The boy came into Computer Connection on a Saturday. Sasha saw him hesitate at the door and then make his way awkwardly into the shop. He was in the same grade as Sasha but all she knew about him was that his name was Cash. He usually hung around with a girl called Letti.
He looked around him in confusion and Sasha went over to him quickly to ask him how she could help. He showed her a file of papers and told her that they were drawings that he’d done, comics that he wanted to get scanned onto a flash-drive because he needed to submit them to art schools as part of his portfolio.
Computer Connection didn’t usually do that type of thing but they had a scanner and Sasha felt sorry for the guy. So she told him that if he waited outside until her manager went on a smoke break, she’d scan them quickly for him. He smiled at her gratefully and handed her the folder.
Twenty minutes later the manager went out for his smoke break and Sasha slipped into the back office. She turned on the scanner and pulled the pieces of paper from the folder. And her heart skipped a beat.
“Simphiwe!” she shouted urgently. “Come here now.”
There, staring out at her from the piece of paper, was Prof V. Something stirred in Sasha’s memory and she recalled the comic strip that Simphiwe had found when they had initially Googled ‘Professor V’.
She paged through the comics. In all of them, Prof V (short for Professor Virus) had some sort of plan to take control of various worlds and make its inhabitants his slaves, programmed to help him take control of other planets in the galaxy. His plans were always foiled at the last minute by the superhero, Captain Kind.
In the latest few comics Captain Kind had a sidekick, Glamour Girl. Sasha smiled as she recognized Letti’s big afro. Glamour Girl looked just like Letti. Sasha was so engrossed in the comics that she didn’t hear Simphiwe come in.
“That’s bizarre,” he said, looking over her shoulder. “It’s as if the comic Prof V came to life somehow.”
“Pity Captain Kind didn’t come to life too,” Sasha remarked.
“Oh, but we didn’t need him. We had you. You foiled him.”
Sasha couldn’t help grinning. She didn’t care now what she looked like or what other people thought of her. She knew that she had more than enough value exactly as she was.
“I guess we’ve all got a little bit of superhero in us,” she said. “We’ve just got to look for it.”
***
Tell us: Do you think it’s true about us all having a bit of superhero in us? What makes a superhero? Do you know one?
