Superpower

Sai Srikar Valmiki, as I said in the stories before, was very shy and cowardly in his childhood. He was the most bullied child in his school. Though he was smart; his talent was never recognized just because he was bullied.

Almost every night, Sai Srikar Valmiki prayed to God to either give him the power to face the bullies or to make the bullies vanish or give him the ability to destroy them all. Of course, never did his wish to procure super power come true. This made the hope in him slowly vanish. 

He used to wish every night, but slowly every night converted into once in a week and eventually Sai stopped praying to God for super power at all. 

One day, during his summer vacations, Sai developed a habit of reading books, comic books especially. He used to borrow, buy or rent comic books from his friends and libraries. Tinkle was the only comic book he found. He liked it, the jokes were classic and the characters were unique. But after a few months of reading them, he found them to be a little routine, just because he read them a lot. He wanted to read something new. As he liked comic books, especially the funny ones (generally because he had only read Tinkle, which is mostly famous for its comical characters), he tried to read comedic novels and humor fiction. But he didn’t like them very much, because they were not as funny as Tinkle. He asked his friends to suggest a comic book and many of them suggested super hero ones. 

Though superhero comics were not humorous books, Sai decided to try one of them. He bought the comic book in which the story of a famous superhero was written. It was not an old edition and so it was not so costly.

He started reading it. It made place in Sai’s heart instantly! He liked it very much. From then on, Sai collected superhero comics.

It was July, and Sai’s exams were just around the corner. He was completing his term’s work when a bully approached him and asked Sai to complete his work too. Sai refused. This made the bully angry and he and his gang cornered Sai, after school, and beat him very hard. Sai somehow managed to escape from them. 

He was very sad because of this incident. He constantly prayed to God for super powers, just like the ones the super-heroes have, to defeat the bullies and get rid of them. 

On the day of his exams, Sai woke up and felt a kind of change in him. He ignored that feeling and started getting ready for his exams. He wore his uniform and was packing his bag. It was his math that day and so he looked all around for his geometry box. When he found it, he tried to open it but it was stuck. When he applied all his force, the lid of the geometry box separated from the container and flew across the room. 

Sai looked at the lid, which now laid in the corner, perplexed and amazed. He did not know what to do.

He decided to get the lid and lo! He reached the other side of the room in a split second.

Now, everything has been made clear. The superpowers he prayed (namely super-speed and super-strength) for had come true. He thanked God. He was very happy now; he was all set for defeating the bullies and scoring a 100 in the math exam.

He decided to go to school on foot and see how fast he could run. He stepped out of the house and started running, but this time the sensation was different. He started feeling like he was burning and then suddenly it was like he was on flame. He stopped running and tried to understand what was happening. Maybe it is due to all the friction, he thought. 

He decided not to run as he could literally burn to ashes. He was now only left with super strength. He wished he could fly, so that he could directly go to school without any turns. He tried to jump into the air, and as per his wish, he started floating!

He tried to move around in the air like superman does, but it was very hard. It was harder than moving in water. While he did all this floating, he started attracting a lot of attention and so decided to go up higher and fly. 

Unfortunately, he forgot that with higher altitude the temperature decreases. And so, it did. As he started soaring above the clouds (which took him a lot of time and energy) and suddenly he felt a cold breeze touch his cheeks. And gradually his hands, legs and face almost froze. He couldn’t move them. They were stuck. Due to this he stopped floating and dropped. He tried to move his body. It was a horrific incident. 

But he was lucky. When he was some 4-5 meters above the ground, he started floating again. He then decided never to fly or float so high. He now floated just at altitude from which he was not visible to people on the land.

But this idea was also a disaster. Every now and then a bird or insect would come in his way, hit his face, go into his clothes and in some or the other way irritate him. He got so annoyed that did some kind of dance in the air to scare away the miscreants that annoyed him so much. But in response more birds and insects surrounded him!

Out of anger he decided not to use his floating power and went back to the ground. When reached the ground, it was 8:30 am and his exam was scheduled for 8:45 that day. He was only half to school, and it would take at least 20 minutes to reach school from there.

In desperation he ran as fast as he could. This triggered the super-speed in him. This caused his body to burn and blister, but he ignored the pain and continued on his journey. 

Alas he reached school, and in only 5 minutes. But because of the friction, his body was all inflamed and his shirt’s sleeves had been torn and his pants became very dirty because of the dust particles in the air. All-in-all, Sai’s appearance matched that of a beggar.

Sai was the last one to enter school. It took him 5 more minutes to go to his examination hall. The examiner in that room looked at Sai’s appearance and for a second made an expression which is not only hard to describe but equally hard to recreate on a human face. Then the examiner took a deep breathe and told Sai where his seat was allotted. 

Sai reluctantly went to his seat and with a thump sat there. He was about to cry but then controlled himself. 

After a few minutes of attendance and final warnings about not to cheat, the examiner distributed the answer sheets and then the question papers. 

Sai was shocked to see the question paper. It was a science question-paper! He asked the examiner if it was the right question paper she had distributed. This irritated her a little bit, but she calmly answered his query. 

After the discussion, it turned out that Sai had prepared the wrong paper. Sai was a genius when it came to science, but it did not matter much because the answers of many small or important questions he did not know. He was very horrified. He was excited for the exams as he was sure he would have gotten at least 97% had he prepared for the science exam. 

In dismay, Sai started reading the question paper. Sai knew the answer to half of the question given there. He grudgingly started writing. He was very tense, instead of concentrating on answering the exam, he thought of how his parents would react, how his friends would react. He started becoming so scared that he accidentally triggered his super-strength. This caused his pencil to shatter into pieces.

After the exam ended, Sai had to submit a blank answer sheet. 

Suddenly, Sai woke-up with a dreadful start. Sai was very happy that this was just a dream. He was also happy that his exams were still 2 weeks away. 

After he got ready, the first thing did was make a timetable for his exam. He was still afraid that he would study for the wrong exam.