To Raphael, Commander, Guardian Corps:
Per your request, what follows is my final report as guardian assigned on William Schultz, aka Will the Teleporting Wonder, case 21-115. Preliminary biographical details are on file and noted in prior reports; to review, prior to the incident, Will was one of my best charges. I rarely had trouble with him at all. I can’t be certain, but I think his tempter had more or less given up any real efforts and was only phoning it in, as it were; some days I hardly saw him. The mortals aren’t perfect, of course, but this one was, well… he wasn’t bad, anyway.
Then one day he woke up and found out he could teleport.
I’m still not sure why. We’re not all-knowing, after all; only He is, and until He explains, this part of the report will remain a mystery. I’ve corresponded with our people in the Science Wing and in Communications, and I reviewed the records thoroughly. Will didn’t fall into a vat of chemicals, he isn’t secretly an alien, and he wasn’t bitten by a spider. It just simply happened.
The teleportation was straightforward as well. No flash, no sparks, no bamf noises. Will just wanted to be somewhere else, and there he was. His range and control grew with time. At first he could only go a few feet, and he couldn’t predict exactly how or when he could do it. (This led to a bit of unintentional comedy; see annex 3-f.) Then he learned. Soon Will was bouncinig all over his suburb. No one had seen him disappear or reappear yet, but he would unavoidably be noticed.
It was at this point that I felt I should intervene. I realize that we in the Guardian Corps don’t as a rule break cover, but this seemed an emergency situation, and you will recall we discussed and agreed a talk was appropriate (see attached). I approached Will in civilian form and let him know who I was and what I knew. He was startled, to say the least, but he seemed amenable to a bit of advice. He had already been thinking of a career as a first responder; I suggested he use his new ability to good effect. I realize now that I should’ve told him not to use it at all. I didn’t know.
We all know about the conscience: the capability of a human to recognize, if properly formed, when something is right or wrong. Most people, if they see a dog run out in front of them the road, will hit the brakes to avoid a collision. Many will, if not entirely stop at stop signs, at least slow down when passing them, as if to acknowledge that they exist and that the request to stop has been received, if not completely followed. Even a child on the playground will cry no fair! if another cuts in front of them in a line.
Will, on the other hand, had received and was growing daily the ability to bypass a basic law of physics. He could do something no one else could do, in every possible sense of the expression. He began to wonder what else he could do. Or should do.
Even then I didn’t quite see the danger. His first few saves were wonderful. The fire at the Thornald apartment complex where everyone was miraculously rescued, the shooting at Glen Road, the near-collision at the corner on Seventh… he was riding high.
Then he was rejected by the fire department training academy. Will had sent off the exam before the incident happened. He had also gone in for a physical, but again, this was before. He was upset. I had withdrawn from openly intervening again in hopes that the one would be enough; we want them to walk on their own, you know, but I was still keeping an eye. It wasn’t enough. I don’t know precisely whether it was something he drank or whether the tempter showed up at last, or a mix of both, but Will decided it would be a good idea to teleport to the academy and show them exactly what he could do.
He made it safely there, but the person who’d signed the rejection letter had already gone home. Will demanded to speak to someone, anyone. The anyone who answered was a tired captain who’d just come off a shift and, reasonably, wanted to know what Will’s problem was. Will began to explain, loudly and angrily. The captain, patience thin, told him to just go home and sleep it off.
Will, according to half a dozen witnesses, said, “Fine, you first!” and seized the man’s arm. Then he teleported. He had never before tried to teleport anyone else besides himself. He made it. The captain didn’t, mostly. His arm did.
Things spiraled quickly after that. The police naturally came after him. They found him fairly quickly; after all, his home address was on the rejection form and in the system. Once they tried to take in him, however, he vanished. He turned up again fifty miles away trying to use his credit card to get a hotel room. Soon the authorities were on their way, but by the time they got there, he was gone again. A video camera in the hotel corridor captured him disappearing into thin air, and the game was up.
The Feds got involved, his accounts were frozen, and the walls closed in. Will tried to flee to another country, but his powers didn’t reach that far yet. He tried to call friends, and the first friend he called offered refuge, not knowing anything yet. He teleported into their living room, scaring the daylights out of their dog, waking the household. Will was very hastily asked to leave.
Word spread. His other friends didn’t answer his calls. Then his phone was tracked. He was forced to live on the run, teleporting into stores and restaurants and out again for food, half-sleeping in case someone found him. Will wasn’t prepared for anything like this.
It ended when Will tried for the last time to teleport out of the country and into the Pacific. He was aiming for some island without extradition treaties. What he got was right in the middle of the ocean. The length and exhaustion of the jump disoriented him enough that he couldn’t focus to jump back, he didn’t really know where he’d jumped from, and anyway, he’d never learned how to swim.
They never found him. The case has been closed out on all official records. With this report, I have closed it out here as well. For further reference, see Winifred’s after-action report re: this case, filed in her official capacity as Death Angel on duty.
Respectfully,
Donny, Guardian Angel Corps, Second Class