Every 28 days, like clockwork, you punish me for every missed opportunity, for not giving you want you want, what you need. You plan it all out, no detail overlooked, every part of you is ready: the mind prepared to teach, arms strong enough to embrace and lift up, lips primed to speak gentle words, and a heart so full, so willing, it strains. You wait, anticipate, like a child on Christmas eve dreaming of the bliss to come, but Christmas never comes; we are both left wanting and time is waning.

To truly know the start of a story, the reader must understand this: things have to change. The end and the beginning cannot look anything like each other.

My beginning was a little strange for those around me, but I got used to it. In the beginning, getting too caught up in a train of thought during biology class leading to my feet and legs beginning to crack, shift, and rearrange into the limbs of various bugs was hard to deal with. Impossible, even. But it got easier with time.

In time, I learned to control myself. I learned to focus on the image in my head, learned to pick and choose my battles. Sometimes, it was worth it to be the bull someone needed to stop a car, the horse someone needed to get away, the lion someone needed to scare the thief.

The ‘sometimes’ got harder to choose. I wondered if I was in control of my own powers, if they led my train of thoughts instead. One time, in my bedroom, I made my choice. I made my choice with fur and fangs and ears and paws, and my choice made me with guts and sinew in my teeth. I made my choice; Jason made his too, when he got in that argument with me.

Every end must be different from its beginning. In the beginning, I was a hero. Maybe even a superhero.

In the end, it’s not shapeshifting if I’m the monster, is it?

My name is Kid Kaboom; I explode. I am a sidekick, and, as is often the case, I get kidnapped, strapped to some deadly contraption, and then used as bait for super-folk. Heroes tend to take it and so, one day (unsurprisingly) Doctor Kill surprised me. I dropped a catchphrase, a few one-liners, and then (one conk of the head later) I woke up in his lair. Standard procedure for sidekicks would be to endure the torture (usually quite light), listen to a diabolical soliloquy, and then basically wait for rescue. But that day, I just had it. As super-villains go, Doctor Kill is pure third-rate: his lair obviously rented, his costume so Halloween-Clearance-Sale, and his evil plans ill-conceived and lame. I was done. As the Doctor composed his ransom, I said my magic word–– and I exploded. The Kill-Zone was decimated, the Death-Ray incinerated, and my afternoon suddenly free. From there on out, that is what I did. Was it right or wrong? Who knows, but I sure did kill more super-villains that way.