Chương 5: Colors

I hadn't dreamed since I was a child. If prompted, I could always recall that exact last dream I had. I was exactly nine years old, as my birthday was two nights prior. I had a cupcake with a candle in it. Hand-baked. It had to have been baked incorrectly, maybe bad eggs, since for the past two days I'd been keeled over with some horrible malady of the stomach. And I was an already feeble kid at the time, getting sick from everything, always tired, asthmatic. With that food poisoning, I felt like I was dying.

Right, the dream. I need to stop getting so distracted. In the dream there was this wooden... I don't know what kind of ball it was, but the foster home had it and it was mine. A wooden ball. I always played with it. Just felt good in my hands to hold it, roll it around. In the dream, it was rolling away. My hand reached out to it, and I just didn't want to lose it. I couldn't reach it because of how fast it was rolling. At the same time, I could feel my legs and back being sucked away by... something.

I couldn't look back at it. I didn't know what it was, but I could clearly feel it in my heart that if that sucking sensation got past my legs I was dead. I would die if I couldn't get away from it and grab that ball. The ball was all I had, if I let go of it I'd never be able to hold on to anything again. I refused to let that happen, and I just kept scraping and groping at this black nothing of a floor below me until I grabbed the ball in my hand. That same motion of grabbing it, it shattered into splinters.

Then, I had woken up to find I had ripped part of the cheap plywood frame of that bed like I tore off a sheet of paper. I still held the shattered fragments of the frame. I shared a room with seven other kids. Every single one of them looked at me in horror, woken up by the sound of the wood crunching under my grip. Inexplicably, the sickness was gone. My breathing felt clear for once. They did a physical on me and found I seemed to be in the best shape of my life.

Asthma was gone, I wasn't sick, I didn't get tired. I could play like a normal kid. That's what I thought at first. Truth was that I couldn't. I broke every toy I picked up. When most kids get too excited while running, they bump into things. They fall on their backsides, get back up, and move right along. If I did that, usually there wasn't much left of what I bumped into. The other kids kept away. They didn't hate me or anything, in fact they were as nice as could be.

It was just hard to get physically close to someone who could tear you apart like a stuffed animal. I was supposed to get registered, per the Chicago Act, but for whatever reason the care home kept mum about it. Maybe they were worried I'd be taken away for experimentation and never find a family. Unfortunately that physical loneliness made it impossible anyway.

I learned to temper my strength over time, but by the time I really figured it out, I was about fifteen and people were just too used to following the rule of not letting me get in arms reach so I don't accidentally hurt them. It was just the rule, and I was used to it. Also meant any prospective parents didn't give me a second glance. Got used to that too. Then I turned 18 and I had to go. This was a lot to say I finally had another dream, for the first time in almost ten years. And I don't fucking remember it.

I just know I felt it, and I could see that I felt it when I woke up and saw I had yanked a portion of the metal frame of my bed off, and it was embedded in the concrete wall on the other side of the room. Would make for a good pull-up bar if you were two feet tall. I processed every moment of all this in the few seconds I heard the pounding of a fist on my door. Concrete is great for echoes, which explained how I was able to catch it so soon.

"Wakey wakey!" Agent Tancred's voice. Couldn't have been a short nap. Rolling out of bed, my entire body seized from a rawness caused by the settling of my clothes against my skin. Didn't budge an inch in that bed. Pins and needles wracked random parts of me, though thankfully my feet were not on its hit list. I trudged up the steps, grabbing the railing only to immediately snap away as that sharp sensation practically screamed at me from my left hand.

I heeded its warning and let my arms hang as I made my way up the stairs, and tolerated a very short argument from my other hand as it worked the door open. As used as I had gotten to holding back, it wasn't as simple when not all the nerves in your hands are awake. This proved most apparent by the door handle gaining a new curvature to it as it was turned by a heavy palm. The door was pulled open to reveal a far more expanded group of individuals than the consecutive one-on-ones from before.

I recognized Agent Tancred, who stood a couple feet away from me, and Christian, who had placed himself among another group a bit closer to the center of the room. Accompanying him were approximately seven individuals, broken up into little "bubbles" of clear personal association. Directly next to Christian was a girl about my age. Her eyes were impossibly magnetic, a very cloudy blue. If I couldn't see her pupils aimed at me, I'd mistake her for blind. She seemed to dress for comfort, loose and baggy clothes.

Just processing the existence of her outfit made me notice Christian's, which seemed like a normal set of jeans and a t-shirt until I noticed his shoes. My God, his shoes. They were the gaudiest mix of bright orange and deep blue I'd ever seen. I have no sense of fashion, and yet in that moment even I could feel revulsion. The disgust managed to sit behind my eyes and not creep onto my face, likely due to my observation taking precedent. My eyes then passed over to the next "Bubble." A bubble of one.

A boy, while clearly thinner and younger than me, seeming packed with mostly muscle. He wasn't weak-looking. Though his skin bore strange deformities, mixes of browns and golds and greens splotched and scarred along his bare arms and legs, and chest. He only wore an open vest the same shade of bright orange as Christian's shoes, leaving his torso exposed. He didn't wear shoes, just sandals. His hair sat in this tall, thin mohawk dyed an almost neon shade of yellow. Then I saw his eyes.

They too, were blue, but unlike the girl's, his had tall, slitted pupils like some kind of reptile. His sclera were black. He simply raised a thumb as though he were affirming a thought I had, though the only thought I had was I had no idea what I was looking at. My gaze then swung further to the right.

A girl who looked practically emaciated, with pale brown hair so fuzzy and thick sticking off of her head she looked like a used cotton swab, weighed down by a labcoat, standing just behind two children who were about waist height to her. Her eyelids seemed to sit about halfway down, as though she were fighting off sleep, but her body language indicated she was alert. The kids seemed normal, a boy wearing denim overalls and a t-shirt and a girl in a rabbit pajamas, the hood pulled up.

First set I could immediately identify as the apparent "Dr. Way" and her kids, I think. Going by the ages Christian said, the other two must be May and Jairo. The last bubble seemed to be more just two people standing next to each other. One an older, heavier woman, with her grey hair tied back, and a middle-aged and lanky man, taller than me, with a completely shaved head and a goatee. He seemed to have the same fashion sense as Christian, though a better taste in shoes. Admittedly that was not a high bar.

It seemed as though he did not have any eyebrows either. I worried I had taken too long to observe all of these people, who would be wondering if I would say anything, until I had realized my foot only just then touched the floor. I was getting too antsy, I had no reason to believe these people were going to jump me. Not yet, at least. Agent Tancred interrupted my thoughts, a favorite habit of his apparently.

"Leo, this is your team for The New Sentinels. You've met Christian already. Next to him is May Hart," I was right.

"And next to her is Jairo Carter," another one.

"Dr. Samantha Way and her son and daughter, Samuel and Samara," five for five." And these are your support members, Eliza Forrest and Perry A. Schiver. They're not superheroes." I had no way to predict who they were.

"Hi," I weakly shot out.

"If you all want to introduce yourselves to Leo directly, it can be done after his meeting with Eliza and Perry." I looked at the two older figures as Tancred put a hand on my back. At that moment I could feel every muscle in my body scream at me to swing for him, but for whichever reason, I managed to choke it down. He led me along as the other two opened the door to that common area I fell into, before taking me to the door Christian first walked in through.

The other side of it was a simple metal spiral staircase, that they all began trudging up. I looked at Agent Tancred, one of my eyebrows involuntarily raising up.

"Where are we going?" I asked, conceding that I would not be able to stare my way into getting answers at this point.

"Well, Leo, if you actually accepted the tour I told Christian to give you instead of immediately running off to nap, you'd know we're heading up to the staffed sections of the building. Each floor has more utilitarian function for The New Sentinels. First floor is a cafeteria," he noted as we crested the steps, and he was ostensibly correct. It was unnaturally baby blue, with three dark brown tables, each featuring a bench.

On one end was a counter, presumably to order food, and behind it was a kitchen where people milled about preparing food. It smelled like a laundromat. This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

"There's a few Super Commission staffers here as well to handle admin, and you might see them come down for lunch here. Food's free for you guys but the rest of us have to pay. The meals rotate every week, check the menu." He pointed to a corkboard I didn't notice, since he was in the way until stepping back. It had a grey printout of a list of food items. Might smell like a laundromat, but free food is better than what I've had to scrape by on.

"C'mon," he noted as he led me out of the cafeteria, into a hallway with this dark purple carpet and tan walls, up a set of stairs with the same carpeting. As we rounded up to the next flight, a white double door separated the stairwell from the other side. Through the window, a myriad of desks were visible, with men and women in suits filing away.

"We're not going in there but the next floor is the admin office. Payroll, getting your college applications in, all of that's handled here. When money or school matters arise you'll be coming up here." He kept going up. At this point I realized Eliza and Perry weren't in sight. Stopping in the cafeteria left them an opportunity to get ahead. I didn't really want people prepared for my arrival anywhere, even if they meant well. Being anticipated makes you brace.

We ascended to the third floor, which seemed to just be a hallway with more of that purple carpeting. On either side were wooden walls. Fake wood, same paneling as in that common area in the basement. Three doors. One on either side and one at the end. Tancred was quick to explain the layout.

"These are the offices for Eliza and Perry, and the meeting room. Left is Eliza, right is Perry. They've got little placards so you can discern it even if you forget what I told you. Far end is the meeting room, which is where any sort of hearings or discussion with the Super Commission or SIT or just any upper brass will happen. We'll be talking in Perry's office because the meeting room is too big for just a few people, and Eliza's office gives me the creeps."

I found that to be the worst thing I could have possibly heard from this man that didn't involve his personal life. Striding down the hall, the agent opened the door and nodded for me to enter. It started this short staring contest where we both kept exchanging head tilts. I didn't want anyone behind me. He didn't want me out of sight, probably thought I was gonna lunge out the window. In the end he won the battle of wills and I was not entirely sure how. Upon entering, the room looked... cluttered.

One wall had eight televisions, all playing different shows. Mostly news outlets. One weather channel. One had a different kind of show. It was a man in a white suit with a red shirt underneath it and frazzled black hair reading off papers while he spoke into a large mic that hung in front of him. He had large earphones. On the bottom right corner, in yellow text, it said "Ask A Hench."

The man speaking on it pressed a button on some console before seemingly restarting his verbal pacing: "Alright, you're on The Katt with Witty for Ask a Hench. What do you wanna ask our hench?" A voice with no face attached to it spoke. It sounded like it was over a telephone. Woman's voice.

"Hi, I'm Candi with an I, I just wanted to confirm before my question: You henched for Shatterhouse, right?" The camera finally moved, cutting to a man in a ski mask with sunglasses on, and a filtered voice.

"Yeah, I was on his Hench detail back when I lived in Pittsburgh." The woman replied: "Oh, oh, cool! So uh... do you... know how tall Shatterhouse is, by any chance?" The henchman looked over at "Witty." The camera snapped over as well. Witty shrugged, and the camera cut back to the henchman.

"He's like... 5'5"? He doesn't stand up much from the floating chair but he did one time and I looked down at him, and I'm 5'10"." The woman responded with an immediate "Oh." There were a few seconds of silence before "Witty's" voice broke the airwaves.

"Oh crap, she just hung up!" As I watched the screen, a thumb and index finger snapped in front of me.

"Leo, kid, we've been talking to you for four minutes." My attention returned to Tancred, who had a thoroughly disappointed look on his face. He'd feel less disappointed if he could tell time. That couldn't have been more than two and a half minutes. Behind him I saw the other wall, which had a bunch of pictures of sketches of various superhero costumes pinned to the wall, newspaper cut-outs, and what seemed to be certificates. Reality came back to me as I reminded myself to focus on the conversation.

"Sorry. I don't watch TV much." My gaze crossed the room to address the others there. Eliza was sitting in a chair on the opposite end of the room's central desk, which hosted Perry. His head was rather reflective from the sun behind him, coming in through the large windows to his back. He seemed more amused than Eliza or Tancred. Eliza didn't seem upset though, more just disappointed. The bald man spoke, his voice nasal and almost monotone.

"It's alright, son, they don't call 'em boob tubes for nothing. Take a seat, chair's soft." I looked at the chair. It was a wide enough one, if I had to move, it would be easy to just kick the desk and send him flying out the window and just hurl my own chair at Tancred. I don't think Eliza needed any specific contingencies. If she had powers I couldn't tell, but she seemed mundane. I sat down in the chair, surprised by the softness but unwilling to admit it, and looked over at Perry.

"Right, Tancred introduced me but it's more fair for me to introduce myself. My name's Perry A. Schiver. I used to work in PR for stand-up comics after no one wanted to hire me when I graduated Parsons, 'til I somehow ended up in the same room as Jack Mansley, the Jackal." Celebrity superhero. Super speed, could break the sound barrier. Pretty physically strong, too. Very good reflexes. I had no idea why he was famous before becoming a superhero, I don't think I'd ever find out. His full name is public knowledge.

"You might have heard about the little controversy he had when he cursed out that Frenzy Tiger fella over ripping a bus in half and nearly hurt a kid." It was a news cycle everywhere for few weeks. Happened before I got powers. I remember being enamored by the footage in the foster home's little fuzzy-screened TV.

"Despite the fact Jack did the right thing," Perry continued, "he used some pretty obscene language and an awful pejorative. And called him a pedophile, which wasn't really the case, but all of that was pretty hard on a guy freaking out after a bad divorce and tabloids love making heroes into looking like real jerks." Frenzy Tiger nearly killed a child while ripping a bus in half over his own issues. He didn't deserve that kind of empathy. Perry's story didn't seem to end.

"He'd actually been in talks with The Saint around the same time because he wanted to join The Wave of Hope. It wouldn't be the first superhero with a business layer to his lifestyle, they have Tyr who promotes his YggTech stuff. Wouldn't be any weirder than The Jackal's interests in sponsorships and endorsements. But he kinda strained that with the whole situation. Well I spoke with him and we actually got on well, he was majoring in marketing in college so he understood what he did was a big nasty."

He leaned back in his seat.

"At that point my career highlights included saving the careers of three different comedians who made jokes about 9/11, including one involving Chicago having the world's biggest barbecue in 1993." In that moment I considered kicking that desk full force and seeing him flailing out of the window.

"That one does charity work now for the survivors and their families." It could wait.

"Anyways, I told him this and I helped him with setting a whole framework for unscrewing the pooch. I got in contact with The Wave of Hope who had a tipline and I was just like 'Hey I got a superhero The Saint was talking to that kinda recently screwed up but wanted to figure out a way to fix his image and keep up negotiations to join here's my phone number' and I actually got a call. We then set up a meeting and I set a couple rules for him. He couldn't date any superheroes and his language had to stay PG-13.

He can say 'Shit!' if he drops something but he can't say 'Fuck!' He's allowed to flip people off though." He leveled a finger at me.

"Same rules apply to you guys, by the way," I didn't talk much while I was dealing with gangbangers anyway so I didn't see the issue there.

"Anyways, they liked it and Jack stuck to it and he's been with the Wave for seven years now and he does great work. The point of this story being I have a track record of success with superheroes and my job is to make sure you not only have the image but the rules of engagement that will make you the heroes of the next generation, brought to you by Uncle Sam himself." I considered asking if a story this long-winded was really necessary, but I had also concluded that asking that would have made the story longer.

Perry clapped his hands together.

"Regardless, we'll go over things like rules of engagement and all that at a later time. I just wanted to introduce myself and go over your image, so that we can get that duck in its row and you're not deliberating over it in the future. Your file says you didn't really call yourself anything but you did adopt a moniker because of what people called you, and it is an intransitive verb defined by Merriam-Webster as 'to chew or press with a crushing noise.'

In reference to the various bones you've broken dealing with the scum of the Earth, that is." His gaze was beheld from an almost cherub-like face. His lips had a bit of a curl to them, almost like he had told a very subtle joke and knew he couldn't laugh. A look of knowing. But it seemed to just be his resting, neutral expression. I wasn't sure how I felt about that.

"Simply put, that is MORTIFYING to the average citizen.

'Have no fear, Crunch is here!' on a good day is either a cereal ad or a bad pro wrestler's intro. Otherwise it just makes you sound, frankly, like a villain. I haven't figured out a name yet, I've got a few in my head, but I'm making it clear we won't put you under the name Crunch. And that's NOT because we don't have any trademarks for the word!" He pointed in that case, as though I was going to accuse him of something I wouldn't have thought of anyway.

"Okay," I told him in hopes he'd move along to a point.

"The other thing is costuming, appearances. Baggy clothes to hide your silhouette is, again, kind of just scary." I cocked my head.

"How am I going to hide my identity?" He gave the most dismissive shrug I had ever seen.

"A mask and a costume that doesn't scare the crap out of people, Leo! Come on, this is the easy stuff. We already have a costume design for you, a good neutral one that works with any name until it looks like a brand update could be useful." He picked up a paper from the desk and held it up with both hands due to its width, showing drafts of a costume. It was that garish orange and blue combination again, swaying and interchanging on a bodysuit and a mask that left the top of my head exposed. Hell no.

"I'm not wearing that. What the Hell is that?" Perry looked dumbfounded.

"Your costume, pal! It's a good heroic bodysuit, handles your physique nicely, and it has the official colors of The New Sentinels: Orange and blue." He did everything except coherently answer my question.

"Why is it orange and blue? Why would those be the official colors?" He continued to seem surprised.

"They're the most popular complementary colors. They draw the eyes well, that's why that pair is used on so many movie posters." I shook my head.

"Why would I want to draw eyes? Drawing attention draws more risk. And my silhouette is completely obvious, people would be able to spot me anywhere without the costume on." What impressed me most was how many words this bullshit was pulling out of me. Perry sighed, looking almost defeated, and yet I could tell he hadn't given up.

"Kid. You're coming in with anywhere from three to four other people to save others, from supervillains, or disasters, or anything else. You need to draw eyes because it means you have nothing to hide."

"Like my identity?" I shot back. He shook his head.

"Not what I mean. Think of it like police sirens: It's to tell you the police are here or coming. Blue and orange signal the Sentinels are coming."

"It would look like the circus is coming," I called out.

"Yeah. It is. Here's the thing. You can slap a car into the next zip code. That's TERRIFYING." His arms spanned out, like he was giving a physical approximation to scale how much terror it would be.

"I'm not saying this to demean you, kid, but with that kind of power, you are a bomb. You can change the trajectory of dang near anyone's life without even exerting effort. If you just come in, all in black with a nebulous shape and just start suplexing vans, they're not gonna see you as a hero, they're gonna think you're another villain adding to the chaos. You need to look ridiculous to the point it's not scary. That measure of humbling yourself helps reassure people you're not a threat.

That you're here to help them. You WANT their eyes on you so that they know where to look to see help is on the way." He lowered one arm, the other pointing at me again.

"You're giving them hope, and hope comes in stupid silly color combinations. The Saint wears a red shirt and white pants, you think he doesn't find that a little ridiculous?" I hadn't considered that. My mouth started to open to, much to my surprise, agree with him, before he interrupted to continue.

"And yeah, I don't think bright toy orange is very statuesque, but the things we see are given meanings based on how we see them. These colors look dumb now, you follow the ROE and you save a bunch of lives, eight months from now they're gonna spray paint those colors at flash floods and kaiju attacks and villains trying to conquer the world as a mark of hope, because they'll have seen those colors in the context of bringing hope and saving people." My gaze finally broke from Perry, towards Agent Tancred and Eliza.

Eliza was smiling. Tancred was just quietly staring at me. I don't know why my gaze lingered on Tancred, but he simply nodded. It was a bit worrying to me that I took Tancred's nod almost assuringly. It felt paltry given he had said nothing but blithe nonsense since I met him, but he looked serious for once. I turned back to Perry, and scrounged up the words.

"Alright. I'll try it. But if it looks bad we're changing colors." Perry gave a defeated shrug.

"You know what, that's probably the best concession I'm gonna get out of you. Stand up, lemme get your measurements." I listened and stood up, wondering where my spine had gone in all of that conversation." I think some vibrant colors wouldn't hurt you," he said, getting up and procuring a tape measure. Three steps away from me, he stopped, gazing past me.

"Hurt. Huh," he remarked, as though it surprised him. I cocked my head, again thinking looking at someone at a forty-five degree angle would manifest an answer.

"Hurt. Her-t. Strong guy, history of violence. Being petitioned by a higher power for redemption." He snapped his fingers, before pointing at me, eyes wide." Hercules."