Firedrake Chapter 27

The classroom was small compared to most at the Hurst Academy, barely large enough to seat twenty in comfort. It was currently filled to capacity and beyond, with students of all shapes and sizes jammed shoulder to shoulder. Some were seated, others stood. A quiet humming sound overlaid everything, the combined tones of two dozen voices all whispering excitedly. At the front of the room was a podium, and behind that towered the hulking form of Francis Drake. He looked out across the assembled students, eyes widening slightly as he thought about what he was doing.

Speaking in public had never been Drake’s strong suit - unless Mirandizing suspects counted - and this situation was enough to send a chill down his spine. The expectant faces that looked up at him from the desks scattered about the room made him feel more than a little uneasy and self-conscious. Gnawing on his lip for a moment, he extended his hands and gripped the frame of the podium. Wood creaked beneath his powerful grasp.

“All right, listen up!” he bellowed. The room went silent almost at once. Every eye in the room shifted to lock on him.

“My name is Francis Drake,” he declared. “You history buffs will recognize that, I’m sure, as belonging to some famous explorer-type guy. For the record, I am not him.”

A light round of laughter greeted the comment.

“Who I am is an Agent of the Department of Justice, Office of Metahuman Response. I am either your best friend or your worst nightmare, depending on who you are and what you do. Headmaster Hurst has seen fit to allow me to teach you folks a few things about the real world. He was non-specific on the content or methods of my teaching, so I’ll just do it my way. I’ll tell you this much for free: my way ain’t pleasant, but I don’t lie about anything, either. You ain’t gonna hear no politically correct doublespeak and you ain’t gonna get no free pass just ’cause nature saw fit to grace you with a set of wings.”

He turned to the standing chalkboard in the corner, pulling his wings in tightly against his back to avoid blocking anyone’s view. Carefully picking up the tiny piece of chalk that occupied space in the aluminum tray at the base of the board, he drew a single line down the center of the board.

“All right, goofy examples time,” he said, turning away and pointing to the line he had drawn. “It starts like this. On one side, there’s boosters…us.” He wrote a large, blocky letter ’B’ on the board to the right of the line, then followed suit with an equally large ’N’ on the left. He tapped at the ’N’ with a talon.

“This side’s norms,” he said. “The line’s invisible in real life, but you all know it’s there. Just being boosted makes you different. Don’t matter that you got enough arms and legs to be a centipede, it’s the fact that you got boosted at all that makes you different from the norms. It makes you odd. Weird. Freaky. You all know the names. I’ve been called them, you’ve been called them, and I’m fairly certain it’ll happen to someone else…probably right about now, somewhere.”

“So you’re calling us freaks?” asked a pale-skinned boy in a red Starter jacket. His head was cocked to the side and his eyes were narrowed.

“Yeah, let’s just get that out of the way right now, shall we?” Drake suggested. “The answer’s got two sides, slick. One side says no. I ain’t calling you a freak ’cause I don’t like the whole name-calling biz. I couldn’t care less what you look like, or what you smell like or whatever. I mean, hell, look at me. I ain’t exactly what you’d call a normal person, right? So get over it. Other side is, yes I am. You are a freak. So am I, and so is everyone else in this room. Like I said a minute ago, you’re a freak because of the very fact that you’re boosted.”

He drew a horizontal line across the board, neatly bisecting the two letters he had printed. Above the line, he wrote a lower case ’g’ on the top of both sides and a lower case ’c’ on the bottom of both. Thumping at the board with a scaly knuckle, he made a chuckling sound.

“This is where it starts to get odd,” he said. “It’s kind of simple, but here it is. Normal or boosted, it don’t matter. On one side of the line you got the good guys.”

He indicated the ’g’ written on the top for a moment, then swung his hand down to the ’c’.

“On the other, you got your criminals. You can continue to divide this all day, but from my standpoint it figures in real well as it is. Good, bad, normal, booster, there it is. My job says I deal with any kind of crime that is committed by or directly affects anyone that falls on this side of the line,” he added, tapping at the ’B’. “Truth told, that means I may have to deal with a norm who is committing hate crimes against boosters, or selling them drugs that are supposed to change them, or whatever. Most often, I get sent after the boosters, though, and we let the norms police their own. There’s more of them than us, anyway.”

A hand raised toward the back of the room, in a small cluster of students. Even from across the room, Drake could see the layer of fine, almost downy hair that covered the appendage. He pointed to the upraised hand.

“Question?” he asked.

“Yes, sir,” the student responded. She pushed her way past the others around her so that she could look directly at Drake without anyone between them. Drake examined her as she spoke, seeing the slumped shoulders, the lowered head, and watching the hand quickly placed back into a pocket to cover it. When she spoke, her voice was little more than a whisper.

“Why is it that when one of us does something bad, it’s like the world treats it more seriously than when a norm does? I mean, we could steal some food ’cause we’re hungry, and they act like it’s the end of the world…like they would if someone killed ten people or something.”

“You, uh, you remember that plane crash last year over in Santa Cruz?” Drake asked. “Took out part of an apartment complex, four hundred dead all told?”

The girl nodded slowly.

“You remember the two cars that hit each other in the Wal-Mart parking lot last week?”

Her lightly-furred head shook from side to side.

“Drama beats reality any day,” Drake explained. “A plane crashes and it’s major news. Two cars hit each other? Ah, that happens every day. Who cares, right? Generally, nobody but the folks in those cars. Well, it’s the same scene with crime. Joe Nobody goes into a liquor store and takes what’s in the register. Wow. Big deal, says Bill and Mary Normal. That happened just the other day. Give us something new. So someone in the media says ’Hey, I bet people would watch our news, and consequently our commercials, if we show them something about boosters’, and then they proceed to do exactly that. It doesn’t matter how lame it is, or whether it’s important, ’cause it’s about someone different. It makes news. Boosters are rare enough that we are news just because we exist. Kinda like a movie star, you know? Ever seen all the cameras that hang out around their favorite restaurants and bars and stuff? You like to see what they’re doing, right? Well, people are the same when it comes to us. They want to know what we’re doing because we’re not like them. Whether you can fly, or shoot particle beams, or knock over buildings, or if you’re just odd, you’re news - big news - to the average monkey in his trailer.”

“Isn’t that, like, discrimination or something?” asked a boy with shockingly blue hair and a nose ring. His pants were battered jeans with the names of punk bands scrawled on the in black felt-tip, and a concert shirt with a few holes covered his scrawny torso.

“Is it discrimination when you want to know why the bass player left The Ravagers?” Drake countered, gesturing toward the shirt the youth wore. “It’s news. It’s entertainment. It’s learning about something that fascinates you, for whatever reason. Nature of the beast, slick. Get used to it. You wanna try for a discrimination suit, give it your best shot. It won’t work, but you’re welcome to try.”

“Well that just sucks,” the youth spat.

“Yep. Just another case of the Man keeping you down,” Drake joked in response. “Seriously, though, I mean it. Get used to it. You start going out there and seeing the world, people are gonna see you. When that happens, they’ll react, and not always politely.”

“Did you ever shoot someone?” called a voice from Drake’s right.

“Who asked that?” he asked, his tone light. He added a slight smile, trying not to terrify anyone with it. He was partially successful, although a younger girl in the front row hid her face at the sight. In response to his query, the students parted to reveal a boy of about thirteen, with thick rolls of blubbery skin and deep-sunk eyes in a pasty face. The student was practically crammed into the desk at which he sat.

“Yeah, pal, I’ve shot people before. I don’t like it, but it’s happened.”

“Did they die?” the boy asked. His voice quivered as he spoke.

“Nope. I can tell you that for sure. I have never in my life killed another human being, whether boosted or normal. Not even when I was using a gun…or these,” he added, flexing his claws. “Put a few in the hospital, but that’s another story.”

“So, do you always get your man?” asked a girl. She looked to be about seventeen years old, with a long braid of stark white hair that fell to her waist. Her skin was a midnight black in hue, and seemed almost to absorb the light around her.

“I try to catch whoever they send me after,” Drake answered with a chuckle. “As to ’always getting my man’, I’d think you were better at that than me.”

The ego stroke made the girl lower her head slightly, eyelashes fluttering. A pretty smile flashed.

“I’ve missed a few, here and there,” Drake admitted. “Being a cop - ’cause like it or not, that’s all I am, despite the fancy title - ain’t an exact science. We go out and we do our jobs, just like a baker, or a teacher. End of the day, you might have caught the guy you went after, you might not. If not, you try again the next day.”

He cleared his throat and turned back to the board, gesturing vaguely at it with a massive hand. “Like I said, the diagram is simplistic, but it pretty much says all I need to know. There’s norms and there’s boosters. Good guys and bad guys on both sides of that line. You stay on the good side, and you never have to see my bad side.”

Laughter rippled through the room and Drake found himself relaxing a bit. He felt as though he was getting into the rhythm of speaking with them, and the students seemed okay with his down-to-earth, no-punches-pulled style.

“So let me ask you this,” he prompted. “Why is it that people do the bad things they do? Are they born bad, or do they learn the behavior? Is it a combination of the two? Is it something else?”

He pointed toward the thinly-furred girl who had raised her hand earlier. “I’m not talking about someone who steals food because they haven’t eaten in a week,” he clarified. “I mean the bad ones. Killers, rapists, child abusers, stuff like that.”

The girl stammered for a second, then lowered her gaze even further. The skin beneath her furry cheeks blushed hotly. Inwardly, Drake groaned as he realized she had been speaking from experience and not simply posing a hypothetical situation. He had meant only to clarify the question, not accuse her of theft, and it occurred to him only after he had said it that the phrase came out as condemnation of her activities. He thought quickly, trying to determine a way to salvage the scene.

“Think I’m picking on you, don’t you?” he asked suddenly, tilting his head. The room fell silent as all eyes swiveled to look at the girl. She seemed to shrink even further, drawing herself in to protect herself from the dozens of gazes.

“So you maybe stole a little food to keep alive, and you think I’m harping on it,” Drake said. His tone changed, became softer. “I can’t tell you the number of times I snagged a meal here and there. I used to live in the woods, way out in the woods. You eat what you can find out there, whether that be a squirrel, or a wild pig, or some rancher’s cattle,” he said, his tone hardening at the last.

“Them folks work hard to keep those cattle in good shape, keep ’em healthy and well-fed. Didn’t mean nothing to me when the time came. I was hungry. Hadn’t eaten in three days. I came across a herd, and I just picked one. Flew in and took it like it was mine.”

The girl looked up at him, eyes widening slightly as she took in what he was saying. A ghost of a smile began to tentatively spread across her face.

“Now that don’t make it right,” he said, stopping the smile from developing further. “Stealing is stealing, and by it’s very nature it’s wrong. Point of fact, I went to that rancher a few years back and I paid him a hefty sum for his cow. Told him what had happened, why I did it, and how sorry I was for it. One of the hardest things I ever did, standing there and facing that man.”

“So you were scared?” asked the down-faced girl.

“Terrified. Not of the shotgun he had, ’cause I figured anybody gets a little nervous when I show up to say hi, but of having to own up to what I did. It takes a lot of guts to stand up and tell someone you stole from them. If you’re a good guy, at least,” he added with a grin, using his tail to tap once more at the chalkboard. “The maggots, they brag about it. Tell everybody how they stole this or that, or attacked this person, or set fire to that house, or whatever. Folks who ain’t got that kind of mindset, well, it’s a hell of a stretch to look a man in the eye and tell him you were the one that took away part of his livelihood.”

He paused to sweep his gaze across the group of kids. “That’s what I’m here to explain to you all. Not how you should always follow the law, or always be pure of heart, or brush your teeth before you go to bed or whatever, but this simple lesson: Treat folks right. It don’t matter if they think you look weird, or you dress funny, or you got wings. Fact is, everybody in life has the same problems. Yeah, some folks have more money, or more power or whatever, but they’re still people, just like you. You want someone stealing what you worked hard to get? No, you don’t. Same goes for them.”

“Kind of like the Golden Rule,” said the blubbery teen from his desk.

“Uhh, yeah. That works,” Drake replied, nodding his head. He took on a teasing tone as he winked and grinned at the boy. “Thanks a lot, slick. I go to all the trouble of making a big ol’ speech, and you just take the whole thing and boil it down to less than a dozen words.”

“What about the people who treat us like monsters, though?” pressed one of the students. Tall and rangy, she had skin like tanned leather. Bolts of electricity danced within her eyes, and Drake noticed that the others had afforded the girl a little more room than they had other students.

“Are you a monster?” he asked bluntly. The girl shook her head. Drake shrugged his shoulders. “Then don’t be a monster,” he said.

“Well, they still think I’m -”

“A freak?” Drake finished for her, letting his lips curl back in a grin. “That’s what I’ve been telling you all along. You are a freak. Maybe to them, you are a monster. Do you care? Probably. Should you care? Not one bit. These people aren’t any better than you. I don’t rightly care who they are or what they represent, they are not better than you.”

“We’re better than them,” snarled the blue-haired punker.

“Oh, yeah? Why’s that?” asked Drake, leaning forward. As his weight settled on the podium, it creaked and groaned. Convinced that this was a bad sign concerning its structural integrity, he backed off a bit. Falling through a piece of furniture could not have a positive impact on his presence.

“We’re boosted. We’re better than they are ’cause we can do stuff.”

“Do what? I can fly. So can an airline pilot. Am I a better person than he is? Naw. I can breathe fire. So what? I’ve got a blowtorch in my garage that does it just as well, and can be controlled a lot easier. So now I’m better than a welder? How?”

“Well, you can do all that on your own.”

“Yeah, I can. I’m also a seven-foot walking iguana. You’re missing the whole point here. You’re no better than them as a person. You may have abilities they don’t, but they can probably do things you can’t. You’re a music fan. Can you write songs like Bob Dylan or Kurt Cobain? Play guitar like Eddie Van Halen or Jimmy Page? Sing like Sinatra? Dance like Astaire? None of them are boosted. Are they better than you because they can do all that? Better musicians, maybe, but not better people.”

Stepping away from the podium once more, Drake drove a stiffened finger into the chalkboard, a single spark flying as his talon hit home on the lower case ’c’ he had scrawled there.

“Folks who think they’re better than others are the ones that fall into this category!” he roared. “You start off thinking you’re maybe better than the janitor, or the street sweeper, ’cause after all, they’ve got crappy jobs, right? Then you figure you’re better than the average Joe, ’cause he ain’t got fancy powers. Then you get to thinking you’ve got one over on the cops, or the doctors, or the astronauts, or the animal rights people or some such as that, and you justify it in your head by saying you’re somehow better than them. All along, you’re setting it up in your head that it’s okay if you step on them, ’cause after all, they’re the ’little people’. They aren’t as good as you. You’re better. You’re elite. You’re a booster. Why should you care about them, right? Next thing you know, you’re staring at me across the barrel of one of these,” he wrapped up, patting meaningfully at the pistol beneath his left arm.

“And you can trust me on this, slick: You don’t want that. Not at all.”

A bell chimed softly, and the room lights flickered off and back on, signaling the end of one class period. Nobody moved, intent on the tension that had built following Drake’s last comments. Drake stood, stock-still for a moment, letting his words sink in.

“Dismissed,” he said finally. Students began to file from the room, each one murmuring to another about what they had just witnessed. As they passed through the door, Angelo Salvatore entered. The students split to either side as he stepped into the room.

“Couldn’t go one day without bringing out the pistols, could you?” he asked, grinning widely. The expression stretched the wrinkled skin around his mouth.

“Just making a point.”

“A good one, too,” Angelo noted with a nod. “I was listening outside the door. You’ve got it down pretty solid. I knew I made the right choice.”

“Yeah? I still wonder about it.”

“Maybe you shouldn’t,” Angelo said, pointing. “Looks to me like it may have worked.” The gesture drew Drake’s attention to the podium.

Resting on the wood was a fresh red-skinned apple.