Generation Why Bother

As ambitious and fearless as he was, Johnny Cool could also be cocky as hell. It was like he was trying to prove not only to others but to himself that he could accomplish whatever was thrown at him, always bouncing back up from a fight.

The third time was the charm for his enemies. It was right before a gig when disaster struck New York City yet again, this time in the form of a heavy downpour of pink rain. Johnny was sitting on the edge of his bed strumming away at his guitar, with Hoshiko curled up sleeping behind him, when clouds formed and turned the street a faint hue of crimson.

He was so immersed in his song, though, that he didn’t even look up until Hoshiko was shown to notice and stand up, stretching and headbutting Johnny’s arm. Even then, he just petted the cat at first until he let out an annoyed meow, pointing a paw to the window.

Suddenly, it looked like Pepto Bismol was falling from the sky, and somehow Johnny knew exactly what was going on. Maybe it was the way Hoshiko had noticed it first and responded so quickly, but he was catching on quick – this was an intergalactic being that was causing this, and it was his job to stop it dead in its tracks. Hoshiko, though he didn’t know much, knew that his companion was at least bright in that way, and the two set out from their apartment and ventured into the city streets.

Pink sludge cluttered up the sidewalks and struck terror in the hearts of every civilian. When Johnny looked up, past the rosy liquid pulverizing the city, a distinct cotton candy-like shape was lolling around in the sky, and though it had no face that he could see, the thunder was roaring from its belly. It was suspended far above the commotion, yet it was easily seen to be quite small – it just propelled its pounding precipitation in a way that defied size boundaries.

“Oh man, what do I do, Hoshiko?!” Johnny squeaked, picking up the cat.

Hoshiko yowled, but he wasn’t giving instructions. He just didn’t like being suddenly picked up.

As far as he knew, Johnny couldn’t fly. So how could he possibly hope to reach the cloud beast causing such a panic in the skies?

He thought about it for a few panels, then with a snap of his fingers, he gasped, “I’ve got it!”

Carrying Hoshiko, still, they raced back into his apartment building and headed straight for the elevator. When they reached the top floor, Johnny clambered for the staircase and flew up it with the alien cat in tow, and as predicted, they were at the very roof of his apartment building. The pink demon was now in sight, and they weren’t getting soaked. Just a few more feet…maybe a hundred, tops…

“Hey! Cat, can I jump any higher with my Star Powers?” Johnny questioned, his voice quaking.

Hoshiko processed the question. Hearing the Stars tell him yes, he meowed with a positive tone.

“Sweet!”

He obviously wasn’t thinking about the aftermath of what he was doing, though. Because before Hoshiko processed in his little mind that Johnny was about to jump off the building and try to slice into the beast, Johnny was already halfway up with one arm outstretched in hopes of cutting it into pieces.

The thing was, he had nowhere to land but the lovely lavender city streets.

So yeah, Johnny ended up destroying the pink raincloud that had flooded a section of New York, but in exchange he got a good conk on the head and a rousing bruise on his butt. He landed splat on the street in front of his apartment on top of a taxicab and hit so hard that the airbags inside of it went off. The dude was knocked out pretty much on contact.

While the beast writhed and shrunk into itself, stopping the rainfall, Hoshiko watched as his companion sailed further into the bowels of the city, and cringed when he saw the fall. With the catlike abilities he possessed from his heritage as an out-of-this-world being, he too jumped from the top of the building – but unlike Johnny, landed on all fours, light as a 20-pound feather, not a scratch on him.

Johnny ended up being alright after that incident. He just needed a little bit of TLC from Hoshiko and Maryanne, who had witnessed the whole thing and ended up lecturing him about how stupid it was to jump from that building without thinking it through. Even if he did have superpowers, that didn’t excuse him from looking at a situation like a normal human should first, she told him in a spiky speech bubble.

He was bedridden for the next few days, but he didn’t mind. Maryanne had cooled off and stayed over while he was getting better, and The Dudes had understood what Johnny was going through and called off the next few gigs while he healed. Even if he came out fine, Johnny had learned a lesson through that ordeal: just because you can, doesn’t mean you should, because crap can go down in the end anyway.

Thinking about that issue got me to thinking that maybe we sort of jumped the gun a little in recruiting Chuck and Riley. For one thing, they were on the other side of the country from us. I understood why Andy and Anthony were so adamant on getting them on the same page from the getgo, but they came on a bit strong. And even though Chuck didn’t blog any more about the subject, Tegan and I could tell they still thought they were tripping.

But things just went on normally even though our team was all ready to go and learn what our powers were going to be. Put’emup, Put’emup was chugging along in their tour bus all over the northeast with an all-girl punk band on the same record label, and even though I kind of wished they’d do another show back in Chicago because both bands were awesome, I had to face facts that it would be a while until I’d see their real faces again.

Even so, though, in the same way Mick added Tegan and I on Facenook, the other members followed suit. A few days later, we got friend requests from Andy Allen, Anthony Alvarez and Chance Chauncey, and even though we knew it was for real, we still knew not to let anybody know that, making their friend requests hidden to our friends. Also, I spent an embarrassing amount of time going through their photos looking for cool performance shots because I was trying to improve my gesture drawings. Of course, I would never tell any of them that. I told Tegan and she still calls me a stalker.

The days were just packed with nothing at that point, save for some small talk with the band members in various chatrooms to keep at least a fraction of the bond alive. I don’t know, it made me feel special. Like I’d said before, it was having celebrities on speed dial.

Nothing could soften the blow from the fact that I had mere days left before school started back up, though. The last day before the learning torture began again, my dad cooked potato skins for dinner, knowing it was my favorite food to at least cheer me up a little bit. He always did that on the last day of summer; it was a nice little gesture and it meant a lot.

Of course, no dinner with my dad was complete without a mention of the guardian issue.

“So how is the thing with the band going?” he said, being just vague enough for me to have to pause to process what he was asking. He slathered his potato skins in sour cream and green onions as he asked it.

I shrugged, tapping some pepper onto mine. “Uh, it’s kind of a standstill for now. They’re doing a tour right now and taking care of some publicity stuff since they’re putting together a music video.”

“What about your superpowers? When do you find out about that stuff?” he chuckled, not rudely or completely skeptically, but still with a tinge of joking.

“That’s kinda uncertain for now. We’re all able to get ‘em at any time, I guess, but nothing’s happened yet.” I took a bite; the cheese and bacon littered my tongue with all sorts of unhealthy goodness. “But look at my scar, it’s getting even darker. It’s kinda cool, actually.”

It looked like he was about to scoff at me for speaking with my mouth full, but he swallowed that thought and glanced at my arm, exposed by the rolled-up sleeve of my button-up plaid shirt. Of course, the lightning branches had deepened in color, a dark purple. When I went out in public, it attracted some stares, but people were quick to write it off as a tattoo. That was fine by me.

“My lord,” he said quietly. “Does it hurt, Oshie?”

“Not anymore,” I mumbled. Another bite of potato skin filled my mouth with wonderful tastes.

He sighed heavily. I was expecting another lecture about the validity of everything I was facing, but he then spoke, “You know, me and Tracey worry about you and Tegan all of the time. We’ve even gotten closer over that kind of worry. Just know that. We care about you two and we want you to know that you need to be safe.”

“I figured that much,” I responded, not completely sure of how to react to that. “But they’re all real stand-up guys. They don’t even cuss that much.”

My dad laughed, and for once it was real – he never laughed about the subject. “I’m glad about that, mijo.”

“So what’s this about you and Ms. Tracey getting ‘closer,’ huh?” I jumped on the question that immediately surfaced in my mind a few seconds ago.

He shot me this totally deadpan look, like he’d slap my butt into another year if I dared to continue. “Mijo, eat your food. I made it just for you.”

“How can I eat when my dad is out there being a ladies’ man?” I joked.

“Callete, Oshie.” If I didn’t know any better I would’ve thought he was pulling a knife on me. So I dropped it and kept on eating, but not without a little wink and a smile.

I couldn’t help it, it was just legitimately cute. My dad deserved a lot and he didn’t get much. Seeing him finally be happy was something I didn’t get to experience often, so I held on to it.

School ended up starting as a combination of a bang and a fizzle. It was a big slap across the face to be stuck doing so much work just in the first week – a combination of reviewing everything I learned last year in all of my classes, and introducing new concepts – and it was a fizzle in that I really had no desire to do any of the work that was thrown at me. Tegan was caught in that same predicament, probably because we ended up having four of our six classes together, the only difference being her theatre and portfolio classes taking up my advanced placement art class and gym period.

At the moment I was wracking my brain to come up with the main concept I’d be making 12 pieces with in art class. My art teacher told us to make it our own, but let it shine through easily in each piece. She also said to think about it over the summer. The only art I was thinking about over the summer was my own little doodles that were slowly getting better and better – sure, I had some ideas on the backburner for a main concentration, but I had no idea if they were any good.

So I thought of different words and sketched thumbnails based on them for those first few days. I sketched a few main pieces to use as the other section of my graded portfolio that focused on the extent I was able to utilize different mediums. It was scary when the only class I completely liked was slipping away from me. There were only a few other kids who took that class too, and they were all already way ahead of me. I had literally just gotten into the water and I was already drowning.

That didn’t matter, though, because the weekend came soon enough, and that meant that it was Friday movie night with Tegan at my house. She came over with a stack of DVDs ready to warm up in my disc drive that evening, already giddy like me to get rid of the mountain of stress piled onto our shoulders right out of the starting gate.

My dad ordered pizza for dinner and we vacuumed it up at the dinner table while he asked us how school was going; we gave him filler answers about how sucky it was, how excited we were to get out already. I fought the urge to bring up his obvious crush on Ms. Tracey for the simple fact that I didn’t know if Tegan even knew about it.

Then, it was on to my room, onto my bed and facing my laptop while rifling through the armful of movies Tegan lugged over.

“Ooh, this is a cute one,” she gushed, picking one up, “it’s about this kid who gets hit by a car and dies and gets kicked out of Heaven with this other guy. It’s a total bromance movie.”

I stuck my tongue out. “Ugh, I remember when that one came out and everybody hated it.”

“Well, I thought it was cute, so ha.” She flipped through the other cases. “There’s this one about a bus driver. It’s kinda indie.”

“Oh, I remember seeing that one with you in theatres. It was alright. I forget the ending though.”

“And then here’s that movie about that dude who tried to do everything on his bucket list before Y2K,” she suggested, going through a few more movies without saying anything.

“God, that one was so corny,” I snorted, looking through the stack again. There were endless possibilities in front of me and I wanted to watch every single movie, but there were only so many hours in a night.

“We could also watch TV on your computer if you don’t mind breaking a few laws,” she insinuated, avoiding eye contact suggestively.

“I’ve got a link in my favorites to all the episodes of ‘Spin’ -” I started, but the sound of blooping and beeping coming from my laptop cut me off. It sounded like somebody was calling me through a telephone.

Tegan leapt off my bed and to my laptop, opening the Internet browser window I was using for Facenook – you know, just in case the band wanted to chat. Sure enough, we were getting called to video chat with Mick, a phone icon dancing in the middle of the screen.

“Click it!” I gasped, sitting up.

She did, and after a few seconds of loading, we got a clear shot of the inside of their dark and depressing tour bus. I thought it was just crappy video quality at first, but once it tuned up and the light of the webcam shined on their temporary living space, my first impression was right – it was dark as night in there.

And for some reason, water was sloshing around on the floor that we could see, the tiny couches and cabinets lining the mobile home soaked in the clear liquid.

Mick fumbled around with his laptop for a moment, adjusting the angle, and when he saw Tegan and I with our mouths dropped to the floor, he started laughing and said, “You guys – you’re never gonna guess what happened – Chance found out his power!”

“Oh my God, are you serious?! That’s awesome!” Tegan gushed, leaning forward and rocking my bed.

Mick kept on beaming and cheered, “I know, right?! He can literally shoot water from his hands whenever he wants now! Our tour bus driver was falling asleep at the wheel, and so we were kinda swerving off the road and God knows what would’ve happened if nothing happened to wake him up, and – oh my God I’m still shaking just thinking about it – Chance jumped up and then all we heard was a scream and he just sprayed buckets of water on him to wake him up!”

With the most dumbly happy expressions we could have had, Tegan and I looked at each other and she started flailing her hands around. “Oh my God, it’s finally happening! I can’t believe it!” she rejoiced, grabbing my arm with both of her own.

“Well, I just called to let you guys know what was going on, but I gotta help clean up now. As you can see, it’s kind of a mess in here,” he laughed, stating the obvious. “But we’ll keep you guys posted! Our tour ends at the end of this month and our last tour date is August 29th, so just hang in there. And be careful! The uncertainty of this stuff is through the roof and we don’t know anything about…well, anything.”

“No problem, dude,” I assured him, nodding into the webcam.

“And make good grades! I know you guys just started school. And don’t do drugs. I’d say the same thing to those other two kids but the amount of stalking we’ve done on them is already creepy enough,” he continued, brushing the hair out of his face.

Thus, the webcam chat ended, and Tegan and I just decided to spend a few minutes celebrating the news by laughing like maniacs and hugging and stuff. You know, how normal people celebrate something. Despite the fact that my heart was sloshing around in my stomach from being dropped down there minutes ago, I kept on smiling, not wanting to burden Tegan with my stupid fears of the future.

She stood up and jumped around a little more, and after that she turned around and grabbed both of my hands and whooped, “What do you think our powers are gonna be?”

I was at a loss for words and shrugged.

“I hope we get something really cool! Like, something we can use to kill people with. I mean, we’re already gonna be doing that to aliens. But I’m talking something really powerful!” she went on, gripping my hands tighter and flopping back down on my bed.

She kept going on like that for a while, and I didn’t want to dampen the mood any more than my silence was already doing, so I just smiled along with her and answered whatever wacky question she threw at me.

As much as I would’ve liked to remain a sourpuss, though, over time as she kept speculating about what our powers were gonna be, I could feel my mood somehow lifting. It was like talking about it and focusing on the sheer excitement of it all could somehow distract me from cowering in fear. My smiles became realer. I could feel the stress of school lifting away for at least the night.

Everything was going to fall into place eventually. And even if I hated vagueness, somehow it was alright with me, because there wasn’t a whole lot I could do to change that looseness, and I had accepted that.