Well, here we go again. Once more, everybody say it with me now, Static Shock is not mine. Seraph and Tim are. No money happens for this story or I promise it would have been done a lot faster! …Kidding – I'm kinda slow either way, which I think you all know by now, and I am eternally, eternally grateful that you put up with me. Anyway, getting back to the point here, this is just for my own entertainment, and apparently yours, too.
Thanks again to all of you who read and enjoy the story. This is all for you.
Enjoy!
Richie took a deep breath, then another, and then gave up. Rolling his eyes up into his head, he let his cranium crash down to the desk in despair.
"I hate the world…" he moaned, his voice muffled by the red cloth.
"Aw, come on, Rich! It's not that bad, is it? At least you got the pillow now!" Virgil said sympathetically.
Richie snorted. True, the recent gag-gift from his best friend was definitely coming in handy. After their honest conversation two weeks prior, Virgil had appeared in the AGSS one afternoon with a paper bag and a smile. Inside, a thick, square, bright red pillow with a bulls-eye pattern bore the words "Save A Keyboard – Bang Head Here." Virgil claimed it was to prevent any more dents in Gear's helmet that were non-combat related, but it had comforted Richie nonetheless. It meant Virg was back to his usual understanding and humor with regards to their friendship.
"Thanks, V. Very helpful. Extremely useful for producing a result on this," Richie replied, raising his un-bruised head to glare at his friend.
"That's what I'm here for! No, seriously, what's got your brains in a knot?"
Richie sighed as his mind worked to put together all the pieces that were so thoroughly driving him up the wall. Aside from the continued analysis of Reconstruction on a series of rural and urban centers in the American South, and not including the extremely annoying looped rendition of the "Who Loves the '80s?" CD mix, which he had unfortunately seen a commercial for three days prior and was still plaguing him, there were other, more pressing problems spinning him in circles. Round round in circles, like a record. Ooh, stop that! he ordered his mind firmly. Not funny. Totally not funny.
"If my brain were a person, I'd swear it was out to get me," he said. At his best friend's confused look, Richie waved it away. "Okay, so here's what I've got." Turning back to the computer, the genius brought up several different graphics on the screen. Virgil, using his powers to zap a chair into place from across the gas station, perched just behind Richie's shoulder to where he could see everything.
"I've been consolidating all the information I could find on either of our two new friends, Seraph and He-Who-Has-Not-Yet-Been-Named-Since-You-Let-Him-Get-Away…"
"Dude, can we just call him Baby X?" Virgil put in plaintively. Richie smirked.
"Yeah, whatever. So, Seraph and Baby X. Seraph, we have a lot of information on, given our encounter with him. I've got a good idea of what he can do, and I'm pretty sure he's kinda whacked. Since he doesn't appear to be running with any of the gangs, or with Alva, for that matter, it's going to be harder to pin down his motivation and anticipate his next attack, but I'll keep on it. In the meantime, short of looking under every rock in the city, our chances of actually finding Seraph before he finds us or causes any trouble are…pretty low, actually."
"Got total faith in you, bro."
"Thanks. Baby X, first of all, we don't even know if it's a Bang Baby. Could be a neuron-toxin, some kind of theta-wave generator, any number of drugs and gases, you get the idea. But, I think the assumption that he or she is a Bang Baby is a good one for a bunch of reasons. First of all, the sort of chemicals or devices that would produce a similar effect would have to be carefully controlled, handled by someone with in-depth knowledge, and even then, they should have worked on us when we arrived at the scene of the attack. Secondly, there was that kid you saw leaving the bookstore fire who was the only one moving, right? There are other reasons, but they…well, it has to do with math and probabilities, so just trust me on it, okay?"
"Whatever you say," Virgil grinned. Richie nodded and then moved a couple of graphics around on the screen. What had been a series of photos, first of Seraph and then of the scene at the bookstore, now showed a map of Dakota with the bookstore and coffee shop in red.
"This is where the two fires were." Richie pushed his glasses up to his nose thoughtfully. "Now, we don't know for sure that Seraph is connected at all to Baby X, or that Baby X is behind the fires. But the fact that both incidents involved the same accelerant-based pipe-bomb is suspicious. Add to that the witnesses from the café talked about experiencing something similar to what we saw at the bookshop and I'd say it's a pretty fair guess that the same kid is responsible for both fires. Now, when Seraph showed up at the second one, it didn't seem like he was just walking by, or maybe flying by is more accurate, and just randomly decided to make his move. It's just too much of a coincidence. So, the probability is strongly in favor of the idea that Baby X is responsible for both fires, and the things that happened to the people at each location, and that he or she is at least in some way connected to or in contact with Seraph."
"Makes sense."
"Okay. So, if we postulate that Baby X and Seraph are, in fact, working together, then we have a far greater chance of finding wherever they're hiding out." With a few quick keystrokes, a series of blue dots appeared on the screen. There were easily two or three dozen dots spread across a part of Dakota, but no obvious pattern to them. "These dots represent incidents of people reporting similar symptoms as what we saw in the bookstore fire: sudden blindness, pain or failure of the legs, and inexplicable loss of breathing."
"Dude, that's a ton of people!" Virgil exclaimed.
"The incidents go back almost to the night of the Big Bang itself, which is further evidence that Baby X is, in fact, a Bang Baby. But here's where it gets interesting."
Richie zoomed in on an area that Virgil immediately identified as being the neighborhood not far from their high school.
"The greatest percentage of reported incidents in the last month or so is right around here. Not only are they geographically close together, but they all seem to happen around the same time: approximately three in the afternoon. Of the remaining incidents, they are overwhelmingly timed between nine-thirty and ten-thirty in the evening, with no events taking place after eleven. Which suggests that whoever Baby X is, they have a pretty set schedule and routine."
"Sounds to me like somebody's got a curfew," Virgil nodded, smiling knowingly.
"Exactly." Richie leaned back, his brain running over all the numbers and possibilities again. The evidence was just too clear; the Bang Baby had to be someone who lived in the area, who couldn't be out late at night and who…
"Wait, you're saying whoever this is goes to our school?" his friend interrupted his thoughts with the sudden realization.
"Yep. Chalk another one up to our fine educational institution. Hey, at least this time he or she didn't drop out of school!"
"Stay cool, stay in school," Virgil recited. "So, in other words, we've gotta start keeping our eyes open for Baby X at school, and on patrol, and hope that we can find whoever it is in time to track Seraph down before he does any more damage."
Richie nodded wordlessly. Inside, his thoughts were tumbling over each other. This kid could be worse than Madelyn Spaulding ever was, he considered. Well, okay, maybe it's worse to lose control of yourself and have somebody invade your thoughts, but some of these medical reports show some pretty nasty stuff, too. People falling while in the middle of a crosswalk, others unable to see right as they got behind the wheel of their car, and the whole not breathing thing, it's remarkably bad. And talk about a weird sort of power! Why on earth would you end up gaining the ability to make other people not walk or see or breathe? But to this, while his brain could helpfully provide dozens of possible explanations, none of them seemed any more plausible than the others. Richie fell deep into the possibilities, looking for anything that might stick out.
"Hey, wake up!"
"Wha…?" Breaking out of his reverie, Richie might possibly have lost his balance on his work-stool except for the quick hands that held him steady. "Oh. Sorry. Got caught thinking."
"Yeah, I noticed that. How's…all that going, anyway?" Virgil's voice was quiet, and the genuine concern with which he asked his friend warmed Richie's very heart.
"Well, better than it was, I guess," was the honest reply. "I think…ever since we talked, anyway, it's like we called a truce in there. I still feel like my brain is pulling me in a thousand different directions all at once, and they're still annoyingly random directions, but it isn't as overwhelming as it was. I can block a lot more of it out now. So that's something, anyway."
"Yeah," the teen who was Static breathed. After a moment, he continued, "I've been thinking about what you said. Before, you know. And…well, I've got an idea about it."
"Yeah?" Richie urged his friend. Virgil was surprisingly reluctant to speak, uncommonly so. He had left one hand on Richie's shoulder after balancing the distracted hero, and that hand, while comforting, seemed tense. Richie knew Virgil better than anybody, and he always knew when something was up with his best friend.
"Yeah. Well, you've read the psychology section of the library right?" he joked. At Richie's serious nod, Virgil grinned and continued, "Of course you did. Why am I not surprised?"
"So, what's your idea?" A tiny surge of hope in Richie's heart at the idea that Virgil might have something to help only resulted in his internal soundtrack switching to "Living on a Prayer." What a help. His brain was useful on the level of the little paperclip in Microsoft Word, but without the unintentionally hilarious timing.
"Well, I was just thinking about how you're different from the geniuses that go crazy. Not that you're gonna go crazy!" he waved hurriedly. "But, I mean, you know the stats better than me. It's a lot more common to be a genius and crazy than a genius and not. But you're not, and you're not gonna go crazy," and this time Virgil's voice was so solid and sure Richie breathed out in relief, as though his friend's certainty made it true.
"You're right that I'd be in the minority that way," he said slowly.
"But you're different, and you can be more different. I'm no psychologist, but I know that emotional states influence the mind and vice versa. So maybe what we should do is focus on something besides your brain to make it easier for your brain to focus. You know?"
Riche tilted his head to one side and considered. There was significant merit to Virgil's point. In fact, all science aside, his own experienced proved out the hypothesis – his thoughts had been much less chaotic ever since he had unburdened himself not long before. And, indeed, when he had admitted some of those fears to himself, his mind had been entirely his own, not the independent thing it seemed to be the rest of the time. But he would be looking for much bigger issues if they were the root of his deteriorating control.
A sudden flash in his mind sent Richie to the depths of his thoughts and back in a flash. Images played through him like a DVD at 32x, none of which were pleasant. There was the memory of his father, some years prior, angry over the usual nothing and taking it out on his boy. The night not even long before when he had woken up from that suffocating nightmare at Virgil's house. A dozen battles, even after he had become Gear, when he hadn't been able to help, had been outmatched or isolated and rendered ineffective. Deep-seated aches from a multiple sources that were based in the bedrock of his character seemed to break out all over his heart, and Richie suddenly started to wonder how much analysis and repair was going to be needed. It felt like a pretty big job, and his optimism faded. But he tried to push aside the sense that it was more than he could manage and looked back to his friend.
"Okay, so if we assume that you're right, then what we really have to do is locate the root of some of the emotional factors that are unbalancing my internal equilibrium and resolve them." Richie smiled tightly at his friend. "Sounds like more work cut out for me. Nice assignment, Virg."
"Well, I'll help if I can…oh!" He smacked his forehead hard enough that a spark flew. "Assignment! Totally forgot! English paper due tomorrow!"
"You're right. Want help?" Richie offered. While Virgil was incredibly adept at science and math, the liberal arts didn't hold his interest very well.
"From Mr Great Brain himself? Sure!" They shared a grin as Richie expertly cleared his screen of everything not homework-related, keeping most of the work in his mind anyway, and the pair bent their heads over Virgil's copy of "Young Goodman Brown" to see if they could produce a paper that did not, for once, include any inside jokes.
--==OOO==--
"Got an A minus. Not bad," Virgil handed the paper to Richie a week later.
"What didn't she like?"
"The part about 'prithee offer this gentle writer a benevolent mark, Goody Smith.'" Virgil snickered.
"Dude! You didn't actually write that, did you?" he tried not to laugh.
"I might have slipped it into the footnotes." His infectious grin, totally wide-eyed in innocence, ended in both of them giggling.
"Hey guys!"
"Daisy! What's up?" Virgil called, waving her over to their corner of the hallway.
"I hate to do this, but Richie, could you do me a favor?" Daisy had a pile of books in her arms and a slightly harried look to her.
"Sure. What do you need?"
"There's a kid I'm helping tutor, but I completely forgot I've got a dentist appointment today. He's smart, just behind, since he's a new student. Would you work with him this afternoon?"
Richie and Virgil exchanged a momentary glance. They had plenty of work to do as Gear and Static to deal with Seraph and Baby X, but it could probably wait one evening. There was no warning or hesitation in the look Virgil shot him, so Richie shrugged. "Sure."
"Okay. He'll be in 203 in about ten minutes. His name's Tim. Here," and she dumped the load of books into his arms, "you'll need these."
"Oof! Thanks," he replied as he tried not to drop a mountain of paper all over himself. One small one slid down the side and was about to slip out from the crook of his arm, but Virgil caught it and settled it on top. "Why so many books?"
"He's smart, but his school before didn't have as wide a curriculum, so he's behind in a bunch of different things. I'd have asked Virgil," and here she wrinkled her nose teasingly, "but I heard he might not be the best one to handle impressionable minds and English assignments."
"Hey!"
"Thanks again, Richie," Daisy said, ignoring the indignant look on Virgil's face. "I really appreciate it."
"Don't sweat it." As she dashed off, Riche looked ruefully at his best friend. "Wanna come?"
"With that load? No thanks. But I'll catch up with you later, bro." They managed a fist-bump only due to Richie precisely calculating how long he could balance the pile on one arm, then separated, Virgil towards the lockers and Richie back upstairs. It took him a few minutes to navigate the swarm of students without losing his load on the way to the classroom. He thought at first that 203 was empty, but heard a quiet scrape when he entered.
"It's you!"
Richie met the eyes of the student he had "rescued" on the sidewalk some weeks before. Tim was nothing if not memorable. He smiled encouragingly.
"Yup, me. Daisy says she's really sorry but she had to run to the dentist, so she asked me to fill in. I hope you don't mind." Richie gratefully set down the pile, nimbly saved the two books that attempted a daring escape, and sat down across from Tim.
"No, whatever works, I guess."
--==OOO==--
Two weeks later, Richie entered 203 with the usual stack of books, plus a tin crowning the pile.
"How's it hanging?" he called. From their usual table, Tim turned and smiled. Though it had only been intended as a temporary stop-gap for Daisy, Richie and Tim had struck up a good friendship, and the genius had taken over the tutoring on a more regular basis. Tim was really a good guy, Richie had quickly learned, just beat down by the world for being different. Though he never admitted as much, he sure understood it! And, in an odd sort of way, Tim could be as helpless and yet as helpful as Richie himself feared he was as Gear to Static. It was a good thing for both of them, and they knew it.
"Okay. You were right about bio," Tim answered, carefully unloading his friend's arms and looking curiously at the tin. "Definitely more up my alley than physics."
"Don't ever let Virgil catch you saying I said that, 'cause he'd have my head. But not all of us are meant for the path of the mad scientist," Richie smiled, privately hiding several different meanings and jokes in that one sentence. "But, speaking of which, this is from V's family. His sister baked 'em, but I tried one and they won't kill you."
"They sent me cookies?" Tim's brow furrowed in confusion even as a shy color rose in his cheeks.
"Sure. V's told them about you and about how I'm working with you and you're new here, and…well, it's just the kind of people they are, you know?"
"Yeah," Tim breathed. Somehow, Richie wasn't sure he did know about people like the Hawkins family. From everything the kid had said, his mom was okay, but the rest of the world had been particularly harsh. Richie could sympathize.
"You know, you ever want me to bring you around, introduce you, I could do that," he offered suddenly. Though Richie generally ran with a particular crowd, he had friends all over the school demographics, and he knew a couple of other shy, smart types that would give this outcast a place.
"No, that's okay. I'm fine," and here Tim smiled with a tinge of confidence. "I do have other friends, and as I'm getting caught up the whole school thing isn't so bad. I've got, you know, stuff to keep me busy."
"I know how that goes." So far, hanging with Tim hadn't cut into his work as Gear, but the last weeks had been quiet. If he ever got that particular pinging ringtone, the signal his phone was programmed to receive from Backpack in the case of an emergency, he'd have to come up with a cover and fast. "Still, nice to spread yourself out sometimes. At least have somebody to talk to."
"Yeah," was the noncommittal answer Richie had taken to associating with his friend not being entirely convinced. Then, after a minute of quiet munching on Sharon's cookies, "Richie?"
"Yeah?"
"I…can I ask you something weird?" Richie turned to see Tim not meeting his eyes, looking intently at the stack of books between them.
"'Sure."
"You ever wonder if you're really doing the right thing, when it's the right thing but it isn't?"
"Back up, man. Do you mean doing the right thing for the wrong reasons? Or doing the right thing in a way that doesn't feel right?" Richie leaned in, interested. This kid was nice and smart, but he had sensed there was a lot of turmoil under there, easily understood given his probable history in the world of punks and the cruel society of high school. He'd spent two weeks trying to get him to open up – at last it seemed to be paying off.
"That, exactly. Like, well, you know I'm…into faith, right?" At the encouraging nod, Tim continued. "Well, faith has a lot of rules about how you do some things. I mean, I'm supposed to be a good person, a servant to the Lord, you know? But what if the service doesn't feel right, even if it's right?"
"Tim, are you okay?" Richie asked. His mind was rapidly processing the question, but he was more concerned with the hesitance in Tim's voice.
"Yeah, I'm fine. I just, well, there's something I have to do. And it is right, I believe it is, but something about it doesn't feel right, you know?"
While Tim fidgeted with a cookie, Richie let his mind speed up, piecing together everything he knew about Tim, everything that he might be referencing. When he'd taken on the tutoring, he'd also done some quiet research, just to get a sense for the kid, so he had no shortage of facts. But there was something familiar, and ominous, in what Tim had said. In fact, it reminded him of something Virgil had been talking about right before the Bang, about having to deal with that gang. The genius considered Tim, thinking of how much bullying the kid probably experienced, and decided that was a plausible hypothesis.
"Well," he said slowly, trying to keep any kind of urging inflection out of his voice, knowing it would only scare Tim off, "since I don't know what you have to do, I can't be specific, but in general, they say that trusting your gut is a good way to go. We all have instincts for a reason, and if we're doing something contrary to those instincts, that's usually a signal that something is off."
"Yeah, but…" Tim looked up, accidentally breaking the cookie in his hand, "everything I know says it is right, so why doesn't it feel right?"
"Maybe it's the way you're going about it?" Richie asked. "Like, if you're supposed to give your mom flowers for her birthday, but you steal them from the store, you did the right thing by doing the wrong thing. There's lots of ways to do good, and there's lots of bad ways to do right."
"I guess that's true."
"And remember," Richie said, encouraged at the thoughtfulness his friend was showing, "maybe you don't have to do whatever you think you have to do. Maybe you aren't even supposed to."
"Not supposed to?"
"Yeah. Maybe you only think you have to because it seems like it's easy or smarter or something, but really, if you think about it, you can get what you're looking for by doing something else." The image of Tim trying to make good with the punks who regularly tormented him flashed through his mind, and though he found it unlikely, Richie decided to give one more push. "Only you can decide what you really have to do, what really makes sense for you. Don't let anybody tell you different. It's hard, but being who you are for your own reasons is the best thing there is."
--==OOO==--
Later that night, as Richie was finishing his homework, he sighed and stared into space for a moment.
"It's hard, but being who you are for your own reasons is the best thing there is."
The words played back in his mind, under all his other thoughts, picking moments to rise again and sound back at him. Richie's brain had already taken the sentiment and compared it to a dozen similar quotes from famous people, from Eleanor Roosevelt to Aristotle, but they always came back as he had spoken them to Tim.
I hope that meant something to him. It did seem to cheer him up, anyway. And he seemed a little happier going home, too. I hope Tim isn't in any real trouble. I'm not sure how exactly he could get in too much trouble, all things considered, but still. Maybe I'd better keep a closer eye out for him. Besides, even if it's no more than the usual, he's getting bullied, and I should probably see if I can do something about it. I'm not a hero for nothing, after all. It's a good thing I'm so immeasurably cool, or I'd probably have the same problem!
Richie snorted at himself, shaking his head. Still, what he'd said to Tim, about being who he really was, that hit home. Because since talking to Virgil, the genius had realized that his greatest struggle wasn't his run-away brain. It wasn't trying to be a superhero, a high school student, and gay all at the same time. It was being all those things, and accepting them. It was being those things willingly, eagerly, without being sorry for what they meant. All of his fears, his perceived weaknesses, they all stemmed from the facets of himself that he didn't like, didn't want, didn't appreciate. Everything that made him cringe internally was probably weakening his mind, and if he let them go on weakening him, it was very likely his mind would break – it was, for all its speed and vast intelligence, quite fragile that way. As he'd said to Virgil, he had to deal with the emotional factors that were impacting him. And chief among these was the simplest of all – being comfortable in his own skin, and with the consequences of what that meant.
"If it's going to take a complete reinstall of my self-perceptions and a refit of my internal sensors to just about everything to keep me from going insane," he muttered aloud, "this might take a while." He sighed heavily. It was a dire prognosis, considering how much there was to do, but probably the right diagnosis all the same.
"Gear?" the Shock Vox crackled to life. Richie banished as much as he could of the introspection that was taking up his consciousness and picked up the gadget, trying to shift his voice into neutral.
"I'm on. What's happening?"
"You up for a run?" There was a note in Static's voice that Richie knew all too well. It was the I'm-not-asking-for-back-up-but-I'd-sure-like-a-hand-here tone. Definitely no time for internal repairs right now, he thought as he stood up and started to tug at his sweatshirt, moving towards the bag that held his uniform.
"On my way, bro."
