The Tortoise and The Hare

The tortoise sat down in a foyer of the first National bank and puffed upon one of his cheap cigars as he watched his hyper-accelerated and long- eared colleague, The Hare do battle against the gargantuan musclebound Supervillain called Nagrom.

 

“Aren’t you going to help me?”, asked The Hare as he dodged, at superspeed, another of Nagroms super powered piledriving punches.

 

“Oh, I will”, said the Tortoise, puffing on his Cigar and gazing into the distance, “I just need a little time to think, that’s all”.

 

Nagrom aimed a blast of telekinetic  power from its third eye towards the contemplative tortoise but it bounced harmlessly off of the invisible force field, made visible only by grey cigar smoke, that constantly surrounded him.

 

“Oh, you can blast and blast all day, if you want”, said the Tortoise, aiming a warm friendly smile towards the scowling supervillain, “My force shell is pretty much impervious to most things; missiles; energy beams; you name it. It gives me more time to think, you see”.

 

With an animalistic roar, Nagrom hurled another devastating blast at the tortoise, one that would have levelled a building complex but, again, it bounced harmlessly off of his invisible shell.

 

“Your friend is a dweeb”, growled the monster like supervillain, firing another blast of psychic energy at The Hare, one that, in spite of his superfast reflexes managed to hit him in his solar plexus and send him crashing backwards into a wall.

 

The tortoise looked strangely at Nagrom,

 

“Dweeb?”, he thought out loud to himself, as he often did, “An odd word for a grown man to use. That’s like a kids word isn’t it? I wonder if that’s significant”.

 

Nagrom, telekinetically, picked up a chunk of concrete that had come crashing down from the ceiling earlier and threw it at tortoises head but, like everything else, it bounced harmlessly off.

 

Then Nagrom picked up his friend The Hare and did the same with him.

 

“I wish you would hurry up, dammit”, said The Hare, speaking at ten to the dozen the way he normally spoke, as he picked himself up from the floor of the bank where he had landed with a thud, “I can’t fight this guy all by myself. His strength is beyond belief and nothing that I aim at him seems to touch him, it all goes through him like he’s made of air or something but his punches are like wrecking balls”.

 

“Wait”, said the Tortoise, noticing something in what his friend had just said, “Say that again”.

 

“I said”, repeated the superfast hero, narrowly dodging another punch from one of Nagroms enormous boulder sized fists, “It’s like he’s not really there but he is; he can hit me but I can’t hit him back”.

 

The Hare flew towards Nagrom aiming a superpowered kung-fu kick at the monsters grey skinned musclebound  torso and Tortoise observed the The Hare pass right through him as if through a ghost.

 

Then, suddenly, there was a glimmer, just a faint glimmer of something in the Tortoise’s eyes as if he was having an idea.

 

And then, his eyes darting left and right almost as fast as his super-rapid colleague, they searched the foyer of the bank before, suddenly, they settled on one of the customers in the bank; a little sandy haired boy who was staring intently at the battle between The Hare and Nagrom but, strangely, unlike his mother and the other cowering customers in the bank, he didn’t look frightened or even excited but just angry.

 

“An angry little boy”, said the Tortoise looking deep into the child’s fixated, glaring eyes, “And a telekinetic monster that may or may not be there”.

 

The light in the tortoise’s eyes became brighter.

 

“Well”, he said, smiling, “There’s one way to find out”.

 

As a screaming Hare, hurled by Nagrom, went crashing past him, again, into another wall, the tortoise rose from his seat and, stopping only momentarily to flick the ash from his cigar into a potted plant, he slowly trudged over to the little boy.

 

“Aren’t you frightened, kid?”, he asked, smiling warmly, down at the little boy.

 

The boy took his eyes off of the battle for a moment and looked up towards him.

 

“Huh?”, he asked, like a child who’d just been woken up by a teacher from daydreaming in class.

 

“I asked if you were..”, he started to say, but then, before he could finish his sentence, he heard The Hare calling to him.

 

“He’s gone? Where’d he go to?”, he was shouting in a bewildered voice.

 

The Tortoise looked around and, sure enough, Nagrom had vanished.

 

The slow, thoughtful superhero smiled with satisfaction,

 

“I think I know”, he shouted back.

 

The Hare, too tired do so at superspeed, now staggered over towards he and the boy, puffing and panting, like a regular mortal.

 

“And?”, asked his colleague.

 

The tortoise pointed one of the fingers of his green gloved hand towards the boy,

 

“This little boy. When I spoke to him that’s when our Mr Nagrom vanished”, he said.

 

The hare just looked puzzled and then the boy’s mother turned round, startled and, putting her arms round her son protectively, pulled him closer to her.

 

“I’m sorry, sir, are…are you talking about my son?”, she asked, her eyes becoming wide and trembling as she looked up at the tortoise.

 

“Madam”, he replied, “I think your son has amazing telekinetic powers. What’s more, I think he has the power to make whatever he dreams about become real but unfortunately he also seems to have a lot of anger inside of him”.

 

The woman looked shocked and she was shaking her head.

 

“Is your son’s name Morgan, by any chance?”, asked the Tortoise.

 

“Yes”, said the woman, her mouth, already wide, widening further still, “How did…how did you know that?”.

 

“Nagrom…it’s Morgan backwards. Perhaps the name came out of your sons subconscious, an imaginary friend who can punish the world for whatever makes him angry”, said the Tortoise.

 

The woman started shaking her head again as if she didn’t want to believe it.

 

“So, I’ve just had my a….I mean my butt kicked by this kids imaginary friend?”, asked The Hare, not as quick to grasp things with his mind as he was with his super powered reflexes.

 

“No, you’re wrong”, said the woman, putting her cheek closer to her sons head, “I don’t believe it”.

 

“You’re afraid madam, I can understand that”, said the Tortoise, “But your son has an immense talent that could be used to do good things if it is recognized and nurtured and guided in the right way…he could even become a superhero one day”.

 

“Oh no”, said The Hare, slumping down exhausted onto the bank floor and leaning back upon a pillar, “Believe me, that’s the last thing he wants to be”.