Gumdrop Man's Journal Entry 1

Gumdrop Man’s Journal

Since security protocols have not been met at the time of this writing, I will only reveal myself as The Gumdrop Man. My given name is not only unimportant, I don’t even know what it is. My code-name is confidential, for now.
I work for the Federal Bureau of Meta-human Recruitment. No, you’ve never heard of it and you won’t be able to find any information about it anywhere. There’s only one document that can verify it’s existence and that document is as secure as the President’s bed.
For the record, if you’re reading this, your security clearance is top secret/kryto/high filter. If it’s not, get some coffee. It’s going to be a long night.
I’m writing this journal to record events, and my relation to them, for future study. I’d like to say that I will still be alive when these words become subject to scrutiny by the United States Government. But, in this game, even the best die.
I’m not saying that’s the way it should be. I’m just saying that’s the way it is.
Understanding the game is the first step in playing to win. Winning, well, that’s another matter altogether. In this business, winning can be ambiguous.
We cleared an innocent man of murder today. He’d been on death row for five years. When he walked out of prison and embraced his mother, I nearly cried. The look on their faces is something I can’t even begin to describe. Other than it was a joy so profound it brought them to shuddering tears.
If I live to be a million, I doubt I’ll ever know that sort of joy.
We also buried one of our own today. A very lovely young lady who went by the code-name Windstar. She was just 15. In this business you can’t just tell these kids that they can’t go after the bad guys. As powerful as they are, they’ll do it anyway and we can’t stop them. The best we can do is help to guide them and try to protect them when they get in over their heads.
I so much want to say her name in this journal, to give an identity to the hero. I can’t, of course, she had family, and the previously mentioned unmet security protocols are why.
But she was so much more than Windstar. She was bright, funny and believed in being a hero. She gave up her dream of being an actress to fight crime. I saw her in a school play and she was brilliant. She even used her wind power to blow some papers off a desk, to distract the audience as she fed the lines to another actor in the play who had forgotten his.
It was priceless, a Mastercard moment.
She liked scary movies, peppered beef jerky and she could fight like hell. She was almost as good as SammiClown.
Yes, I’ll get to SammiClown soon. It’ll knock your socks off. But for now, I want to finish what I want to say about Windstar.
Her greatest moment as a hero came when she stumbled upon the JLA getting their asses handed to them by Deathstroke. Not to take anything away from Ollie, but he knows he wouldn’t have even had the opportunity to stick that arrow in Slade’s empty socket if Windstar hadn’t given Slade a little wind whoop under his butt.
She knew her power wasn’t the flashiest, but she knew how to use it to beat the bad guys. Ya gotta love that.
She died at the hands of a punk with a gun. He got lucky, she didn’t.
I watched as the man we cleared of murder climbed into his mother’s car. I was late for Windstar’s funeral, but I wanted to see every moment of justice coming true. If for no other reason than I could take that memory with me, to lean on it, as I paid my final respects to one of the great team players.
I also wanted to shove a bit of hope into my black as coal heart. This horrid game we play, us against them, it’s preposterous. But it’s just as true.
I’m the Gumdrop Man. If you don’t fear me, all the better for me.
If you do, you should. Because I not only believe in justice, I believe in revenge.