There was a bronze clock tower on Maynard’s and Twentieth, one of countless pieces anchoring some specific period in time in New Langshir’s long history. Large cities tended to tell a story. Of pioneers and strife, of sacrifice and legacy. The metal was worked into a depiction of historical figures. Men and women holding flags, caricatures cowering, dated perspectives on fellow man, all converging towards a centerpiece on top where time was kept.

The clock was attended by civil servants once every couple of months, for it always ran a few seconds too slow. They performed their work and then they left. If they were asked what the clock was named, they would struggle to answer without consulting their work order. If they were asked when it had been built, they might have been able to recite a year.

Various decorations hung on the tower. Stains from guano mostly cleaned off; old and new graffiti; advertisements in layers. Until it was time for the reset once more, and all of it was sheared off with scrapers and cleaning fluid, all except the embossed artwork.

And the garbage that often littered the foot of the historical artifact. That was the wind’s job.

But the air was still that night, and there were more people than usual on that side of town. Construction was still underway in other parts of the city. The people flocked everywhere else, repulsed by the scars that defined their patchwork city. When the broken would be rebuilt, they would flood back into those parts of the city, rubbing shoulders with the workers and heroes leaving their finished work behind.

For now, they walked the relatively untouched streets such as the Twentieth. And that was where they were met with young idealists. The M.A.G.E students numbered about a hundred when they began. Bystanders asked them questions and they answered. The longer they walked, the more supporters they picked up along the way. The hundred doubled, then doubled again. After the months of gloom, the people were bored.

Lyssa walked alongside the procession. She had no opinion on the matter. But happenstances tended to occur at these sorts of events. It was only some months ago an anti-gifter barged into the announcer’s booth at the games, emboldening their plea for division. The police had to be employed to quell some of the more outspoken participants of that protest. For obvious reasons, heroes were not allowed to control the crowd. The optics weren’t good.

“Trouble you fer a penny?” A ragged man with a beard and a missing leg below the knee said.

Lyssa let him have any loose coins she had on her person, lowering them onto the man’s bowl with her power.

“Oh you’re one of them,” he remarked, pointing at the march.

“I suppose so,” Lyssa said.

“I lost my leg ‘cuz of Laser Eagle. He gazed my leg off while trying to weld a building’s supports back on. I was standing too close.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t say it was your fault. This was years ago. Many years.” He looked despondent for a moment. “Lost my job because I joined one of them anti-hero rallies. I was in a bad place ya know. A bunch of kids spammed my workplace with uh calls and memes—this was back when they really liked heroes. They had to let me go or else the bad press might get to the business. Now we’re shouting the other way.”

He had started to mumble to himself, not quite knowing what to do or say. He hadn’t had an audience for a long time. Lyssa left him there since the march was moving on. While she was still within earshot she heard him shout, “Keep to yourself, girl. Just stay quiet. Just uh stay uh-” And there went the last of the homeless man’s lucidity, for the night.

She already knew that. Jackson’s drills had been thorough. Her personal course had her learn to look where people weren’t; that was usually where villainy occurred.

“It’s all misdirection,” Jackson had said. “Most of a plan had already happened by the time our frontline heroes tackle them. And most plans go wrong. So you too must go wrong on the fly.”

This whole thing stunk. The juxtaposition of the trespassers to the students’ response, the speed at much their demonstration travelled on social media… Or perhaps she was just paranoid. Either way she needed to keep an eye on Lian. The psychic probably didn’t notice that they had met before, inside her own head. They had faced one of Lyssa’s demons together.

“We are learning how to help!” One of the many phrases of this demonstration. “Give us a chance.”

“Do you know why heroes are necessary?” Jackson had asked her at the end of a Clandestine class.

“Police aren’t effective enough at handling large scale criminal operations?” Lyssa had recalled from her CEOR studies.

“Yes, but no,” Jackson had replied. “There are many more fundamental ones. For example, the bystander effect. A man collapsing on the side of a road would not receive help immediately, even on a crowded one. That’s because people always expect someone else to help. But we’re all someone else to someone else. And if that man is dressed in old, dirty clothes, his chances of getting help are even lower. In the minds of bystanders, the beggar is a second-class citizen. The refuse of society that they have to deign to help. Forget about it if a physical altercation took place before their eyes. People pick and choose their own battles, usually the safest ones.

“Heroes pick everyone else’s battles, dangerous or not. It’s a mentality. Heroes aren’t better than ordinary humans because of genetics or gifts. They’re better because they choose to be, regardless of if we all deserve it or not.”

“Why does Whitworth think we need heroes?”

“Because he doesn’t think we’re better, he thinks they’re far worse.”

Already the march was slowing a couple hours into the night. A counter march had occurred, full of ungifted. There were far more of them. The police had arrived to mediate the situation. Because there were gifted involved, heroes were called as well.

“Alright guys, let’s enjoy the First Amendment respectfully,” a voice boomed above them.

The air rippled from vector fields as Ace Pilot came to a stop a couple storeys above the event. There were a few others Lyssa didn’t recognize. A woman in a dark suit and cowl who seemed to stick to the walls, looking down on them with two pairs of crossed arms. A man with a dumbbell motif on his uniform hovered above the counter march. He kept several weight disks in orbit around his person. On ground level a man with steely skin stood a head-and-shoulders above the crowd, watching with either vigilance or annoyance.

Gifted and ungifted met each other in the middle of a square, just as a nearby bronze clock tower hissed eleven times. Hundreds of heads bobbed in the night light spilling from the gigantic television screens around the square. Under vibrant commercials for conditioner and make-up, a shouting match began.

“Go home! Leave our city!”

“This is our city. We’re training to protect it!”

“You’ll kill us all by accident!”

Lyssa leaned on the clock, away from the passion and glory of the spotlight. It was only now she understood what Jackson had meant. It wasn’t as if people suddenly stopped loving superheroes. Heroes had saved more people this generation than ever before. People were afraid of confrontation. Out of the hundreds of thousands who were safe because of heroes, only a few hundred had come to support the students.

Though a fair number of attendees were journalists and TV crews, hungry for content.

“We’re just like you!” That was Lian’s voice, strained but clear. “We risk our lives to train to be better protectors. What had happened was the work of criminals. They will be brought to justice!”

“Your mere existence is a threat to us!”

“We were all born and raised here! All of us have lineages that intertwine and knot until we’re all but indistinguishable. How can you deny us our right to simply exist? We built this country together with your ancestors!”

“There weren’t as many of you then!”

“We’re human too! We have gifts, but we’re human, can’t you see what’s right in front of you? We deserve to exist just as much as you. Give us a chance to be judged for our character!”

There were tears in Lian’s eyes. And her words seemed to have bought a moment of silence. The square’s television screens went dark, and gasps filled the urban sprawl. Then the picture came back on.

It was footage. Taken from an unsteady drone. Other perspectives from other drones appeared, taking up every free screen around the street. Lyssa recognized this footage. It was from the games. After that muscle-clad creature had knocked out M.A.G.E’s camera drones with an energy pulse, another wave of them had arrived. Nobody had questioned them, assuming they were back-ups. They were watching shaky but comprehensible recordings of the fight between Victory and the beast. Gifted and ungifted watched along with the members of the press as the beast pushed Victory to a corner. Every punch was strong enough to stir storm-like winds, knocking boulders and rubble aside. The enemy was a true monster. Until it came to the part where Victory tore it apart limb from limb. Another gasp fell as the golden hero turned dark red, utterly dismantling the monster into twitching ropes of flesh and bits of bone. Victory turned, brow furrowed and eyes glaring, teeth still grit in battle mode.

Then the footage repeated.