[ WP ] You 're a normal person in a world full of superheroes , and unfortunately , you live right next to a super villain .

Let me tell you about my neighbor Jake. 
 
 The neighborhood is a fair distance from town, up where the foothills yield to the mountains. The company where I used to work was sucked into a negative dimension leaving all of us on the brink of oblivion for a torturous 6 months as a result of a botched super-battle. We all received large settlements from the Alliance of Heroes as a result. I invested it, quit the day job, and moved someplace scenic to focus on my dream of sculpting. 
 
 Big plots out here, only a couple houses within sight of my hilltop cabin. One of them of course belongs to Jake. He has a nice Modern style place nestled up against the small mountain that forms the back of our little valley. Friendly guy, the only neighbor that came to greet me and help me during the move in. Said he'd moved there with his wife after he made some money selling his tech startup just out of school. 
 
 No big deal, right? So I settled in, and started to relax. A few weeks later in the middle of the night, I noticed a rumble in the ground. Earthquakes were unheard of in this party of the Rockies so I went to investigate. Made it outside in time to see a giant hole in the mountain behind Jake's place close. Did n't know what to make of it at first. I convinced myself it was a hallucination and almost told my head shrink. 
 
 Good thing I did n't because that's when I noticed that the car traffic leading past my place up to Jake's was odd. The giveaway was the day a semi truck came out without having gone in first. Curiosity got the better of me, screw the authorities I thought. I was going to check this out myself and avoid turning my scenic backyard into a battleground. Catch was I needed an excuse, so I contrived to give them a thank you gift for welcoming me. 
 
 So I welded up one of my smaller works of art and took it over there as a gift. They had a few avant garde pieces out front already, thus I reasoned it was a tasteful offer. Drove right up to the gate and hit the buzzer. Took a while but Jake's lovely wife Clarissa answered and let me in. Nothing seemed out of the ordinary. Polite, neighborly, and effusive over the sculpture I brought. They put it right in the foyer even. 
 
 It was so ordinary that it was suspicious, or maybe that's my paranoia. 6 months of mental agony in the nightmare realm has been known to do that. At any rate they showed me around, and they invited me to stay for dinner. Enjoyed their private art gallery, enjoyed a nice vintage wine over some fresh caught salmon out of the nearby river. A pleasant perfectly ordinary evening. 
 
 Right as I was leaving I asked them not to open the mountain after midnight as it disturbed my pets. I may as well have sprouted a second head based on the looks they gave me. That's when the attack squad materialized and I found myself quickly restrained to a chair. Jake demanded to know why his sleep wave inducer had n't worked on me. To which I informed him I am physically incapable of sleeping anymore ( cause you know: shadow reality exposure ). 
 
 He seemed perplexed by this so I explained my situation, and asked which super category he fell into. Jake was none other than the illustrious Technocrat, Bane of the CyberSquad. He did n't appreciate my quirk about defining oneself in terms of somebody else. Then he thought about it, laughed and gave me the REAL tour of his abode. Super Villains are odd like that. So now he gives me fair warnings about upcoming cataclysms and keeps the minions off my lawn. Throws a great Christmas party though. 

