Chum

There’s a full length mirror in the ladies room, over in the DVD’s headquarters. The fact that I’m sharing a headquarters with the Delaware Valley Defenders still hasn’t hit me yet, not in the way it really should be. After a day of reflection, I can remember that, yeah, even some of the Young Defenders are people I have heard about before, at least off-hand. I examine myself in the mirror on a Sunday, one of the six days of the week I reserve for not looking at myself in the mirror, but it can’t be helped when examining a new outfit.

Nothing has changed in my core self yet. A grueling one-day obstacle course workout only leaves me a little sore, and even that went away after breakfast. My palms are red and raw but the scabs healed pretty quickly underneath the gauze, and thankfully, I had been told that I hadn’t hit my head on the way down when I passed out, which was my main concern. The rest of the day after that was watching from the sidelines and stretching, helping clean up after all was said and done, and being sent home. I had dinner with my parents, they asked me how it went, I told them fine, just training and introducing.

I’m saving the costume talk for a later day.

I’ve never felt comfortable in my body, but this is something easily blameable on puberty as opposed to anything else. I haven’t started growing gills, nor shark teeth in any interesting new locations, so the only target of my dysmorphia (that’s what mom called it) is just… me, as myself. I look at my body. It’s pale and taut, with angry, raised ridges of white flesh along my side. I look more like my dad than my mom, in the body, with squarish shoulders and a lack of, well, mom calls them “feminine attributes”. Even though they’re the “Young Defenders”, watching Gale and Puppeteer and Blink and Gossamer changing in the periphery that the mirror offers me just reminds me how much more adult they are. It turns out Puppeteer, even though she’s shorter than me, is 19. 19! She goes to college! She probably even has a day job.

It turns out, most of our heavy training is during the summer anyway, since the DVD doesn’t want to intrude too much on our “scholarly development”. The schedule is haphazard and unclear, lacking any strong routine for me to get attached to. No patterns. Nothing to hold on to. I just know that today is a patrol day, so they’re going to take me out on patrol. Easy peasy.

I jump when Gossamer gets a little too into my personal bubble. “You good, Hound? You’ve been staring at the mirror for, like, five minutes. Need help getting in the costume?”

Hound. Pooch. Dog. Dawg, sometimes, too. Blood. BH. Bee. In less than 24 hours it feels like I’ve already accumulated two school year’s worth of nicknames and callsigns, mostly in the form of the encrypted group chat I’ve been added to. I glance at Gossamer, putting my hands on my hips. “No, I think that’ll be fine. I’m just thinking. Can I ask how you got my measurements?”

I start unfurling the costume in front of me, set out on the… the… whatever you call the surface that a sink is set into. Countertop? The countertop, which is nice but visibly old polished granite with plenty of wear and tear, and doesn’t match the rest of the brown-tile-and-peeling-wallpaper bathroom at all. Gossamer giggles. “I just eyeballed it while you were passed out. Is that okay? I hope that’s not weird or creepy or anything.”

“That’s a little creepy.” I say, stepping into the unzipped undersuit. I got the whole lecture over the group chat – the undersuits are stretchy, breathable, and padded, made mostly to allow people wearing them to take falls and tumbles better. Elbows, knees, shins, anywhere a protruding bone might slam against hard concrete has a thin layer of padding. I reach around and fumble for the zipper, which Gossamer so dutifully pulls up for me. “Thanks, though.”

“Not a problem. I’ll see you in the locker room?”

“Yeah, sure.”

She gives me a supportive clap on the back and vanishes out the bathroom’s entryway. I look around, looking for everyone else, and discover to my slight surprise that they all finished getting changed before I have. Either way, there’s more layers to get on, so I start doing just that.

Depending on how active the hero is expected to be in combat, they’ll get more layers and more armoring with their costume. Rampart, for example, has a full set of ceramic armor that normally costs more than the entire gym equipment, because if a patrol ever ends up turning into a scuffle there’s a high chance he’ll get shot at. Gossamer, on the other hand, is more of a support type person, and basically wears enough to hook all her equipment on and protect from the elements and forgoes most, but not all, of the kevlar and other stuff like that. Those are basically the two extremes, at least in the Young Defenders.

Puppeteer’s told me that I’ll be somewhere in between, so my outerwear includes a lot of stuff that’s already familiar to me – elbow pads, shin guards, shoulder pads, and gloves, all in a shade of brown that’s shiny and bronze-y but also pretty dark, nearly black. Before I get those on, though, I pull up a pair of provided shorts with a snug, modified waistband that’s seemingly designed to let a bunch of carabiners hang off of it. Presumably, this is for gadgets. And modesty.

I don’t know what my vest, if that’s even the right term for it, is made of, but it’s flexible and hard sort of like a bike tire but thinner, clasping around my back with the clicking sort of clasps that you have on a backpack, covering most of my center mass. Same color as the other protective gear, but with some painted on additions, mainly a stylized wolf’s head seen from the side, snarling, baring teeth, in bright red reflective paint. The final parts are on my face, with that samurai mask that Gossamer found from her quote unquote “Halloween pile” easily snapping around my ears and the back of my head, and a black-colored mask for my eyes and forehead that’s been sort of carved to fit the shape of the bottom part, leaving no part of my face exposed besides my ears. The two pieces snap together at the back, making it fit securely and snugly on my face without a single bit of adjustment. With all that in place, I decide to let my hair stay down, maybe falling over the sides of my headwear a little bit, just to frame it a little more naturally.

I gotta say, Gossamer does some good costuming. You can barely tell I’m an anxiety-prone 14 year old with ADHD. Now I just look badass, and a little silly. I open and shut my mouth, feeling the strap that’s clamped around my chin shift and adjust, dragging the mask’s bottom part open and shut with it. I have a feeling if I ever get in a situation where I really have to bite someone or something, this will get in the way more than it will help me, but at least it looks cool.

Everyone’s waiting in the locker room patiently for me, so I try not to make a big deal about showing up, keeping my stance stiff and professional. Everyone looks a lot different with masks on and little support gadgets equipped, hiding their facial features, making body language and tone of voice my only way of distinguishing mood. “Alright, cool. Bloodhound, you and Gale will be handling Northern Liberties, Fishtown, and the waterfront. Let’s get you geared up and then we’ll be heading out.” Puppeteer says, dragging a box of old police equipment out from a small closet while she does so. “Walkie time, fellas.”

She starts passing out walkie talkies – no, two-way radios, using her strings to fling them to everyone. I catch mine out of the air, afraid of it dropping, only to realize that she had her string around it until it was actually in my hand. I clip both parts of it, receiver and transmitter, onto my shorts, and then stand back at attention. “Question: What exactly does patrol entail?” I ask, raising a hand and not waiting to be called on.

“Just make sure you thoroughly walk down most of the streets, peek into the alleyways, poke your head into frequent robbery targets. Home invasions aren’t common these days but some asshole is always trying to flag down a CVS or a Wawa. If you’re not bulletproof and they have a weapon, twist the janky side-knob on your receiver twice clockwise and that’ll patch you into the police frequency. I know this is going to sound stupid, but don’t be a hero. While we’re in costume, it’s a lot harder to tell that we’re just stupid kids, and there’s a nonzero chance you will get shot at if you intervene. Your job is not to get into fistfights, it’s to apprehend if possible and otherwise delay until the police arrive to clean it up,” Puppeteer addresses the group, but mostly me. She reaches in and grabs a couple of pairs of zip-ties, tossing them to Gale, who tucks them into her waistband. “I assume you have it, but just in case you managed to trick your way in this far – you’ve got your LUMA, right, Bloodhound?”

My face twitches beneath my mask at the suggestion that I might’ve lied my way here, but I don’t say anything about it. Instead, I just reach for my phone, which has a sort of fold-out wallet phone case attached to it, and flash my license. I tuck it back into my shorts.

“Good,” she continues. “Frankly, I don’t want you getting into fights at all, I’m hoping this is a calm Sunday where nothing happens and we all meet back here at 3 or 4 with nothing interesting to report. Because we plan, and God laughs, let me tell you what’s up. You are not… ‘allowed’ to get into fights, but you are allowed to defend yourself against threats. You are only allowed to apply force proportionate to the threat, which means that if someone’s just trying to punch you in the face you cannot bite their arm off, but, hypothetically, if someone points a gun at you it’s fair game. That being said, it’s an extremely large stack of paperwork as well as a debriefing so you should avoid really fucking someone up. Definitely don’t kill someone,” She rambles on, giving me a somewhat precise list of what to do and not do out on patrol. I appreciate the specificity. “I feel like this should go without saying, but don’t kill people.”

“I will try my hardest, ma’am.”

“I appreciate that. You, in particular, I want to try and stay out of fighting in general. Gale knows how to handle herself, and your more important power is the blood sense. If you’re on patrol and smell someone bleeding out or something, I want you to patch into the police and they’ll handle contacting emergency services. Or just directly call 911. You’re callsign “Bloodhound” with the Delaware Valley Defenders, start any message with that. They might ask you for your LUMA number. They might not. Just have that stuff on hand. Got it?”

I nod, trying to let it all soak into my head like milk into a tres leches. Or water into a sponge. I shut my eyes and let it get chewed on in my brain. “Yes, ma’am.”

She takes a step back so she can more effectively address the rest of the group. Her mask covers basically everything but her mouth, chin, and hair, reminding me of some fictional superhero that I can’t recall, with a purplish-red color and white “strands” fanning out from her nose. “Great. You all have your assignments, take your laps around the neighborhoods, note down anything suspicious, and meet back here when you’re done. Any other questions?”

Northern Liberties is not the sort of place I hang around a lot. Everything is really, really expensive here, same with Fishtown, and I know my way around Tacony much better than I do either of these places. It’s not like I’ve never been near Center City, but, y’know, if I’m hanging around places with shops and stuff with my friends I’m usually hanging around South Street, which is refreshingly linear (this means it’s all in one line). You just start on one end and work your way down the other end and you giggle with your friends whenever you pass by “Condom Kingdom” and then you get a cheesesteak.

On the other hand, this place is a mess, a maze of streets compared to what I’m used to, and an ugly one, at that. I see old brick buildings that must be like at least twenty years old, probably older, right next to that really smooth blocky green and grey with big windowpanes. My dad calls it “gentrification”, which is a big word that is basically like when rich people like a neighborhood so they start buying all the property and kicking out all the poor people that used to live there, or at least that’s how he explained it to me. The gentrification style, I think, is really gross looking.

“Gale, right?” I ask, passing by a big building with crazy smells labeled “Federal Donuts”. I watch her lips crease up behind her scarf, cheeks pulling up in a way that indicates a smile, which makes me feel a little funny inside.

“You don’t have to ask for confirmation. If you want to start a conversation, just start it, okay?” she replies. The wording sounds like a dressing down, but her tone of voice is so comfortable and polite that I can’t bring myself to mind. Her “mask” if you could call it that is just a domino mask with a white membrane over her eyes, with her scarf handling the duty of covering her face, tied at the back around her hijab to hold it in place. My fake wolf jaw moves when I talk, clacking together slightly, and I think I’ll take a nail file to it later so it stops doing that. Annoying noise.

The sidewalks are cracked and filled with grass and broken glass bottles. I’m wearing my soccer cleats, since I figure I’ll need the extra kicking power if I get in a fight, but also stepping over glass feels better when the surface of my shoes is a little bit above the ground. Whenever I step on glass or anything, I always get these nightmare visions of a perfectly-lined-up shard of glass just stabbing right through my sole and into my foot. It’s awful, and I wish I didn’t think about it. The cleats help with that. “Alright. Are we, like… allowed to be friends? Can we talk on patrol? Or is this all business?”

Gale, on the other hand, wears what looks like heavy duty toe-socks, or water-shoes, padded at the bottom but molded to her feet. Instead of walking, with the outside wind like this she can easily lift herself about an inch or two off the ground, putting us at equal height. I can feel the wind swirling around her, and easily see how it picks up loose paper and leaves, kicking them around under her feet and leaving a small trail in her wake. She looks ahead, but keeps smiling. “We can be friends,” she says, and an awesome wave of relief flows over and through me. “Something on your mind?”

“No, just making small talk while I keep an eye out,” I reply, waving stiffly to civilians who pass us by. Being on the other side of the equation is extremely strange to me, someone who’s grown up in this world where the comic books started becoming real and superheroes were just a matter of daily occurrence. I would wave at them when they were on the other side of the street and give them a wide berth so they wouldn’t get in my way. Now, I’m on the other side of the street, and people are giving me a wide berth. “Morning,” I wave someone by who hasn’t avoided me. They give me a good morning back.

The sun is high in the sky but covered by a thick layer of overcast clouds, making the temperature comfortable and surprisingly cool for mid-August. I like being cold, so my favorite season is unsurprisingly the winter. That being said, I was fully expecting to sweat my ass off in this costume, but I think whoever designed it, probably Gossamer, is some kind of genius, because it’s extremely comfortable and breathable. I don’t even feel any sweat accumulating in my armpits, which I’m only thinking about because I’m feeling self-conscious. Not for any particular reason, mind, it’s just my first patrol. Easy reason to get nervous. Gale chuckles under her breath and I nearly jump.

“You alright?” she asks. “Need me to repeat that?”

“Oh, I, uh, didn’t notice what you said. I think I was just kind of adjusting to the costume,” I answer.

That makes her laugh even harder. “Yeah, the undersuit takes some getting used to,” she says in between chuckles, twisting her fingers to scoop up some of the trash from the ground beneath her into a swirling ball. She deposits it in the nearest garbage can unceremoniously. “I asked if there was anything in particular you wanted to know, or talk about.”

“Oh, well, uh… Are we allowed to know each other’s names? Or is that a superhero no-no?”

She nods at me while we round the corner. The sidewalk dips down, a heavy downward slope underneath a chunk of highway, I think. Or maybe train tracks? It’s hard to tell from down here. Gale keeps sweeping up the larger chunks of trash that she can handle with her hands, almost subconsciously, while she talks. “If you don’t mind the risk of me getting tortured and giving your secret identity up. Why don’t we just stick with first names for now?”

“Yeah. First names are okay. My name’s Samantha, but everyone calls me Sam,” I tell her, tilting my head around to get a better view of all the blood around me. There’s nothing notable, thankfully – nobody bleeding out on the floor, nobody bleeding out into their stomachs – but I can smell the old blood, the traces of it on every block of sidewalk concrete. The blood of thousands of people, powerwashed off by the street cleaning crew every so often, leaving only its lingering traces framing the ground. Even if I shut my eyes, I can still feel an outline, however faint, of the sidewalk below me, just from the blood sense. When Gale laughs again, I open my eyes and look at her.

“Sorry, sorry, you just look very much like a puppy when you do that. Sniffing the air. I assume you were doing something with your blood sense?” she asks, depositing another trash ball into a streetside trash can. “And just so you don’t think I forgot, my first name is Jamila. But while we’re out on patrol, you should still call me Gale, and I’ll still call you Bloodhound. Safer that way.”

My face burns with embarrassment. I wasn’t trying to sniff the air like a dog, and, in fact, I wasn’t even sniffing, since my blood sense I don’t think is a literal smell thing. But I was craning my head around to get a better angle, like how owls swoop their heads to get a better 3d view of things. I’m glad I’m wearing a full-face mask, because I’m sure I’m beet red right now – I can feel it in my ears. “Yeah. It’s like… I was getting a better 3d picture. There’s a lot of really small blood particles that have soaked into the sidewalks over the years that they haven’t managed to fully clean up, so I can sort of just see the entire environment.”

“That’s really impressive,” she replies, and I burn with shame even more for reasons I don’t understand.

“Well, it’s not really high quality. I don’t get all the nooks and crevices or any real good picture. It’s just more of a vague shape of the sidewalk, and a little bit of the street. When someone’s bleeding fresh, it’s really, really sharp, and I can see all their veins really close. This is super fuzzy. I don’t even think I could walk by it,” I elaborate, as we come across the other side of the downward hill, back up to the other side. “And, uh, it’s nice to meet you.”

“It’s nice to meet you too, Sam.”

I smile at her, but it’s probably hard to see under my wolf jaw. We make our way in and out of streets, winding through without issue or incident. The city streets are calm and quiet this Sunday morning, just like Puppeteer asked for. We make chatter.

“How old are you? I know Puppeteer is 19, but everyone else is sort of a blank to me.”

“I’m 15. You’re 14, right? I heard Ramp and Pup mentioning it.”

“Yeah, just 14. Is that too young?”

“Too young for what?”

“To get powers?”

“I got mine when I was 13.”

“Oh, wow. That’s younger than me.”

She laughs. “Yeah? Were yours recent?”

“Like, two, three months ago. I’m bad at keeping track of time. Can I ask how you got your powers?”

“That’s a little personal, isn’t it?” She asks, before quickly waving her hands up. “Kidding, kidding, busting your chops. I was coming back from visiting family in Iran. Our plane started falling out of the sky. It was a whole news story but I think they didn’t report on me.”

“Yeah, aren’t there laws against that? Like, you can’t say so-and-so got a superpower in an incident unless they actively contributed to the incident or whatever. I don’t know how to talk law talk,” I reply.

“I wouldn’t know how to explain it either, but yeah. It really wasn’t that dangerous, the pilots mostly had it handled, but the turbulence made me hit my head really hard on the seat in front of me and boom, powers. I mean, I got a concussion,” she says, continuing her civic duty of scooping up trash here and there as we walk through neighborhoods with a distressing mix of blocky, modern apartments and charming old brick ones. “But I think in terms of activation events, mine was pretty pedestrian.”

“Was it, like… a really bad concussion? Did you almost die?” I ask a little incredulously.

“Oh, yeah, I had to spend a good couple weeks in physical therapy because it knocked some stuff loose in my head. They had an ambulance waiting for me when the plane landed, but my powers were already activated so they had a hard time getting me to the ER because they had to…” she explains, beginning to lose herself in quiet giggling. “They had to like… push past this cushion of air I was forming around myself while I was out? Like, I assume it was a combination of the boom, instant concussion, and my body being afraid, ‘oh, oh Allah, we are going to fall out of the sky,’ so it gave me something that would let me float, but it sure made it annoying for the EMTs.”

“I think mine just traumatized my grandpa,” I reply, giggling along with her. “I was fishing with him and my line got snagged on something super heavy, so it pulled me down, and, uh.”

My teeth start hurting in my mouth. I stop for a second and catch my breath. Gale stops floating right in front of me. “Hey, hey, you don’t need to talk about it if it’s still sore for you.”

“But then it’s not fair,” I reply, as one of my teeth bloodlessly falls out of the back of my mouth. I spit it out onto the ground and then stare at it. “Oh, that’s extremely weird, I’m sorry.”

She stops, stands in front of me, and puts both hands on my shoulders. “Hey, you can tell me the backstory when you’re feeling better with it. Do your teeth grow back or do I need to call a super-doctor, Bee?”

“No, this happens. Don’t worry about it. They grow back,” I reply, poking the newly formed hole in my gums. Already, I can feel the tooth underneath it, pointy and sharp compared to its duller, worn-out predecessor. “Sorry, it’s probably really gross.”

“I’ve seen weirder. Here, let me toss that for you,” she says, sweeping it up with a flick of wind and propelling it into the nearest trash can. My teeth ache again, and I shut my eyes. “Is everything okay? For real?”

“Yeah. Someone’s bleeding.”

“Not you?”

“Not me. Not clear, either, but it’s this way.”

I let out a little yelp as my feet lose contact with the ground, along with Gale’s. “Alright, let’s get going. Just hold on to me and shut your eyes and tell me where we’re going.”

I hang on her shoulders like a backpack, arms wrapped around her neck, and try not to anxiety vomit. My hands stay firmly and exclusively in their proper locations, and I shut my eyes, pointing one finger forward. “This way!”