VELVETEEN vs. Normalcy
Giant mutant bats were attacking Portland.
As a statement, the situation was simple.
As an evolving situation, it was anything but.
They had appeared shortly after dusk three nights before, dropping out of the sky like stones, if stones had grasping talons they could use to catch themselves on eaves and tree branches before they hit the ground.
At first, the people of Portland—the ones who were still wandering the streets at sunset, and thus in a position to see the bats—had been clever enough to give them a wide berth.
Then, inevitably, a few people who thought rabies was a government conspiracy intended to keep them from cuddling the “sky puppies” had decided to get up close and personal.
Which was how those same people had learned that rabies was a secondary consideration to “giant bat with a mouth full of very sharp teeth and clear ideas about personal space.” Several of them were no longer in a position to worry about infection.
Several of them were no longer in a position to worry about anything.
At least none of the people who’d died of giant bat to the throat had gotten back up and turned into bats in their own right.
That proved this was an invasion of giant bats, not giant werebats, and under the circumstances, that was definitely the better option.
No one needed to grow wings and fangs and start eating the neighbors.
During the day, the bats disappeared to some unknown location, but they came back as soon as the sun went down, arraying themselves around the city like strange blossoms on some terrible hanging vine.
Portland was now effectively under a curfew, with all sensible people getting inside as soon as the sunlight began to dim.
The bats attacked anything that moved, from cars and buses to pedestrians and wild dogs.
The city’s coyote population was definitely taking a hit, and most of the larger raccoons were already gone.
Velveteen, crouching on the edge of an office building roof and watching the bats take short, gliding flights between the buildings below her, couldn’t help but wonder when she had so effectively abandoned the label of “sensible.” There was a time when she would have been comfortably wrapped in a plush bathrobe and nestled down in the cushions of her couch, letting the teddy bears bring her cheese puffs and watching the carnage unfolding on the news.
Instead, she was out on the streets, ready to kick the carnage off on her home ground.
“Fucked-up times fifty,” she muttered, pulling a handful of small plastic birds from her belt pouch.
Four of them fit comfortably in her palm, bright colored in a way even real birds—not renowned for their subtlety—would have found off-putting, with big, human-esque eyes and long black eyelashes.
In case that wasn’t enough proof that they’d been designed by someone who had never actually seen a bird, they all had long, brushable tails made of synthetic rainbow hair.
They were beautiful. They were impractical.
But most importantly, they could fly, and didn’t look like anything that was likely to be a normal part of a giant mutant bat’s diet.
(“Will the enemy eat it?” wasn’t normally a consideration when using actual toys for reconnaissance, but maybe it should have been.
Her first volley of spies had been army toys, black helicopters designed to look sleek and intimidating, when not blending into the shadows around them.
And they’d been very good at their jobs, right up until they encountered enemies who operated more by echolocation than by eyesight.
Their shapes and coloring made them seem like regular bats to the giant bats, and all she could do now was hope that the bats who’d eaten her spy planes were going to get indigestion for their troubles.)
She tossed the birds into the air, and they began to flap their wings, frantically forcing their utterly un-aerodynamic designs into something that could actually fly. Their sculpts didn’t change at all, of course, but as vitality spread from her to them, they suddenly became airborne.
“Colorful birds are supposed to be the Princess’s gig,” she muttered, and waved a hand in the direction of the cluster of bats she’d been observing for the past hour. “Go over there, see if you can figure out anything about them, come back here and tell me everything.”
The plastic birds chirped obligingly and flew off toward the bats, leaving Velveteen to watch. Nothing could mistake those birds as natural, or edible. They’d come back, and she’d know what was going on, and—
Little plastic birds screamed as they were snatched out of the air and shoved into toothy muzzles, chomped down with all the enthusiasm a giant mutant bat could muster. In a matter of seconds, her spies were gone, down the gullets of the bats.
Velveteen swore.
Unlike the people of Portland, she had a healthy respect for rabies, and when she’d tried to get close to the bats herself, they’d lunged in a very rabies-implying manner.
Polychrome and Victory Anna were on the other side of town, handling the boring but essential task of helping people getting off work make it from their offices to the bus stop and then home.
If it had been up to Vel, all businesses would have been closing by six at the latest for the duration of the bat situation (invasion?
Infestation? Things were confusing enough without trying to put a name on them), but she wasn’t in charge, and capitalism was perfectly happy to feed a few workers to mutant bats in order to keep profits high.
She didn’t really see how dead employees helped the bottom line, but she was just a superhero, after all.
Pol and Victory Anna had the business district, Tag had the schools, and she?
She had the place where the high rises of downtown overlooked the homes and small businesses of suburbia, which spread right up into the edges of that same downtown, creating a steep drop-off that was perfect for a superhero who couldn’t fly unassisted to use as a vantage point.
She had a dwindling assortment of flying toys, and a non-dwindling assortment of monstrous bats.
She also had a headache.
The bats, bellies full of plastic debris, were looking in her direction. Swearing again, she moved to put herself behind an air conditioning unit, counting on its vibrations to confuse their echolocation.
She was gonna need some bigger toys.
* * *
The majority of superhumans won’t survive far enough into adulthood to become bored or jaded.
If they did, the balance of power would shift irrevocably, and they would inevitably begin to press their superiority over more ordinary people.
As it stands, superhumans spend their lives in a wash of novelty that leaves them unlikely to overthrow governments or plan coups, or otherwise attempt to maneuver themselves into the halls of the powerful and the bored.
For those lucky few who last long enough to become settled adults, patterns inevitably emerge, repeating conflicts which occupy their time and attention without providing any true mental enrichment.
There are a thousand ways to build a city, but only one way to burn it down, after all.
Many new-adult superhumans chafe against the sudden intrusion of boredom into their lives, viewing it as unfair and somehow personal when really, it’s just the world doing as the world has always done.
Continuing on, with little care for the people it carries with it.
For those superhumans who survive the boring days—the period during which the second-highest number of heroes will die, done in by carelessness when they decide they’ve seen it all—the other side is something else most of them have never experienced, and something they will find a thousand times more dear.
Peace. Beyond the boredom lies peace, a world where the fights go on, but it no longer seems as vital for every single battle to be handled personally; where great powers and great responsibilities no longer go hand-in-hand.
For a superhuman who can survive long enough to learn the value of boredom, there is a long and mellow maturity waiting, ready to welcome them with gloved but open hands.
It’s all a matter of staying alive long enough to get there.
Some people have suggested that the teams and traumas model of superhuman management, as practiced by The Super Patriots, Inc.
, has been partially designed to prevent heroes from reaching that state of peaceful acceptance.
Superhumans invested in living in the world, not just saving it, are more inclined to notice the sort of problems that don’t wear capes or carry laser guns.
And when Princess Power is telling you to fix the potholes, it can get difficult to tell her “no.”
* * *
Arms over her head to protect her from being swooped, Velveteen ran along the line of the roof, swearing constantly.
She’d been sure she was hidden from the bats, and to be fair, she had been, at least from the bats in front of her.
The bats behind her had proven to be a different story, and once they’d started screeching and kicking up a fuss, the others had come swarming.
Being back on the active superhero circuit meant she worked out more than most people these days, and had the training to run along a narrow concrete boundary without losing her balance and toppling to the city.
And that was about the only positive thing she could say about her current situation, which seemed likely to end in rabies shots, if not outright consumption.