Generation Why Bother

Johnny had a love-hate relationship with the fact that his name was now in tons of newspapers all across the world for the odd happenings just a few nights before. He was known as The Dude Who Saved New York From Getting Flattened By Some Huge Cat – and even though there were a ton of conspiracies and other things to doubt the legitimacy of it all, Johnny knew in his heart that it was completely real.

He knew he wasn’t dreaming, because every day he woke up to see Hoshiko sleeping softly at the foot of his bed, still wearing clothes for some odd reason. Hoshiko would watch television in the apartment when Johnny went out at night to play with his band, sneaking sardines out of Johnny’s fridge somehow. He’d come back and greet the alien cat, asking how things were, and even though Hoshiko couldn’t speak English, somehow Johnny knew what he was saying.

The Stars spoke to him sometimes, too. They told him to keep his guard up in case something else caused peril, and despite so many things going wrong in the world, Johnny didn’t seem to mind as much. He was content just to live in that moment.

With a leash he’d bought from a pet store down the road, the next issue started off with Johnny clipping Hoshiko up and taking a stroll down the busy city street that had once been covered in fur. Of course, it was strange to the average bystander to see a hero walk among commons with such aplomb, but on another level – who the hell walks their cat?

For a heavy creature, Hoshiko didn’t mind the exercise. He waddled to keep up with Johnny as they walked down a sidewalk littered with street vendors and small businesses, whipping his little head around to try and absorb everything on Earth. Smells everywhere! So many colors! Hoshiko didn’t quite know where he had come from in the universe. For as long as he could remember, he’d floated among the Stars, and as far as he knew, the Stars were his parents, his siblings, his cousins.

Johnny, sunglasses over his big eyes, strolled along at a leisurely pace, keeping a tight grip on the leash to make sure the cat didn’t escape. This was just another day to him in the city – everything was going perfectly fine. But just ahead of him was something that made his day even better.

He stopped in his tracks on the edge of the sidewalk, peering ahead at a girl a short distance in front of them.

“Maryanne!” he called out.

The girl, red bobbed locks bouncing over her shoulder, turned around and batted her long eyelashes at the young man. She smiled upon seeing his face and walked back in his direction, throwing out her arms. “Johnny!” she exclaimed.

“Fancy seeing you here,” Johnny grinned as they hugged. “You should’ve called me and told me you had a day off, honey.”

“I was going to surprise you at your apartment,” she smiled.

He wrapped his arm around her shoulder and held her close. “Well, how does a little walk around the city sound?”

She glanced at Hoshiko, who was looking up at her with friendly eyes – and somehow, he had a big hamburger patty in his mouth. “With your cute lil’ city destroyer, that sounds groovy, babe.”

“Aww, he didn’t mean any harm,” Johnny laughed. It was true – he later found out that the Stars had been controlling Hoshiko’s size in order to provoke Johnny to use his Star Powers for the first time. He did a double take when he looked down at the cat and noticed the beef, punctured by his teeth. “Hoshiko, did you steal that?!”

The cat simply purred. He couldn’t help it, he was hungry.

And their stroll throughout the city, shown by detailed landscapes and symbolism in the vast spaces surrounding Johnny, Hoshiko, and Maryanne, was a beautiful way to mark the middle of that issue.

The next day after my dad had given his hesitant approval of the situation, at around noon Tegan and I drove to the band’s apartment in my car. There wasn’t a really big reason to do so, and like Johnny’s decision to take Hoshiko out for a walk, it was sort of on a whim. It certainly wasn’t a waste of a day.

I guess Tegan and I just wanted to let the band know that we were signed on to this for real. Plus, my dad was at work at the moment – he worked at a mechanic’s; he was pretty high up. I just called him and said we were gonna go there and he was just like, “Okay.” No big deal.

We vaguely remembered how to get to their apartment, but every so often we had to pull over and try to recognize our surroundings, or take a little detour on the backstreets. Eventually we found it and parked in the back.

Upon staring up at the building again, we looked at each other and Tegan said, “We’re taking the elevator.”

So we did. Seventh floor, all the way at the end of the hallway to the left – that was their flat, and when we knocked on the door, we were halfway prepared to come face-to-face with nobody. They were a band, after all. They had stuff to do. Publicity, touring, writing, all those good things you always hear about.

But somebody did answer, and that somebody was Andy, clad in a dirty tanktop and boxer shorts. He froze for a second as if trying to remember a situation calling for us to be right there at that moment, but seemed to toss it away and instead said, “Well…you’re here.”

“Uh, we just kinda wanted to let you know we’re officially signing on, I guess,” I fumbled.

“In other words, his dad got the stick out of his ass,” Tegan boasted.

Andy smiled and nodded, ushering us in. “Good. Now get in here, I know you didn’t waste gas for nothing.”

The rest of the band was sitting in the living room, but the only one who seemed to be dressed and awake was Chance, who was strumming away on his guitar, repeating riffs over and over while tweaking little bits. Mick was at the stove frying something while in pajamas, and Anthony was sitting at the kitchen counter eating cereal.

“Yeah, we’ve got a little bit of down time. We had to cancel our two shows this week because of the confusion about that concert,” Andy said a bit grudgingly, elbowing me. He started to walk away, leaving Tegan and I in the company of three people we knew even less, but he explained, “I gotta go shower now. I’ll be right back, dudes.”

Anthony looked up from his food and made eye contact with us for the first time that day. All he did was nod a bit with what looked like a strained smirk, then he went back to eating. Chance didn’t even break contact with his music.

Mick, however, waved at us with his spatula and offered, “Hey guys! Want some eggs? Breakfast is the most important meal of the day!”

Tegan pulled her phone out of her pocket to check the time. “It’s noon…”

“Noon, nine, same thing,” he shrugged, still chipper. “My offer still stands. I’m gonna end up eating all of these eggs all by myself and I don’t think I need that.”

That’s how we both ended up eating scrambled eggs on Put’emup, Put’emup’s couch circle in the middle of their living room. Mick was a good cook, I had to admit. He even put a bit of cheese in the eggs to give it a little extra creaminess, and when he put a plate of eggs in front of Chance, he even got out of his daze and put aside his guitar to eat some.

Mick took a seat with us and so did Anthony, despite him having a bowl of cereal instead. Everybody was silent and eating their brunch like it was the greatest nourishment to ever come to them, but on the other hand, it was kind of weird to sit there in silence.

“So, uh…you guys are in on it too, right?” I asked to nobody in particular.

Anthony took it upon himself to nod, and he put his bowl on the coffee table in front of us, pushing his hair back as well. “And of course Andy is too, but he’s stressing himself out about it to hell and back despite the fact that we don’t need to worry about it too much right now.”

“What, is he like the self-declared team leader or something?” Tegan asked jokingly.

Chance laughed a tad and spoke with his mouth full. “I think he wants to be. We all said we’d try to keep it equal ‘cause we don’t want one person getting too stressed out, but I think he really just likes responsibility.”

Anthony raised his eyebrows and said, “Well, one of these day’s he’s gonna burn himself out,” with a sarcastic smile.

His little remark caused us to go silent and eat our delicious eggs in peace. Nobody seemed to mind, though – the reason why we were quiet in the first place was because the food was so good that talking would be a useless interruption.

That silence was cut off, though, when Andy waltzed out of the bathroom in cargo pants and a baseball tee, marching over to the kitchen counter to grab some leftover eggs and hit the button on the wall that made the monitor appear again. As if on cue, Anthony rolled his eyes like he knew what was coming.

“I was thinking in the shower,” Andy started, “that this is a good thing that you two came over. Because there is something we need to start working on right away – your workout patterns.”

Workout? The only workout we got was in gym class – and half the time we took the easy way out and just walked laps around the field…

We looked at each other in terror. “Workout?” Tegan whimpered.

“Yeah, workout. Don’t tell me you guys don’t already get some exercise,” Andy said, parking his butt down right next to mine.

“Gym class…” I trailed off. The fact that I was shoveling more food into my mouth probably wasn’t making me look any better.

He shook his head but kept the slight smile as he said, “Look, you guys gotta get into shape if you wanna add any extra oomph to the powers you’re gonna be having. Neither of you look like you’re gonna have many problems doin’ some running or weightlifting, you look pretty fit already. I don’t care if they’re all lightyears away, it doesn’t hurt.”

Tegan grunted. “But my legs break really easily…and I’m too fat to run…”

I raised an eyebrow at her. She was so tiny I could probably lift her with one hand. Anything to get out of it, I guessed. I didn’t blame her…

“Then you’ll be feeling the burn even more, won’t you?” Andy teased.

“Wait – when are we getting our powers again?” she asked, sitting up and placing the empty plate on the coffee table.

“When we find out who the seventh and eighth guardians are,” he answered.

That was Anthony’s cue to jump in. “Then we’ve got time to spare, Andy. We’ll find them when the computer tracks ‘em down, okay?”

Suddenly, Mick jumped up and started rounding up plates and taking them to the kitchen sink, and Chance moved to a different room to practice his guitar. I wonder if they felt that earthquake coming.

“What’re the odds they’re gonna be in Chicago again? We got lucky with these kids – those last two could be anywhere in the whole world, and they can come at any time. And I can tell you, they’re probably not gonna come at the same time like they did,” Andy countered. “We didn’t have to rely too heavily on the computer because we saw it happen and we saw their scars and knew what was going on. I don’t care if we have time; that time is still precious and we shouldn’t waste it.”

Anthony held out both of his hands and motioned as if to calm down the situation. “Just chill out, okay? You already freaked them out yesterday and we could’ve had a walkout at the worst possible time. We don’t need to deter the people we need to work with.”

Out of nowhere, Mick poked his head between Tegan and I and whispered a nugget of wisdom into our ears. “They do that a lot. They’re best friends and they hate each other half the time. Don’t worry about it, they’ll be fine.” Just like that, he was back in the kitchen washing dishes.

The look on Andy’s face as the debate went on grew more and more serious, until he threw his hands up and said, “Well, better safe than sorry!”

Both of them stood up at the same time, but it was Anthony who walked away from the scene. “Fine, go ahead, kill some time. I couldn’t care less.”

He trudged through to get to the hallway leading to bedrooms, his back turned while Andy flung two big middle fingers at him, sticking out his tongue and flailing angrily but quietly. His face flushed red, he exhaled heavily after the release and pinched the bridge of his nose.

“Okay.” His voice was gravelly. “Are we ready to start light? A little jog?”