EYES ON THE GRASS

Keep the Snake at bay!

Having grown up in a city infamous for its pervasive gang presences, I considered myself decently well-attuned to the associated jargons. I wouldn't be able to pose as a member of either major power for more than a short conversation, but I knew enough to recognize it when I heard it, to categorize based on common themes.

This sticker, however, puzzled me. It was pasted onto a streetlight, high enough to be beyond the reach of the average passerby but still readable from the sidewalk. The pole was on a street along my usual route and I couldn't remember seeing it yesterday morning, so it had to be new. The grass part could stem from the concept of 'blood and soil', which would indicate the Empire. On the other hand, Norse mythology featured a number of obscure tales surrounding animals in some way or another, so the snake aspect might suggest the Chosen. Both connections felt flimsy, though, so I reluctantly accepted my own ignorance and reached up to peel it off, just in case it was meant to incite trouble.

Something bit into my fingers and I hissed, snatching my hand back more out of instinct than actual pain. The half-peeled sticker curled back, revealing a razor blaze hidden in the middle. I scowled, thankful the dawn was still dim and there was no one around to see the oil in my cuts congeal and smooth over. Despite there being no need, I stayed mindful of the edges as I finished the job and delivered it post-free to the nearest house's trash bin.

The front steps of my own home greeted me at the end of the run and I skipped one on my way in. The savory aroma of bacon drew me to the kitchen. I nabbed a piece from the plate on the counter before heading up the stairs, fanning myself by the collar of my baggy sweats. I was almost at the second story landing when Dad popped out of the bathroom, dressed for work and smelling of aftershave.

"Oh, hey bud, wasn't sure I'd catch you before I left. Your run doesn't usually take so long. You add a block or two for the challenge?"

No, I was just worn out from fighting a ruthless gang boss and running from cops the night before. "Yeah, thought I could step it up."

"Attaboy." He ruffled my hair, grinning. "Got anything fun going on today?"

I shrugged. Charlotte would be helping her grandfather with his shop after school, and as well as I'd gotten on with Victoria, I doubted she wanted me to pester her less than a day after we'd met. "Not really. I'll probably just be here doing homework. How about you?"

His grin turned grimace. "Nothing but."

I cocked a brow. "Trouble in paradise?"

"Just some Empire recruiters getting pushy. We'll have them out of our hair in a day or two of coordinating, but you hate to see even a few guys stop to hear them out." He 'tsk'ed. "I know I don't need to tell you not to listen to a Nazi, but if you can help it, don't let them talk at all. Someone else might hear what they're selling and start to buy in."

"I'll be sure to punch a skinhead if I get the chance."

"Make your pops proud," he said, clapping me on the shoulder and passing me down the stairs. "And if you ever want to drop by and learn more about the job, you know where to find me."

Once he was out the door I rolled my eyes and headed into the bathroom. I held appreciation for what he did for a living, sure, but I wasn't keen on following in his footsteps the way he sometimes seemed to hope I would. Mom had once called dockwork, "Fine work for fine men but far less kind to women," and I was inclined to agree.

Showers were gauntlets of composure now, a series of little hygienic trials where losing my cool could spell disaster. Insecurity stalked like a highwayman in the brush, ready to plunge the honed edge of self-loathing into my back if I began to fixate on my body. Each second I let my guard down would cut deeper, bleed me faster, and if I faltered too long I might lose form entirely and be washed down the drain. I didn't know what exactly would happen if I had to feel my way out of our pipe system. I doubted it would be pleasant.

The steam and my suboptimal vision helped blur the visual pitfalls, but what really kept me together was my haircare routine. I spent most of my time in the shower treating and fussing over my curls, relishing the way they spilled past my clavicles when wet. They were my closest connection to Mom and everything she meant to me, more intrinsic even than my musical abilities or appreciation for literature, equal parts inheritance and cultivation given tactile form. No one could smear what that meant to me, not anymore.

Once I was out, dry, and dressed I settled my glasses back onto my face and drew my bedroom window's blinds open. The pale blue-gray of early autumn greeted me, drizzled in thin, wispy clouds and garnished with yellowing trees, and for the first time in a long while I found the view inviting. Despite being the same view I'd woken to my whole life, it felt different in some intangible way, and I wondered just how long this honeymoon phase with new purpose would actually last.

There was nothing for it but to go and find out. I shrugged my hoodie on, retrieved my backpack and flute case from the living room, locked the front door behind me and waded into the new day.

"The Parahuman Registration and Oversight bill, which you all have probably heard referred to as PRO-Act. It's not actually an act yet, since it's only been proposed for now, but that's the name that caught on, so. What do we know about it?"

Mrs. Fulmer's tired eyes scanned the meager offering of hands, to which I'd failed to contribute. I probably knew more than most in the room, considering I had damn good reason to keep tabs on such movements, but habit held my tongue. The best attention was no attention, after all.

The first kid she singled out was Caroline Something-Or-Other, who was under the dual delusions that one, a pedigree boasting Winslow wouldn't smother the career of an aspiring political figure in its crib, and two, the classroom was the best place to start practicing for her surely lucrative future. "PRO-Act is a state bill that would require all non-villain parahumans, hero or rogue, to register with the PRT and comply with their regulations. Additionally, it would criminalize the unauthorized use of powers for anything besides self-defence."

Her artificially chipper tone broke like a wave against the looming cliffs of Mrs. Fulmer's indifference and left it unmarked. "Mhm. What else?"

"It's probably not gonna pass," offered a boy with a limp faux hawk. His name may have been Mark. It might have been anything else, too.

"Speculation, not information, but no, probably not. Can anyone tell me who the biggest proponents are?"

The rest of the hands went down after that, so she targeted one of the indistinguishable stoners huddled in the far corner. "Uh, the… House of Representatives?"

Mrs. Fulmer, long numbed to such stunning displays of insight, didn't even sigh. "It was proposed in the House, but the ideas behind it were pushed by a specific organization. Who knows which one? Anyone?"

When no one else raised their hand, I reluctantly lifted mine.

A flicker of surprise crossed Mrs. Fulmer's face - the first emotion she'd shown all day - before she called on me.

I ignored the weight of the others' attentions as best I could. Most had probably forgotten I even sat here, secluded by the windows as I was. "The Common Guard. They're an anti-cape group."

She nodded. "Correct, although they wouldn't refer to themselves as such." After a look at the clock, she continued. "Now, with the ten minutes we've got left, split into groups of three and discuss the effects this would have on a local level if it passed." She waved us all on before trudging over to her desk to review papers from other classes.

The room stirred into conversation with minimal shifting around, as most students were seated by their friends to begin with. Charlotte wasn't in this class so I had no such safety net. Instead I got lumped together with Sparky, because I knew him from concert band, and Greg, because no one else would have him.

To say I knew Sparky may have been too generous an assessment. I was a flute and he was in percussion, so we were about as far apart in both seating arrangement and micro-microculture as two band students could be. Whatever respect he might have had for our mutual musicianship was overshadowed by the fact that I was a 'boy' who played flute, which was so heinous a betrayal of masculinity he hardly acknowledged my existence even when sitting next to me.

Greg, on the other hand, was happy to ramble to one of the few people who wouldn't outright shoot him down. "...and it's got this whole complicated system of randomly generated mob spawns, so the areas feel different every time. It's super cool, I've been sinking more hours into it than Blue Neptune, and I never thought I'd say that. There's also-"

"I know Mrs. Fulmer doesn't care," I interjected, "but shouldn't we at least talk about PRO-Act a little?"

Sparky seemed relieved I'd corked Greg's enthusiasm for the moment, though not enough to shoot me so much as a thankful glance, or even look up from his poorly-hidden phone at all. "I mean, it'd be cool if it did pass, I guess. Bet cape insurance would cost way less."

Greg mirrored my disbelief, though any hope his reasons reflected mine were quickly dashed. "Dude, what?! There's no way having a list of every cape is a good idea. Can you imagine what would happen if the CUI got their hands on that? They'd be picking off even more of our capes than they already are!"

"That's, like, 'Scion controlled the Endbringers' level conspiracy shit. Sorry I care more about my house not getting wrecked in a cape fight than the fuckin' Chinese boogeyman."

"But what about the effect on capes?" I asked, incredulous that I even had to argue the point. "You don't think it's messed up to forbid them from using their powers unless they conform to non-powered peoples' ideas of what a cape should be?"

Sparky rolled his eyes before returning them to his phone. "Nope. I mean, lots of shit's got special laws. If anyone's gonna get more I'm cool with it being the guys that puke lasers or whatever."

"The PRT regulations are absurd, though," I pressed. "Have you read them? Registered independents aren't allowed to do anything without a bunch of evaluations and licenses, all of which they have to pay for out of pocket. There are barely any rogues left that haven't been fined out of business. The only reason the Protectorate gets to do anything is because they report to the local Directors, which lets them bypass approval requirements. And even then, some of their capes are quitting because they keep rolling back what they're allowed to do."

If Sparky was anything but bored, he had a funny way of showing it. "Okay. I still don't give a fuck. It's not like anyone I know has powers, so all it means is things are safer. I'm cool with that."

My eyes narrowed. "Isn't the whole point of capes that anyone could be one? This could directly affect a friend or family member, and you might not even know it."

"It's one in a million or something, so no, not really." He finally met my glare. "Why are you so worked up about it, anyways? It's probably not gonna pass in the first place."

His total indifference struck a bubbling core of indignance in my gut. Peoples' very livelihoods were being targeted under the guise of security. We were those who'd suffered so deeply it'd manifested physically, and the shrinking fraction of us wanting to remedy the world instead of exact vengeance on it were at risk of losing our ability to do so in any meaningful way. But that was a distant thing to him, so far from his own little world that he would sell us for snake oil and feel nothing about it.

I looked to Greg for any sort of backup and realized he'd stopped listening and started sulking after Sparky had called him on his paranoia. That he could afford to tune out over so little rankled me.

I spared a last-ditch glance around the rest of the class, as though someone may have heard us and be waiting for a tag in, but no. In fact, it seemed maybe one or two groups were even talking about PRO-Act at all. I'd known passively that I was likely the only one directly affected by it, but now, being confronted by just how little it mattered to them, I felt like I was sinking in the realization, drowning in it.

Suddenly, I was very alone in a crowded room.

"Whatever. Let's just chill until the period's up." Without waiting for a response I flipped my hoodie up, folded my arms on my desk and buried my head in them.

When the bell rang I was the last one out the door, only managing to swallow my festering arguments when there was no one around to spew them to. The halls swallowed me in turn, the flow of students dragging me in the general direction of the south end in a daze. Their chatter was babble, their worries were shallow, and my jaw clenched knowing most of them would never know just what it meant to trigger, to stagger out of hell and still smell sulfur wherever you walked. I was so lost in resentment it took me a moment to register when someone shoulder checked me.

Sophia watched me stumble, ready to remind me of my place in our fucked up dynamic once I recovered my footing, but instead she cocked a brow. "What pissed in your punch today, Hebert?"

My glower must have been fierce to have caught her off guard, but for the moment I was too stunned to consider it. Here, right in front of me, was one of the only people in Winslow - probably the only one - that could relate to what I was feeling, whose insides burned and twisted with the memory of just how unjust the world was. She'd had her own nightmares brought to life, understood what it was like to carry the most bittersweet reward-slash-reminder wherever she went.

And yet, she'd still found it in her to pass the favor on to me.

"Fuck. Off. I'm not in the mood today." I barely bit the words out, nearly gurgling with half-bridled hate, and stomped off, ignoring the way she watched me go with narrowed eyes. I truly despised her then, that she could so callously reflect the evil that'd scarred her. I hated myself, too, for imagining any solidarity between us, even in a moment of weakness. There had to be something wrong with me, something at least Stockholm-adjacent.

To add the terrible cherry to my bad mood sundae, when I got to the spot I where Charlotte and I usually met up before heading to band, she was nowhere to be found. She'd probably gone on ahead when I'd not turned up on time. I berated myself and started towards my locker.

On the way, though, something caught my eye, and a subtle unease tickled at the nape of my neck. The southeast stairwell was one of those spots even the teachers avoided, because no matter which gang had the upper hand at the time, it was always someone's territory. Seeing the door stand open even a crack was a red flag. Hearing the scuffle of shoes on tile and clothes rustling from within was as final a warning as you could get. I should have just walked on by like everyone else, but the itch of disquiet swelled at the thought. I took cover on the wall just by the door and strained my ears through the harsh echoes.

The first voice I heard was a thin but steady tenor. "-your little friend now, huh? Prolly too busy suckin' dick to protect you, huh?"

The second was a little lower, more tenuous, almost hissing. "Fuck! Get her fucking arm, she's got nails like- like nails!"

"C'mon, you're gonna have to get closer to really mess her up. My dad was the one who got you out last night, so if you wanna repay us for that I need to see more than a couple bruises." The first voice, again.

"Get- gah! -get the hell off me!"

Charlotte.

Shit.

I burst through the door. The echoing bang it made when it hit the beat-up rubber doorstop gave pause to the commotion. On the landing between this floor and the next one up stood four pale assholes wearing more red and black than anything else. Of the four, one was holding a folding knife out to another with his arm in a cast, covered in illegible signatures. The other two were holding Charlotte tight by her biceps. All of them were now looking at me.

"Let her go or I swear you'll regret it." I growled.

The one holding out the knife turned to me instead, grinning like he'd just been served an extra helping of Thanksgiving dinner. "Well, well. How's that saying go? 'Speak of the faggot and he shall appear.'" The knife flicked open and he dragged it lazily through the air in a taunting flourish. "What say we really make my pops proud, huh?"