“Listen, man, I get that they just want us to be safe, but doesn’t it feel a little… excessive?” Swallowing a mouthful of food, Connor — the aforementioned Invisiboy — rolls his eyes and reaches for his drink.
“Can we not… talk about it here?” Kaiden responds, his eyes darting around the interior of the semi-crowded diner where they sit. “At least, not so loudly?” he adds in a low voice.
“I’m sorry!” Connor replies, and on seeing the sharp look that Kaiden immediately shoots at him, lowers his voice to continue, “But you see what I mean, right?”
Kaiden’s voice is barely audible over the bustle of the restaurant. “Yes, and I understand what you’re saying, but I really think it’s for the best. I mean, I’d rather have a partner to watch my back than end up like… well, you know…” His sentence trails off, but Connor understands and nods.
“And the neighborhood watch idea?” Connor asks, his expression unreadable, “What do you think about that?”
“I think it’ll get in the way of everything.” Kaiden rests his head on his hand. “I mean, I hate the idea of having to go out, whatever the reason. I do this stuff because I like to help people, not because I’m forced to. I don’t want that to be spoiled.”
“You could always go back to being an independent?” suggested Connor, toying with his straw. Kaiden does a quick scan around the room, to make sure there is still no one watching or listening.
“But I like being signed on! It’s nice to, well, to get a little recognition sometimes… that never happens as an independent. I just broke through, man.”
“Thought you didn’t do it for the glory,” lilts Connor with a smug grin, “Mister I-do-it-to-help-people.”
“I do! But isn’t every good deed a little selfish? If seeking a little gratification makes you a bad person, then lock me up, because I am a villain.” Kaiden pauses and perks his head up, staring at the door of the diner, “Tara’s here!”
A few moments pass before the door swings open, bell ringing in response. As Tara walks into the diner, her windswept hair standing up with static, Connor raises his head to turn around and look at her.
“Tarrrra!” Connor calls, excessively rolling the r in her name, “You finally decided to show up!”
She gives a tight, scrunched-up smile, responding “I did, now scoot over,” before sliding into the booth next to Connor. She sets her canvas bag down onto the floor next to her, licks her hands, and smooths out her hair.
Kaiden snorts. “Gross,” he says, and Tara shoots at him a look sharp enough to cut glass.
“Aaanyway,” Connor stretches the word until both Tara and Kaiden are looking at him. “Tara, me and Kaiden were just talking about the new policies they proposed — have you heard?”
“Bits and pieces,” responded Tara, picking up her spoon and looking at her reflection, “A neighborhood watch? What’s the deal?”
“Well, maybe you’d know if you had shown up,” is Connor’s mumbled retort.
“I had rehearsal!” shoots back Tara as she sets down her spoon, “And besides, I don’t need to show up when I have you guys to fill me in.”
“And,” Kaiden cuts in, turning on Connor, “you showed up late, so really you have no room to talk.”
“Okay, okay! Either way, that’s just one of the options. The other one is a buddy system. Me and Kaiden both agree that that’s the better option, even if it’s inconvenient as hell.”
Kaiden nods, and Tara looks up, as if looking into her own mind, considering. “And the buddy system… would your ‘buddy’ be someone in your rank?”
“Yeah, that was actually one of the first things Chameleon clarified,” Kaiden responded with a nod and a smile.
“Can you pick your partner?”
“Well, he said that they would pair us up. I imagine they’ll just pair up people who have powers that mesh well; no pyros and hydros, no super hearing and sonic scream, whatever,” Kaiden thinks out loud, but his mind wanders to further possibilities. Would they try to avoid pairing Kaiden with someone who can manipulate light or smoke?
With his eyes being so sensitive, it had originally been recommended to Kaiden that he wear goggles while fighting, but he insisted against it. He never shared the real reason he’s so averted to the idea, which is that, honestly, he doesn’t want to look dorky. The stereotype of supers with enhanced vision requiring goggles is a tired one, and he prefers to not accessorize one of his obvious weaknesses, however much of an Achilles’ heel it may become.
“Hmm,” Connor opens his mouth to speak, and hesitates before continuing. “I wonder if they would pair me with Chrisom. We would pair together pretty well, her being blind and all.”
“Regardless,” Kaiden begins, “I wonder how they would do it with the neighborhood watch.”
“Hopefully we never find out!” exclaims Tara, “I don’t even know why they proposed it when it’s clearly the worst route to go in.”
“Well, honestly, people seemed a lot more open to that idea than the buddy system,” Kaiden says, rolling his eyes and looking down at his hands.
Tara looks to him, then to Connor, then back again. “Why?”
“Because they’re old! They’ve probably had to do neighborhood watches for their grandkids!” replies Connor, groaning. “It’s ridiculous how the organization is totally dominated by these — these old-timers. Most of them couldn’t even get through a sparring match without getting back pain.”
“And they could still beat you in a fight,” says Tara with a feigned yawn. Connor’s mouth opens in exaggerated outrage, but then he shrugs, mumbles “fair,” and takes another sip of his drink.
Kaiden sighs and rests his chin on his hand. Connor and Tara may be able to just move on and not think about what happened, but he can’t. Every time he closes his eyes, his mind brings up images of Middleman, his striking demeanor, his powerful stance, the covered stretcher being carried away on the news. He squeezes his eyes tight until he can hear rumbling in his ears, then opens them again to see Tara staring at him while Connor munches on ice.
“You okay, Kade?” She asks.
Kaiden takes a breath in and rubs his eyes. “Yeah. It’s just… I can’t stop thinking about Middle. I’ll never see him again, I — I’ll never work with him again.”
After there’s no answer, Kaiden takes his hands from his face and sets them on the table, ready to delve into his dumb origin story. “The first time I saw him in real life, I was still an independent. He was in the middle of a fight with someone — I think Daybolt? So I walked by the alley they were scrabbling around in, and he heard me pass behind him. He, like, whirled around because he thought I was trying to double team him. And so there was this man who was like a total celebrity to me, just standing there staring at me. It was like an out-of-body experience.”
“Did you tell this story before?” asks Connor, “I can’t remember ever hearing this story before.”
“He told me when it happened,” says Tara with a smug grin, and Connor gasps, his eyes widening.
“Kaiden! How could you just not tell me?”
“I think that was the summer you were on that cruise! I couldn’t reach you, and by the time you got back, I just… wasn’t thinking about it anymore,” Kaiden explains meekly.
Connor cartoonishly squints at Kaiden. “Thin ice, Kaiden. But what happened next?”
“Well, I looked at the guy behind him, and I thought, ‘this is my chance!’ This was my chance to impress this guy. So first I had to figure out what his power was — I could see his heartbeat was really fast, and the heat signature on his boots was ridiculously high, so I assumed it was superspeed. After that, it was easy. When Middleman turned back around to face Daybolt, I just observed as they fought, and I noticed a sort of pattern on this guy, you know? Like, a hit in one place, then a different place, then back to the first. There was an obvious rhythm, an obvious timing. The problem was that Middleman couldn’t see it, Daybolt was moving too fast. So I looked for something I could use to break his momentum.”
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
“Oh. What’d you do, throw a stick at him?”
Kaiden raises a finger and points to Connor. “Close! I picked up a brick, and he was still distracted just jabbin’ at Middleman. So he pulls back his left hand to make another hit, and I throw the brick, and I time it out perfectly, and he doesn’t have enough time to stop making the hit motion before his fist just slams into it.”
Connor looks at him, eyes wide, heavily engaged, before asking, “Did it… did it do anything?”
“Oh yeah,” replies Kaiden with a smile, “He was so drawn into his personal rhythm, and that totally messed it all up. So he, like, screams. It turns out the brick totally shattered his knuckles, because he wasn’t trying to punch the brick, he was trying to punch Middleman.”
“Oh, wow,” says Connor, quietly. “Ouch.”
“Anyway, Middleman looked so… impressed. I could tell he would’ve been fine even if I had just walked away, but I wanted to help so badly, and I couldn’t believe it worked. The debris didn’t even hurt anyone. I was so proud of myself.”
“And you still didn’t think to mention it to me when I got back?”
“No!” Kaiden responds, his face taking on a twinge of pink shame, “I really didn’t, and I don’t know how I went this long without telling you!”
“Well, I never told you guys about my encounter with Middleman,” says Tara, effectively grabbing the attention of Connor and Kaiden, who respectively look at her.
“You too?” exclaims Connor, his eyes wide and his mind astonished, “What happened with you and him?”
“Imagine this,” she begins, adopting the inflection of a movie storyteller, “Flyfish and Middleman, an epic water battle on the beach, except it’s not the beach, it’s the park by the pier. It’s Wednesday night, and I’m walking to clear my head.”
Connor interrupts. “Why?”
“Does it matter?” A pause. “Anyway, I don’t even notice them before I notice my shoes have gotten wet. I look forward, and I see them just having at each other. Flyfish takes water from wherever they can get it, and obviously we’re right next to the pier, so there’s a lot of moisture in the air. Middleman is doing the same thing, as he does. So I’m thinking, oh, I could totally swoop in here. Now is my chance to help out, and show Middleman what I’ve got! It totally parallels Kaiden’s little story, only I don’t swoop in by throwing a brick at Flyfish.”
Kaiden’s eyes crinkle and he shakes his head. Yes, what he did was ridiculous, but it worked! And now look at him, a C-tier Ally steadily moving up further and further. It makes him feel dizzy to think about where he started, that being casual team-vigilantism, as opposed to where he is now, and where he could go from here.
Tara continues, breaking Kaiden out of his short trance. “You guys know what happens when electricity touches water?”
Connor and Kaiden look at each other, both knowing the answer, yet neither speaking it. Tara decides to answer it herself. “The electricity travels right through! That’s why you’re told never to aim a hose at power lines — that water is a direct path from the power lines to you, and your ass is getting shocked. So without thinking, I charge in, and I yell ‘Hey!’ with the scariest voice I can make.”
“I’d love to have heard it,” Connor muses, “Tara being scary?”
“Okay, so it wasn’t scary,” says Tara with an eye roll, “but it got their attention! And for just a moment, the fighting stops, and they both turn to look at me. And I know I’m about to get soaked. So, obviously, I charge in. Middleman is, like, urging me with his eyes to just leave, but I can’t now!”
“Tara,” groaned Kaiden, stressed yet amused by the mental image of Tara running straight in between two supers much older, bigger, and more experienced than her. Tara’s energy has almost tangibly shifted, and Kaiden can see it - the hairs on her head have begun to stand up once again, and her eyes flicker periodically, the normal deep brown of her irises flashing into a shade almost as white as the whites of her eyes, and then back again.
Tara leans forward, her eyes wide. Her irises flash once more. “You don’t even know how badass I was, Kade. So Flyfish gets pissed off, seeing me run straight at him, and he blasts a huge stream of water at me, and it hits me hard. But I don’t fall. Oh, no, I was kept up by the fact that he fell directly into my trap!”
Connor, who’s been leaning back for the majority of the conversation, also leans forward so he, Tara, and Kaiden are all eye level in a tabletop huddle. He whispers, “What happens next?”
“First, just take a moment to appreciate the situation! This is a moment I’d been waiting for forever! I would daydream about a potential battle between someone with hydrokinesis, all the stuff I could do, and now it’s happening, and there’s a witness, and the witness is THE Middleman?” She slaps the table, and then realizes just how excited she’s become. Her face slowly grows red, and she leans back in her seat once more. “Anyway, I digress. One current. I generated one current. Not even my best or most powerful by that time, but that’s besides the point. Ooh, I could almost see the electricity travel through the water stream, literally lightning-fast. He couldn’t even stop the stream quickly enough before it gave him an awful shock.”
“How did Middleman react?” asks Kaiden simply.
“Impressed. Really impressed — I could see it in his eyes. Though, I guess it could’ve just been surprise. Either way,” she waves off the subject, and continues with her story. “It knocks Flyfish off of his feet, and he’s on the ground. So I turn around, I look at Middleman, and I say ‘you want some?’”
“You threatened Middleman?!” Connor asks, his voice filled with more shock than Tara could possibly provide.
“No! No, not like that,” shoots back Tara, laughing, “No, I meant, like, if he wants to use my electrokinesis to finish the fight! He nods, but he still looks totally surprised, so I shoot a little spark at him. It can’t hurt more than static, but it gets his attention. And I can see his posture, his stance change as he switches from mimicking Flyfish’s power to mimicking mine. And I walk away, back in the direction I came from.”
There are a few seconds of silence as Connor and Kaiden process the story’s end. Finally, Kaiden speaks. “You just… left?”
“Yeah, I figured Middleman could take care of himself from there. I’m not one to snoop on other peoples’ battles!”
“That was literally an entire story of you snooping on someone else’s battle,” replies Connor. Tara responds by rubbing her fingers together and poking his shoulder, and Kaiden can hear the sharp click of the mild static shock Tara just gave him. “Ow! Hey!”
Tara smiles innocently, and Connor rubs his shoulder as if in pain. Kaiden, however, is still thinking. He’s been doing that a lot lately — not talking, but constantly evaluating. Evaluating his surroundings, his thoughts and feelings. Evaluating what’s happened and what he can do. But the answer to the latter has always just been nothing. He hates being able to do nothing in a situation besides go with the flow.
It also makes him feel like a dick. When you’re the only one in a group — or table — that refuses to participate in the fun banter that occurs, you start to feel like you might just be ridiculously pretentious without realizing, like you’re the problem, and like everything would be so much better and happier if you just weren’t there.
Is it true? Maybe. Kaiden knows that his friends would never tell him if it was. How could he know if all of his friends secretly dreaded seeing him and spending time around him? What if they’re just really good liars? But then the other part of his mind reminds him that he’s seen them lie before. He’s aware of almost every detail of the mannerisms that their bodies adopt when they lie. Every tense of the muscle in Connor’s shoulders, every sped-up beat of Tara’s heart. It’s kind of creepy, to be honest. But he can’t do anything about it. If he could shut off his mind’s ridiculous observations, he probably wouldn’t, but that doesn’t stop him wishing he could.
“It just makes me think,” begins Connor, his voice low and musing, “both of your stories involve you helping Middleman in some way. Maybe he wasn’t as overpowered as we thought! I mean, he could use any power, and he could do it well, but he could only use one at a time. Maybe the point is… working as a team is better? Even Middleman could use some help sometimes.”
“That’s so cheesy,” says Kaiden, but Connor’s words have already sunk in and put a little smile on his face.
“It’s true,” says Tara, “I mean, you said yourself that you figured Middle would have been fine if you’d just turned around and left, but you didn’t. You stayed and helped. And I’m sure he appreciated it! I know he appreciated my help!”
“I just…” Kaiden trails off before beginning to speak again, his voice thick and low. “I can’t process the fact that I’ll never see him again.”
Connor and Tara both look down at the table almost in unison. Tara is the first to speak. “You worked with him more than any of us. I can’t lie and say I understand exactly how you feel, but I’m sorry.”
“Yeah,” chimed in Connor, “I mean, I think I saw the guy in person maybe twice. But he seemed really cool, and… genuine.”
“Oh, he was one of the most genuine people I’ve ever met!” is Kaiden’s exclaimed response. “That’s something you guys just can’t understand — I can tell when people are lying, I can tell when they’re fake or suspicious, my brain reports every little change straight to my eyes, and I can see it. And Middleman? Never once did I notice something weird or suspicious about him. He was so real. He just wanted to help people, and you can’t say that about some of the Allies. And I can’t wrap my head around the fact that I’m never going to see him again, and he’ll never help anyone again, and he’ll be replaced, and we’ll move on like nothing ever happened. I can’t do that. I won’t.”
“Would you bring him back if you could?” asks Connor quietly. Kaiden looks at him inquisitively, and he elaborates. “I know you can’t. I know it’s probably not even worth delving into. But… if you could have him come back tomorrow, like it was all some crazy misunderstanding, would you do it?”
“I…” Kaiden has to think about that. His brain’s first instinct is to say yes, yes, obviously yes. But, it doesn’t feel right. “I don’t know. Would it even be worth it?”
Neither Connor nor Tara responds. When Kaiden scans around the diner once again, he notices it’s cleared out significantly since he and Connor arrived less than an hour earlier. But no one has so much as batted an eye in their direction - just another group of high schoolers grabbing food on a Tuesday night. He figures that no one cares about them as long as they’re not causing any trouble, an assumption that hasn’t been challenged thus far.
“I don’t know, Kade,” says Tara, and Kaiden looks at her. He nods and closes his eyes, but he can still see her, her dark skin illuminated by the pendant lights above them.
“Me neither.”