a small smirk, “yeah you said your name was Sam already. I was just returning your generous flirting.”

She nodded as he changed the subject about comics, she loved batman, and maybe it was the everlasting darkness that surrounded the series. And how realistic Batman’s motives were for fighting crime, the creator made it to the point where Batman could be relatable, yet make him completely in a old fashion ‘superhero’ world/way. “I don’t just like batman, I love him.”

[Samuel Rixon]

Being fifth in a line of six kids had made Sam a master of things like old games. If he wanted to be cool like his big brother, he learned how to play, and fast. Of course, he hadn’t passed down that same logic to the sixth kid in line. Much as he had tried to leave his little brother out of things, it hadn’t worked all that well. Sam liked to hoard all the cool stuff to himself, which had been made so much easier upon graduating to college. Now he could game his life away between classes and studying, and it was awesome. “Bullheaded?” He honestly couldn’t figure out if that was a compliment or not, so he chose to ignore it in favor of the words he did know. “I can be a genleman,” he assured. “A good one.”

He grinned at the name of her dog. “Beast’s a bitching name for a big dog.” Of course, Iggy was a great gecko name, too. Much better than Vincent’s name for his spider. Who in the heck named their spider Emaleth? Granted, 90% of the time it was shorted simply to Emma, much like Iguana was shorted to Iggy. “You can talk to animals? So... like... a squirrel? Are they always talking about nuts?” Cue a rather immature laugh. “Seriously. I need to know. It’s important.” Mostly so he could go and brag later to his best friend about what squirrels talked about. Once Iggy was picked up, the gecko simply lifted his head to look at his new friend and shifted to stabilize himself on her hand. “Oh. Right.” No one had ever accused Sam of being genius.

Or mature, for that matter, as he lit up at Kam. “Ooh. Y’ love him so much you’d marry him?” Probably a stupid question, being that Bruce Wayne was freaking richer than Scrooge McDuck, but still. It didn’t matter, because he was quickly grabbing for Kam’s hand and pulling her along to the section where the Batman comics resided. “So, uh... there’s like... a butt ton of remakes and stuff.” So many that he honestly didn’t know where to start anymore, but Batman was Batman, no matter the reboot, right? “Sooo just... look around and see where he looks the sexiest?” Was that good advice for a girl? Well, yes. Probably. He’d go with it.

[Kamillia Engel]

Kam never had siblings while growing up, she was an only child until she hit teenage years… So she had never dealt with it, and even now still didn’t know how to deal with it. Because the fact was that her sibling was adopted, and Kam didn’t like her very much and vise versa. Half of the reason was because of parents issues, long standing parents issues, like since she was five issues. “Hmm just a little.” Though she herself didn’t know if his over growing confidence was a turn on or not, she had met so many guys who were so into themselves that they agreed with every type of compliment thrown their way even if it wasn’t really true. Those types of people in general disgusted Kamillia, because it just showed that they didn’t know how to be humble, and being humble once in awhile is healthy. “I’m sure you can. But I can’t say for sure considering we just met.”

“Yeah, I thought it was cute.” Though considering she had four big dogs Beast was the only name that worked out ironicly. “I also have a snake named Toph.” And if he got that reference than she would probably marry him. Because really, how many guys her age watch Air bender? She had to laugh when squirrels came up, she liked the puns in everything that had to do with that question. “Actually, they kind of do, considering that’s mostly their life… hording nuts. Well at first all they can do is ask questions about how I can talk to them, and then compliment my singing because that’s how they end up even coming to me in the first place.” And now she was rambling, not something she did very often. “Shutting up now.” She gave him a small smile and scratched the back of her head. There were something that Kam could just go on and on about without even stopping for the other person to talk.

“Eh, not really. I don’t really go for the overly dramatic childhood type of guys.. too much drama for me… I actually don’t think I would go for any type of superhero…” She had reasons, a lot of them, but she wasn’t going to elaborate unless asked… Money didn’t matter to Kam all that much, considering she had personally seen what money could do to someone, she actually lived with it most of her life. Her parents were pretty loaded, so she knows what’s it’s like to live rich, and that never really suited her. There wasn’t any adventure in already having everything you wanted or needed… And Kam liked adventure, and thrills, even if they were completely stressful. Maybe she just liked being able to work for her own money instead of having it handed to her on a silver platter. “Yeah, I know, which is why I had no clue where to start.” Kam started picking up random comics to look at the covers, “Doesn’t look pretty much the same in all of them?” Then she got a thought, “Oh, what about the justice league? I loved that show too…” Yeah, her mind was all over the place. It also seemed a lot easier to start off with something like the justice league than batman… Though she would have to dive into that soon or later, but she would probably do research on the different universes to decide where to start. That’s probably what she should have done to begin with…

[Samuel Rixon]

Sam might have preferred being an only child. It hadn’t been so awful when he’d been the baby of the family, but once Bryan was born? It hadn’t been fun. Everything was all about the baby, and no one cared about the second youngest anymore. (It hadn’t really been that dramatic, but Sam had had a lot of years to sulk about it.) As for Sam’s willingness to agree with her, it was hardly born from ego. It was more... well... his desire to be liked, for one. But not far behind that simply came that fact that Sam wasn’t generally all that bright. At least Kam didn’t seem completely offended. “Just wait. You’ll see.”

“Aww, you got a snake too? How big?” He liked all manner of creepy crawlies and animals, so long as they weren’t birds or fish. His best friend had a tarantula and he more or less cooed after her like she was a puppy. Just... an eight legged, fanged puppy. “That’s awesome! I wish I could talk to them.” Granted, he’d probably ask them to swarm his best friend, or something like that. He was loving that way.

Sam had dated (and slept with) all kinds of girls. Especially at Hammel. He didn’t tend to stick to one type. Any girl willing to give him the time of day was enough to keep his interest. Kam so far had that in spades. “Drama’s not all that bad.” Well. The right kind of drama. He’d known girls who could spin a sad story and just keep amping it up every single time it was retold. That wasn’t much fun, even he could admit. But, back to the comics. He was hardly an expert. Sure, he had a modest collect that was usually spread all over his floor or desk, but there was no real rhyme or reason to it. He tended to just buy what appealed to him. If that happened to bounce across difference universes or issues, so be it. He didn’t care. “Pretty sure they make Justice League stuff too. Uh. Somewhere...” His eyes roamed the shelves before he let out a triumphant whoop and trotted to another shelf, pulling out one of the issues and offering it to Kam. “Here you go. One Justice League. ... What’s the Justice League?” Because he couldn’t possibly stay cool for long.

[Kamillia Engel]

If it didn’t come from his ego, than Kam would probably be fine with it. She had a lot of bad experiences with guys, and girls that let their ego run wild, she was pretty fed up with anyone who had a huge ego at this point. “Oh, you act like we are going to see each other after this.” That was not Kam trying to turn him down to anything, but more of her pushing buttons on whether they would possibly see each other after today, or even this store. It would be nice if they did, Kam didn’t mind another friend.

“Yes, I do! And she’s about thirty-nine inches. This is on the smaller side for the breed of snakes.” It made the snake even cuter in Kam’s eyes. Kam never really thought about have a pet tarantula, she wouldn’t know how well she would do with something that she would kill if she ever saw it roaming in her house… Now you couldn’t blame her for that, it was just a natural instinct for most girls to kill things that were seen as ‘pests’… “Sometimes it’s cool, other times it’s kind of not..”


During high school Kam hadn’t never really been one to sleep with a lot of people, or even date a lot. Maybe it was more because guys always saw her as ‘one of the guys’ and not girlfriend material, which was perfectly fine for her. She didn’t believe most guys could handle her anyways. “Oh really? Well, drama movies are awesome to watch. And even high school real life drama can be entertaining when I’m not a part of it.” Did that make her a bad person? That she loved to be entertained by other people’s shit storms? Kamillia placed a hand on Sam’s arm, and gasped when he asked what the Justice League was. “You never heard of the Justice League? Well obviously it’s a comic book, but they made a cartoon too, used to watch it when I was little. I think it’s even on Netflix, you should totally binge watch it.” She completely skipped over what it actually was, “Basically it’s like the DC Avengers.. Batman and Superman basically run this, what ends up being a huge, well league of pretty much all the DC super heros, mostly the popular ones of course. And they of course fight the villains together and protect the world. It’s really cool.”