"Dude, that was insane!" Charlie yelled after a particularly difficult play in the online game he was playing with his best friend, Brian. The other boy was the son of the mayor of Boston, but he was as normal as they went. Well, normal at everything except this game, League of Masters. He was one of the country's best, and some of the stuff he could pull off… it was like in the World Tournament.
"Thank you, thank you very much," Brian responded, mimicking Elvis Presley as best as he could. Unlike his video game talent, he sucked at imitations. Charlie laughed at the attempt, promptly getting himself killed.
"You think we'll have school tomorrow, given everything that happened today?" Charlie asked, crossing his fingers that they might find a silver lining in all the chaos.
"Those administrators will work us 'til we drop dead, Charlie. Is there any need to ask?" Brian responded, having just died himself.
"Aw, come on. They're not that bad."
"Yeah, but that's only because everyone loves you, Charlie. If I didn't know you any better, I'd think you were trying to be the teacher's pet. But because I do know you, I can confidently say that you have teacher's pet in your genes." Hearing Charlie's surprised gasp through the in-game audio, Brian continued. "Ah, but there's nothing you can do about it, so I don't bother."
"Thank you, Brian. Mind telling me how others perceive me before I completely ruin any social connections I might make?"
"Sure, man. I've got to hop off for the rest of the night. My dad's got some kind of press meeting he wants me to go to with him. It'll be boring. A bunch of people will want to suck up to my dad, so they'll try and be super nice to me, but it's all so laughably fake," Brian sighed, and Charlie could hear the disappointment as Brian logged off. Now alone, Charlie closed the game.
Closing the curtains in his room – they were made from the same stuff as the curtains in the living room – Charlie dedicated himself to some more training. His dad knew about the training he did in the living room with dark matter, but this was a secret Charlie kept.
Many years ago, back when Charlie had first discovered that he, too, had superpowers, he had blown their living room up. It was a typical afternoon, but after watching one of the most influential sci-fi movies to have ever existed, one with an order of space wizards, Charlie pretended to use the Force to grab a remote off the coffee table. Unfortunately, it worked a little better than he had expected. Not only did he manage to lift the remote, but he managed to lift everything in the room and smashed them against the walls.
It wasn't enough to really do much structural damage, but it had absolutely obliterated that poor room. It also led directly to his family relocating to the edge of the city, taking up residence in a relatively isolated house. The only reason they actually stayed in Boston proper was for the safety that came from being near a NAUG facility; many of the more rural towns had Traitors working behind the scenes, acting much as the mafia bosses of the old world. Most of them were genuine NAUG defectors, but the government didn't have enough firepower to simultaneously protect all of its urban centers, financial interests, and contested territory and deal with these small-time, superpowered thugs.
Most people, like Charlie's parents and older sister, chose to live near the cities that came with NAUG protection. Most of them had a group of a dozen or more Supers, though few of them were as powerful as the Supers that fought in the streets near the coffeeshop. Generally, the weakest among the NAUG's forces were stationed in the cities. Official doctrine was that as long as the NAUG didn't lose its strongholds on the borders, the cities should be safe from harm.
That being said, there was always at least one Gravity-type Super. With the ability to – as you guessed it – directly affect the gravitational force affecting objects, they could redirect missiles aimed at the cities. They were more of a deterrent than anything, but they needed to be ready at all time to fling aside any threat. No Traitor attack had warranted one of their number to respond to them.
He shook himself free of thoughts of the Traitors this morning. There were more pressing things to worry about. An hour. That's all he had between his mom coming home from work near the center of the city and his dad falling asleep. Though dark matter was far less volatile, it was far less versatile than dark energy. Like the Gravity-type Supers Charlie had read about, he was able to pick up matter. And yet, unlike them, it was a strain on his mind to weaken his dark energy. To use it with any precision was like spreading butter on toast with a jackhammer. It was the force that drove the expansion of the universe, after all.
Sweat flowed freely, leaving rivers on his face. His mind felt like it was splitting, but he continued to try to force the eraser in front of him to rise into the air. Almost imperceptibly, it began twitching, and then it slammed into the ceiling, leaving Charlie barely any time at all to register his power rapidly growing in intensity.
"Damn it," Charlie reclined into his chair, disappointed that his nightly practices haven't yielded anything in the past years. That eraser had trumped him at every turn, and he was sick of it. That said, he wasn't as hopeful as his father. Hopeful that the government would never find out about his existence. If that moment ever came, if Charlie ever had a lapse of judgement, he needed to be stronger than any Super they could send after him. Plus, having superpowers was pretty cool. What person wouldn't want to experiment with them?
Shuffling over to the kitchen, Charlie grabbed a mug of milk and sat himself down at the counter, debating whether or not to take medicine for that headache pounding in his skull. As he did so, he made an executive decision to forswear homework that night. It wasn't due tomorrow, so he wouldn't do it until tomorrow. At that moment, his mom made her appearance, depositing her oversized purse by the front door.
"Hi, Charlie. How was school?" The age-old question, that was. Without fail, she'd ask that. It was tradition at this point.
"I mean, considering that there was a Traitor attack earlier today, I'd say it went pretty well. That Chemistry test was rough, but I'll take what I can get," Charlie reported, to which his mom ruffled his hair. She looked tired, but then she always did. Her working for the mayor's office tended to turn long days into even longer days. Sometimes, Charlie wished she'd quit her job as the mayor's principle advisor, but he knew she'd never do that.
For all the negatives that came with the work, they gained too much from it. Not only did it pay well, but Charlie's mom was more well-informed than most people who worked for the government, forget the people that didn't. There was an old saying, back from before Chaos Day. "Keep your friends close and your enemies closer." It was another way of keeping Charlie and all of them safe. He felt bad about it, most of the time, but his mom seemed to genuinely enjoy the work.
"About that, Charlie. Your dad told me what you did today."
Oh boy. Tongue-lashing part two.