Rising Shards

A newscaster frantically run up to the blue caped, masked dude.

“Excuse me, just one second of your time! Can you explain why you put your life on the line to do battle with those folks with ill intentions?"

“They were threatening some kids, so I just felt like I had to do something,” the masked person said. “When you, uh, when you kick, to kick a man when he’s, well kids aren’t technically yet…men, but one day they could be men, but uh, still when, to kick, to kick a man when…s-sorry!” They flew off abruptly. The feed panned away to a newsroom.

“Yes, those were the words of the masked hero who defeated the notorious yellow striped socks gang,” the head newscaster for East Valataran News said. “Because of that interesting interview, some commenters online are dubbing this masked vigilante ‘Tokickaman.’”

Basically, the guy got turned into a meme already. All of my feeds were ‘Tokickaman’ crap already and a vast majority of it wasn't even funny. Still, the interview was pretty good. I wondered if the mystery hero was Penteldtam due to how horribly awkward it was, but no way he would ever be competent enough to fight anything.

“Sorry if you’ve seen that already,” Diast said as she paused the video on the projector.

“Like five times today,” I said.

“I said sorry! They’re making us show you and give a spiel,” Diast said.

“They gotta give this guy a better name,” I said.

“Blude!” Zeta said.

Zeta and I got shushed by Lillia. Even though we were better friends now, when she shushed you, it stung and I had to shut up until my roasting Diast meter was done with its cooldown.

“Right, anyways, every now and then people will pop up who due to whatever reason, stand out like this. Kind of superhero-y, but it doesn’t necessarily happen due to heroism, sometimes a guy is just really strong, like that butter guy who flooded a whole town. Sometimes they’re hoaxes also, so be wary of that. When one shows up, usually more follow. Scientifically, could I explain it? Maybe, but it’d take forever. The important thing is that you don’t immediately start fawning over these guys, and seriously don’t try any of this. I know we do plenty of risky business, but Cani stuff here is a lot safer than that.”

“Diast, you made a superhero boring, that’s impressive,” I said. Diast roast cooldown complete. “If I get that powerful, I’m getting a better name than ‘Tokickaman.’”

“If you do, tell me,” Diast said. “I can never get a hold of any of these super strong types. Count yourselves lucky to meet the River & Lyric trio, that’s probably the closest we’re getting to that type of ‘importance.’”

“Pfft, our art teachers? They have like 100 followers on Friendliest, they’re not like superhero level.” I said.

“Social media follows do not equate importance!” Diast said.

“I’m just saying, I have more followers on my revived drinking fountain blog than they do, I bet Tokickaman has like a million followers already. And none of their powers don’t seem that like big.”

“Well on that note, I should add that just because someone has a lot of raw Cani power, that doesn’t make them more important than you either,” Diast said. “The news and surrounding media takes these types and kinda isolates them in elevating them to be this big thing, but you’re just as special. Chilling here isn’t any lesser than the big world shaking things others do. It can be a rough life, and I’m sure this blue guy is gonna figure that out. I mean, it is rough. Putting yourself in danger, taking on powerful foes, and that's just the start of it..."

Diast was droning on and on about this and I still didn’t really get it. So some really powerful Cani will pop up every few years and the news basically hails them as superheroes? Was that it? It just sounded like stuff we did.

While I was zoning out as Diast continued (pausing only to answer some really dumb questions from Iris and Roux, and to reassure Zeta that Raina Starlight was still really cool even if she wasn’t a big-time superhero), my mind went back to that damn Michi question.

I gave a brief thought to asking Diast after class what she thought about the ‘in love with the wrong person’ riddle after class. That just made me laugh because I thought about how funny it was when I walked in on her and Zeta’s sister Stella getting a bit frisky, and then laughing thinking about how I still had to prank Zeta about finding out about her big sister’s secret-ish relationship with Dr. Diast.

"Just paying for the outfits when they get damaged? That's gotta be astronomical...Kalei, what's so funny about this?" Diast asked, interrupted by me again.

"It's nothing, just—" Oh no, now I could not stop laughing.

“Can you just shut the hell up for a bit?” Diast said.

When classes wrapped up, I tried to think of what I could really do. Maybe I could grill Michi more about their hypothetical and see what connection they really had to it. I could be like Tik Moonheart and figure it out all detective style. Or be like that superhero guy Blude/Tokickaman/whatever and go kick someone’s ass. Or I could ask around to some people who wouldn't have a meltdown thinking about the question for five seconds.

“Koridiaaaaa…”

A chill ran up my spine at the voice whispering to me. I whirled to find Roux snickering.

“Don’t ever do that again,” I said.

“I waited for the perfect opportunity to get behind you to do that," Roux said. "That opportunity may never come again, so I should enjoy this."

"Sure, whatever, I'm kind of in the middle of something," I said.

"Me too!" Roux said. “Something is brewing..."

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