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Somewhere in the skies above Newyorkopolis soared Large Hero, the largest hero. His name filled the whole sky, and he perched on it and looked at everyone and everything they were doing and asked himself where they needed two hundred pounds of completely invincible muscle to charge through a wall and physically annihilate people.
He listened to them. He watched them. He was the best and most moral of all panopticons, up there in the big blue horizon, invisible and omnibenevolent.
And then he saw a sight that could not be condoned. A sight that filled him with more horror than he could possibly imagine.
Quick! Quick! Disaster must be prevented.
Large Hero dropped from the sky like a bird that had remembered it was a brick, leading with his fists – the most important and heroic parts of his body. There was something far worse than crime afoot.
Change.
Sure enough, there on the very steps of the courthouse, there stood a vile, ruthless mob, brandishing filthy and unlawful signs and shouting most uncivilized rhetoric. And among them, dead guilty, stood a super-heroic being, unmistakably in her willingness to wear brightly coloured quasi-spandex in public. She had caught several tear gas grenades and thrown them into the stratosphere.
“Stop right there!” shouted Large Hero. “Desist! Halt! Avaunt!”
“Never!” called the super-hero. “I am participating in public protest, rather than remaining aloof from it! I am a citizen and should act within society to change it for the better!”
“Have you lost your MIND?” demanded Large Hero, rhetorically. “Once you start doing this sort of thing, where will it END? Interference in normal society, violating the good, clean, righteous letter of the law…these sort of delusions can only end in violence and despair for you and all of the public you delude into following your deranged whims. You should stick to simple and wholesomely apolitical things, like extrajudicially beating up, electrocuting, and/or freezing solid people that steal money from banking institutions, unless they use suits instead of guns in which case you should begrudgingly protect them from all retribution.”
“Preposterous! Outdated!”
“In that case, why not concern yourself with foiling ultramaniacal mega-death schemes executed by mad geniuses, who seek mass death and obvious self-aggrandizement exceeding that which is deemed publically laudable? Sweep out the upstart riff-raff, thwart the unseemly, revel in the applause of all as you protect and serve the rightful and unending order of things.”
“This seems morally dubious,” said the super-hero.
“THIS ENDS NOW,” hollered Large Hero, and he punched the super-hero and they went into a very long and extremely epic fight scene that destroyed lots of buildings and vehicles yet conspicuously avoided showing direct physical harm coming to a specific human being. It concluded with Large Hero being victorious and he made a quip and so on.
“Now you realize the error of your ways, which has been established by your losing a physical contest while I state basic moral homilies. You’d better listen to me now.”
“Ah, yes, you are correct now, I realize the error of my stupid, headstrong ways,” lamented the super-hero. “Your fists are bigger and therefore more moral. Your enemies are now my enemies; your battles my battles. You are my heart and soul and inspiration and I will live, die, and kill as you command.”
“Not kill!” shouted Large Hero. “Never kill! Slam their heads into concrete; render them unconscious with concussions and internal hemorrhages; break ribs and snap arms; bash skulls and crack spines – yes, yes, yes, revel in that, take great glee in that, make witty one-liners at that, be proud of that! But no, no, no, you’re never killing anyone (directly). Never! It is the line that shouldn’t be openly acknowledged as being crossed.”
“Aw jeez you’re right again,” mourned the super-hero. “I can’t get over how right you are. All I am is dumb and wrong. I should listen to my elders and betters and better-sellers.”
“Oh, we are not as different as you might think, young woman,” said Large Hero, as he led the super-hero to his impossibly expensive and super-futuristic satellite superstar base, the Good Star. “You see, I too was once misled in my ways!”
“Impossible!”
“Oh yes! In my heady youth, I thought that there were things that must change – minds, actions, the way of the world even. Such arrogance! Why, I took down slumlords, threw wife-beaters out of windows, and even disrespected the police. But in time I grew older, and became well-known, and realized this: with great publicity comes great money, and you can’t let shit get in the way of that. Best to ride the waves and not make them. There is no such thing as society; merely normal faceless interchangeable folks and the madmen and hoodlums who would take their wallets, lives, and comically large bank vaults filled with brown bags with little ‘$’s on the side.”
The young hero raised her head and her eyes were glistening with the tears of the awakened sinner. “Oh my god, my Large Hero,” she said, nobly kissing around his feet, “you are completely right. I will never try to change anything ever again! When I imagine the future, I imagine my fist whacking a garishly coloured man with an evil scheme to cause change, forever.”
Thunderous applause filled the Good Star. Thousands of beefy gloved hands smacking into each other, from a trillion giant muscly arms. Most of them belonged to slightly smaller Large Heroes.
“Wellll…. Maybe not forever and EVER,” said Large Hero. “You’re sort of new in town. You might just get bumped off the next time everyone has to fight off the evil ALIEN armies of Masterdooms. Don’t worry though, you’ll inspire a lot of heartfelt tears and rage from me, for at least five minutes. Now stand up! Raise your head high, recite our oath, and be redeemed! No more are you a person, now you are SUPPORTING CAST! Welcome to the status quo squad!”
Eyes filled with pride, the hero raised her hand. “I will fight for things as they are now, and not one step further.”
“I will be small, and contain a tiny core of character,” said Large Hero.
“I will repeat myself incessantly.”
“I will repeat myself incessantly.”
“I will repeat myself incessantly.”
“I will repeat myself incessantly.”
“I will position all disputes as violent conflict, and I will ensure that my side will always possess the greatest violence.”
“Nothing will ever change, ever, as long as we are on watch,” said Large Hero.
Everyone shed beautiful tears of joy.
“Now, if I’m not mistaken, there’s an invasion of evil people from far away coming this afternoon. They aren’t like us – they have no individuality, and all of them don’t care about the value of life. It’s war now, between the pure and innocent US and the vile and contemptible THEM. So feel free to kill as many of them as you feel like, as long as it doesn’t make you too grim and broody!”
“Hoorah!” called everyone.
Then Large Hero and the Status Quo Squad all flew up, up into the big bright sky, like birds seeking a plane’s engine. And they did it forever, in the golden, eternal moment that they made sure would never end.