Generation Why Bother

Space knew they had something rough on their hands when they were messing with Johnny. Of the times they’d tried to pulverize him, he’d destroyed them no matter what kind of injuries he sustained or what kind of damages were done to New York. The world was becoming aware of Johnny, and he was hailed as some kind of hero, which was new to him, but he didn’t think much of it. He still lived in a little apartment, and he still looked forward to playing music every night with a few other dudes who didn’t care how famous he was.

The planet Dingaling had a trick up their sleeve to rid Earth of Johnny Cool once and for all, however.

It was one of those nights, read the text box above the first panel of that issue. You know the kind. Like day, but darker.

Johnny was passed out in bed, sleeping like a log with Hoshiko curled up next to him. Sheets of music strewn all over his bedroom next to cola cans, his apartment was the usual mess. But it wasn’t like it was getting broken into by paparazzi, the same folks who would recognize him on the streets and beg for a picture or an autograph.

In a way, it sort of was broken into, though. There were definitely intruders. Hailing from the planet Dingaling, these creatures were known as Bells – tall, snarky and snooty catlike creatures that were known for their incredible intelligence and their prowess in space exploration. With their stealthy spaceship in tow, they hurtled through the night sky and transmitted signal beams through the floors of Johnny’s apartment when the ship landed atop the building.

Johnny started to glow, but he was still out cold. The bright light woke Hoshiko, though, and the cat stood up and tried to process what was happening.

Though the Stars hadn’t told him what to do yet, Hoshiko yowled as loud as he could in an attempt to wake his partner. It worked like a charm – Johnny stirred in his slumber and his eyelids flickered awake, and once he saw that he was glowing, he let out the most ear-piercing shriek he’d ever uttered before.

“What’s going on?! Why am I glowing?!” he stammered, staring at his shining limbs.

He looked down and saw his feet start to dissolve into the air, particles flaking off, the process moving up his body. Hoshiko leapt onto his chest because he really didn’t know what else to do, and as they both flaked into the night, neither knew what was in store for them.

For a few panels, everything was black. Not a single sight, not a single word.

Everything came back to Johnny as he slipped out of unconsciousness. He slowly blinked, once, twice, to find himself in a metal pod surrounded by three cat heads – one with cerulean fur, one lavender, and the other a lovely shade of pink.

“He’s awake,” the blue one said, a thick French accent littering its words.

“Whazza…wha’z goin’ on?” Johnny slurred, trying to get up. His wrists were shackled to the chair he was forced to sit in, along with his ankles. Fear spread throughout his body at the uncertainty that had befallen him. He wasn’t quite awake and he still could tell he was in danger.

The pink one laughed sarcastically, a heartless chuckle, and turned his back to face out the window that only displayed a deep night sky. “You are Johnny Cool, yes? Protector of Earth?”

Johnny couldn’t speak. His mouth was a desert and his tongue was a cactus.

“Well, we ‘ave come to take you away from your planet,” the Bell went on. “You see, it is not easy to dominate the universe if you have an enemy, correct? And this is why we are sending you into space without the precious oxygen your pathetic human body so needs.”

That fear gripped Johnny around his neck and made him paralyzed. He couldn’t find the effort to fight the cuffs that locked him place and the only thing that went through his mind was the constant reminder that this was his end. He had a good start, but it was gonna get cut short. I mean, what kind of hero just sits back and lets it happen?

Well, he didn’t just sit back and let it happen. Not after Hoshiko pounced out from behind that chair and flung his rotund feline self at one Bell, catching the attention of the other two while Hoshiko moved on to the next one, scratching through their flesh just enough to incapacitate them. Bells were smart as hell, but they weren’t built for combat.

Hoshiko fell from the pile of writhing Bells and with his tail, flicked the switch on the chair that released Johnny from his shackles. His companion jumped from the seat and scooped up the cat in his arms, rejoicing with the biggest grin.

“Aw, I knew I could count on you, buddy!” he gushed in a spiky speech bubble. “I owe you all the fish in the market for that one! Now let’s go home!”

Hoshiko purred happily and shot a devastating glare toward the dismembered Bells as if to ask an unsaid question.

“Press the big purple button, it will send you back to your bed!” the blue one whimpered.

And so they returned home safe once more, Johnny’s head spinning at the thought of the sheer amount of trust that had gone into such a near-end of a situation. When they lay back in the bed, Hoshiko happily dreaming of yarn and milk, Johnny gave him a little scratch behind the ears. He sure helped him out of a sticky situation – that’s what friends do, right? He stood behind his promise, too; the next day, he went down the street and bought out all the best fish from the supermarket, coming home with armfuls of it for an eager alien-cat friend.

Teamwork. That’s the word of the day here. When someone’s in deep doo-doo, you help them out – even if it’s just on a whim, it’s the right thing to do, and it pays off. I’m speaking from experience…well, I watched it all pay off, anyway. Still counts.

It started the Saturday after we visited the band’s apartment. Tegan and I were bored out of our brains sitting around our houses doing nothing, and our parents were telling us to stop being couch potatoes and to get some fresh air since apparently all we did was laze around, despite the fact that we kept up with our jogging every day after school and homework. We figured it couldn’t have hurt to get out into the real world, after all.

We drove into the city, kind of wasting gas while we sped past all sorts of downtown wonders just to kill time. Because it was such a nice day, the fall breeze swaying throughout the area, we even rolled the windows down. It almost made me feel like we were outside.

“Let’s just go to a park and walk around,” she suggested, resting her head in her hand along the window. “This weather is amazing.”

“You’re gonna have to be more specific; there are a ton of parks around here,” I told her, taking it into consideration.

“Ah, just park at a corner. We can walk to one.”

She was right. Despite the metropolitan look of our home city, greenery wasn’t hard to find. I looked out my window (while keeping an eye on the road, of course) to see a good park and a good place to park. Right up ahead was a pretty nice place me and my dad used to go to when I was really young and not old enough to be in school, and I kept on driving.

“You’re not lost, are you?” she said threateningly.

“No, I know where we’re going,” I replied, “but I don’t remember much about it…”

The place ended up being Jefferson Park, and I’m not really sure how we ended up on the road to it, but I’m pretty glad we did. The place was a whole area in itself and of course, there was a park, full of lush green grass and trees and a few other people who decided to bask in the glorious sunshine underneath a canopy of leaves.

I parked nearby and we got out and stretched our legs. Tegan walked over to my side of the car and placed her hand on my arm as if to hold onto me, saying, “Well, shall we, my good sir?” jokingly.

“We might as well,” I shrugged, going along with it. Truth be told, I just wanted to draw. The environment was giving me inspiration I desperately needed at the moment.

But man, it was a beautiful day. It was the kind of sunshine that didn’t make you sweat or dread the heat, but it just warmed you up. It was pleasant. I couldn’t grumble about anything when we started walking through the area aimlessly and the sounds of the city paralleled the quiet whispers of nature. Tegan let go of me after a while but she still stuck close to me, whipping her head between the streets and the trees, and both of us were quiet. There wasn’t some impending need to fill the silence with useless chitchat.

Even though I was getting sick of school already and the workload associated with going back to it, somehow it didn’t seem so bad at the moment.

The quiet peace was broken a few minutes later by a familiar voice trumpeting from down the sidewalk.

“Oshie, Tegan! What the hell, what are you guys doing here?”

We turned to see where the voice had come from, and it was from nobody other than Mick himself, dressed like a 2009 scene kid in a headband, purple gym shorts and a yellow t-shirt with the word “Schurz” and a bulldog printed on it. Sweat stains on his pits, he walked up to us out of breath and smiled like he just uncovered some sort of unearthly treasure.

“Hey Mick!” Tegan said happily, not even feigning the cheer. “Well, this is a coincidence.”

“I know right? Man, what brings you here?” he gasped, hands on his wide hips.

“We were just getting some fresh air,” I shrugged, taking my hat off to briefly scratch an itch.

He grinned through his beard. “Great day to do it, am I right? Wonderful weather. That’s why I’m out here huffing and puffing.”

“Yeah, I’m digging the sweatband, dude,” Tegan said.

Mick didn’t catch her sarcasm. “Thanks, Tiger.” He didn’t notice the weird look Tegan shot him after that utterance of her forgotten nickname. “What do you say I join you on a little walk around here? I’m pooped. I hate running.”

“I don’t have a problem with it,” I agreed. “Tegan?”

She looked up at him, a foot taller than her, and said, “Nah, the more the merrier!”

Even though I thought at first that Mick would be a kind of unnecessary addition to our stroll, he ended up improving it. He was in his usual cheery mood, and even though he kinda smelled, I could look past it. The blue skies seemed bluer, the air more vibrant. He even had things to talk about. I didn’t have anything interesting to say before so Tegan and I would’ve had a forced conversation, but he was talking so much about random things that it seemed like he was talking to get something out of his head.

When he stopped talking, I took the opportunity to ask something that was on my mind for him. “How come the others didn’t come with you?”

His eyes widened a bit. “Oh, um…they were all kinda doing their own thing when I left, and uh…well, things are still rough between Andy and Anthony, and…yeah.”

“Yeah, what happened with them? They’re being weird,” Tegan stated the obvious, looking up at him.

Mick’s cheerful demeanor faded away and I kicked myself for making it disappear. “Well, that kind of stuff happens with them. Me and Chance never really know the exact details of it all, but eventually one of them tells us the gist. Anthony told me Andy is under a bunch of pressure right now and when Anthony tried to talk to him about it, Andy blew up at him on the plane and they’ve been stewed ever since then.”

“I wonder if that can be skewed,” Tegan laughed.

“Anthony was probably getting on his nerves somehow,” Mick whispered, “but pretend I never said that.”

Mick changed the subject to something only slightly less depressing – asking us how school was going – and after we milked that, he asked if we wanted to back to the flat with him and hang out for a little while. We said it’d be cool and I said I could drive all of us back, and I kid you not, he saluted me with thankful eyes. “You’re saving my legs, Osh,” he pleaded.

We drove back with the windows down, me relying on Mick to give me directions since I was clueless as far as how to get to the apartment from there. The closer we got, the more hesitant he was in speaking, the more his voice would crack. He was sitting in the backseat, so I couldn’t see him, but Tegan would look back and shoot him a funny look and start laughing whenever it happened.

The three of us opted for the elevator in getting back to the band’s apartment, and Mick opened the door for us using his key. When we walked in, at first glance it looked like nobody was in there. When I took a second look, though, I noticed Chance sitting in the couch circle, his guitar on top of him as he laid back and sunk into the music he was playing.

Mick slammed the door behind him and he jumped up, letting out a muffled squeak in surprise. He saw the three of us standing there and then went, “Oh. You’re back already?”

“I, uh, got sidetracked. Also, I hate running,” Mick muttered, ripping off his headband. “Do you know where the others are?”

“Nope,” Chance smiled. “Andy went out earlier but Anthony’s in his room I think. That’s all I know.”

“I feel like we walked into a nuclear aftermath,” Tegan joked.

“It’s more like a minefield,” Mick shrugged. He walked around the couch circle to the bit of window exposed by the fact that the monitor wasn’t up and running, blocking it. Arms folded across his barrel chest, he stared back outside. “You know you guys can take a seat. This is kinda like your home, too,” he chuckled when he glanced at us and saw Tegan and I still standing up.

I took up his offer and plopped down on the seat in front of Chance, but Tegan walked toward Mick and stared at the outdoors like he was doing. Chance smiled at me as I sat down.

Mick opened the sliding glass door to walk out on the balcony. “I’m gonna stand out here for a little bit. Can’t get over this weather, man.”

Anybody could tell he was just looking for a way out of the warzone, and Tegan frowned at me before heading out behind him. Outside, he leaned against the metal railing keeping him from plunging into the makeshift garden in front of the building. He was so focused on the sky that he didn’t even notice Tegan coming up behind him until she said, “Hey.”

From then on, they shot off on their own little conversation while I was inside sitting in front of the only one of us who had discovered their power. Chance wasn’t a real talkative guy. When you brought something up he knew about or loved, he could talk your ear off in an endearing way, but when he had his guitar, there was a slim chance of getting him to speak to you.

Out of nowhere, though, he sat up again, hushing the strings of his acoustic music-maker with his hand. “Oh, hey, you know how we were filming our music video while we were on tour?”

“Like, on the days you had off? How’d you do that?” I asked in return. I knew they just filmed the live-action part of the “Strawberry Jam” music video, but I didn’t know how exactly.

“We had two days to film it so we stopped in Albany at the studio,” he told me. “So yeah, that’s outta the way for now. We’re just waiting on it to get processed and for the rest to get animated.”

When I looked at the balcony for a second, Tegan was leaning on the railing instead of Mick, but they were both smiling and talking about who-knows-what.

“I think it’s cool what you guys are doing with the video,” I said just to keep the little spark rolling.

He went back to strumming but didn’t let it die. “Yeah, Andy had the idea way back after we first wrote it. That’s all him,” he snickered.

Chance sunk into noodly melodies again and I decided not to bother him. He didn’t mind when I didn’t say anything back to him and I even found myself relaxing a bit. Everything he played was different. It was like he could just pull anything out of his head and know exactly how to play it on his guitar and make it sound like magic. It was like when Andy sketched up that flawless drawing of Johnny Cool (which was still hanging on my wall, by the way). The talent was effortless. No wonder they only had one guitarist in the studio; he could be rhythm and lead.

The summery ditty that was coming from his strings was shattered into pieces when the sound of metal snapping sounded from outside, however.

I whipped my head up to look outside, but nothing could have prepared me for the sight of Tegan falling off the balcony alongside the metal railing. Accompanied by a shill gasp and scream, she was falling backwards to an inevitable death; Mick clouded the air with his own yelp, wobbling on the edge with a hand outstretched, her own hands slipping past his arm.

“NO!” he cried, his voice cracking, teetering.

Chance and I raced over almost instantly to help in any way we could, but as it was, there was nothing we could have done. They just leaned over the stone part of the balcony to watch our friend part with life, her face scarred with fear as she fell further and further away from us. I didn’t even dare to look over for long. I only managed a glance before I felt sick to my stomach and felt the tears prick my eyes.

But…there wasn’t a bone-crunching “splat” as she landed. In fact, there wasn’t really much of a noise at all. There was a shuffling of leaves, the snapping of branches. Her screams stopped.

Then Mick whimpered, “Oh my God. Oh…oh my God.”

I couldn’t even turn around. My palms were deep into my eyes to keep any more tears from coming and I don’t think anybody needed to see that.

“You just…you just grew a bush out of nowhere, dude!” Chance wailed. “Look at her! She’s…she’s standing up now, she’s walking around…”

I peeled myself away from my refusal to look. They were both standing and looking over the ledge, but Mick was hyperventilating and staring at his hands – the same ones that, apparently, had rescued Tegan somehow.

“What’s going on?” I asked, my voice weak and quivering.

Nobody noticed the moisture on my cheeks and instead Chance answered, “She’s alive! Mick saved her with a bush!”

Mick had his hands full of lush, green, healthy leaves. He let them fall to the floor of the balcony, watching as they were lifted by the wind and landed so easily, and then he screamed. “What the hell is going on?!”

“Chill out!” Chance ushered, reaching over to shake him by the shoulders. “I think…I’m pretty sure you just…discovered your power.”

Mick’s eyes were wide as volleyballs as he shook even more, screaming like a banshee. Those screams then evolved into big laughs that rocked the balcony and spread like wildfire to Chance and I, who laughed right along with him. With all of the emotions darting through his head, it was a blessing to have a few crappy seconds replaced with rejoicing.

Meanwhile, Tegan was shouting at us from down below to get our attention, and after the cheering subsided, we all leaned over to see her standing perfectly healthy, not a scratch on her from what we could see.

“I’m gonna go back up now, guys!” she warned, cupping her hands around her mouth.

We saw her walk back into the building, and after a moment of just staring at each other with ridiculous smiles across our faces, we filed back into the apartment.

Anthony walked into the living room at the same time, though, and the look of distaste on his mug wasn’t a sight for sore eyes. “What the hell is going on out here? What’s with all the screaming?”

Mick didn’t say anything. He just grinned toothily and held up his leaf-infested hands.

The bassist just pressed his eyebrows together and stated, “That’s a weird way to go vegetarian…what really happened?”

Giddy as a schoolgirl, Mick gushed, “I’m not completely sure, but I think I can control plants and shit!”

Anthony looked like he had been electrocuted again and was about to say something when someone knocked on the door. Mick lunged like he was going to answer it, but I raced in front of him, eager to see Tegan in one piece and not bloodied and battered like I feared she was before. Man, you just can’t watch something like that and come out completely normal and not wanting to smother your best friend in hugs.

That’s exactly what I did when I opened the door and saw her standing completely normal like nothing had almost taken her from life. She didn’t even have time to question what I was doing before I had her in my arms, holding her tight, biting back tears yet again – she just cracked up like it was all a big joke and wrapped her arms around my waist right back.

“God, don’t scare me like that again,” I whispered into her hair.

She snickered, her head in my chest, and said, “Aw, I feel loved.”

“Hallelujah, praise the lord, something good finally happened today!” Mick suddenly burst, his head turned to the ceiling. A few leaves fell from the palms of his hands to the floor, but the only person who gave it a second look was Anthony, still looking like something just wasn’t clicking.

Mick held up his hand for a high-five with him, and even though Anthony didn’t leave him hanging, the bushel of leaves that erupted upon impact was kind of awkward to witness. Especially since Anthony added, “Okay, it’s awesome that you got your power and everything, but you’re gonna have to clean this up. Can’t have bugs in here.”

Mick’s face fell only slightly. “Oh. Yeah, that’s understandable, I can do that. I’ll make sure to get it under control, dude.”

Chance placed a hand around Mick’s shoulders and announced, “I think this kind of news calls for pizza. Anybody else with me?”

Anthony turned around and smiled at me and Tegan; I still had both arms around her but I wasn’t smothering her like before. “You guys wanna hang out here a little longer?” he asked.

We ended up doing just that, chilling there for a few more hours until evening fell and we had to go back to our houses. Andy didn’t show up at the apartment from what we witnessed, but Chance messaged us later on over Facenook to say that he did come home about half an hour after we left. He said he just walked around town. Whatever he did, he came back empty-handed and quieter than normal. Even Anthony was quiet while we hung out at the apartment. He wasn’t even moody or really in bad temperament; he just didn’t smile a lot and kept his mouth shut.

It was probably the happiest I’d seen him in person up until that point. I don’t think he was as mean as the others let on or told us before. I do think, though, that the time away from Andy was helping him be a little less snarky. As much as that thought pained me to think about in regards to their band as well as our band of guardians, it rang true. I had to wonder if it was only me who noticed.