A/N: Before I can loose my courage, I'm posting this. Please tell me if it's okay. It's just a one-shot, and I'll probably keep it that way. Hope you enjoy this little read, and I'm sorry it's so short.
Juggernaut
"Oh. Yeah. It's a'ight, I guess."
His sneer larger than life, folding arms as wide as sky-scraping towers, and brown, privacy-breeching catechizers for eyes staring down every opposing force. To be immortalized via billboard; an honour reserved for only the biggest stars- sandwiches, cell-phones, pound-puppies someone bedazzled for their latest campaign, and yes, at the bottom of the barrel the Wiz himself. Jonah usually prides himself on his melodramatics, but calling something like this an honour is crossing some sort of line.
Though Dan had always thought lines were meant to be crossed.
"No, I'm telling you, dude, having a fifty-foot you is uber-cool. You can rig it up to shoot lasers out of your eyes or come to life and eat people you don't like. Maybe the Ekats could turn it into, like, a 2-d robot! Those Vespers'd hit the ground running when they saw, Giant Jonah."
Dan raves and rambles like this all the time. Jonah finds it endearing, unlike most of everyone else, who just dismiss him as annoying. "That'd be tight, D-man, but the record co.'d be pretty steamed, ya' know? Their biggest star running 'round like Godzilla? Bad press."
Snorting, Dan leaves the window in which Jonah watches his fifty-foot counterpart. It's odd for him to think that this paper cut-out giant sneering disdainfully at all of Beverly Hills is supposed to be him. It's never struck him before as anything but ordinary, but now that he's stopped to think for once in his life, it's just that; anything but ordinary. It's starting to bother him, and it's bothering him that it bothers him. Things were never so bothersome before.
Before the clue hunt, before he changed, or before his mom left? The hurt echoes too much when he thinks about his mom, so he's decided it's just best not to. That being the case, the 'before' in the difference between before and now has to be that he himself changed. Before he didn't care, but now it seems wrong. Before lying to the world wasn't wrong, that's the difference.
And that's what it is now. A glorified masquerade the world sees him as. He's starting to suspect his reality's become a one-way mirror; the world sees what they're supposed to when he's observing impartially. In his place, stands the Wiz, and before now, before he changed, he'd never realized Jonah and the Wiz were so different.
"Jonah?" Dan's brow is furrowed, his head poking back in from down the hall. "What're you doing? You've been standing there for, like, five minutes. At first I thought you were gonna do that cool dance-thing you do, you know, when you're, like, all still, then slowly break into dance for no reason. It'd be weird, but not as weird as staring at a billboard for five minutes. You okay?"
Jonah can't help but love how weird Dan is. How normal. He doesn't give Dan the famous Wizard smile, but a genuine smirk, "Yo, I'm just picturing the whole Giant Jonah concept. It'd be da bomb to have him rapping along behind me at my next show, and bonus, no security needed; with a home-boy that big no groupie gets near, ya' dig?"
Dan's eyes brighten, "So, the laser thing's not off the table?"
Laughing, Jonah hobbles over; making a cane look Gangsta, as he puts it. Even when his legs have healed enough to ditch his crutches, he limps just as the decrepit Alistair Oh. Well, the bone did shatter, the doctor had said handing him his new tool. At least the pain can't be measured in such extreme units, now, it could've been worse; he's seen the Starlings.
Dan waves him over impatiently, "C'mon, c'mon, I got Halo set up on you're Xbox. I paused it, but Master Chief is about to get slaughtered!"
Dan rushes ahead, and Jonah feels almost like Jonah again, not the Wiz; a normal kid with normal problems, with a normal friend to kick alien hide with. And, he realizes, Dan doesn't see the Wiz, and hasn't since China. Cousin Phoenix looks up to the Wiz, but he can see Jonah in there from time to time, too. This frame of mind, distinguishing which aspect of him everyone sees is weird, but at least there's an aspect to distinguish now. The kid who wants to stop and play Xbox vs. the kid who went Platinum at eight.
Plopping down on the couch, Jonah thinks it's just fine to balance both. If lying to world meant he could be both himself and the Wiz, he decides it's the best way to live. He can't stop being the Wiz anymore than he could stop being himself, so why fix something that's not broken, right?
Besides, Cahills have been lying to the world for generations, why stop now when it works so well?
Yeah, he knows that's an awful way to think about it, but there's no good way to say he's not entirely the person he portrays for the millions of devoted, adoring fans who practically worship him. There's no good way to say he doesn't plan on changing that, either. Jonah Wizard's larger than life, and he's not about say otherwise.