text: To any and all law enforcement reading this; this is not a confession. This is me telling you why I killed all of those people on live television. Do with this information what you will. I know whichever detective or police captain or whatever that finds this thinks he's going to be the one who caught the world's biggest monster. I'm sorry to disappoint you. My name was boring and ordinary: Thomas Howard. Many myths, legends, and rumors have been floating around for years about where my powers came from. I don't know if any of them are true. To be honest with you, I have no idea where my powers came from. I never cared to find out. Was I an alien that landed on Earth? Was I a science experiment gone wrong? Did my parents just feed me the right combination of juice and vegetables? I don't know. Little Tommy Howard just had powers, and he never cared where they came from. I hid them from everyone for years. My parents taught me to hide them and pretend that everything was normal. They told me that my powers would scare people. They told me that if I ever wanted to be accepted by the world, I had to pretend to be no different from any Tom, Dick, and Sue on the side of the street. So, I obeyed like a good boy should. I never questioned it. I honestly believed that everyone had my powers and we all had this silent agreement not to share them. My best friend for the first five years of my schooling was Rachel Cole. I was never the most popular kid, but she always found a way to include me in everything. She insisted that we were friends the moment she saw how scared I was on my first day of kindergarten, and she made sure I felt welcomed. She pushed me to ask Hannah Dover for a kiss in first grade and promised she'd be there to make sure I felt strong enough to do it. I know now that she just wanted to watch the show. It was my tenth birthday. She'd been pressuring me for the better part of two years. She could tell there was something I wasn't telling her, and I just decided eventually that I could be honest with her. She promised to accept me no matter what. I realize now that she thought I was gay. I don't think she expected my two, green, scaly dragon wings. As soon as I showed her, she promised that she would keep my secret no matter what. That night, a government agency claiming to be the FBI showed up at my house. You don't care about the details, I know, so suffice it to say, my parents tried to prevent them from taking me away, and were both shot. Special Agent Raymond Clarke was the name of the man who pulled the trigger. He was the forty-seventh man I ever killed. I escaped without harming anyone, and I tried so hard to convince myself that it was all just a coincidence... but I've never prided myself on any level of stupidity. It seems like the show was over for Rachel. I didn't know where she lived. She'd told me, but we always hung out at school. Her parents were weird about boys being friends with their daughter. I had to break into the school to get her address. I'm strong enough to rip solid steel apart with my bare hands. It wasn't hard to rip my way into the school to get her address. The FBI agents surrounding Rachel's house expected some winged boy to attack or arrive from outside. They didn't expect it at all when a mass of tentacles, muscle, claws, and wings burst from the house covered in Rachel's blood. My tenth birthday was the night I realized that no one who knew about my powers would ever see anything other than a monster. It was only a few weeks later when superheroes flew into the spotlight, starting when Peacekeeper stopped a terrorist attack on Chicago. Powerful men and women from across the world appeared in the hearts of every innocent person. I wanted to be just like them once, but their powers were looking beautiful and saving people. My powers were turning into a nightmare and scaring everyone. I was walking down a street, looking for either money or food when the course of my life was decided. It was two months short of my eleventh birthday, and I'd been living on the streets since Rachel took everything from me. There was a car accident. A semi-truck with one of those giant gas tanks for a trailer had gotten into a head-on collision with a moving truck. It was a huge pileup. If ever there was a time for me to become a hero, this moment was it, right? Wrong. I transformed. Wings, tentacles, claws, everything. I ran at the scene and started pulling people away. Yes, I know I'm unsettling to look at when I'm transformed, but it was the best way to hide my identity, and I truly did want to be a hero. And then the superhero showed up to help out. I don't remember his name. It was something like "Captain Silver" or "Silver Streak" or "Silver Shlong". I remember "Silver", but that's it. Maybe whoever reads this can figure it out. Obviously, the monster pulling people from the car crash and ushering them to safety was the cause of this whole thing. Obviously, the only option was to attack. I was terrified the whole time. A superhero had targetted me. We crashed through the gas tanker. Fire erupted from around us, covering the street. We wrestled until the asphalt gave way beneath us. I clawed at him desperately while he punched me over and over and over. He cracked me over the head with a giant pipe and got me in a headlock. I couldn't breathe, I couldn't think, but I could feel the bones in my neck straining while he twisted as hard as he could. Superheroes always seem to forget that if you're fighting someone with extra limbs, including tentacles, he doesn't have to only fight with the "normal" four limbs. Yes, I strangled him and broke his neck with my tentacles, but he was going to *kill me*. What choice did I have!? It was him or me, and I chose *me*. And I would do it again. Movies don't properly prepare you for the mental and emotional strain of killing someone. Yes, I know I'd killed before Silver, but I'd blocked it from my mind enough to focus on survival. But this was different. Newspapers, blogs, TV... everything had pictures and videos of this eldritch creature killing a superhero. "Demon kills Silver". "What is this monster that just murdered a hero?". "The tragic death of a hero. More at eight". I think I lost myself then. I took the name "Star Spawn". It sounded catchy enough for an eleven-year-old. Over the next several years, I became the world's most powerful supervillain. If they were going to fear me for no reason, I'd just have to give them one. I became everything they said I was. I became everything I hated, everything I wanted to avoid becoming. I killed five hundred eighty-six people over the course of my criminal career. No, I'm not counting the murders done by people working for me. Just mentioning the name "Star Spawn" in front of a hero would make the color drain from their face. I took a special sort of pride in that. Every villain and hero feared me. Except Peacekeeper. If you're older than six months, you know all about Peacekeeper. Hero from a distant world. The man who looks like us all, but with the power of a god. Strength to level mountains, flight faster than possible, more powerful than any bad guy ever. If anyone could defeat Star Spawn, it would certainly be Peacekeeper! Well, you'll all remember that short time about eight years ago, when I was fifteen, that I took over the United Kingdom. A lot of people have speculated on why I decided to do that. Honestly, I was bored and wanted to see if I could take over a country with just eight guys. Turns out that yes, I could. Well, who would show up to save the UK but Peacekeeper! The one hero who could stop the dreaded Star Spawn was on the case! I'd like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to Cardiff for turning it into a war zone. That was never part of the plan, and I really regret what happened. I was honestly there to get a game console when Peacekeeper arrived. I was a fifteen-year-old boy; of course I was there for something stupid. We crushed buildings and shattered rock. He was the first being I'd found since Silver that could actually cause me pain. It was my first challenge in five years. I was going to relish every moment of it. We fought for hours, destroying everything in our wake. Militaries arrived and tried to join in, but each vehicle was just a weapon for one of us to batter the other with. My claws couldn't cut him, his eye-beams couldn't burn me. We were just punching and fighting, turning the world around us into rubble. I'd never felt so alive. And then I killed Peacekeeper. It was quick. I had pinned him to the ground and used my tentacles to restrain him. I punched him in the throat over and over to keep him stunned and finally pulled him into a headlock. With one roar that could be heard from across Wales, I snapped his neck and ripped his head clean off. I kept his cape as a trophy. I still have it somewhere. I'll spare you the details of how I abdicated control of the UK. Every hero in the world showed up at my front door to avenge Peacekeeper, and I just transformed back into a scared fifteen-year-old boy. Thomas Howard was just scared because Star Spawn had captured him to keep as a hostage. He just wanted to go home. I think it was Peacekeeper's girlfriend that flew me back across the Atlantic and apologized profusely for everything I'd suffered through. That was good for a laugh or two. Killing Peacekeeper awoke something in me. It became a new challenge. How does one kill the unkillable? Every hero that fought me was a new puzzle to complete. What were their weaknesses? How hard of a punch could they take? What was the most mundane method I could use to kill them? What would my trophy be? Fifty-nine of my five hundred eighty-six kills were superheroes. I have trophies from each one. In my "evil lair", I actually had display cases for my trophies with the name of the hero, the date, and the method I used to kill them. If you ever find it, it's quite interesting. I believe my favorite was when I killed Cosmic Shield via his peanut allergy. And, just to debunk a myth, I did *not* eat superheroes. That would be disgusting. Fast-forward to my twentieth birthday. I was in Manhattan, planning out how to take over New York State and turn it into my own sovereign nation. To be fair, I was pretty bored, and I knew that heroes would flock from across the country to fight me for control of The Empire State. Also, I wanted my country to be called "The Empire State", so... you'll understand the situation. Anyway, I was sitting in this small mom-and-pop coffee shop, just a few blocks from Central Park, and the barista gave me a free refill without me asking for anything at all. She was cute, friendly, and probably the most clumsy and ditzy person on the planet. I've never claimed to be a wise man, but I'm also not completely stupid. No one is that clumsy by accident. She was obviously a superhero in disguise. Well, how much sweeter would the victory be if I could plan the hostile takeover while chatting with a hero? Or... or maybe getting lunch with her a few times. Or maybe going on a couple dates. Or maybe hearing about her struggles in life. Or listening to her talk about her dreams while she lit up with more excited energy than anyone I'd ever met. Or watching that weird, unnatural crease in her forehead whenever she got frustrated. Or maybe surprising her with breakfast at her apartment. Or maybe watching her dorky celebration dance whenever she beat me at anything. Or maybe sharing some of what I was afraid of. Or maybe finding out that she truly accepted and loved me. We got married about a year after we met. She told me she was the superhero known as "Skystrike" the night I proposed. I had people in place for my takeover of New York. They were supposed to wait two weeks... then five... then nine... And I think their official orders are now "standby". I don't remember. I don't care. Star Spawn was on hiatus. Tom Howard was now a lame, normal guy who worked at the DMV. Three days ago, she and I had just woken up and were talking about starting a family. We were thinking about maybe trying for a baby. She was insistent that we would have to name it "Erik" if it was a boy and "Cassidy" if it was a girl. Honestly, it's really hard to fight with her when she gets her mind set on things like that. And that's coming from the guy who killed Peacekeeper with his bare hands. Then, she got an alert on her "blue cell phone". Little known fact, most superheroes have a "blue cell phone". She gave me a quick kiss and suited up, and she flew off. I kicked on the news and just watched, waiting to see my wife kick some bad guy ass. But it wasn't just *some* bad guy. It was Worldender. Worldender had been a thorn in my side for the entirety of my criminal career. Anything I decided to do, he would either do it right after me, or he would try to do it before me. He was this stubborn idiot who tried so hard to claim that he was an original mastermind, but he was only a copycat. Let the record show that *all* of Worldender's ideas were *mine first*. The worst part about Worldender is that I knew he was stronger than my wife. I'd fought him once, and we came to a standstill. *That* was how powerful Worldender was. I just sat at the foot of my bed, panicking while I watched the live footage from his attack on the Chrysler building. He was fighting twelve superheroes at once, and he was winning. Then, everything was just... still. The reporter kept babbling about something. I don't remember what she said. Then Worldender took over the airwaves (which was also *my* thing). He had his own live broadcast to do. Every one of the twelve heroes that had attacked him were on their knees. Some unconscious, others just bound. They were all surrounded by his nineteen henchmen. Skystrike was sitting farthest from him, bleeding and terrified. I found myself begging for other heroes to show up. Someone had to do *something*. That was my *wife* sitting there. And then he killed the first hero on live TV. He said some other self-righteous garbage and killed the next. He was going to kill her. There are no words to describe the rage I felt. I wasn't thinking. I wasn't planning. I don't know how to describe my wife's face when *Star Spawn* burst through the wall of the floor she was on. Glass, stone, and steel rained down from around me while the camera turned to focus on the roaring beast that had just entered. Worldender's face was *priceless*. The terror in *everyone's* eyes when I roared was exactly what I needed. You saw the broadcast. I know you did. The only thing I saw was tentacles, bullets, blood, and flesh. I wonder what you saw. Fifteen seconds, and I had every one of Worldender's henchmen dead around me. Good luck finding all of the pieces. You watched me pin him to the ground. You watched me torture him. You watched me kill him. And now you know why I did. I smashed the camera. No one needed to see what happened next. I didn't set any of the bound heroes free. I didn't need that complication. I didn't make sure the unconscious ones were okay. I'm sure they're either fine or dead. Either way, not my problem. I grabbed two pieces of Worldender's armor, and then picked up Skystrike and flew out of there. She and I had a bit of a discussion about everything. But she'd known exactly who I was the whole time. Apparently, I'd written "Star Spawn takes Manhattan" at the top of the paper I was writing on. Probably not my most clever idea now that I think about it. She'd planned to get close to me to find out what I'd been planning in that coffee shop. She'd planned to take me down and bring me in, dead or alive, the instant I let my guard down. Like me, though... she kept postponing. She fell in love with me as much as I'd fallen in love with her. She knew exactly who I was, and she loved me anyway. She said she would only have changed her mind if I had kept doing criminal things... but I didn't want to. I wanted to see what would happen if I got to know this strange woman. So, we're leaving. Farewell, New York. Or we're not leaving. Either way, you'll have found this letter and this drawing I made of the two of us flipping you off, and you can take that as a sign that you will never see either of us again. Do not try to find us. Do not search for us. We've quit our "jobs" now. No more being a superhero for her, and no more being a supervillain for me. We've decided to be boring now. If you think you have a chance to track either one of us down, I want you to take a look at the object I left under this note. Yes, that is one of the two pieces of armor that I took from Worldender's suit after I killed him. And if you try to capture or arrest or hurt or kill my wife or me ever again... I'll just have another trophy to add to my collection.