Making a Name

A name is everything. I would always cringe whenever I would hear parents give their children obscure names that would ultimately result in them getting bullied in life.  A name sticks with you. It’s how the world sees you. How the world addresses you. It lets people know whether you’re worthy of their respect or not. So of course everyone would make a big deal about the name you choose for your Hero ASAP assessment.  It’s the first thing that you have to fill out before you start telling them what your abilities are. Because from that point on,  you’re no longer who Mommy and daddy named you. You’re the name that you chose for yourself.  You’re “insert idiotic hero name here.”

Awakened humans. Roughly 40% of humans were gifted abilities after the Indigo Reset of the year 2000. Humans with abilities beyond anything that history has ever known outside of the stories of Olympian Gods. Powers were everywhere and anyone could have them. Everybody’s a freaking hero. Which I hate. Society is oversaturated with  I am a legacy awakened. That means not only are my abilities passed down, but I’m also the offspring of a former hero. In my case, I am the grandson of Mr. Millenium, the first official hero.

I tapped a pencil against my chair as my indecisiveness began to annoy me. Choosing a name for myself should be easy. I mean I could easily just pick some derivative of my grandfather’s name. Or even my mothers. Lady Ultima. But neither of those felt right. I knew that my powers made me unique. As far as I knew, no other Awakened had an ability similar to mine. Because of this, I needed a name that fit just me.

I had what was known as a compound power, or an Ability that can have dual uses. That wasn’t the part of my ability that was unique. There were others like that. Someone who can control fire but is also fireproof would be an example. My power is the ability to copy somebody’s ability by making physical contact with them. I can copy up to ten powers at one time and use them as I wish or I could copy one power and make it ten times more powerful than it originally is. There are a few abilities that I’m unable to copy. I’ve come across those from time to time. I call those duds. I’m not sure why those abilities are off-limits to me. But that represented less than 1% of the powers I came across.

The issue is because I had so much potential for my power, I didn’t have a clear path on what my name should be. I mean if I was super strong I could choose something related to brawn. But my abilities made it so I could do almost anything, which meant that my name could also be almost anything. I had been scanning the dictionary for days. Trying to see if I found any words in general that excited me. I had made my way to the letter L when my mother stepped in. Lady Ultima had stepped down from the Hero City Six after coming across a villain that was too much for the Current Heroes at the time. If it wasn’t for Blakk Titan and  Captain Maximum, who weren’t members of the Six at the time. The city could’ve been destroyed. “Still mulling over a name huh?” She smiled at me from the doorway. Even her smile was empty. She was a shell of herself. It almost disgusted me to see her looking so weak.

“Yeah, I’m hoping I’ll have something before the end of the day,” I replied to her and turned back to the dictionary. I knew she would leave if I didn’t continue the conversation. “Ok…well if you need some idea’s just let me know. I know how important this ASAP exam is going to be for you. I’m going to see your grandfather in an hour or so if you want to come. Maybe he has some ideas as well?” I shook my head and continued to stare into the pages of the dictionary. “I think I’m just going to stay here,” I replied. I had no interest in family bonding. The name had to be right. It was more important than anything they could offer me right now.

She conceded and closed the door as she left. As she did I set the dictionary down on my desk and began to think about my current power stores. I was holding 5 powers at the moment. Flight, Super Strength, Super Hearing, Invisibility, and a nifty healing ability that I picked up at a hospital. But none of those powers made me think of a name. They didn’t have anything in common other than being powers.  I considered scouring the city for more powers but didn’t think that would help me come up with anything either. Although I can hold up to 10 abilities, I was always selective about the abilities that I took in. There was one downside to my powers. I can keep any ability for 72 hours at a time before I would lose it. So I would constantly make contact with the same individuals over and over to keep the powers. I tried to keep at least 3 spots open because if I came across powers that I needed to copy in a pinch, I liked to have that flexibility.

I cut the TV. It was still on the last channel I watched which was HC TV. The City’s local 24-hour Hero network covered all of the Awakened Activity that was going on in Hero City. Another “so-called” hero was being interviewed on TV. The Centurion. He was talking about some mediocre act of heroics he had just committed when my eyes became transfixed on his uniform. The woman interviewing him must have also noticed the uniform. It wasn’t anything spectacular or anything. In fact, it looked slightly ridiculous. The colors didn’t match. The gloves seemed oversized, and his body wasn’t in the best shape so his top seemed a bit too tight. But it was the massive X on his cape that caught my attention. The Blue Cape with a light blue X that touched its four corners. “Can you tell me, Centurion, what does the X on your uniform stand for?” He turned to face the camera when he gave his response. “This is the Roman numeral Ten. It signifies my strength which is ten times that of a normal man.” He told the reporter.

Being Ten times stronger than someone wasn’t even that impressive. The reporter must’ve been thinking the same thing because she awkwardly shifted the conversation.  But as he rambled on about himself,  I just kept staring at the massive Roman numeral 10 on his cape. Ten powers. Roman numeral Ten. Ten? No Ten is a stupid name. I opened my phone and searched for synonyms for ten. I scoured the first few links until I found a name that made me pause. Then I pulled out a scratch piece of paper and began to sketch some ideas that were coming to me. The other thing that was just as important as the name was making sure that your costume looked the part. As the image began to take form on the paper, I scribbled the name that I had chosen directly underneath it. The name that the world would come to know as its ruler. The name of the villain who would conquer the earth. “Decimos,” I said out loud before folding the paper and putting it on my desk. “They’ll call me Decimos.”