Long hypo with fantasy premise and storytelling OP. If you don’t like these, why are you here?
It’s the first of July, and Bob X–the slacker superhero with Kryptonian powers–is running on fumes. The last several weeks have been lousy with natural disasters–earthquakes, volcanoes, hurricanes, and so forth; every continent but Antarctica has been hammered, though the United States has been spared thus far–which is lucky for the rest of the world, actually, since Bob always prioritizes danger to the US when he has to make hard decisions. He hasn’t had time to play a video game, binge on Hulu Plus, or fuck a groupie since May. For that matter, he literally hasn’t slept in three weeks, breaking his previous record for staying awake by eight days.
Six weeks into this marathon of catastrophes, Bob gets a sat-phone call from one Penelope Scuito, a cybergeek whose pants he’s been trying to get into for a while. She says there’s something he needs to know about the crisis. He cuts her off; North Korea is about to get hammered by a tsunami, and tidal waves require his undivided attention.
Exhausted after saving the Koreans, Bob takes half an hour for a catnap before calling Penelope back. That’s thirty minutes too long. When he calls her house, the police pick up; she was murdered while he was in the land of Nod.
Bob drops everything to look into Penny’s murder. Reconstructing her research, he discovers that the disasters are in being caused by an ancient mystic artifact–the Trident of Poseidon, if you care–which a cabal of US government officials and businessmen found in a certain warehouse, two aisles over from the Ark of the Covenant. Integrating the Trident into a device called the Cataclysm Engine the cabal have been using it in the service of what they see as American security and economic interests. In addition to destroying terrorist training camps and wrecking foreign nuclear weapons facilities, that means destroying factories competing with US firms (in the process devastating the areas around them). Naturally they’re the ones who offed Penelope.
Angry super-heroics ensue. Tracking down the cabal, Bob curb-stomps their combat forces, smashes the mortal-forged parts of the Engine, and dumps their base into a live volcano that needed plugging anyway. He considers leaving the surviving conspirators inside while doing the latter, but Penelope wouldn’t have liked that, so he’s merciful. He turns the conspirators over to Penelope’s coworkers (she worked for a federal law enforcement agency known by its initials) before heading to the asteroid belt to bury the indestructible Trident.
Back on Earth, Bob gets a voice mail asking him to come to the White House. Waiting for him are President Powell and his entire national security team. They thank him for his service, twice get Penelope’s name wrong, and finally ask a favor. As far as the world knows, the catastrophes were a freak of nature. If any other country discovers the truth–and Russia, Iran, India, & China all got hit hard–it’ll cause a diplomatic shitstorm, if not war. They want Bob to keep his mouth shut about what he knows.
Now, thanks to his super-senses, Bob can always tell when he’s being lied to. Consequently, when Colin & Co. assure him they had no idea of the cabal’s existence, he knows they’re telling the truth. But he’s still in a lousy mood. A lot of innocent people have died, and Penelope–who, as far as he’s concerned, is the real hero of the hour–will not get the public recognition she deserves. So he makes no promises, saying he’ll let them know what he’s decided in a day or two.
Bob flies home and decides to stop at his favorite coffeehouse before hitting the sack. While sipping cocoa and feeling sorry for himself, he’s approached by a reporter he knows slightly who’s hoping to score an interview about his busy month. Bob’s first impulse is to tell the reporter everything he knows about the whole lousy business. Should he do that? What SHOULD he do?