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howtohero · 4 years

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#243 Teen Teams (Adults Read This!)

As we have mentioned many many times, bringing a teenager with you to a fight is a terrible idea. They get in the way, they’re always texting, and they’re not old enough to drink away their pains so any physical or psychological pain that they endure in the line of duty is going to stick with them forever. So, it goes without saying, you definitely shouldn’t bring two teenagers to fight the Living Bitning. (That’s like living lightning, except it bites you. Rude.) Then, it would also follow, that if you shouldn’t bring two children to a fight then you definitely shouldn’t bring three. And so on and so forth... or so you would think. According to groundbreaking research published by Professor Lucius Flay in his award winning book The Big Book of Fake Science, there is actually a good number of teenagers that one could bring to a super-battle. Who would’ve thunk! Unfortunately, Flay did not actually present this golden number with his research. So it’s anybody’s guess. And believe me, everyone has guessed. Ever since then, teenagers who have an insatiable thirst for justice, adventure, and missing school have joined together (presumably because they’ve read this dense research) to fight evil wheat spirits, or any other evil goon, ghoul, or Genghis Kahn out there, and look cool doing it.

Teen teams are like regular teams, except they’re worse in every way. You see, a team of adult superheroes, who pay bills and have responsibilities can pretty much be self-sufficient once it is established. They don’t need to bother any other heroes, or take them away from their important world-saving tasks, every five minutes. Teenagers on the other hand, owing to the fact that they are literally children can’t be trusted to do anything on their own. At the same time though, they’re far too stubborn to actually accept help. So what the heck are you supposed to do with that! Well, basically, you have to help them without them ever knowing that you’ve done anything. Which is not going to be fun at all.

You may be thinking, if these bratty teens don’t want our professional, experienced help, then so be it! They don’t deserve our help. Well, that’s not very superheroic of you is it? Remember, these literal children are literally children who have decided to throw themselves head first at every zombee, octoman, and hellpigeon they come across. (A hellpigeon is like a hellhound except it is a bird so it’s 80% more evil.) If you’re not going to protect children then what are you even doing here? And yeah, children are going to be snooty, and they’re going to think that they’re big kids, and they’re not always going to say thank you. But that doesn’t matter. Not when you’re a superhero. And especially not when you need to be setting a good example for these impressionable kids.

The easiest way to keep teen teams out of trouble is to never invite them to come fight crime with you. If you ever find that your team is shorthanded for a given mission (like a doubles-tennis tournament to save the world but you’ve got an odd number of team members) then feel free to call one of the thousands of adult superheroes to lend a hand. You might think that inviting teen teams to join you for crime fights is a great idea, because it allows you to actively help them without being discrete about it, and you can easily keep an eye on them. But this is wrong, and you should feel bad for having such wrong thoughts. Teenage superheroes are often not very resourceful and they have very limited networks, so it is unlikely that they will actually be informed of any crimes happening that they can’t see from their window. If you don’t invite them to fight crimes, they might never fight any crimes and that’s good because they’re underage! Plus, teen teams are rife with petty high school drama. If you actively spend a lot of time with them, you’re definitely going to get sucked into that and that’s the last thing you want! Teenagers are mean! They might make fun of you and there’s nothing you can do about it because superheroes don’t make fun of children! It’s horrible!

Still, you can’t completely ignore teen teams, otherwise they’re likely to just loiter outside of your hideout and follow you when you go to fight supervillains. Instead, you should invite them to come help with non-combat missions. We’ve spoken at length about other ways superheroes can help their communities and the world around them, even when they’re not fighting crime, and there’s no reason teen heroes can’t help out with stuff like that. Bring them on humanitarian aid missions or just to perform acts of kindness in their hometowns can go a long way towards molding them into the kinds of people who can make real good adult heroes one day.

Unfortunately, keeping teen heroes away from supervillains is not the same as keeping the supervillains away from the teen heroes and you’ve gotta do both. Teen heroes are often all about the glory and all about the fame. They’re not going to be private about the fact that they’re young, inexperienced superpowered do-gooders and that’s like catnip to supervillains. They’ll have big gaudy hideouts (they seem to think that the reason adult heroes have secret hideouts is because adults are lame and not because they value being able to live in peace without fighting off a supervillain attack every five seconds) with flashing lights and possibly a speaker system that blasts their theme song at all hours of the day and night. They’ll have giant sculptures of themselves, a glow in the dark decor, a giant dragon statue on the roof! It’s obscene! So you have to basically act as secret guardians for this egregious eyesore. If their hideout is in on a mountain, you’re gonna have to spend your days climbing that mountain whilst fighting supervillains. If their hideout is in the sky, you’re gonna have to say goodbye to the ground for days at a time. If they’re on an island I guess you just goddam live in the ocean now! Sorry! The alternative is trying to talk them out of some of the more gaudy accouterments but something tells me these no good teens are just gonna flip you double birds and then do a backflip out of the nearest window. Who knows where they learned that from!

Still, teenage superheroes aren’t all bad, and adult superheroes can actually learn a thing or two (but no more than two) from them. For example, teenage superheroes are often too young to be jaded by the non-stop cycle of fighting supervillains, only to find them back at it again a week later. They’re still full of hope and optimism and a sense of wonder that I think older heroes can really learn from. Plus, you gotta admit, that roof dragon looks cool. Honestly, you should look into that.

In a world of fantastically powered heroes it is not surprising that children would be inspired to follow in their footsteps. They’re going to want to get out there and mix it up with a Sasquatch or a Dracula. (I’m referring here not to vampires in general, but just specifically to that time Dracula bought a cloning-machine and really went crazy with it but then immediately lost interest and kind of just let the clones roam free.) Your job now is to protect those kids, and make sure they survive long enough to be competent adult heroes. Plus, hey, you might get that Flay golden number!

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