Reginald Raravi's Lucky Break (remix!)

1:45 pm

The sun hung blisteringly hot above Reginald as he sat in his Toyota outside the Shrimp Palace, the seafood restaurant he lived above. The restaurant and the entire building also happened to be owned by his father. Though his father was as loving as they come, he was still a strict man, and a stricter landlord. He allowed Reggie to work off some of his rent by putting in hours at the Shrimp Palace on weekends, however as it was looking then, Reggie was still going to come up short. So far superheroics proved to be less than lucrative business.

"I still can't believe you're a hero, dude! That's so tight!" Chubbs exclaimed from the passenger seat.

Chubbs' real name was Chester McAllen. You wouldn't know it looking at him, but the the nickname was originally given to him ironically back when he was a scrawny teenager. After highschool his life slowed down and so did his metabolism. He was Reggie's childhood best friend and thus far the only person who knew of his secret alter ego. This was out of necessity as Reginald quickly discovered it was very hard to get footage of himself fighting crime. Besides, if you couldn't trust a doughy stoner with your secrets, who could you trust?

Chubbs excitedly punched at the air, "I always kind of hoped I'd get to be a sidekick some day."

Reggie raised an eyebrow at his friend.

"Maybe they'll let us join like Prodigy or something. Wouldn't that rule?!"

"Dude, those kids are like half our age."

"So what?"

"So if we run around with a bunch of teenagers people will think we're creeps."

"But we're not creeps."

"Yeah but people won't know that. They'll just see some grown ass men running around with a bunch of children in costumes. No one will wanna sponsor that. "

"Fuck people, dude. You can let that shit stop you, but when I get an invite, I'm joining."

"Why would you get one? You don't even have any super powers."

"Then I'll get some. Super powers spread like wildfire, man. Once someone gets them people around then just start getting them too."

"They aren't herpes."

Their bickering was interrupted by Reginald's antique police scanner. "*Khhhhzzzt* All units. *vhhssh* 5th and Leonardo st. Code *khrzzt* Bank robbery in progress. Possible metahuman *vhhhmmnm*"

It started to go dead. Piece of garbage. He decided as soon as his rent was paid he would buy himself a new one. He gave it a good smack in an attempt to bring it back to life.

"Repeat reports of *vhhhht* at the scene."

Reginald's eyes lit up. His foot was on the gas pedal before dispatch even finished the sentence. There it was, his chance to finally make it big in the superhero game right in front of him. It didn't matter who or what was reported at the scene. He was sure it was a big enough name to help the name of Mr. Invincible grow with it.

Even with his reckless driving he found the scene crowded with police, media, and other onlookers.
Parking in an alley down the block sounded like the most solid course of action, so that's what he did.

Reggie decided to check himself in the reflection of his car window one last time before heading into action. To him, his sleeveless Adidas shirt and shorts looked awesome. He made sure the logos were proudly displayed. Sure, the news would probably have to blur them out, but the videos onlookers took their cellphones would not. Adidas would almost definitely see these and then maybe they would work with him to design a suit capable of stretching like he does. He was sure of this. All he was missing was the muscles. In an instant he had them. Shaping his body was the first trick he learned with his powers.

"Buff bod: check. Super legs, go!"

At that he pulled his ski mask over his face. The forehead was married with a big red lowercase i. He then extended his legs until he was eye level with the rooftops of surrounding buildings.

"Are you sure we should be running into a bank robbery wearing ski masks?" Chubbs asked as he adjusted his bullet proof vest.

"We'd have real masks if your dumb vest didn't eat up our budget. "

Reggie stretched an arm down and expanded his hand to pick up his sidekick.

"My uncle gave me a deal on it. Besides, getting shot would suck."

"Just keep that camera on me, OK?"

Reggie still wasn't used to walking with legs extended to such a length, so his arrival was more a dizzy wobble than anything heroic like he imagined. He ignored the  warnings from police as he wobbled over the crowd to the front of the bank. He gently put Chubbs down and shrunk himself down to normal size.

"Ummm. Look out, assholes! It's uh- It's Invincible time!" He looked to the camera, "How was that?"

Chubbs gave a silent thumbs up.

Reginald pushed the door to the back open. Mr. Invincible was about to show the world he was a hero, or die trying. But hopefully not the second part. That would suck.

Bank robberies, not something that Alpha dabbled in very often but a lucrative business when it came to rounding up metahumans. Los Angeles was the location he had picked out, the location a rather annoying group known as Prodigy worked out of, but he had surmised they had an effective radius where he was likely to encounter them, and so Alpha simply decided to work outside of that. The three small time metahumans sat before him within his personal hotel, gruff looking punks who all were more than willing to accept the paychecks. What they thought of the mysterious metahuman dressed in all black went unsaid, if only because the money rode upon them not offending him.

”So, you want us to hit a bank?” The physically least impressive of them questioned, a woman with a rather large black bow upon her head and searching, suspicious eyes.

”That is correct.” Alpha responded with a small nod of his head, keeping a close eye upon all of them.

“No disrespect or anything boss man, but isn't that a little below our...erm..talents?” The larger one of them asked, adjusting large black shades to reveal eyes much like a void.

“Yeah, usually we're getting sent out for something more high profile than knocking over a bank.” The last of them agreed, with that jittery speech of his.

”Trust me, this is beyond simply stealing money. I have more than enough of that stuff, no, what I want is metahumans. Heroes tend to flock to scenes such as a bank robbery, and you may of course help yourself to any money you steal, along with my initial pay.” If they were not wearing those obstructive shades, then he would have seen a glint of greed within their eyes.

“So, what is our pay? I had heard big money, but how big we talking?” The female would question, resting a single elbow upon his desk; brazenly.

”100,000 each, if you do a good job.” It was then that he had them biting.
–
The heist had started as simply as they all did, with them walking in as suave as always. It was upon seeing that all was well that the leader would remove what looked like a rather high caliber weapon from nowhere, firing off a few shots into the air and sending everyone diving to the ground. “Okay, I assume you all know what’s happening now.” She would announce to the entire room, not even bothering to stop the silent alarm from being sounded off. If she had guessed what their boss wanted, then it was likely that this was the exact thing he wanted, a lot of noise. “Bull, get to tearing open the vault.” She said with a snap of her fingers, sending the rather brutish one to his duty.

“Slips, do what you do best.” She would then add in continuing to tote the weapon around in an almost menacing fashion.

“Yessir.” No need for proper gender pronouns, that was for lame social justice types on the internet. Afterall, they had to put on a show for the boss, and when the heroes arrived, they could already count the money piling up.

“Nice costumes, buy them at Wal-Mart?” The leader asked almost scathingly raising her weapon to them and unleashing a spray of bullets upon the rubber meta-human.

Reginald was hit with a few sudden realizations the moment he entered the bank. The first was that he had no idea what he was doing. The last fight participated in happened in high school, and he didn't even win. The next realization was that all female criminals didn't look like Aileen Wuornos. The woman waving a gun around didn't look like her at all. She was basically the opposite; she was kind of a babe. He could see himself hitting Aileen Wuornos, but how could he bring himself to punch a hot girl?

His next realization came as he picked his jaw after the robber made him drop it. This tied into his first two, and essentially boiled down to the one thing: "Oh SHIT!"

Our hero found himself betrayed by his new found goddess of greed as she let lose an angry swarm of bullets directly toward him.

"ohshitohshitohshit"

He reflexively squeezed his eyes shut and tensed his muscles. This was it. He was sure he was dead until the bullets hit him. Each that hit him did little more than sting as they ricocheted off of his dense new body. The ricocheting bullets bounced around the room aimlessly, which caused the already panicked civilians to scurry for cover.

He opened his eyes. Another realization: He was alive, and not just alive but superpowered.

"Hey! What is wrong with you?!"

Both of his arms stretched from his body instantly. Each went toward the bullet babe, at the end of the right was a large fist aimed at her face, the left would attmpt to cover the gun and pull it from her clutches.

Chubbs half cowered behind Mr. Invincible frantically pointing the lens of his camera back and forth at the two targets of his friends arms.

"Make sure you're getting all of this."

Rather than reducing his body to a bloody mulch, the bullets would only ricochet off of his body as if it were made of something else. “Well boys, looks like we found ourselves a meta-human.” She said almost pleased with herself despite the fact that her bullets did almost nothing to him. They weren’t really anything she could trust when it came down to taking down supers, always being deflected by touch skin or by some kind of energy.

“Well slips, it looks like things just got a little more complicated.” Just as she said that, the elastic man would stretch out his arms, giving her only enough time to avoid one, and it came down to the gun. Ducking back from the fist aimed towards her face, the gun would be wrenched from her hands with a might tug, fingers uncurling from around the weapon in question. That left the weapon a little disarmed, but nothing that she couldn’t deal with. Looking down to the hand that once held a weapon, she scowled annoyed before looking up to the man that had taken it.

“Come on boss, don’t let this guy make a fool out of you.” Slips snickered, a low hiss issuing from his throat.

“Then why don’t you do better?” She snapped in return withdrawing three throwing knives from her boots, clenching them between her fingers as her eyes trained upon the elastic hero. “Wait, don’t answer that.” She then added, throwing one of the knives as a feint more than anything, while Slips would do what he did best.

Something would crawl from his sleeves, scaly forms that only could be described as snakes and a lot of them plopping onto the ground. He was literally producing snakes from his sleeves, living, hissing snakes with tongues that flicked out to taste the air.

“No matter how many times I see that, it still is disgusting.”

“I have a feeling you’re just jealous.”

“Yeah, of creating snakes. Why was I not so blessed?” Diatribe aside, the flow of snakes would slither along the ground with the intent of biting the heroes, as well as anyone they could, aside from the two that were snapping at one another.

Reginald's untrained rubber fist missed the woman by a mile. The momentum behind the fist sent it continuing forward as it dragged the rest of his arm behind it until it crashed into the far wall. The other hand, however, accomplished the task it was sent to do, and Reginald pulled the gun to him. "Here Chubbs, hold onto this."  He casually held the gun to his friend and camerman while the robbers bickered, "Chubbs?..."

The only response he received was a high pitch screech.

Mr. Invincible turned to see what was causing the noise. He hadn't even seen it happen, but the knife the woman pulled was now sticking out of Chubbs's bullet proof vest. His friend was right to be so adamant about purchasing the vest with their hero budget.

"Woah! Dude, you totally could've been killed!"

"I know dude!"

"Dude!"

"Dude, turn around, dude!"

"Huh?"

He turned back around just in time to witness the end of what might have been the weirdest magic trick he'd seen since Dr. Mendoza's Magestic Mule show that one spring break in Mexico.  He now found himself faced with twisting snakes on top of the trio of armed bank robbers. He needed to think quickly.

"Ok, man, that is gross."

He looked to his arm still stretched to the far wall, and then down at the snakes, and finally to the hottie hot violent woman. Genius inspiration struck. He stretched his hand even wider and snapped it back quickly. With any luck it would knock her straight into the snakes, with no luck his hand could end up sweeping the snakes right to him.