READ WEBNOVEL Ch 64 – Coming Down The World Turned Over
In a way, Balloon Boy's life was a common tragedy.
Balloon Boy, while considered by most to be a bit of a joke, was not someone you laughed at for very long. He was a formidable opponent, if he stayed within his strengths. He could take a hit, was capable of bouncing bullets and resisting energy damage due to the rubbery substance he was composed of. He had remarkable endurance, was able to hold his breath for an insane amount of time, and if he got in close, packed quite a wallop. Additionally, his ability to expand and manipulate his size while disregarding kinetic energy made him one of the toughest capes in the city.
That is until someone comes at him with a pencil.
His vulnerability was to sharp attacks, both stabbing and cutting, thus permanently limiting his potential. Most teams relegated him to support. He dreamed of making it big, of being the next Wonder Guy. This wasn't going to happen when you are known as a glass cannon, or a specialty super as they like to call it in the business. A superhero who excels in a specific area, but is weak outside of it. In a way, he shared similarities with Ivy. Both had great strength and each had a nightmare scenario. For Ivy, it was being completely dehydrated in the middle of the night. For Balloon Boy...
It was an office supply store full of thumbtacks.
Balloon Boy's career started at the ripe old age of fifteen, the youngest anyone can join up as a cape, assuming you graduated from high school. Oh, you might not know. Thanks to invitrogrow, kids physically mature faster than in Normal World. If mom uses the drug when the kid is in the womb, she can have the kid in as little as nine weeks. The effects lingers for years, but does have a half life. So usually by one year old, the kid would be physically three by Normal World standards.
Add onto that the use of 'corrective drugs' to help with 'cognitive deficiency', kids can learn- *ahem* I'm sorry, I used the wrong word there. Kids can MEMORIZE quite a bit more than your standard child on normal world. Despite having an advanced education system, these kids are not necessarily more intelligent or creative than normal world. This can leads to a lack of critical thinking skills and reliance on following orders blindly. It is unknown if there are side effects of these drugs that could also lead to long-term health problems, mostly because nobody lives long enough for long-term side effects to become obvious. Nevertheless, invitrogrow remains a crucial tool in the fight against population decline in the high-mortality environment of Reverse World.
There's some variation, of course. School typically starts for most kids at around five and ends at about fifteen, physically seven and eighteen years mature by Normal World standards. The system relies on children with superior monads to be the ones who get ahead. Public schools are there to give everyone the basic, bare minimum, and that's it. The mentality is that monads are what makes a person exceptional and so monad growth and development is what the focus of public education is on. Who cares about the normies? From a strictly pragmatic view, they aren't worth the investment in a world with limited resources.
While it has certainly had a profound effect on the growth cycle of humans, it's hard to say for sure what the long term consequences of using Invitrogrow might be. It may have been used for close to a century, but it only really got pushed into near universal use in the past thirty years. The spike in meta-human births that has been observed since the drug's introduction may have raised questions about its safety and potential consequences, but the number of meta-human births brushed aside any other concerns.
Invitrogrow leads to more meta-humans and that can only be a good thing.
Right?
Ah, but I digress. You aren't here to listen to this chronicler ramble on about such trivial matters. We can return to this particular tidbit of esoteric minutia another time. What matters right now is that Grease was desperately trying not to get murdered by her ex-boyfriend who had currently gone insane due to a mind virus that was torturing him with all his past failures and inadequacies.
We should get back to that, I suppose.
Balloon Boy was pulling his punches.
The force behind Balloon Boy's bloodlust was affecting him to the core, pushing him to try his level best to outwit Grease. She was quick and elusive, as such he was no match for her speed. To correct for that, he was using the terrain and his greater flexibility to his advantage at every turn and she was constantly on the defensive. There was the additional difficulty that Balloon Boy was nigh-invulnerable to anything Grease was willing to throw at him. 'Willing' was the keyword here.
She could use his vulnerability against him, but she wanted to incapacitate him, not kill him. She once saw someone staple him to a wall with an arrow. One arrow not only took him out, but it nearly killed him. He just hung there, deflated, like he was like a parade balloon that had all the air let out. Fortunately, Grease long ago learned to carry useful things with her and one of those things was a roll of duct tape. She pulled him off the arrow and taped up the holes preventing any more of his... air... from leaking out. It still took two days for him to... uh... 're-inflate' I suppose it the word to use. It took some time, but he did, as Balloon Boy is oft to say...
'Bounce Back.'
That marked the beginning of their relationship. He was deeply appreciative of her for saving his life, and this may have been the reason he tolerated her crude demeanor and made it clear he hoped she would try to woo him. Part of the problem was, he never should have been first-string. The decision was based on diversity hiring quotas and not on his actual skills and abilities. He was trying his best, but the truth was that while he had the position of first-string, he was essentially treated as sitting on the bench.
And he knew it.
The frustration of being used as a mere showpiece, despite his lack of merit, weighed heavily on him. Grease did not realize this until much later, but the sole reason he remained on the team was because of her. When they attempted to escalate their relationship and she flubbed their first sexual encounter, everything fell apart.
It's possible that their relationship could have worked out if they had engaged in open and honest communication. But at that time, Balloon Boy's resentment was at its peak, and Grease botching their intimate moment was the last straw. He not only quit, but demonstrated an exceptional talent for vindictive retaliation. As the saying goes, 'Hell hath no fury like a man scorned.' and he certainly lived up to it. He went to great lengths to take his revenge on Grease and ultimately cost The Rascals dearly.
Balloon Boy made it clear he was after Grease and Grease alone. He figured if he just amped up the pressure, they'd abandon Grease. The odd thing was, in his head, he imagined that if they kicked her out, she'd have to come crawling to him, and then they could work things out. Yes, that makes no sense, but Balloon Boy was a rather emotional person who had a tendency to listen to people who didn't have his best interests at heart.
He never expected her team to stand by Grease no matter what. The more he tried to ruin her, the more the Rascals took it on the chin. Eventually, he ran out of ammunition. He would just have to console himself with all the money he got in the settlement.
Because he was going to need it.
After receiving the settlement, he celebrated for a few weeks in an effort to move past the situation. He accepted the fact he'd never be first-string again after this, so he was willing to settle on the bench or even support. Perhaps that was where he truly belonged. And so he attempted to return to his life as a cape. The key word here being 'attempted.'
Nobody would touch him with a ten foot rubber chicken.
Initially, he believed that The Rascals were being spiteful and slandering him when they got inquiries off his resume, but he soon realized that it was something else. He had been blacklisted. The reality was that any team he approached already knew about the incident, and he was considered too much of a liability. They wouldn't hire him for the bench, for support, hell, he couldn't get a job as a janitor. They always had an excuse. You didn't get to be a successful team without having lawyers who knew exactly how the regulations worked, and more importantly, how to reject someone to avoid discrimination lawsuits.
Eventually, he received a job offer from an all-male team on the West Coast, and he eagerly relocated. He was all too happy to get to work and put Empire City behind him. He even was on the first string, because in comparison to the rest of his team, he was by far the strongest. This was going to be the turning point in Balloon Boy's career when he finally had the opportunity to prove himself. He was going to show everyone that he wasn't the loser everyone thought he was. At least, that's what he told himself.
It turned out the team was a farce. Male capes got hired based on their physical appearance alone. The team's owner basically saw it as her personal harem and couldn't care less if anyone ever left the base. Since they never actually went out on any assignments, there was no money to be made. Well, there was ONE way to make money.
Despite being able to make ANY body part grow dramatically, Balloon boy was not ready to become a porn star.
When he realized the truth about his situation, everything fell apart and he fled the west coast. He ran all the way back to Empire City, where he still had a few remaining friends, so he believed. However, by leaving Empire City for the West Coast, he had become a laughingstock, even if he was unaware of being scammed. He might not have done anything, but just joining that team got you labeled a slut and utterly destroyed your reputation in a single blow. His fair-weather friends were quick to turn on him, betraying him and stabbing him in the back at every opportunity. Unfortunately, Balloon Boy's susceptibility to all things sharp extended to the tongues of those he once considered friends. He would later find out that the west coast job offer had been arranged by someone who he had, long ago, publicly humiliated and that the whole thing had been revenge.
And so he decided that it was time to hang up the cape and settle down.
The problem was he couldn't just fade into obscurity. His rubbery appearance made him look like a living anime character. Having a bad reputation might get you lots of dates, but it didn't get you many marriage proposals. The more dates he went on, the more he realized women were only interested in him for one thing. He longed to settle down, get married, and leave the world of capes behind, but he was past his prime. At the age of twenty five, he was a washed-up has-been, having given up the chance for a family and a normal life to chase his dream of becoming the next Wonder Guy.
Alone, broken, with no friends, purpose, or future, Balloon Boy was at the absolute nadir of his existence when his phone beeped. Craving any sort of social interaction, he picked it up and played the attached video without a second thought.
The FOMO virus had found ground most fertile.