“Want to go for a walk?”
“Hell yeah. Am I allowed?”
“I’ll need to make a few phone calls.”
■
Middle schoolers swarmed around a very unhappy looking team of Wards, pushing, jostling, calling out, reaching to touch armor and costumes. The overcast sky was only just clearing up, causing the colors in the park to be all the more vivid.
“Why?” I asked.
“Why are we here, or why is this happening?” Mrs. Yamada asked me.
“Yes.”
“This is happening because of you, in a roundabout way,” Mrs. Yamada said. “When your secret identity was revealed, it didn’t take the media very long to discover that you’d been bullied in high school.”
“Oh hell no,” I muttered.
“People asked why more hadn’t been done to reach out to you and individuals like you. This was the response.”
“I’m not sure this is a good thing,” I said. “These assemblies and events were always atrocious, with really bad speeches.”
“I saw enough of them when I was in high school, I know. But superheroes have the ‘wow’ factor, at least.”
I looked at the very uncomfortable Boston Wards. They had enthralled the kids, but they couldn’t do anything with them, with the crush of bodies. The teachers seemed to be enjoying the break, sitting on the far end of the field, in the shade.
“Want to wow them, too?”
I glanced at her.
“Not a fight, but a chance to be heroic. The PR that’s been forced on your head won’t be a handicap here,” Mrs. Yamada said. “And maybe it will help you feel a little more human, at a time when you’re worried about the monster inside you.”
“A little heavy-handed,” I commented.
“A lot heavy-handed,” she said, smiling. “But it’s a chance to be outside, instead of cooped up in yet another room, without worrying your life’s at risk.”
“I’ll take it,” I said. “Thanks.”
I ventured into the fray.
A hundred kids, all probably from one school. I almost would have rather been up against Bambina.
I called on every butterfly in the area, across the whole park. It took nearly a minute before they were gathered. I sent them into the crowd, flying over and around the mass of kids. Some of them screamed, others ducked, covering their heads.
Not quite the delight I’d hoped for.
Was this another point where I was underestimating what the effect of the swarm was, or were the kids just overreacting? It was only five or six hundred butterflies.
“Whoever catches the most wins!” I called out. “Go!”
The kids stared at me. Some were still reacting from the rush of butterflies.
“Go!” I said. “There’s a prize! A good one!”
They scattered.
Butterflies wove in around one another, around trees, out of reach and over heads, between legs and under tables. I watched the crowd, got the kids to bump into one another, gathered them into clusters where I had ten or twenty students running after one group of butterflies, conserving effort and increasing the confusion when two groups ran into one another.
When the mass of kids had burned off their initial energy, I joined the Wards, still controlling the butterflies.
“Thanks,” said one heroine in pale blue.
“A bit much?” I asked.
A guy with a fox mask said, “You can’t really interact with them when there’s this many. There’s no point.”
“Good memories,” I said. “Better than nothing.”
“But not great,” fox-mask said. “Good memories aren’t exactly why we’re here. Somewhere in that group, there’s kids who could be the next wave of capes.”
I watched the kids run. They’d succeeded in surrounding one group of butterflies, and some had taken off rain jackets to form improvised butterfly nets.
That kind of organization deserved a reward. On the flip side of things, they were liable to murder one another over a handful of butterflies. Competition trumped reason.
Making the butterflies simply rise into the air was too easy, and there were some kids who were sitting on each other’s shoulders, to get more height in anticipation of the tactic.
I swept up butterflies with dragonflies, carrying them out of reach, through the crowd.
Some of the kids rushed up to me, red in the face with exertion.
“You’re cheating!”
“Not fair!”
“I used to be a supervillain,” I said. “I’m allowed to be a jerk. Go! You two are in second place, but you’re falling behind while you complain.”
They gave me death glares, then ran off.
I focused on my power. The power I wasn’t entirely sure I could trust anymore, and I identified the stragglers. The ones without a group. The ones who weren’t participating, or who weren’t able to maneuver around the crowd, solitary in the midst of groups of friends.
“Can you guys do me a favor?” I glanced at fox-mask.
He nodded.
A few quick instructions, and the Boston Wards were mobilized, tapping on shoulders, saying hi to each of the ones I’d identified.
We gathered at the picnic tables.
“What’s the point of this?” one kid asked, a twelve or thirteen year old with hair draped over half his face. Never understood that hairstyle.
“A break can be nice,” I said. “Whether it’s from school or saving the world.”
“Inviting us here, I mean.”
“You want the cheesy answer or the real one?”
“Cheesy,” one heavyset girl said, with just a touch of snark.
“Cheesy answer is you didn’t seem interested in going squee over these guys, you didn’t feel like chasing butterflies, so I figured I’d invite you to hang.”
“It’s so fake, ridiculous,” she said.
“It is,” I said. “Fake can be good. Reality sucks sometimes.”
“What’s the real answer?” the guy with hair over his face asked me.
“The real answer is that this whole thing is a ploy by the good guys,” I said.
He rolled his eyes.
“They want to get on your good side, just in case you get powers,” I said.
He rolled his eyes again.
“Powers?” another kid asked. He was shorter than all the others, and his eyes were disproportionately large for his face.
“Powers,” I said. “And you guys, I’m thinking, are among the most likely to get them.”
I was getting funny looks.
“Do you know what trigger events are?” I asked.
He shook his head.
“Um,” one of the boy heroes said, “Not sure this is approved.”
I cocked my head, turning to the kid with the hair in his face, “See? It’s a ploy. Big secrets.”
“Not that big,” Fox-mask said.
“I didn’t find out about trigger events until months after I’d had mine,” I said. “It’s how you get superpowers.”
Okay, that had their attention. Twelve or thirteen pairs of eyes were fixed on me.
“It takes something pretty lousy to happen to you,” I said. “You get attacked, or you get hurt, or someone attacks someone or something you really care about, and you have nowhere else to turn, and you get powers.”
“It doesn’t work if you force it,” Mrs. Yamada said, approaching the table, “so don’t try.”
“Right,” I said, though I was digesting a tidbit of information I hadn’t had.
“Why are we going to get powers when they won’t?” another kid in our cluster asked me.
“Because you were alone. It’s a bit of a trend, I think, one I’ve noticed. I’ve seen a lot of powers, and I’ve seen a lot of people with powers who had similar things wrong with them. Labyrinth, Bakuda, Night, Fog, Mannequin, Siberian, Lung, August Prince… again and again, it’s their ability to communicate that’s missing, either because of their powers or be
cause they chose to hide or mask their voices. I was thinking about it, and I think we parahumans tend to be loners by nature.”
Which might explain why we struggle so much as a community.
“So you’re here to make nice, just in case?” the boy with hair in his face asked me.
“That’s the gist of it. I think the PRT’s cunning plan is to get you on board before you get powers.”
“As if,” the boy retorted.
“Hey,” fox-mask said, “Not cool. We’re trying to be nice here.”
I could see a scowl, the glance away on the kid’s face. I was put in mind of Regent for an instant. A similar personality?
“No, let’s be fair,” I said. “Being a villain’s an option.”
“You did not say that,” Fox-mask said, incredulous, “It’s not an option at all.”
The girl in blue looked at Mrs. Yamada, “Ex-villain’s corrupting the kids, and you’re not stopping her?”
Mrs. Yamada was frowning at me.
“I’m going somewhere with this, honest,” I said.
“If you’re sure,” she said. “I can stop you at any time.”
“You can.”
I looked at the gathered kids. A few of the less successful butterfly catchers had drifted away and approached.
“I always hated the speeches when I was in school, the preaching in auditoriums, the one-note message. Stuff like saying drugs are bad. It’s wrong. Drugs are fantastic.”
“Um,” Fox-mask said.
Mrs. Yamada was glaring at me, but she hadn’t interrupted.
“People wouldn’t do them if they weren’t. They make you feel good, make your day brighter, give you energy-”
“Weaver,” Mrs. Yamada cut in.
“-until they don’t,” I said. “People hear the message that drugs are bad, that they’ll ruin your life if you do them once. And then you find out that isn’t exactly true because your friends did it and turned out okay, or you wind up trying something and you’re fine. So you try them, try them again. It isn’t a mind-shattering moment of horrible when you try that first drug. Or so I hear. It’s subtle, it creeps up on you, and you never really get a good, convincing reason to stop before it ruins your life beyond comprehension. I never went down that road, but I knew a fair number of people who did. People who worked for me, when I was a supervillain.”
I had their attention now, at least.
This was probably going to hit the news as something like, ‘Ex-supervillain Wards member recommends drugs to kids’. Whatever.
Maybe I’d get a shit placement in the Wards, but I felt more like the Weaver I wanted to be.
“It’s the same, being a villain. I went there, I did that for a few months. Risked my life, hurt people, made an incredible amount of money, but I look back, and it wasn’t worth it. I value the people I got to know and love far more than I do the money, the power, the fame. They’re the only thing I regret leaving behind.”
“How much money?” the heavy little girl asked, grinning.
“You’re missing the point,” Fox-mask said.
“Fifteen or twenty million,” I said, ignoring him.
“Shhh-ugar,” one of the heroes muttered, just behind me, deciding on a new word midway through.
“That’s so worth it,” a kid said.
“I think this is bordering on counterintuitive,” Mrs. Yamada said.
“Do you have a piece of paper?” I asked.
She only frowned at me.
One of the young heroes, a boy with goggles, handed me a pad of paper.
“Pen?”
He handed me a pen.
“What’s your name?” I asked the boy with hair in his face.
“Ned.”
I wrote it down. “Ned. And you?”
I got the names of all of the kids I’d picked out. The stragglers. Maggie, Bowden, Ryan, Lucas, Jacob, Sophie… the list went on. Fifteen kids in all.
I ripped off the sheet, then tore another sheet into squares. “More pens?”
The goggle-guy handed me a handful of pens.
“Each of you write down the most horrible thing you can think of, that you can reasonably expect to happen to you in the next few years. No need to get too complicated. Think of something horrible that would give you a trigger event. Write it down.”
I waited while each of the kids wrote something down. Other kids were gathering now, but they’d be bystanders. It was the stragglers who were the focus now.
“Hand your sheet to the person to your left. Boston Wards, help me on this score. We’re going to make up powers that sort of fit the trigger events, in a vague way. No need to be specific.”
“If it helps,” Mrs. Yamada said, “More mental powers for mental stress, physical powers for physical stress.”
“She’s the expert,” I said. “Let’s go.”
“I want to pick my own power,” Ned said.
“Too bad. You don’t get to in real life,” I said. “You think I wanted bug powers?”
By the time we’d finished, more of the butterfly catchers had come back. They were watching, now.
“Ned gets the ability to fly.” I’d left him for last. “And some sort of ranged attack. Kind of like Legend.”
“Sweet.”
“But no power is really that simple. So… you fly by blowing. Like a balloon with the end untied, only with more control. You attack by blowing too.”
“No! That sucks!”
“Too bad,” I said. “It’s not all fun and games. What was your trigger event, Maggie?”
The heavyset girl frowned, blushing a little. “Um. Someone chopped my wiener off. How does that-”
“It doesn’t matter,” I said. Someone hurt you badly, and you got a more physical power?”
“Reynard said I got super strength, and regeneration.”
She looked at Fox-mask. I had his name now.
A little boring, whatever. “Okay. Now, on the back of the sheet, write down whether you’re a hero or a villain. Your choice.”
“This has got to be a trap,” she said, “So hero.”
“Okay,” I said. “And do you join the Wards, or no?”
“Join us,” Reynard whispered, urging her.
“Kind of seems like a pain.”
Reynard groaned. “I’m wounded!”
“So you’re on your own, or you join another group?”
“Another group.”
“Okay. And… Bowden?”
The kid smirked. “Screw that. I want fifteen million dollars. Villain.”
“Okay. Ryan?”
We went around the circle, until everyone had their affiliation.
“I don’t suppose you’d have any dice?” I asked the Wards.
The goggle-hero handed me a handful of dice.
“Oh shit,” Ned said, “You conned us into playing dungeons and dragons!”
“Nothing so complicated,” I said. “Roll, Ned. A three is bad luck about your powers, a two is bad luck about your life as a cape, and a one is really bad luck.”
He rolled. A three.
“Aw, what? No!”
“Okay,” I said. “Your powers came with a drawback.”
“I blow air! I already got screwed.”
“Your power came with the ability to understand air currents, which you need to fly,” I said. “But they erased something else. Your sense of direction is gone, unless you’re using it to fly. Wherever you go, you get lost. It’s bad enough that you can’t do anything on your own. Unless someone here asks you to join their team, your life is ruined.”
“What?” He asked. He glowered. “Fuck you.”
“Language,” Fox-mask warned.
“It happens,” I told the kid. “Let’s hope others have more luck.”
We went around the table, there were a few more with bad luck. I found it interesting when the Boston Wards volunteered penalties. One involved a trigger event so public that a kid had to abandon the idea of a secret identity. Another was t
raumatized by theirs, and wouldn’t get a good night’s sleep for ten years.
“Now let’s talk about what you do with your careers,” I said. “Ned? You found a team, and your power’s pretty good, so let’s say you win a fight against the heroes on a two or better.”
He rolled, “Six!”
“Now you fight other villains, who want to steal the money you just got. Roll.”
“I’m a bad guy, I’m not fighting them!”
“Bad guys fight villains and heroes,” I said. “But you can give up the money if you want to run.”
He scowled, shaking his hand in anticipation of rolling, dragging it on far too long.
“And because bad guys don’t always play fair, these guys kill you if you roll a one, and they win on a two,” I added.
He rolled. A two.
“Money gone, you’re hurt, embarrassed, but still alive. Maggie, your turn.”
The exercise continued. Once we had a general system in place, crude rules or no, the Boston heroes took up the job, until each of us had three ‘capes’ and a small crowd of spectators.
“I’m not sure I get the point,” Maggie said, after a few rounds. She looked a little nervous with a crowd looking over her shoulder.
“Okay,” I said, clapping my hands. “Villains, raise your hands.”
They did.
“If you’re dead, maimed or in jail, lower your hands.”
More than half of them did.
“Heroes, raise your hands if you’re okay.”
Most of the other kids raised their hands.
“Sophie chose to be a rogue,” Fox-mask said, “She’s been in one fight, but she came out okay.”
“You’re screwing the villains,” Ned said. “It’s not really one fight after another.”
I opened my mouth to speak, but was interrupted.
“Being a villain is hard,” Mrs. Yamada said. Odd as it was, she seemed to have a measure of authority I didn’t, here. Weird, that the kids would listen to her because she was an adult, and not someone who’d actually been in the thick of it.
Weird and frustrating.
“One in twenty might make it in the long run,” I said. “If they’re lucky, if they’re good, if they have friends they can count on.”
“Pat yourself on the back a little more,” Reynard said, a little sarcastic. The girl in blue elbowed him.
I made sure to look each of the participants in the eye as I spoke, “I wasn’t satisfied doing what I was doing, as a villain. I switched sides by choice. Think about that. Even after all of that, after everything I had, even though I felt pretty good, spending all of that money on helping people in my neighborhood, being front page news, I gave it up.”
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