People don't realize. When you make soup, everything goes in. There's no "extra tomatoes" or "leftover ham" or "excess of garlic," it's all just soup. It boils down, and in the end, nobody really cares if it's potato or rutabaga that make those squishy lumps.

The other heroes don't understand. There's a patience to soup. They want results now! They want to be in the news, given awards, get famous. It's not worth it though. They make fun of me, but I don't mind. I like my soup. It's an art.

I stared up at the sky. I couldn't see it yet, but I could feel it. It was a big meteor, so it took some thought, but that's just prep time. Every soup takes prep time. If it took no time at all, everyone would make soup. I concentrated... I could feel it, moving fast, careening towards this little blue marble, a one in a billion shot. It wasn't big enough to wipe out all life, of course. People would survive. Maybe not a lot of people, but people. The other heroes... Well. At least some of them tried. Ultimate Mask died trying, which is a lot more than most of them managed. No imagination... Most of them left, or hid in the other side of the planet.

I began making my soup. Boiling it down, melting the fat and breaking bonds. It wasn't fast work. Increase the temperature... Transmute the base properties of nickel and adjust the bonds on all that carbon. Boil off the extra liquid. I pulled in some atmosphere as the newscasters started making their overly-calm end-of-the-world claims, just for flavor. And then I held out my bowl, and...

Bloop. There it was. Steaming perfection: Italian Wedding Soup. I chose it because it was meatier. Ha! Food humor. I glanced around. There were a few heroes who gallantly stuck around to try to stop the full extent of the damage, but not many. Most looked confused, but one older fellow caught my eye and gave me a bit of a nod. I could see the fear in his eyes. He understood. Not many did, but he did.

Young heroes love to make fun of me. They think my name is stupid. It's not as stupid as "The Whizzer" though. It's just my name: Stu. They say I don't have a nemesis because I'm so "lame." It's not true, of course. I used to have a nemesis, years ago - the Sandwich Artist. Killed a family and made them into sandwiches. Nobody heard of him again, he just vanished one night.

Soup night.

I really do love soup...