Chum

I’m an athletic person, this much was never in question, I think, by anyone. I can run, I can kick, I can climb, and I can lift heavy things. I do not think it is fair to expect me to do some Wipeout bullshit on a whim, and yet that is the exact situation I find myself within. There used to be game shows like this that my dad used to watch – I distinctly recall sitting on the couch with him as a young child, watching reruns of Ninja Warrior while he tried to get me to sound out all the foreign names I couldn’t pronounce at the time, trying to develop my linguistic palette. I’m not sure how effective it was.

Either way, despite seeing the gigantic obstacle course in front of me for the past two hours, looming in the background like a wildfire on the horizon, I did not expect that I would be upon it, forced to prove myself to these strangers. I shakily put one foot in front of the other, and think to myself, in no uncertain terms, “this is bullshit”.

Blink’s hand is on my shoulder as I watch Puppeteer approach the course from the front end. “You know, you don’t have to finish it. You’re already in the group, we just want to see you try,” she says, presumably trying to make me feel better as my eyes scan everything I’m going to have to deal with at the end of this queue. I gently shrug my shoulders to try and get her hand off of me, and thankfully she gets the message and pulls away. “Did they give you a hard time about it?”

“No,” I answer. The rest of the Young Defenders are all sitting by the starting line, stretching, preparing themselves, while Puppeteer does a handstand onto the first obstacle and begins walking her way down with her hands. “I just don’t like being looked down on.”

“I don’t think anyone’s looking down on you, unless you mean, like, literally, because I’m not sure how we could get up really high there without looking down at you. But I think you didn’t mean literally,” she replies, which is I think her attempting to cheer me up with a joke. I glance out the corner of my eye at her crooking a hip out, leaning into her own arm. I bend down and touch my toes, keeping my head up to watch Puppeteer. “Don’t feel intimidated by Pup, she just likes to challenge herself.”

“I’m not intimidated.”

“Good! I promise, we’re all really nice. I don’t know what Ramp told you but don’t worry about him either. He’s nice too even if he’s kind of a dick sometimes.”

I glance at her, pulling my arms over my head, twisting my back left, then right. “You talk a lot, don’t you?”

“Should I stop?” she asks with worrying sincerity. Puppeteer easily navigates the first obstacle on her hands, a thin array of crisscrossing balance beams situated a foot above the ground. The padding is extra thick below her, but I don’t think she’ll fall, not even for a second. Part of it is because, clearly, she is or was a gymnast, and this sort of acrobatics is second nature to her, but also because I can see her “strings”, little vibrating strands of air wrapped from her fingers around everything she can find, mostly the supports of the obstacles ahead, cradling her in an impenetrable web with at least five or six points of contact. I look at Blink dubiously.

“I think you should probably go and get some stretches done if you’re going to go do the obstacle course with everyone else. Before you go, though, I’m curious – is this, like, a frequent event? You guys practice this every day?”

She shakes her head. “Not every day. But, like, once or twice a week. Sometimes we switch it up, too. Take a heavy lifting day to rearrange the course. A lot of it is just old gymnastics equipment that the big guys buy off of places that are closing down, or, like, school surplus.”

Part of me wants to point out to her that Philadelphia public schools could probably use the surplus, but I get the impression from Blink that the slightest amount of pushback would make her cry, so I keep it to myself. “And you’re not going to stretch?” I ask.

“Huh? Oh, I just got distracted by the other thing you asked. Yeah, okay, let’s stretch together! Do you do yoga, new girl?” Blink asks, turning towards me while I keep watching Puppeteer navigate the balance beams until she falls forward out of her handstand and into a normal stand. Blink turns her entire body sans her legs towards Puppeteer and claps, which nobody else seems to care about. Then, Blink bends herself backwards into a bridge, flattening her stomach out. “It’s really good for stretching.”

I do not look directly at her, because I would have to resist the urge to roll my eyes. I’m trying to silence my inner mean girl but Blink is getting on my nerves a little, so I just focus on the stretches I already know how to do. “No, I just play a lot of soccer. I’m going to be doing track at my high school, too.”

“Gosh, you’re so young… I bet activating was real scary. I mean, it’s probably scary for everyone, but, you know. Scary!” Blink replies absentmindedly, pulling herself back up, contorting her body in a way I find difficult to describe.

“Not a fan of talking about it,” I say, trying not to sound like a curmudgeon (big word for “an asshole”), so I throw on a “sorry,” at the end. There was a second obstacle, two walls next to each other that I assume you have to ascend parkour style, but Puppeteer has already made her way up it before I can even watch her do so. She runs across the top and doesn’t bother shimmying down the fake pipe that leads her back to ground level, just tying her strings around the fake roof’s protrusions and descending on her own lines, hopping down like she’s holding onto a rope.

“That’s okay! You don’t have to tell me unless you want to,” Blink replies, smiling at me. I bend back down and touch my toes again, eyes on the prize.

“Alright. I won’t.”

Have I been rattled? I keep thinking about how Rampart was trying to warn me – was that hazing, or just well-intentioned concern? I’ve had people try to get in my head before, during soccer games, but nobody’s had the gall to say to my face “I don’t think you can hack it” and it’s got me annoyed and angry and feeling all sorts of uncomfortable inside.

Puppeteer scrambles up increasingly tall chain-link fences, followed by some rusty looking wrought-iron fences that I watch her shimmying her way up, jamming her feet in between them to lock herself in place. She grabs hold of the spikes at the top and just vaults herself over like it’s the easiest thing in the world. I feel my face scrunching up in something that might be anger, or determination. I don’t like the feeling.

“Well, I’m gonna go get in line. I’ll see you at the finish line hopefully, okay, new girl?” Blink says, breaking the peaceful near-silence that I had lulled myself into with enough force that I nearly jump.

“Yeah. See you,” I reply. She jogs over to meet the rest of the Young Defenders who are waiting in line, and I’m left alone over here to watch and observe and learn what I can before it’s my turn. I could get closer, maybe even get friendly with them, but I’m an angry, hormonal teenager and I feel like stewing in this feeling is a better way to fuel myself for the challenge ahead. I’m not their friend yet. I’m only their comrade on paper. My locker is not decorated, and they don’t even know my name.

I’ll make sure they don’t doubt me.

Puppeteer swings from a series of ramshackle monkey bars, throwing herself on and off of ledges that she has to keep herself on with only her arm strength. All the prior obstacles looked at least surmountable to me with significant enough determination, but this one just strikes me as impossible, and yet she makes it look effortless. Obviously, it’s easy for her since her power is just purpose-built for mobility, so I’m left questioning how I’m even meant to compete in the same league.

Then again, even Playback and Crossroads and Gossamer are expected to complete the course. I’m sure it’s almost as easy for them, too. There’s no sound, no soundtrack, only the sound of feet and hands making contact with surfaces, slapping quietly. Puppeteer gracefully moves onto the next obstacle, a series of platforms at awkward angles and heights arranged in a loose stairwell, and makes a fool out of it. When your armspan is limited only by how far your strings are, it becomes easy to just pull yourself up to any surface you need to, I suppose.

She makes her way easily to the topmost platform and works her way back down by just straight up jumping. The platforms on the other end are all flat and stable and padded, but it’s still like a two, three foot drop vertically and pretty far horizontally, with plenty of room on each platform for her to duck into a roll and cushion her fall. One more jump, even further now, takes her back down to ground level, and then there’s just one last obstacle for her to surmount before it’s time for the next person in line.

I have to assume this last one wasn’t made with “gymnasium surplus”, given it looks straight up like a brick wall that was torn off of some disused apartment complex somewhere. Given all the places I see in north Philly, there’s a pretty high chance that it was, in fact, just ripped off of an apartment complex. Either way, a folded fire-escape ladder and some rickety looking pipes all seem to be extremely untenable ways for any normal person to make their way up to the “rooftop”. I suppose one could also simply, uh, grab hold of the bricks and haul their way up, but I don’t know if anyone here has the power set for that. I certainly don’t. Sure, my shark teeth could catch, but then I’d have to be biting my way up, and I think at that point I’d rather just use the fire escape.

Obviously, Puppeteer makes it look like a joke. She grabs hold of the fire escape ladder with her strings, plants her feet firmly on the bricks, and walks her way up. She doesn’t even bother actually getting on the fire escape platforms, just using them to secure herself as she climbs upward, skipping the stairs entirely to go faster. She climbs on each railing in turn, jumps off in a way that looks suicidal to anyone that’s not looking for her strings, and retracts her strings to pull herself upwards by them. I see the fire escape rattling from the force of the pull, but she makes it up to the roof faster than I think humans were designed to ascend fire escapes, and slaps a large red button.

“Showoff!” Playback shouts all the way from the starting line.

“What’s that? I thought I heard a little bitch complaining!” Puppeteer shouts back, loud enough that it echoes around the gymnasium.

“You’re getting slow, Pup!” Playback shouts, rolling his shoulders until they audibly crack, cracking his knuckles. Obviously, Puppeteer’s hand-walking stunt slowed her down at the front end, that was obvious to anyone with half a brain. If you normally walk that part, hand-standing it is definitely going to slow you down. “Got someone to impress?”

“Don’t you got an obstacle course to be doing?” she shouts back at him.

“Alright, if that’s how it’s gonna be…” he says, probably not loud enough for Puppeteer to hear him. Then, unlike her grace and acrobatics, he breaks into a dead sprint. I’ve never seen anyone sprint across balance beams before, but there’s a first time for many things, and this is one of them. He knows exactly where he wants to put each footfall, making the balance beams shake and rock while he treats them like a running track.

He takes the parallel walls with equal gusto, taking a footstep up the first one and springing off. He grabs an outcropping and hauls himself up into the narrowest sliver of foot space, and I notice something seems wrong but I can’t tell what, exactly. He jumps off to the other side of the wall, catching himself on a plastic bit of piping. One more jump, and he pulls himself onto the top of the walls. What is off about this? He’s performing exactly as he should be.

I glance to the fire escape wall as he works his way down the pipe, over to the fence jumping section. Puppeteer is just sitting there, cross-legged, watching him like a hawk, silently.

Then, I realize that everything Playback has been doing was silent. I have this realization about a fraction of a second before something that sounds like a gunshot rocks the gymnasium. While I’m looking around, ducking down, hands over my head in preparation to be shot, nobody else seems to be concerned. I peek out from over my hands, embarrassed, while a second explosive sound rings out, originating from Playback’s location. He vaults the fences without issue, shimmying his way up the wrought iron one, and moves onto the next obstacle.

“Quit it, you’re scaring the newbie!” Puppeteer barks.

“I need it to jump higher!” Playback shouts back.

“I can guarantee unless it’s loud enough to blow out the eardrums of everyone in here, it is not producing enough force to actually lift you up!” she counters.

“Shut up, nerd!” Playback shouts as he works his way across the monkey bars, one after another. Every motion he makes is unnervingly silent, like he’s sucking all the air and noise out of the equipment. If I looked away from him, my brain would probably have a hard time keeping track of where he was. He grabs onto the hanging ledges and doesn’t use any tricks to pull himself across, just upper arm strength. From there, everything is a formality, up the crooked platforms and down the jumps, rolling into them like a well-practiced traceur (that’s the term for someone who practices parkour, I think).

I don’t even bother looking as he works up the fire escape. He can do it, Puppeteer can do it, and I have no doubt everyone else can do it. It’s a foregone conclusion, so instead I begin walking over to the starting line with everyone else.

They part for me. “Newbie!” Blink shouts excitedly as I walk over, waving at me like we’re already best friends.

“You know, it’s easier to see from over where you were. You don’t have to come over here until you’re ready.” Rampart says, arms folded politely behind his back, stance straight and proper and military.

“Oh, I’m ready.” I say, reaching for the hand chalk that’s been set out and giving my hands a good dusting. Out of the corner of my eye, I watch Gale smiling at me, and I give a couple of short hops, boxing the air, trying to look enthusiastic about the whole trial. I guess, in a sense, I am enthusiastic. I’m ready to go. I don’t need to watch a bunch of people older than me show off, no matter how much I’m sure they want to impress or intimidate me. I crane my head around and notice a distinct lack of Gossamer, but don’t care enough to call it out. “Why, is there a line? Are you going to make me wait for you all first?”

Rampart shows a little bit of actual emotion in his following smile. “Not at all. Ladies first, after all.”

Crossroads chuckles at the back of the group. I think he says “Chauvinist”, but it’s too quiet to hear, and Rampart certainly doesn’t notice over Playback causing airhorn noises to blare out of his fingertips.

Blink walks up to the starting line, cups her mouth, and yells. “Hey, boss-lady, is it cool if the new girl goes next?”

“I was going to ask that…” Rampart mumbles under his breath, while I take my place at the starting line.

“Huh? Yeah. Sure. Show us what you got, newbie!” Puppeteer yells back.

I bend down, doing one last stretch, and tie my shoelaces.