On this particular day Scott had been barraged by a number of menial administration tasks; everything from emails to making sure the printer was loaded with fresh A4 paper. There was a mystery which burned into his very sense of purpose. A mystery which pervades most offices. Why, with a bin no more than 10 paces away, were empty reams of paper package left haphazardly in the box? Surely any self respecting employee would take the package, which they had just emptied, and place it within the bin.
Alas, it seemed that the office employees were living in an alternate dimension which did not adhere to the sensibilities of their local superhero. Mirror man watched on, from the relative safety of his desk, as the box of A4 was upended, tossed across the office and bounced off the head of the nearest team leader. The nigh on assault victim was situated at the end of the bank of desks, minding his own business before he found himself with a face full of box. For a few tense seconds the office fell into the baited silence that precedes a stern telling off, or the juiciest piece of gossip from the Christmas party.
A host of meerkat heads appeared above the mandatory sound reducing borders, that flanked each desk and separated one employee from the other. There had been fierce territory disputes when someones coffee cup had strayed onto an adjacent desk. Not to mention the attempted phone cord garroting that had taken place one especially fraught morning shift. It was pertinent, therefore, to make sure each member of staff had their own small box. It seemed to make the staff more content and placid. Still, there was nothing more exciting in their world than this exact moment.
Scott, team manager, Scott.
Nothing.
One particularly curious employee had even attempted a seated squat, just to make sure they had the best eye-line of the impending carnage.
A nervous cough.
Then without so much as batting an eyelash the team manager resumed typing, as though nothing had happened. The only thing worse than getting to Friday afternoon and realising there was no Biddly juice was the anticlimax of someone who should by all rights be in serious trouble getting off Scot-free.
Slowly one head then another disappeared back below the blue border.
Paranoia struck then, our would-be superhero wondering whether his alter ego was already known. Were his actions deliberately ignored for the greater good? Was the manager actually terrified, horrified of the thought of going against Scott Mano-a-Mano? Slowly he looked down at his ropey arms, his tired George branded work shirt and the space the box of paper had previously been. Fists slowly clenched. There could only be one explanation.
The manager had to be clairvoyant and needed to be dealt with expediently.
Murder was out of the question, perhaps though, he could get rid of the man in other ways…
—
Mirror Man had decided that he was going to go to the middle of the Earth. Despite his colleagues initial bemusement and good natured questions they had soon learnt to ignore his machinations. Mirror man figured that the best way to get to the middle of the Earth was to design himself a capsule so powerful, so profound that he could sink into the Earth’s crust and go where no man had gone before. The only way to do this was to create a box, forged of the finest mirrors, with which he would be able to reflect the intolerable heat of the magma… And other stuff that Wikipedia told him was down there.
There was only one flaw to this design, as pointed out by an especially bored and therefore distractable colleague – the heat may be too intense, too powerful for his mirror box to resist. There could only be one answer – Mirror Man had to find a mighty hose, one which would douse him in cold water for the duration of his journey.
Not even Mirror Man’s manager commented on the several stacks of paper on his desk, covered with barely formed box shaped images, though HR had gently confirmed that his Mirror suit was not compliant with the office dress code.
Mirror man wore it anyway.
—
It seemed to be to Scott that superheroes had to have access to some kind of superhero tailor. No matter how he tried to stitch the Lycra together it either frayed, ripped or ended up looking like something out of budget Mexican wrestling. Scott had even looked up how to make a superhero costume on the Internet. The Internet had told him how he could look like Spiderman, where to buy the best wigs and provided him with a number of cosplay photographs of other people looking much more legitimate than he did.
No matter how many times he looked in the mirror he still looked like the same short, unimpressive specimen, just wearing black and purple Lycra which clung in an unflattering manner in all the wrong places. Tearing fabric from flesh, there was only one thing to it – he’d have to wear his work suit, until he could find a suitable tailor to create the masterpiece that would be his outfit.
There was only one problem with this theory – anyone who had ever seen him wearing his suit would be able to recognise him immediately.
A few years ago for Halloween Scott had dressed up as Zorro, now he could use the mask to disguise himself. It was flawless. If Clark Kent could get away with not being recognised by the virtue of glasses then surely he would be absolutely disguised with a full Zorro mask.
Tying it tightly around his countenance he inspected himself in the mirror. Perfect. Not even his own mother would recognise him now.
The only thing left was superhero gadgets – no self respecting hero would leave the house without them. The first thing he needed was a rope launcher, he’d seen them used by Batman and it seemed a sensible way to go as he could neither fly or jump long distances. Parkour seemed to be something that would break every bone in his body. Therefore Scott would have to improvise. Scott would have to design. Scott needed rope and a coat hanger.
