DemiUrge and Liberty are the topic of today's lesson at St. Mary's High School, where I am sitting quietly in my 10th grade social studies classroom. Everyone in the classroom is trying to pretend that they're not looking at Jason Pittman. The new kid with the dead parents. Me.
Seeing if I'll cry.
Or get angry.
Or run out of the classroom.
Any of the things you'd expect a teenager to do when they have to sit through a history lesson about the event that claimed his parents' lives.
I wasn't used to this back home. Back home, I was one of a dozen kids in every class who had lost someone in The Battle. Not the case here in Bay View City.
My brother was twelve years older than me, but still barely an adult when everything happened. Even though I'm only two years away from being eighteen myself, I cannot even begin to imagine what it would be like to have to suddenly raise a six-year-old on your own.
He did the best he could with what he had, and what he had was a small cash settlement from the United States government. A pittance of an apology for their inability to protect citizens from metahumans gone rogue.
Anyways...
It was the last day of classes, and everyone was busy figuring out their summer plans.
Well, I say figuring out, but really, almost everyone knew what they were doing. Today was more about sharing their plans, seeing those who were the most impressive. No one asked me what my plans were.
After school, I returned home to find my brother Joe was just waking up.
"Rough night?" I ask.
"Something like that," he replies.
Joe is a reporter. Well, technically, he's a blogger, but don't ever correct him about that. As far as he's concerned, there's absolutely no difference between the two. I'm acutely aware the major difference is that one pays an actual salary and the other does not.
Since Mom and Dad died Joe has been obsessed with metahumans. Luckily the site he works for, The Riverdale Post, is just as obsessed with them. Joe is probably one of the world's foremost authorities on metahumans, which in many fields could land him a very lucrative job. However, he's also probably one of the internet's foremost metahuman conspiracy theorists.
Considering the majority of the conspiracy theories around metahumans concern government cover-ups of the deaths of tens of thousands of citizens, you can see how this is something we'd call a "job liability".
Sleeping until three p.m. every day is another one. Luckily, they let him work from home whenever he wants.
"We'd gotten an anonymous tip that a metahuman was sighted down by the old power station two nights ago. Turned out to be nothing," he says.
"Of course it was nothing. There hasn't been something in over 10 years," I tell him.
"You don't really believe all of all that horseshit, do you? You know that some of them are still out there, hiding," Joe says.
"Yes, I do believe that 'horseshit', because if some of them were still out there, then why do you think we haven't actually, you know, seen them?" I'm not even sure why I'm willing to get into this argument again. We must have had it a million times, and it's not like I'm going to change Joe's mind.
"God. Open your eyes Jason. You think it's a coincidence that just when the government learns how to kill a metahuman they all just disappear? I don't understand how you can be so naive," Joe says.
"I don't understand why everything has to be so complicated. Is it really that hard to believe that all the bracelets just stopped working?" I asked.
The truth is, no one really knows what happened. Out of the dozen metahumans that the world had come to know, only a few were actually confirmed dead. Liberty was, of course, confirmed dead by the government (don't bring this up around Joe unless you want to be lectured for a half hour about how blind to the truth you are).
DemiUrge was basically assumed dead, and anyone that remembers the blast had little reason to question it. Metahumans might have seemed pretty tough, but it's impossible for all but the most delusional to believe that anyone could have survived that blast.
Most of the others died of stupidity well beforehand. To be fair, their accidents were really only stupid in retrospect. It's not like the metabands came with instruction manuals. Most of them died before they even had a chance to come up with their own crime-fighting name.
Kyle Jenkins died when he teleported himself to the basement of Fort Knox, intent on stealing the nation's gold reserves. The only problem was; there is no basement in Fort Knox. They found the very top of his head peaking out through the solid concrete floor in the vault. He'd fused with the floor itself.
After his unfortunate example, others with the power to teleport did so much more carefully, only transporting themselves to places they'd been before and were confident hadn't physically changed since their last visit. Of the four known teleporters that were now M.I.A., it was impossible to know how many might be stuck in a wall somewhere, explaining why we hadn't heard much from them lately.
Tabitha Defoe was another famous metahuman, Darwin Award winner. Her metabands were in her possession for all of about 3 minutes before her untimely passing. Not nearly enough time for the cuffs to adapt to her physiology. Good ol' Tabitha had always dreamt of flying, and when given the chance to do so with her newly discovered "magical" bracelets, she did not hesitate. Off she went, blasting into the air with a speed no one had ever witnessed before.
What she didn't understand was that metabands did not necessarily come with the ability to overcome the basic human need for something called oxygen. On a clear night, and with a strong telescope, you can still see her asphyxiated body orbiting the Earth.
"By the way, I'm not going to be able to give you a ride to school tomorrow. Car's in the shop," Joe informs me.
"I don't have school tomorrow. Today was the last day of classes," I tell him.
"Wait, today was? Oh wow, it's June, isn't it? Alright, school's out! Right buddy?" Joe says in his best attempt at feigning enthusiasm, punching me in the arm a little too hard. "So what are the big plans for your first night of freedom tonight?"
I sigh wistfully.
I bet Luke is gonna come up with something crazy to pass the time...