Ryan Richards adjusted his silver-blue striped tie in the mirror on the wall as the theater walls reverberated with noise. He made sure the tip ended in the middle of his belt buckle like his father had once taught him, and wished for the first time in his life that he knew how to do more than just a double windsor.
Maybe Kurt can teach me another knot. Lucas probably just has Carrie do it for him.
“Kurt said the podium is ready.” Lily reported, brushing a hand lightly across his back as she stepped past him towards the table. “And the invincible one with the Fabio hair is already on stage getting them warmed up, so you’re on next.”
“Matt.” Ryan said, offering up “the invincible one’s” name. His eyes and thoughts flickering from the mirror over to her as he finished adjusting his tie. “Though we usually just call him Smith.”
“Right, Smith. Officer Smith.” Lily agreed, setting something down on a nearby table and turning to face him with a shy, yet slightly amused smile on her face. “The funny one.”
“The funny one.” Ryan echoed, though his train of thought had just been interrupted by the outfit Lily had chosen to wear.
Not because she was wearing some flashy, expensive dress. Quite the opposite. As the only one of them not appearing on stage tonight, the lovely red-haired biologist had instead chosen to keep her outfit for the day simple. She was wearing a loose-fitting green knit sweater that fell down over one shoulder with a tan cotton t-shirt underneath and a pair of ripped blue jeans. Blue jeans that were currently sporting fresh dirt on the knees which had probably come from his family’s farmland. Farmland that Lily had been so kind recently as to visit and help him set back up with a number of crops.
Not that Ryan’s thoughts were on the crops any more than his eyes were on her knees.
Damn that is a cute smile.
“How do I look?” The editor asked, giving her a wide grin of his own and spreading his arms in a sweeping gesture towards his outfit. “Good enough for ‘government’ work?”
One of Lily’s eyebrow’s raised, and her eyes roamed down and up him quickly as if only now allowing herself permission to do so. Her reaction was quick. Both cheeks flushed a soft pink color, and some of Lily’s normal reserve that she carried in nearly all social situations fell away. She looked up at him with eyes that told him everything she thought about his outfit, and stepped in close as his arms fell slowly down around her. Meeting her gaze, the editor affected mock surprise.
“Someone’s getting brave.” He muttered, without a hint of judgement before leaning in to kiss her.
“I wanted to get you before you changed for your speech.” Lily murmured, returning his affection and pressing her small fingers into his back. This was not the first time they had kissed recently. Even though their few encounters had not gone much further, Ryan still enjoyed them. They were markedly different from the ones he had had with Renee and together, the two of them made several more moments pass far too quickly for the editor’s taste.
When she came back up for air, Lily put one stiff finger to his tie and pushed off, bringing the fingers of her other hand up to her lips as if inhaling from them as she stepped back. Her eyes were closed, and Ryan wondered how such a small, innocuous gesture could make a woman look even more entrancing when she was kissing you.
“Not fair.” Lily breathed out, her eyes slowly opening and meeting his own.
“Plenty fair.” Ryan shot back, not backing down an inch. “You knew what was going to happen when you walked in here.”
As the editor moved in for another round, not quite having had enough, Lily reached behind her and pushed what she had carried into the room with her towards his hands.
“Your speech notes.” Lily explained, and there was a decidedly college-professor lilt to her voice that went directly to the primal part of his brain and shortcircuited Ryan’s entire train of thought. “You forgot them on your desk when you left.”
She brushed past him again towards the door and by the time Ryan’s mental faculties had recovered, Lily had already left the room. The editor stared after her exit, his mind playing out various scenarios and things he might say in order to make such encounters play out in a more interesting fashion in the future. Several of these scenarios passed in their entirety before the editor actually looked down at the papers she had given him.
There wasn’t terribly much there. Just notes on what he could or should say in various scenarios, and highlights with prepared arguments in case he was challenged. Ryan skimmed over the topics he had planned to cover, using them as a distraction for his mind from the bodily reactions Lily had left him with. When he was done, the editor nodded to himself and put his notes back down.
Thanks to his recently increased intelligence, Ryan didn’t actually need the papers with him in order to recall their contents. Something he was sure Lily had known, but the physical nature of them had still been nice to have. Relaxing his mind, the editor took in a deep, calming breath.
This crowd is only going to be people you already saved. Nobody is going to try and kill you tonight, so there’s no reason to be nervous. Ryan mentally reassured himself, grateful that his wooden hand at least did not shake. He didn’t understand why public speaking triggered a nervous response in him, especially after all he had been through, but it wasn’t like fighting it would help. Just get up there and you’ll be fine.
That last thought was similar to what Sheila had told him not two hours ago, and so the advice of the dark dwarf in charge of all of his group’s construction efforts bubbled back up in Ryan’s mind.
“Don’t worry yer pretty little head about the crowd, lad. They’re already in awe of ye. Just don’t drop off the stage on accident or anything an’ you’ll be fine.”
Shaking his head and wondering how you could fall off an almost completely flat stage, Ryan left the room. Lucas was in the hallway on the other side, not ten feet from the door. The now-even-more jacked wolfman was dressed in a lumberjack-style suit of his own, and looked like a beefed up Paul Bunyan headed in for a business meeting. Ordinarily, Ryan would have cracked a joke about that, but he decided to leave it be for now.
“Feeling a bit more relaxed?” Lucas asked with an amused expression. The big wolfman fell into step beside Ryan as the pair headed towards the stage. “Because Lily didn’t seem to be.”
“Carrie?” Ryan asked, having a gut feeling as to who had pointed Lily in his direction. Not that he had minded the pointing, but she had originally been planning on being elsewhere at this hour. Her presence had been a welcome one, but Ryan hadn’t expected her.
“Carrie.” Lucas acknowledged. “She saw you going over your notes and heard you practicing your speech outside again last night. Said it looked like you hadn’t slept.”
“Ah. Well, she’s not wrong. I haven’t been getting much of that.” Ryan admitted easily. Then, because it was Lucas and he knew the big man would listen to him, he opened up a bit further. “There’s just too much to do. Too many things to build or repair. People or kids who need my help or who have families that do… feels a bit selfish to just let myself sleep the night away when I could just throw some energy down and keep working.”
“You think we’re so far behind the power curve out there that we can’t afford to let you sleep?” Lucas asked slowly, and the question wasn’t a hostile one. It came with the same easy, judgement-free tone the wolfman always seemed to have during difficult conversations.
“I don’t know.” Ryan said with a sigh as they turned a final corridor towards the stage. “Captain Stone is supposed to be back tonight with his report after scoping out the other towns. Depending on what he’s got for us, I guess we’ll find out.”
Lucas nodded, and the pair of them walked towards where the editor was due to give his speech. Before Ryan could ascend the wooden stairs however, Lucas clapped him encouragingly on the shoulder and gripped it tight in the way men often reassure one another before one of them does something important.
“You’ll do fine up there, man. If they don’t like the pitch…” Lucas shrugged his two broad shoulders, the motion almost akin to that of a shaggy bear. “Then fuck ‘em. We can always go somewhere else.”
Ryan chuckled in spite of himself and shook his head at his friend’s casual dismissal of anyone who might not want to join up before ascending the stairs once more. As he did, Ryan called back down to his friend.
“I think Carrie’s bluntness is rubbing off on you.”
Lucas muttered something under his breath about how that was actually something he enjoyed, but Ryan didn’t catch the rest of it. He was too busy crossing over onto Arborville Zoo’s main stage where ‘Officer’ Smith was busy animatedly retelling the story of how he had once been trapped inside a house-sized boulder for several days straight. The crowd in front of him was full of hard-looking citizens actively trying to maintain straight faces as Smith pantomimed having to dance in place to pee. Many were failing and more than a few were laughing outright at the spirited reenactment.
When his old family friend met Ryan’s eyes, the former officer made an exaggerated wince as if he had been caught in the act, and suddenly the editor’s anxiety at what he was about to do fled away all at once. Ryan couldn’t help it. Smith just looked too ridiculous. Despite the hundreds of eyes that were now locking onto him, he laughed openly at his friend as he continued moving forward.
Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.
“Annnd that’s where I’ll zip it up, seeing as our main event has now finally arrived.” Smith said, closing out his story and twisting from his compromised position into a sweeping bow. With his rear hand, Smith tossed the microphone backwards.
Ryan caught it smoothly with his enhanced reflexes, despite not having planned that, and clapped his friend off stage along with the rest of the crowd. Then, after a few more stage-departing antics that elicited another round of laughter, Ryan turned to face them fully. He let the amusement and good humor die down a second before beginning to speak.
“Good evening, everyone. I–” Ryan’s speech was suddenly interrupted before it could even start by a squat, muscled man with waist-thick forearms and honest-to-god diamonds for eyes.
“You the one what took out that mayor fella?” The man drawled in a deep southern accent, and Ryan quickly activated his power on the heckler who looked vaguely familiar. “Marcus or whatever the gripe ‘is name was?”
Name: Bobby Forehill
Age: 36
Race: Diamond Dwarf
Superpower:
Metal Detection: Grants the capability to detect other sources of minerals matching the chemical makeup of one held by the user at a distance of up to 1 kilometer away (distance based on intervening materials).
Not a fighter, then. Ryan thought, fighting down a sudden surge of adrenaline as he maintained his composure. They had tried to screen everyone coming in, but doing so was never foolproof.
“I am.” Ryan said confidently into the microphone, his voice booming off the walls of the suddenly silent theater. To his surprise, the man’s response sounded almost ashamed.
“Well then I apologize for interruptin’ yer speech here, but I ain’t done clappin’ yet.” Bobby said, turning around to face his fellow citizens. The diamond dwarf raised his voice until it was nearly as loud as Ryan’s own had just been, which was impressive given that only one of them had a microphone. “An’ none of you lot are neither, I suspect. So how ‘bout we give this man here a proper ‘thank you’ for saving our sorry asses, hmm?”
Without any hesitation, the rest of the assembled townsfolk immediately began to applaud. It was the kind of unplanned opening show of solidarity that most speakers could only dream of. There were cheers, shouts, and Ryan even saw several appreciative nods of respect, but none of it was in jest. The humor that had filled the theater just moments ago was gone, replaced by a gratitude so genuine and profound it caught the editor off guard.
Everyone present participated, even those on stage behind him, and Ryan straightened his own back as the people of his hometown gave him a standing ovation. He didn’t rightly know what to do in that moment, so he raised the polished mahogany of his left hand into the air. It felt like the right thing to do. To Ryan, the gesture was one of humble acceptance, rather than what a politician might give his supporters. Which, if anything, seemed to intensify the applause.
When the tumult finally began to die down several minutes later, Ryan raised his microphone back towards his lips. Pride and relief surged through him as he spoke.
“Thank you. I didn’t expect–” Ryan’s voice caught on his emotions, but he pushed through them. “Thank you. There are several things we need to discuss as a community together tonight, and I can’t think of a better segue than the one you just gave me.”
There were a few scattered grins, several laughs, and Bobby crossed his arms. The diamond dwarf eyed his fellow citizens for another second, as if daring anyone else to interrupt, then gave Ryan a gruff and somehow supportive nod.
“The first thing I will share to start us off is that the rumors are indeed true. I can grant powers. I can also change anyone or anything here into whatever I can dream up with enough energy, and most importantly – I can bring back our dead. All of them. Everyone we or anyone else lost.”
Stunned silence followed that pronouncement. Nobody clapped for that one, not even Bobby.
Everyone present had sworn a blood oath to get in here. It didn’t bind them to serve Ryan’s goals or anything, just prevented them from discussing what they heard tonight with anyone who hadn’t also sworn the oath. Most were the heads of their respective families, and this audience didn’t contain the entire town. Not by half. Even so, there were a few additional caveats in the oath itself that would help prevent the information from being inadvertently or purposefully leaked, and so the editor felt reasonably confident he could speak freely. Besides…
Gotta give them a reason to believe in me if the rest of this is going to go as well as it started.
“That ability doesn’t come without some caveats.” Ryan said quickly, heading off the deluge of questions he could almost feel bubbling up within the crowd before him. “The primary one being that I need energy to do these things. Lots of it, and far more than we have available to us right now. In order to resolve that particular problem, I am going to need your help in order to bring your loved ones back to you.”
The evolutionary kickstart that had triggered the near-apocalypse nearly two months before, or the ‘trigger’ as it was now being called, had taken someone from everyone. Ryan hadn’t been able to get accurate numbers, but given how widespread Americans had been geographically before it all went down, the percentage loss of family and loved ones had been astronomical even before their former mayor had gone on a murder and kidnapping spree.
What the editor was offering now, so long after that grief had had time to take firm root, must have sounded nearly too good to be true. But because he had known that going in, Ryan had planned to counter that perception. Again, he spoke before the questions could come, doing so with the confidence that only came from being perfectly honest.
“We – and I mean those who are already with me, not just myself – have managed to restore the city’s grid, and the power plant is back online. Thanks to that, we’ve also managed to set up enough nearby energy for a demonstration to prove that I can do what I’ve claimed. And because I don’t want to hold off reuniting that individual with their fallen, I’m going to move right on to the crux of our problem here. The reason I’ve brought you all here tonight.”
The stares of the hundreds watching the editor intensified, and again Ryan could feel the crowd’s mood shift as he spoke. Feel their emotions begin to track his own, and their anticipation collectively rising as the crowd leaned in to hear his next words.
“Marcus did not act alone. He did not rise to power by himself, and he only stayed in power thanks to the support of someone who is – by all accounts – far stronger than our now-departed ‘mayor’ ever was.” Ryan paused a beat to see how that statement landed, but it looked like many in the crowd had already come to a similar conclusion. Good.
“That particular supporter goes by the name: ‘The Patriot’. A man who abuses the term to get others to follow him and apparently ‘collects’ those with unique powers. Marcus was sending him anyone the mayor could get his hands on, trading them for the resources he was distributing here. That, we suspect, alongside his own power, was how Marcus was able to take over so quickly.”
Ryan felt like pacing across the stage as he spoke, but Kurt had coached him to stay in one spot the entire time. To stand firm and not fidget.
“Doing so will project the confidence they need to see.” Kurt had instructed him. “Stay rooted, and they will naturally focus on you. Move, and they will focus on your movement. So don’t move.”
The editor followed his old friend’s advice.
“Our problem now is that the Patriot has been pulling the same disgusting game on a number of cities across the states. We don’t know the full extent yet, but we know ours was not the only one. We also know he is aware that deliveries are no longer being made from here, and if we have anything to say about it, there will be even fewer coming to him soon.”
There were nods of approval at that comment, and a great many serious or contemplative faces staring at him besides. Several seemed to pick up on where he was going with this, and those who did raised closed fists towards him in solidarity. Which Ryan had to admit made what he was about to say a lot easier to get out.
“Ask my friends–” Ryan gestured off to the side where Smith and Lucas were standing. “-- and they’ll tell you I don’t like to admit this, but: I can’t do this alone. I didn’t take down Marcus by myself, not entirely, and I don’t want to replace him. I’m not trying to be our new mayor, but I am trying to make sure nobody loses family or friends to the would-be tyrants that keep popping up among us. That shit would never have flown in the nation I grew up in, and it’s damn sure not going to fly while I’m still around to shut it down.”
There were more nods and raised fists now, even a few shouts of ‘Yeah!’ and ‘Fuck those assholes’! Ryan spread both of his hands open, careful not to drop the microphone, and motioned as if he were presenting the crowd with a gift.
“So if you want to join me, and bravely keep our homeland as free as it was always meant to be, then I promise you – I promise you – I will make us all strong enough to shut down any bastards who try to take our freedom and our loved ones from us.” Ryan raised his voice as he spoke, until it was nearly reverberating off the walls back at him. “Stopping this ‘Patriot’ joker is our first goal, but after that I intend to make sure nobody like him or Marcus can ever rise up again. Guns may have been the great equalizer in the old days, but that’s because they represented power finally being to the common man. And power is something we don’t need from bullets anymore. It’s something I can give each and every one of you – and I don’t need to fuck with your mind to do it!”’
Cheers went up from the crowd, and Ryan couldn’t honestly count how many. He was grateful to his people, who had done a good job earlier screening attendees and picking out both personalities and individuals that would be open to this kind of offer. Especially as that’s truly all this was: an offer for mutual benefit. One that would allow Ryan to help each of these people make their own way as he did, and allow the editor to get them all back on their feet that much faster.
Because if there was one thing the aftermath of Arborville’s civil war had taught him, it was that Ryan couldn’t be everywhere at once. He needed allies.
“The only thing I ask–” Ryan began, bringing his voice and tone back to a more moderate level. “-- is that you all work with me in return. With me, not for me. I welcome your ideas, your experiences, and what you all can bring to the table. I have a feeling we are going to need all of that and more in order to survive what’s coming, but whatever is coming I plan on weathering it together. And anyone who proves they’re up for that, will be getting whatever they need to do it from me.”
The editor paused, letting the silence of the theater hang on for a moment as he looked down at the stage floor. This was another trick he had learned, though this one had been from a late-night comedian. Anywhere Ryan looked, his audience was likely to look as well. So he held their attention at the floor for a second, giving them just enough time to process his words, before looking back out and meeting their collective gaze.
“So, who’s with me?”
The answering roar of approval that shook the walls and echoed back at him was everything Ryan had been hoping to hear. With this kind of support, they could start scaling up. Plans they already had laid out could expand. As the cheers of the crowd grew in volume once more and Ryan stepped back to allow Lucas to bring out what they needed for the demonstration, the editor’s thoughts turned towards the future.