Generation Why Bother

A week later, Tegan and I were about to start our weekly Friday movie night when we ended up getting a webcam call from Chance. Well, more specifically, Tegan did – I was at her house and of course she was logged in to Facenook, so I guess Chance just intended to talk to her. When we connected and both of our faces showed up through the webcam, he looked taken aback for a second.

“So that’s why you weren’t online, Osh,” he said. He played with one of his plugs as he spoke, twisting it in his ear. “Good. I wanted to talk to both of you anyway.”

“What’s the haps, dude?” Tegan greeted, oblivious to the strange look I gave her for saying that.

Chance snorted at my face and said, “Nothing much, just wanting to check in. You guys haven’t felt anything weird yet? Nothing goin’ on that you think might be related to your powers?”

We looked at each other and both shook our heads. “No, not yet,” I told him.

“Alright, that’s cool. Just making sure. Partly because the others were curious,” he explained. He was sitting at the kitchen counter with an empty living room behind him. “Oh, good news – Andy isn’t overseeing the animation on our music video anymore. He just gave all the sketches he did and the storyboards to someone else and he’s gonna let someone else take control.”

“Thank God,” Tegan sighed. “If what Anthony said was true, I doubt he needed to be that involved in it.”

“Amen, dude,” Chance agreed.

I scratched my hat-less head to not look awkward and asked, “So how have you and Mick been with your powers?”

He paused to laugh a little bit, his hand over his mouth. “Well, Mick won’t stop making random flowers pop up everywhere there’s dirt, and I won’t stop watering those flowers, and I think pretty soon Andy and Anthony are gonna get fed up and they’re gonna get so aggravated with us that they’re gonna discover their powers because their emotions are gonna get the best of them.”

“I had a feeling it was tied to emotions, too,” I stated, just throwing in my useless two cents.

“You think we could stage something to make everybody find out their powers faster?” Tegan wondered out loud, her elbows on her knees to prop up her head.

Chance took a swig from a nearby bottle of cream soda, burping quietly and then responding, “I doubt that’d work, but we could try it if worst comes to worst.”

She scoffed. “I’m just eager.”

I didn’t want to sound like a scared loser, so I just said, “Me too,” like I meant it. The thought of having an element under my control sounded like the kind of responsibility I didn’t particularly feel comfortable with. Even if we’d been mentally preparing for a few months at that point, it still didn’t resonate too well with me.

Chance waved his hand as if to quell our anxieties, whatever they were. “Ah, don’t sweat it. It’ll all happen when the time is right.”

That’s the kind of philosophy I always wanted to live by. For a long time, I did. Of course, that was when I wasn’t subjected to weird-ass supernatural happenings I wouldn’t have dreamed of in a million years, and when I wasn’t aware of intergalactic danger approaching the planet in just a matter of time. Everything would fall into place. I guess Chance was right. If it happened for him and Mick, it was bound to happen for the rest of us.

Good thing the universe gave us a nice big buffer as far as time went, because a lot of things had to come together before everything went down.