The coffee shop didn't have many customers. It was nine in the morning and the pre-work rush had already come and gone.
A man and a woman sat at the window. Behind the counter, the barrista prepared their order.
The man was the first to break the somewhat awkward silence. He had messy brown hair and a sunny smile, "I'm so glad you're okay. Your family called me to say the surgery for your leg was a big success."
The words seemed to shock the woman out of her thoughts. She looked up from the empty table, "Yes-yes uh-sorry I was..."
She trailed off. The lost look in her eyes returned. Her mind had wandered back to some strange place.
The barrista approached the table and placed down two coffees. He smiled and said, "Here you go."
The voice snapped the woman out of her thoughts again. She thanked the barrista and gripped the cup with both hands. Her fingers trembled slightly.
Alex knew her name. She was Anna, a twenty-three year old construction worker. Her face matched the photos the police had shown him of the missing person's report.
Her odd behaviour made him feel slightly nervous. He cleared his throat and tried to continue the conversation to distract himself from the feeling, "I guess we both like that view. I think it's even more beautiful at nightime."
Anna blinked multiple times. She looked like she was trying to get something out of her eye. Her voice came out strained and urgent, "You-you saved me. I'm so grateful you found me. I-I'd be dead without you."
"Someone else would've found you, it was just luck that-" Alex started to say.
Anna cut him off forcefully. Her voice was loud and slightly shrill, "No!"
The barrista turned his head to see why the customer had cried out so loudly. His hand drifted a few inches closer to the emergency button under the counter. He looked warily at Alex.
"S-sorry! Everything's okay!" Anna shot to her feet, bumping noisily against the table. Her hands were raised apologetically and she smiled awkardly at the barrista.
The barrista looked away, but the suspicion on his face didn't change.
Anna sat back down. Her left eye begun to twitch. She leaned closer to Alex. The look in her eyes was desperate and searching, "I died. I felt it, I know I did. Everything went dark, I felt it, I remember it. It happened. You-you-you brought me back!"
Alex didn't look away. He met her gaze steadily. He exhaled a heavy breath and rubbed his temple, "I didn't think you'd know."
Anna's shoulders slumped forwards. An overwhelming sense of relief washed over her from head to toe. She placed her elbows down on the table and held her head in her hands. To Alex's surprise she began to laugh.
"I'm not crazy. Thank god, I'm not crazy."
She looked up at Alex. This time her smile was peaceful and geniune, "Thank you, for what you did. I thought-I thought that I'd lost my mind."
Her reaction caused Alex to raise an eyebrow. He was speechless. He contemplated a dozen different things he could say, but all of them felt instantly wrong.
Anna suddenly grabbed his hands and squeezed them tightly. Her expression overflowed with gratitude, "I haven't told anyone. I won't, I promise! I don't-I don't know how you did it, but you-you saved me!"
The warm touch of her hands immediately reminded Alex of Taylor. He smiled politely and hurriedly unentangled his hands from Anna's. The loss of physical touch didn't seem to bother Anna. Her eyes still sparkled with gratitude.
"Could we take this conversation outside?" Alex asked. Anna followed his eyes to the security camera positioned in the corner of the room.
She stood up immediately, "Of course!"
She looked down as she grabbed her coat and realised that she hadn't touched her coffee. She snatched it up and drank it in one go. She didn't seem to take any notice of the temperature.
Alex blinked and started to smile. Her behaviour was so erratic he couldn't help but be slightly amused.
He stood up and did the same thing to his coffee, drinking it in one go. The barrista watched the two of them leave with confusion plastered across his face.
Alex picked a direction and started walking. Anna's left leg was in a bulky plastic cast, he slowed down slightly when he realised that she was struggling to keep up. The tall and attractive blonde-haired woman was a stark constrast to the ashen and mottled corpse he'd found a week ago.
They walked in silence for a few minutes. Anna kept sneaking admiring gratitude filled glances of her saviour. Her behaviour was impossible to ignore. The thought that she might have developed feelings towards him gave Alex an instant headache.
He'd met Taylor whilst saving her from the escaped experiment of a mad scientist. He'd already had his movie-magic meet-cute moment, he didn't want another. He thought about how to explain that he was already in a relationship to Anna.
The sign for a park signalled that they'd arrived at their destination. Alex didn't believe that even the GDA could have bugged every park in America.
The path was lined with trees. Autumn coloured leaves fell gracefully to the floor. He forced a smile and turned to Anna, "I know that-"
A beaming smile and chirpy voice cut him off, "You don't need to explain! When the darkness swallowed me, I felt someone call out to me. I saw the lord's light! He told me that he had sent an angel to save me!
I thought-I thought that I'd dreamt it, but now I've met you I know it was real! I swear on my faith, I won't tell another soul what you have done for me! Your work is sacred!"
Alex was caught off guard. He realised suddenly that the look in Anna's eyes was faith, not affection. He smiled awkardly and tried to argue, "No, I'm not a believer. I didn't-"
Anna shook her head. The beaming smile didn't leave her lips, "Please, don't speak. You have given me a gift that I can never repay."
Alex tried again to disagree. He said emphatically, "No, really, I'm not an angel! I appreciate your faith, but I don't believe in God."
Anna's smile softened. There was a gentleness in her eyes, "My angel, you saved my life. I heard his word and I have faith in it. Maybe you don't know now, but someday you will see as I do. Thank you."
She bowed low and turned away. She started walking off without giving Alex the chance to reply. The whole interaction from start-to-finish made him feel completely stunned.
He sat down on one of the park benches and watched the leaves fall. He didn't know what Anna had experienced after death. He'd already killed a demon that had snuck through from a different plane. If hell existed, then it seemed logical that a heaven would as well.
He didn't have any way of knowing what Anna had seen after death. She appeared to believe without question that her ressurection was the result of divine intervention. He had never been religious. He didn't believe that his powers had to do with any god, or concept of greater good or evil.
He sighed and shook his head. The sky above was blue and cloudless. Every time life begun to quiet down, some fresh problem seemed to spring out of the cracks. He didn't believe in fate or destiny, but the universe seemed to be determined to throw chaos into his peaceful life.
He vowed to himself that he wouldn't return to the forest for at least a month. The beautiful view always seemed to be accompanied by trouble.
His phone buzzed.
He read Taylor's message, "How'd it go? X"
"I'll tell you over ice cream?" He replied.
The bubblegum flavour was just as bright and unnaturally purple as it had always been. Every time he had it he used his powers to analyse its chemical compostion and was stunned by just how far removed from any natural ingredient it was. The flavour was more than worth the additives.
When he told her how the meet-up had gone, Taylor snorted and laughed, "Can you blame her?"
She mouthed the next few words, "You brought her back from the dead!"
Alex groaned and placed his head against the table. The feeling was cold and plasticy. Taylor rubbed his head lovingly, "You did a good thing you know. You should be proud."
She recieved a muffled groan from her boyfriend in response. Taylor rolled her eyes and went back to finishing her ice cream.
Alex eventually sat back up. He asked aggrievedly, "Can't everything just be normal?"
Taylor looked at him pointedly, "Says the cat who eats lasagna."
He understood the reference to his powers immediately. It struck him that he wasn't exactly normal either. Unusual things had a way of coming together.
Taylor had a test the next day. The couple kissed good night at her door and parted ways. Alex returned to his dorm and lay down in bed. He stared up at the lightbulb silently. After a few minutes of pretending that he didn't exist, he willed his powers to work and started his usual before-bed routine.
The modifications for accelerated-motion continued to progress steadily. Problems cropped up frequently, but the process of solving them was its own unique kind of joy.
The following morning he woke up to a knock on his door. He opened it to reveal a grinning Damien leaning against the doorframe, "Breakfast time!"
Their morning routine had been unchanged since the first week of university. Alex had always dreamed of being woken up by his girlfriend kissing him on the cheek, but Damien's wide grin and ever-cheery morning mood wasn't bad either.
They wolfed down a few bowls of cereal and headed to their lecture. The professor guided the class through the endocrine system. Alex made a few notes in the margins of the open document on his laptop for ideas. The notes weren't at all related to key-learning points or what was coming up in the next test. Lectures were an important and regular source of inspiration for his modifications.
To Alex's delight, the next few months passed by in a completely and utterly normal blur. He and Taylor went on dates to the movies and ate ice cream. He scored even better than he had in semester one on his tests and passed the military training programme with flying colours. He held back from revealing exactly how good his markmanship had become. The commanding officer who'd lead the training insisted that he take his personal number and give him a call if he ever wanted to take up a career in the military.
The GDA was responsible for stopping villains from blowing up the white house or sinking small islands in the Pacific. They dealt with anything and everything that involved the supernatural. Their umbrella also included mad scientists who'd created powerful technologies.
Despite the GDA's near omnipresent influence on the global scale, the U.S military and the respective militaries of other countries still had an important role to play in maintaining public security.
Not every offence was committed by a supervillain. There were far more ordinary people doing terrible things then there were supervillains destroying national monuments. The army and the police force helped to make the world a safer place. For children who grew up dreaming of fighting supervillains and thwarting evil, a career in the army was an honourable way to get a little closer to that dream.
The first year of university drew to a close. Alex said goodbye to Taylor for summer. Her family were planning a holiday overseas. Alex knew that he'd miss her, but he was far more excited for Taylor to see the world like she'd always wanted to than he was sad not to be able to see her.
"Hey kiddo!" Jack called out happily. Amanda pulled into a parking spot and hopped out. Alex swiftly recieved two fierce hugs.
He laughed and squeezed back even harder, "Missed you guys!"
It took a couple of trips to move everything from his dorm into his parents car. The Michigan university sheets he'd brought with him when he started university were folded up neatly and placed in the boot. Seeing them every night still made him smile.
The journey home took an hour since they stopped to get burgers. As usual Alex ordered three cheeseburgers. He stored the calories as crystalline energy deposits. The modifications he was making required energy. He had an idea in mind for a project to help reduce the amount of food he needed to eat on a daily basis.
His room was exactly as he'd left it. He opened the window and looked out into the night. The view of the streetlight and his neighbour's house was comforting and familiar.
He lay down in bed and stared at the ceiling like he had for nearly eighteen years. He quickly became lost in thought. The world was still the same as it had always been: Omni-Man still took down villains and saved the planet, he still studied for tests and texted his parents goodnight.
On the surface he was still the same ordinary teenage boy. In fact it was only a few weeks until his ninteenth birthday and the end of his teenage years. He wondered how much longer he could remain ordinary.