“I’ve been too busy with other stuff, honestly.”
“Campaign stuff?” Delaney guessed.
“Yeah.” He sighed.
“Lame," all three of his friends said at the same time, then laughed at the synchronization. Tory grinned.
Alex and Tory had been friends since kindergarten–pretty much since Tory could remember. In middle school, Tory met Delaney and Marisol in an English class, and he had dragged them into his and Alex's circle. They had bonded over–well–utterly nerdy hero-obsessed behavior. Fictional superheroes, mostly, but plenty of real ones, too.
Alex had never been interested in hero stuff. He was much more into music and bands, or designing playlists for Tory to listen to.
Talking about heroes had been fun for years, but now, it made the back of his neck and his forehead prickle with hot and cold needles. He rolled back his shoulders, trying to avoid the feeling.
"Speaking of heroes and campaigns—did you see that Geode announced that she was running for a chair in the Paragon Guild council?" Delaney asked.
"What? Hell yes. The heroes will vote her in for sure." Marisol started the car, the charged engine purring. They whistled. "Geode is a woman after my own heart. Pink super suit, cool crystal rock powers. I'm in love. They've gotta let her on the council."
Tory hesitated. "If they can get out of their own way enough. Mom says it's kind of a mess. Lots of weird traditional masculine hero ideals."
"Well…" Delaney grimaced. "It's your mom's position she's gunning for."
The car went quiet. That happened a lot of the time with the topic turning to Tory's mom.
"Aw, man," Tory scoffed cartoonishly, trying to lighten the mood. "That means more campaign stuff."
"But also, she'll be less busy if she loses. Which…" Alex shrugged. "Could be nice. For you, I mean."
That was a nice thought. Really, it was. His mom hated the guild—her being on the council was practically a way of her keeping her enemies closer. She might be happier if she lost for once.
“Are Geode’s crystal rock powers cool?” Delaney asked, doubtful. It was an obvious shift in the subject, but Tory was grateful for it. “Honestly, like, she’s powerful, but—”
“But what? How could she be anything but completely badass?” Marisol was offended.
“I like weird powers. You know this. Psychic powers, mutations, telepathy–that’s my jam.”
“You have no taste, Dels.”
“You know I love the pink supersuit.” Delaney gestured to herself–her black and pink babydoll top and pink hair greatly added to her point. “I just think her powers are basic. Give me that good weird shit.”
“Like what?” Tory asked.
“Like Everlux. His alchemy power is weird.”
Tory instantly regretted asking.
”Changing the composition of elements and minerals is pretty extra,” Marisol admitted.
“Extra,” Alex agreed. “Just like his personality.”
Tory was no longer a fan of the topic change.
Marisol input an address into the car’s navigation system. It automatically began to soar into the blue glowing stream of traffic cutting between the tall buildings of Gale City.
“So, were you going for like, death pixie punk chic?” Tory commented, eyeing Marisol’s outfit—a black striped tank top, lace fingerless gloves, and a black tulle skirt.
Marisol made a hideous face at him through the driver’s mirror. Fair.
“Maybe I was. You literally have more metal on your fingers than shirt on your torso.”
“You like?” Tory fluttered his fingers. He peeked at Alex, but the other boy was staring out the window at the view of the city as they flew past the tops of buildings, and Tory’s heart fell a little.
Outside, the nighttime was an oil spill, warped and refracted by the transparent sheen of the huge dome wrapped protectively around Gale City.
He could see the burning line of red wasteland in the distance where silhouettes of lumpy, carved rock formations and tumbleweed met the hot skyline. Huge, snaking pipes running from beneath Gale City continued for miles outside of the dome, sometimes diving beneath the sand and sometimes shooting up, releasing plumes of smoke. Outside of their city, vast as it was, was nothing. Nothing but canyons, thistle, and packs of hungry shiftbeasts for hundreds of miles.
Tory was torn from the view, his attention snapping to the hologram screens on the back of the seats and across the dashboard in front of Delaney. They began playing muted news reports, a rerun of an unarchived television show, and a cartoon.
The news report was swamped with colorful, bright images of superheroes. Silhouettes with capes swooping around, carrying burning cars to stack around a group of shiftbeasts to keep them trapped.
His heart raced and he squeezed his phone in his pocket. Any moment now, his mother would call and tell him to suit up. He didn’t want to. He didn’t want to be involved in anything real, and he wanted to be with his friends.
“There have been so many shiftbeast attacks lately,” Delaney frowned. “It’s like they’re always popping up, more and more, even with the heroes always hunting them down.”
“Eh. I’m not scared,” Marisol shrugged. “Our school is four levels off the ground. The only way you can get in is through a hover vehicle, or the elevator in the parking lot, with a school ID. There’s no way a shiftbeast will get in.”
Most of the buildings in Gale City were safe from shiftbeasts for the very same reason.
The news revealed that half of the main roads were closed because a fight between superheroes and a huge group of shiftbeasts had broken out, as well as a fight between the villain Darkwave and the hero Scorch. Marisol sighed and rolled their eyes, as if this was a mild traveling inconvenience, and Alex’s lip curled with irritation. Delaney frowned, looking like she hoped everyone would be okay.
Tory just hoped he wouldn’t get any messages about it. He glanced at Alex, and at the news report, and then he made a decision. One that he knew would come back to bite him.
He powered down his phone completely. Tonight was about having fun with his friends. Tonight would not be filled with danger and drama and superheroes and villains and shiftbeasts for once.
The screens flashed with the angular, botoxed faces of attractive news anchors and then focused on the face of one woman out in the streets, her eyes squinting and her long, blond hair fluttering around her as she screamed at the camera, surrounded by flaming debris on top of a very tall building.
“We’re live at the Mellow Nights Motel in central Gale City, where Darkwave and Scorch are getting down to brass tacks.”
Images of a figure swathed in purple and black spandex and a cape thrusting his hands into the air and summoning dozens of crows blazed on the screen. Tory’s heart jumped a little as one crow soared right next to the camera lens, causing a lens flare.
“Super villains like Darkwave are so…” Marisol sighed loudly. “Obvious. My guy, just because you were given a gothic super power does not mean you should go rob a bank. Try therapy first.”
“Or try a new hobby,” Delaney nodded. “Maybe volunteer?"
Torpedoes of flames swarmed the crows in the air. The birds scattered, dodging each vanishing bullet of fire. They whirled viciously around a man clad in yellow and green spandex with the remains of black soot smearing his bright yellow cape.
Tory rolled his eyes. He should have gone with black and red, just like Tory had suggested once when they had been fighting shiftbeasts in front of a grocery store. Scorch’s powers always left him covered in soot that was completely obvious on a bright yellow costume. Also, the color scheme made no sense. Why his manager had gone with that look, Tory would never understand.
“Do you think Everlux will show up?” Delaney asked.
“Fat chance,” Alex mumbled. “You know, like, ninety percent of his fights are just social media stunts, right? They aren’t real.”
“A celebrity lying on the net?” Marisol gasped. “Alex, what tales you weave! What will you come up with next?”
“I mean, some of them might be set up,” Delaney admitted. “But not that many. Besides, it’s the fan accounts who post the best videos of him.”
“So what? Nothing’s real on the net,” Tory said.
“Yeah, but—” Alex sighed loudly. “But he’s the worst.”
Tory stared at Alex, trying to figure out why he was suddenly so irritable. “You don’t like him?”
“You don’t like him??” Delaney and Marisol repeated, louder.
“I’m literally not into men,” Marisol protested. “And I’m obsessed. His suit is so shiny.”
“He seems so nice in interviews,” Delaney sighed. “Have you ever seen that picture of him holding that news anchor’s baby after he saved her from being kidnapped by Freedom Claw? He was smiling so wide. He gives me good vibes.”
Tory grimaced. That one was real.
Freedom Claw was just as cringy a super villain as his name suggested. Tory could sympathize with wanting to fight the system—he spent a lot of time listening to Alex’s playlists of Gray American punk music, after all. Freedom Claw, however, was just a bored middle-aged man with superpowers who’d spent too much time scrolling niche Nexus forums, who then woke up one morning and decided to kidnap a whole-ass baby to make some kind of intangential political statement.
Freedom Claw had been fighting the Paragon Guild’s superhero costume restrictions. It was a protest, because he wanted to put a logo of a fist giving a middle finger on his chest for his super costume. His costume had been banned, and he was written up for a costume violation.
Personally, Tory would adore a hero with a middle finger logo. It was too bad this one had kidnapped a kid.
Sometimes he stayed up at night, the image of Freedom Claw’s darkening expression before he swung his fist at Tory’s face replaying in his mind. What could I have said to him? What could I have said to make him calm down?
He almost couldn’t remember what happened next. Capturing him in ropes of iron chains and sending him off, the baby tucked safely in Everlux’s arms until he could deliver her to her mom.
Bad memories. The baby was cute, though.
Alex sighed. “Everlux is not a real superhero. He’s a social hero. He does ads and wears logos on his dumb silver cape. He has an action figure and a comic book series!”
“Just because he does commercials and comics doesn’t mean he’s a fake,” Delaney said. “Guy’s got to eat, right? He’s just good at branding and heroism.”
“The real heroes refuse to do branding. It goes against the Justice Code’s basic tenets.” Alex threw up his hands. “And his name sucks. Everlux?”
“Sounds like toilet bowl cleaner,” Tory agreed. “No self-respecting person would choose it.”
“He has those sponsorship logos on his cape. Do you see Geode, Scorch, or Golden Blade running around with cape logos? No. It’s a bad look,” Alex said.
“I wish I was a logo on his cape.” Delaney sighed.
Marisol squinted at her. “What does that even mean?”
Tory grimaced. Alex had certainly scoffed at social heroes before, but he seemed legitimately disgusted by them, like they had personally wronged him.
“When heroes take money for their work outside of the salary the Paragon Guild gives them, it ruins their integrity. It’s gross,” Alex said. “It goes against the spirit of the Justice Code.”
He was strangely passionate about heroes and their income. It made Tory deflate a little, listening to him. Delaney and Marisol exchanged concerned glances.
“Oh my god, Alex, we get it—we just think he’s hot, okay? He’s hot and he has a cool power. Come on, you gotta admit that.” Marisol smirked at him through the mirror.
Alex’s mouth puckered, his face turning red. “I mean, that’s—I mean. Irrelevant. He’s a social hero, obviously he—he gets by on something.”
Delaney and Marisol laughed.
“Tory, your allosexuals are bullying me,” Alex said.
“Just wait a few minutes and they’ll get distracted by another hot person,” Tory said, then bit his bottom lip. “Me. I’m the hot person.”
His friends all guffawed at that—he was once again glad Marisol had put the car into auto-pilot. They had folded in their seat.
In Tory’s mind, the truth was that all superheroes were social heroes. It was just a sliding scale. There wasn’t a single pure, uncommercialized superhero out there. When heroes got together with suit designers and designed their look, that was branding. When they came up with a name and put on a certain affectation when they went out on patrols, that was making themselves marketable.
Did that mean that Everlux was a good public figure? No. He still set up fights that tricked the general public into thinking he did more good than he actually did. He was a liar. But as far as Tory could tell, so was everyone else.
“Tory, don’t you like Everlux? You always pay attention when Everlux is on the news,” Delaney asked.
Tory shrugged, practiced in his indifference. “He’s not my favorite hero. Wild Blossom is all about presentation, and her power is iconic.” He reached over and turned off all of the holo screens with a press of a button.
“I love her,” Delaney sighed, her face flushing with the same fervor that she had for Everlux. “If I had a superpower, I would control plantlife like she does.”
“You just made fun of Geode for having a simplistic power!” Marisol scoffed.
“Plantlife is complex! You’re literally just like, making life! With your bare hands!”
“I guess you don’t like Vent, then. He’s just…” Marisol made wooshing sounds with their mouth. “...Wind. Makes big tornadoes with his hands. Basic.”
“Now you get it. Vent is pretty boring. Plus, I like heroes with…personality. He’s very serious.”
It was funny when people talked about what powers and costumes they would have, as if they could ever have a choice.
The conversation wound back down to normalcy, and Tory’s heart went back to a less erratic rate.
Kind of.
He felt threadbare, like anything could make him freak out and jump out of the moving vehicle. Hot and cold pins and needles ran down his skull to his spine. He stared at his hands and just willed himself to take deep, slow breaths, in through his nose and out through his mouth.
“Tory?” Alex’s hand was on his shoulder, and Tory looked up at him, smiling automatically, as if his mouth was built to follow orders. “What’s wrong?”
It took him a couple seconds too long to respond. He just shrugged and forced an easy smile.
“I just remembered that this party is the first one of our senior year. I was having an existential crisis,” he lied.
Alex nodded, his eyebrows knitting. “It’s pretty weird.”
Alex started talking, and when Alex talked, it was a melody. A melody of the most familiar fugues and motifs of jokes, rhythms, self-deprecating eyerolls, and clever quips, of asking Tory what he thought and caring when he answered, of teasing and describing his favorite music. Tory was enveloped in him for the rest of the drive, and his shakiness faded.
Tory marveled. Alex managed to make every space they shared, every moment they were in feel like home.
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