Captain Cheerful and the Day the Smiles Went Missing

Chapter 1: A superhero whose only power is making people smile

In a busy city called Gloomsborough, where the buildings were gray, the sky was often gray, and most people hurried along with their eyes on their shoes, there lived a superhero.

His name was Captain Cheerful.

He wore a bright yellow cape, a pair of mismatched socks (one striped, one polka-dotted), and a mask shaped like a sunrise. His real name was Sam, he was eleven years old, and he had one superpower.

He could make people smile.

That was it. He couldn't fly. He couldn't lift cars. He couldn't see through walls or shoot lasers from his eyes. The other superheroes of the city, the ones on lunchboxes and billboards, thought his power was a bit of a joke.

"Smiles?" scoffed Titan Tom, who could bend steel with his hands. "What are you going to do, defeat a villain with a grin?"

"Maybe," said Sam, a little quietly.

"Ha!" said Titan Tom, and he flexed and flew off.

Sam looked at his mismatched socks. He wondered, not for the first time, whether a smile was a real power at all.

Still, he did his best. Every morning, he pulled on his cape and set out to work.