10 Blackout
Dark clouds boil into the sky. Not smoke or fog, but something more sinister and strange.
10.1 Brainstorm
I landed and started pacing. "C'mon, Gear. Where do you think he is?"
"I've been trying to figure it out for like an hour now, jeez. Cut me some slack. I can tell you where he's not."
"Okay."
"He's not in the subway, any of the strategic targets or anywhere where a drone can see him. He could be in a warehouse, or a house-house, or outside the city. That's all I got, I'm at a dead end."
"Right. So, let's think of places a guy like Ebon would go. What do we know about him?" I asked. My steel plate trailed behind me like an anxious pet while I paced.
"Besides the obvious? He's a shadow guy who likes shiny things and violence. And he's gotta be smart, if he's evaded the cops this far."
"The chief said he was gonna make a territory grab. From who? The 'nites?"
"He hasn't picked a fight with any of the other gangs yet, only the cops," Richie said, nixing that idea. "The 'nites are pretty much defunct now anyway, since most of 'em died or mutated."
"What about the police station?"
"It's a good target, but not where he's hiding. What else do we know about Ebon as a person?"
I thought about it. "He's ambitious, so what ever he does, it's gonna be big. And a big event needs a big prep space, right? Like the gym before a dance."
"Good. So he's probably not in a small house. What else?"
"He's full of himself and dramatic. He calls himself the fricking Master of Space and Darkness, and you heard that threat he made, right?"
"War and darkness, yeah. So someplace dramatic. But again, that's more of a target than a hideout."
"What's the time?" I asked. Ever since the big bang, I hadn't been able to carry a watch and expect it to work like a watch.
"T-minus three minutes."
"So let's give up on finding his hideout. He'll be gone soon if he's still there at all. Where's he gonna hit that the police don't have covered already?"
Richie didn't answer right away and I let him think.
"The Larsen building," he said. The tallest skyscraper in downtown. It was as good a guess as anywhere else and plenty dramatic.
"Meet you there?" I asked.
"Yeah. On the roof."
I returned the shockvox to my pocket and went back into the subway. It was like my own private highway. A dark, spooky, dangerous highway, but I was fighting the clock on this one.
10.2 Balloon
Copycat sat, watching his air compressor work. Gail's power was an easy one to copy. She made the smoky stuff, and could see in the dark. Way simpler than Marta's—Brickhouse's, he should have said. She had strength and durability, but there were also all kinds of sub-powers that kept her transformed body from falling apart or freezing up. Hers was more difficult to copy, and if he wasn't careful, the object he used wound up turning to stone like she had.
In front of him on the windswept roof, a weather balloon was slowly being pumped full of smoky darkness, filled by the air compressor he'd used his power on earlier.
Copycat aimed his weapon—a pump-action super-squirter water gun—and fired a white-hot blast of pure energy into the mostly inflated weather balloon.
The balloon deflated and its contents poured into the night sky, blotting out the stars. Copycat liked this part of the plan. It was understated, elegant. Ebon wasn't going to make some big announcement, he was just going to carry out his threat and wait for the humans to notice.
He looked up at the cloud just as lightning struck.
10.3 Thunderhead
I got to the Larsen Building before Richie, though I could see him in the distance, a speck of fire hurtling down the street. A cloud of inky blackness was growing around the rooftop, hard to see against the night sky.
"Calling the cops," Richie radioed as I zoomed up the sheer face of the building.
"Rodger."
I reached out with my power, altering the charges between the air and the building and then let them go as I got to the top. Lightning struck and I landed on the edge of the flat roof, brandishing my fluorescent bulb.
One guy stood in the middle of the roof, next to a pair of battery-powered work lights, a mountain of heavy fabric and an air compressor spewing out black stuff. The guy was short, overweight, not white, but not black either. In his hands he had, of all things, a water gun, which he was swinging around to point at me.
I launched into the air again. Could water short out my power? I didn't want to find out this way.
I swung in a high arc over the roof, into the cloud itself. My fluorescent light went dim, but I didn't need to see to know what I was doing. I pushed on the stuff in the roof and pulled on the air compressor, rolling it off the edge, then let go. Maybe twenty seconds later, there was a quiet thud as the compressor hit the street.
I descended from the cloud to see Richie finally reach the roof. The guy spun and pointed his water gun at him and gave it a pump. It wasn't water in the gun, but something bright and white and burning. He missed Richie, but clipped the wing of the jetpack, sending him spiraling out into empty space.
Down on the ground, I might have had a hard time catching him, but here on top of a giant metal tower? Easy. I latched onto the jetpack about three floors down, hoping he hadn't exploded or anything.
"Gear?" I shouted into the shockvox as the guy ran to the edge to see what had happened to Richie.
"Fine," Richie answered. "Beam me up."
I landed and brought up my plate as a shield, ready for when the guy turned to face me, while I dragged Richie up the side of the building. But the guy wasn't turning around. He aimed his gun over the edge of the roof.
"Hey!" I shouted.
He turned and brought up a hand to shield his eyes from my light.
"Where's Ebon?" A quick check with my power told me we were the only two living things on the tower roof.
"He'll be here!" the guy shouted. He took aim with his water gun and edged towards me.
"Good," I said, like I was super confident I could take down Ebon all by myself. "Now put down the gun before someone gets hurt." To illustrate what I meant, I held up my free hand and created some pale, wiry arcs in the air around it.
For an answer, the guy fired at me again, but his aim wasn't great. The ball of white fire struck the corner of my plate and caromed up into the cloud, winking out. I remembered now where I'd seen something similar. On my very first outing as a hero, D-struct had destroyed a bus with blasts like those. Did this guy have the non-mutated version of D-struct's power? Then what was the gun for?
The guy fired again, missing me and the shield this time.
My aim was better. I threw my plate at him, pinned him down with it and charged after, ready to put him to sleep with a taser punch.
The guy pulled one arm free, brought something small and metal to his lips. A whistle. Before I could reach him or take control of the whistle, he blew it. A shockwave of sound bowled me over. I fell, catching myself on my hands and knees. I couldn't hear, I couldn't think, my head ready to split in two. It took all my concentration to keep the guy pinned under the plate.
The whistle echoed on and on and I clamped my hands over my ears.
Inside my pocket, the shockvox vibrated. Richie. I'd left him hanging once the guy started shooting at me. I dragged him the rest of the way up and he landed with a silent crunch. I couldn't focus on Richie and the plate at the same time though, and the guy overcame my magnets.
The pain abated for a second as he stood and drew a breath, but I didn't have time to recover before he started blowing again. I watched, unable to move as the guy picked up his gun, brought it to bear on me and advanced. Aim didn't matter if you got close enough.
He was too focused on me though, and too deafened by his whistle to notice Richie. A broken jetpack wing slammed into the side of his head and he went down. The silence that followed was almost palpable.
Richie dropped the wing and gave me a hand up. He might have said something, but I didn't know what it was. I rubbed my ears through my hood.
Richie made the hand gesture for okay and I copied it. "Thanks, man."
He gave me a slap on the back and dropped to one knee to check on the guy, just like we'd been taught in health class. Feel for pulse, look for breathing, stabilize the head and neck. Then he pulled me away a few feet and made me sit down. He sat down next to me, saying something I couldn't make out through the ringing.
"Didn't your ears get hurt?" I asked, a little too loud, probably.
Richie shook his head, tapped the helmet.
"The police are coming?"
A nod, and a word that might have been helicopters, or yellow softeners.
I looked over at the unconscious guy, realizing that Ebon and the rest of his gang were still on the loose. This could turn into a very long night.
10.3 The Army
Ebon had timed it perfectly. He'd watched the cops make their rounds, got a feel for how quickly they could move, what their routes were and then, just after midnight, he had made a series of portals.
The first one was for the main party. Nightingale, Shiv and Talon portaled into the top floor of the Town Hall building. Nightingale released her darkness while Shiv and Talon took out the security and generally wrecked up the place.
The following portals were for D-struct and Brickhouse. They hopped across the city, taking out transformer stations one by one.
After they'd destroyed three or four of them, Ebon dropped them at the darkened police station and departed to deal with the incoming National Guard himself. He was in his element now and his power had grown since his last head-on encounter.
There were three Humvees and two military trucks cruising down the highway, almost at the city now. Ebon created a portal directly in front of the lead vehicle and sent it crashing into the public utilities building. The rest of the convoy followed in a cacophony of squealing brakes and explosions. The troopers who survived stumbled from their vehicles, dazed.
Orders were shouted, the injured were pulled free, flashlights and weapons were found and made ready. Ebon let them regain their bearings before he attacked. He wanted the semblance of a fair fight at least.
Once they had radioed for help, Ebon showed himself, rising up as a column of night in the flickering light of flames and flashlights.
"This is my city," he bellowed over the noise. The distressed soldiers stared at him. The closest one looked about ready to wet himself. "I want you gone!" He pointed at the nearest soldier and portaled him away into some hidden corner of the subway system.
Mouths dropped open, but the soldiers' leader managed to regain his cool.
"Fall back! Scalizi, get the lights on. Connors, Torre, move those men away from the trucks. McDougall, coordinates!" As he shouted he drew a pistol from a holster on his hip and started firing into Ebon's chest.
That hurt. Ebon melted into the ground, forming up again on the far side of the group. He made himself bigger this time and plucked up the nearest soldier like a boy might pick up a cat. Then, with a motion like a catapult, he threw the man down the street. He bounced once, rolled and came to a stop. He didn't get up.
"This is your warning," Ebon shouted, and portaled himself to a new position before they could fire on him again. "Drop your weapons and leave this city. For every shot you fire," a new portal and a new pair of screams cut short, "I kill another of your men." He moved to stand just behind the leader. "Your turn."
10.4 Second Wind
"You feeling better?" Richie asked.
We were still on the roof, waiting for the helicopters. The ringing in my ears had died down, but my head still ached.
"Yeah. How's our friend?"
"Out of it. I tied him up. Not dead, thank God."
I nodded, relieved. I didn't know if I'd be able to handle killing a guy by accident either, even if he had been trying to attack me and destroy the city.
"How's your charge?"
"Pretty good." I was starting to run low, but as long as I could find an outlet, I'd be okay.
"Pretty good enough to get us both down safe, or pretty good to go help the cops take out Talon, Shiv and Inky?"
"I can fight, but charging is smart." I didn't want to, but I could. It wasn't like Richie could do much now without his pack.
"Can you get us inside?" Richie stood, gave me a hand up.
There was a door off to one side of the roof, in a little shed next to a water tank.
"Yeah, probably." I hadn't practiced lock-picking since getting that box from Alva, and didn't have the patience for it now. I folded up my plate and rammed it straight through the door. It left a long narrow hole, which I levered wider with the plate again. Then I reached through the hole and unlocked the ruined door sans powers. Richie handed me my fluorescent light and we went inside.
"You find an outlet," Richie said. "I'll see if I can't get us some more lights."
The door from the stairwell into the building proper was locked, but I persuaded the door open by means of a steel plate through the window. This let us into a hallway and then what I guessed was a party room—just a big empty space with a bar and a stage and windows that looked out on the city and the lake, obscured right now with black God-knows-what.
I unwound the severed extension cord from around my waist and jammed it into the nearest outlet. Meanwhile Richie found a folding table and some chairs and made himself a precarious tower so he could take down a light fixture.
"What's your plan?" I asked.
"Get some lights. If we're gonna fight Inky, we need all the illumination we can get."
"Where is she, do you know?" She certainly hadn't been on the roof, and Ebon hadn't shown yet, despite what the guy upstairs had said.
"Town hall building, 'cording to the cops. It's her and Shiv and Talon. D-struct and Brickhouse have been destroying transformers all over town, so power up now before they black out this neighborhood too. No sign of Ebon yet, but as long as he keeps shuffling the big guys around, he can't attack directly."
"What about the guy on the roof? Who was he?"
"No clue. Pretty cool power though, did you see?" Richie put the screwdriver in his mouth and wiggled the fixture loose. It was a classy mood lighting kind of thing, a long stainless steel rod with a dozen or so lights on it pointing in different directions.
"No not really. I thought he had the same power as D-struct for a second, but then he had that whistle…"
"Uh-huh," Richie said around the screwdriver. "'E 'ad D-ruct's an' Dalon's an' Ingy's." He set the light fixture on the table and climbed down, taking the screwdriver out of his mouth. "He's imbuing inanimate objects with other people's powers."
"So we pretty much took out half of Ebon's crew right now," I said, feeling badass.
"Yeah, except he was just one guy. We had him outnumbered."
Richie dragged the table a few feet and climbed up again. Once he had completed this process a couple more times he busted out a roll of duct tape and taped the four fixtures together so it looked like an asterix. He used just about the whole roll so there was no way the thing was going to come apart.
"Ta-da." He stood the thing on end so it looked like a wheel without the rim, about six feet tall. "You ready to go?"
I felt shaky and kinda sick, but I had enough juice for another fight at least. I pulled the extension cord out of the socket and stood up. "Yeah."
"Good. I'm gonna take the stairs. Can you take this out through the window?"
"Sure." I smashed the window with my plate and flew outside with Richie's contraption. The blackness was like fog, only darker and more opaque. The wind from earlier in the evening had calmed, and wisps of the stuff drifted around the building, making it hard sometimes to see my hand in front of my face. I wondered for a moment if I really should be breathing this stuff in, then figured it was kinda too late to start worrying about that now.
I landed next to Richie, who was checking on the power duplicator guy, wrapping more duct tape around his wrists and ankles.
"Light 'em up?" Richie said.
I levitated the wheel of lights over my head and gave it some juice. The darkness retreated, but I couldn't tell if the light was actually destroying it or not.
"Shut it off," Richie said, and I did.
"Did it do anything?" I asked.
"I dunno. What we really need is UV, I think. Can you get us to the town hall building? It might be a while before the helicopters."
He still had the remains of the jetpack rig on, so I could carry him with that. "Yeah, sure. How do I get there?"
Richie put one hand to his helmet like it was a phone. "Houston? Directions?"
My shockvox buzzed and I answered it. A few minutes later Richie and me were landing just outside the old brick office building where the mayor and some other city officials worked.
The whole block was dark. Unexplored cave dark, not just power outage dark. More black smoke billowed from the broken windows on the upper floor of the building. The police were there, shining headlights and spotlights at the building.
"What's the status?" Richie asked the nearest of the officers, a tall black woman with a radio in hand.
She blinked, a little weirded out maybe that a couple of kids were asking what was going on like they actually expected her to answer. She glanced at me. "Static, and…"
"Gear." Richie held out his hand. "I build stuff. We can help if you let us know what's happening."
She shook his hand. "SWAT team went in three minutes ago. No contact yet with the Metabreed." She waved one of her colleagues over and passed him the radio.
Richie nodded. "Static, can you find them from out here?"
"No problem." I was way jumped up, and with the power out there wouldn't be a whole lot of interference. I closed my eyes and reached out with my electro-sense. One group of five people down on the first floor. Two on the third floor, being pretty active, and one more on the top floor, standing still.
I turned to the officer. "You got pen and paper?"
The officer handed me her police notebook. "I heard you found that dog in the fire," she said. "It was on the news."
"Uh-huh," I said, drawing a map of the building as I checked on the Metabreed's positions again.
"Sorry, it's been a long night," Richie said.
I handed the officer her notebook. "They're on the top two floors. Shiv and Talon down here, and Inky up there."
The officer smiled for a fraction of a second. "We've been calling her DG," she said, and then relayed my information to the team inside. I felt them change direction and start moving more purposefully towards the two bang babies.
"I hear Ebon wasn't up the tower?" the officer said.
I shook my head and Richie jumped in with the story. The way he told it, he made it sound like we'd trounced the guy no problem, even though in reality things could have gone very different very easily.
I picked up the wheel of lights and my epoxy'd fluorescent bulb and turned to the officer. "While your guys get Shiv and Talon, I'm going after Inky. DG. Whatever."
"Yo, not without your partner," Richie said.
I opened my mouth to remind him that Gear without any gear was just a kid in a helmet, but that wasn't really true, or fair. He hadn't needed special powers to whang that guy on the head. And it wasn't like Inky was particularly dangerous in and of herself. She just created a hazardous situation.
"Course not." I offered him my fist and we bumped. He winced and shook his hand out afterwards though.
"Oh, one thing," Richie said, addressing the officer. " You got a spare pair of earplugs, in case we run into Talon?"
The officer reached into her cruiser and handed me a pair of heavy headphone earmuff things. "For you, I'm assuming."
"Yeah." I took them. "Thanks, officer…"
"Davis."
I looped the headphones around my neck, since I kinda wanted to be able to hear stuff, gave Davis and the other officers a salute and launched Richie and myself up through a busted fourth-floor window. The wheel of light dragged behind us, our own personal spotlight.
There was a lot of noise and crashing going on downstairs, so our landing was quiet by comparison. I didn't think the SWAT team had even got to the third floor yet, so it was probably just the loony duo smashing up the place.
"Where is she?" Richie said in a low voice at my shoulder.
I reached out, feeling for that little electric hum, then grabbed Richie and threw us both to the ground as Inky swang a baseball bat at his head. With the dark, she'd practically come out of nowhere.
She'd expected to hit, and her swing threw her off balance. I heard and felt her shriek, stumble and recover her footing. The dark was so thick, even the light in my hand did no me good. She had to be able to see us, the way she'd come running at us just now, and if she could see us, she was gonna swing again.
But I wasn't totally blind. I could feel where she was and I had the smarts to guess what her next move would be.
My plate caught the blow from above with a sound like a gong.
As she recovered, I stood, pouring power into my free hand. At a thought, the plate slid up to protect my face and I reached for the bat. A spark arced and the bat exploded with a crack like a gunshot. Maybe I should have put on those headphones.
I coughed, feeling weak at the loss of power and then Richie was on his feet, grappling with her.
"Let her go!" I wanted to tase her, but I couldn't see enough to hit her without getting Richie as well.
Richie grunted and hung on, or maybe she was hanging onto him now. I couldn't handle the dark anymore, so I brought around the light fixture wheel and powered it up. This only served to make the black mist more visible. Wisps of white and green danced in my vision, about as substantial as mist themselves, though I knew from my power that Richie and Inky were almost within arm's reach.
And then there was a shiver. Just the merest split second that gave me time to grab onto the wheel with one hand as the floor opened up beneath me.
"Ebon!" I shouted. The emptiness beneath me grew and I felt Richie and Inky slip.
"No!" I grabbed ahold of the remains of Richie's jetpack, but with the floor gone, there wasn't a whole lot I had to work with to combat gravity.
I was way better at sideways than up though, and I flung the three of us across the room away from the portal. Then I thought, why stop there? I forced a broken window open wide enough to let the wheel through and spun down to the street away from Ebon with Richie and Inky in tow. I was not gonna face him in that pitch dark.
We landed hard in front of the parked cruisers—we'd left with a lot of momentum and not a lot of space for me to apply the brakes. I coughed and groaned. No broken bones.
"Taser!" Richie shouted, already on his feet. Inky was on her back, in worse shape than either of us. This was my first real look at her—a skinny kid younger than me even, with long straight hair and freckles just like in the police sketch.
I made an awkward lunge across the gap and my fingers brushed her arm, just enough contact to send over a short jolt. She convulsed once and went still. I sat up on my knees, breathing hard as Richie checked her like he had the guy on the tower. The next moment officer Davis was next to him and they were lifting her to her feet as a second officer got out the cuffs.
I got up, felt around me with my power. Talon was shrieking up on the third floor and there were flashes of lavender light that had to be Shiv. Gunfire too as the SWAT guys made contact.
And then Ebon appeared, oozing out from under a cruiser like a bubble in a lava lamp.
"You have something that belongs to me," he said, his voice cutting through the background noise like a school bell through a lecture.
The officers on the ground turned to face him as one, sidearms coming out of holsters faster than I'd have thought possible.
I felt more than saw him reach for the girl, who was already sitting in the backseat of the car, her hands behind her back, her head limp on her neck.
"Yo!" I shouted at him. "Blob-face!" I really should have thought up some witty insults ahead of time, I thought as I positioned the light fixtures over his head.
Ebon turned to face me. I was almost surprised to see he did have eyes, like two pieces of obsidian embedded in black rubber. I dug deep for every last drop of power and took control of the lights. All of them. Street lights, spot lights, the dome lights inside the cruiser, all of them groaning and protesting as I pushed and dragged and bent metal to focus the beams on the column of shadow crouching over the car.
The shadow wavered, shrank to the size of a man, condensed into limbs and a face and cornrow hair. He leaned on the car and stumbled as I pushed it away from him, spinning it so the headlights faced him.
He was on the ground now, ringed in light. I blinked, green and red spots flashing on the insides of my eyelids. Somehow I'd ended up on the ground too, sitting on my knees with one hand braced against the ground, the other outstretched in front of me.
Everything felt weird and distant, distorted. I wondered for a second how someone had got the headphones over my ears and whether that darkness on the edge of my vision was from Ebon or Inky.
10.5 Hospital Room
I woke up in the hospital with a headache and an IV in my arm. Richie sat next to my bed, still in his Gear outfit, his helmeted head propped against the wall.
I blinked and sat up. Officer Davis was standing in the doorway, keeping half an eye on the room and half an eye on the hall, where it looked like all kinds of problems were going down.
"Ri- Gear, you awake?" I said, catching myself at the last second.
The helmet rotated a fraction of an inch. "Yeah. How you doing?"
"Let's not do that again, okay?"
Richie snorted. "Deal."
"What time is it?"
"'Bout four in the morning."
"What happened?"
Richie took a deep breath. "Lots of stuff."
"What stuff?"
"Well, the media caught you being taken through the ER and really, really wants an interview. Also, I'm like ninety percent certain somebody leaked some drone footage with you and me fighting the guy from the tower, who is called Copycat, by the way, and I have a feeling we're gonna get some pretty mixed reviews, seeing as we kinda broke into Larsen Tower and stole some stuff, and how I brained the guy. And I'm really glad you're awake 'cause it won't be long before someone notices we're gone, but I don't know if the doctors will let us just leave without-"
"Whoa. Too much." I swung my feet off the edge of the bed, realizing someone had taken my shoes off. "Let's just get home before it gets light out." Wincing, I picked up my boots and put them on. "They got Ebon?"
"Yeah, they got him, he's-"
From the doorway, Officer Davis gave a significant cough.
"been gotten," Richie finished.
I was way too tired to figure out what that meant, so I let it slide.
"One hundred percent thanks to you," Richie added.
With a grimace, I pulled the needle out of my arm, a little bit of blood and saline dripping on the floor. "Yo, officer." I took a couple steps her direction, held out my hand. "Thanks." For what, I wasn't really sure. Standing guard? Doing her job? I felt like I had to say something, and that was just the first thing that came to mind.
She smiled, nodded, shook my hand. "I'm going to visit the ladies' room. You boys better still be here when I get back." She winked and left, closing the door behind her. Richie offered me a folding chair, which didn't fly as well as a steel plate did, but it got us home. Tomorrow Richie could fill me in, but for now, all I wanted was some rest.
10.6 Mixed Feelings
Robert sat by himself on the couch. Sharon had gone to be with Adam, and Virgil and Richie were… out.
He had checked his son's room of course, the minute he'd heard what was going on, and neither of the boys was anywhere to be found. He'd watched with horror as the reports came in—power outages across the city, attacks on public buildings, the destruction of an entire corps of National Guardsmen. And in the middle of it all were "Static" and his partner "Gear." Richie's costume hid his identity better than Virgil's did, and Robert might have even called it safer if he hadn't had a rocket strapped to his back.
"No!" he'd shouted at the screen when he saw his boy wheeled out the back of an ambulance and into the hospital, and wasn't reassured when the reporter had claimed he had passed out from exhaustion.
That had been a while ago, and now Robert was sitting on the couch, head in his hands, the TV on with the sound off. He didn't know what to do. He wanted to drive straight to the hospital, see with his own eyes that Virgil was okay. But if he went, would he be putting his son at risk? Static had enemies, a lot of enemies after tonight, and if they found out who he was… Home wouldn't be safe for Virgil anymore.
At least, that was what Robert was trying to tell himself. He was tired, not thinking clearly.
He nearly jumped out of his skin when he heard a bang upstairs. Virgil's room. Robert leaped to his feet, ran up the stairs.
"Virgil!" He couldn't help himself from shouting.
Virgil stuck his head out the door, trying to hide the collar of a blue and yellow coat. "Pops? You up?" He made a show of yawning, or maybe not. He looked exhausted.
Robert wanted to grab his son, hold him tight. But if he did, Virgil would knew that he knew, and this was not the opportune time. Neither of them had the energy to deal with that right now. It was enough to know Virgil was safe.
"Fell asleep watching the news. Looks like everything's gonna be okay."
Virgil nodded, blinked slowly. "Yeah, looks like. 'Night." He closed the door and left Robert in the hall, alone.
Author's note:
Whee! That was a fun chapter to write. If only research papers were that much fun.
Next week: the consequences of Ebon's attack and seeing what the other characters are up to