Another shift ended at Tin Can. Colinaude recovered the costume he always had stashed away in the employee closet and left the bar behind a new man. In many ways, a new day was beginning for him as well. He stepped outside and saw there was no moon; it had been obscured by clouds. No matter. He considered his new charge, the city as a haven, and himself as the warden. There were new possibilities all around him for the Eidolon to be needed, a blank slate to be cleaned. Traverse had its share of heroes, but for the Eidolon, there was only one. There was work to be done, in forms he knew eluded most others, not just embodied by the Cad but in hundreds of other permutations. The cover of darkness created this haven, the brood of mischief, and Colinaude had taken it on as his responsibility. Yet it had become an unbearable weight.
All that he saw, cried out to him. It was as if the whole world needed him, and having once pledged to help it he could not carry out that pledge. Not doing so would make a mockery of it, yet there was so much that needed to be done and so little of him to handle it all, things could not help but fall through the cracks. This was not a thought he relished. He blamed himself, and he blamed those responsible, and he blamed the innocent for leaving themselves so vulnerable. How could he possibly be expected to keep this pledge when he knew he failed another with each success, that each success came at the cost of a hundred failures? How could he possibly rationalize concentration, when it meant that he ignored so much to accomplish it? How could he live with himself, knowing the one expecting success and knowing Colinaude would fail was Colinaude himself?
It was a mortal hindrance. He knew no way around it, least of all the one suggested by Cassandra Dawes, and by every other rational voice he’d heard this day, and all the days before. What was this concept, perspective? What was rational? Was not his charge irrational in its very inception? Was not perspective irrational? Was not the world irrational? Was not himself? How could he trust any of these things to give him relief? It was a fool’s errand.
He knew; he saw; he understood. This was the life he had chosen, and only catatonia was going to change things. Colinaude couldn’t. He couldn’t. He knew no other way; he saw no other way; he understood no other way. Save one: madness. Yes, he was quickly slipping into that.
A couple of vandals there by the corner of that building. They carried spray paint with them. The Eidolon swoops in and sends them on their way.
A burglar, breaking into the convenience store. The Eidolon swoops in and sends the burglar on his way.
Two gangs advancing on each other’s turf. The Eidolon swoops in and sends them on their way.
Three separate incidences, and all the Eidolon does is stopgate them. What more could he do? What more could be expected of him? Mold their lives like a tyrant, end their lives like a butcher? Madness. There was that direction, and then there was retirement. Madness. And yet without the one there would be inevitably the other. They never said how heroes ended their careers, save the noble sacrifice, and for those not blessed with that ultimate gift? There was only uncertainty, and madness. Colinaude supposed that most of them got along well enough keeping busy in their work, never giving it thought enough to worry. They knew exactly what they were supposed to do, and so they did it, happily, selflessly, unendingly, tirelessly. For a long time Colinaude had done that. Yet he had reached the other end. That was never supposed to happen. It was like a fatal illness, and there was no cure because no one had ever studied it.
He looked into the cloud-dampened darkness and that was all he saw. He had never known innocence. Dawes, at any rate, was waiting for him. She too had another identity, and that was Calypso, born a hero, slipped into cat-burglary, and now reborn a hero once more. He could only imagine how that progression had occurred. She had told him it happened when she tried to enter the heroic life too quickly. If this was true, then she made a rapid transition from understanding the world of opportunity heroes attempted codifying along the lines of good and evil to immersing herself into it, because she became overwhelmed. Colinaude told himself the Eidolon was not overwhelmed not by the responsibility of the charge, as Calypso had, but by the charge itself. It was not a matter of semantics, but of, ironically, perspective.
As he understood it, Calypso had taken the road of opportunity with least resistance, until she realized how soon that road ended. Because she had started from the parallel road, she understood immediately what she had done, and what she would need to do to correct herself. For most others, reaching the end of that road failed to come with the same realization, because they had never known any other way, and so when they reached the end, they redoubled and traveled down the same road again. Such were the likes of the Cad. And yet, with others, the most dangerous kind, they knew the two roads, and consciously chose the one with least resistance because they thought its advantages outweighed its detriments.
For that kind, the rulebook was not only thrown out, it was ignored with contempt, a thing to be scorned and detested. They were the most dangerous because they no longer cared for anything but their own benefit. The Cad could always be depended on for those in his own community. He wasn’t trying to fool anyone.
Which did not mean Colinaude held out any sympathy for him. On the contrary, he despised him all the more. He and Calypso were about to embark on a systematic clampdown, the kind that would be seen as premature, by the likes of Godsend and just about everyone else, after all the Cad had not really done anything yet, unless one counted the aligning with Neville and the disappearance of Peter Cooley. Even before those developments, Colinaude had already made up his mind to deal with Cad. With them, not only did he have some sort of justification, but added incentive on top.
The first order of business, he had decided, would be tracking down and eliminating Viper from the Cad’s employment. Cassie claimed she had a number of contacts that would facilitate this. Ending that particular threat had become more important ever since Mad Jack’s, when it had finally dawned on Colinaude how ridiculous the continued dance with Viper had always been. Strangely enough, that was the kind of burden he cared the least to continue carrying, when it seemed to be the only concentration for most other heroes. He imagined it was easier to create such a cadre of serialized foes when you were better known, and since the Eidolon had spent most of the time since the days with Godsend working in the truest sense as a rumor, most of that type probably assumed he was no longer operating. This in turn meant that there were no opportunist villains being created specifically to take him on, at least none past Neville, and Colinaude still knew too little about that one to gain a proper handle on him. Barracuda? That’s what Ratbeard of all people had called him. He still didn’t know what to make of that.
Yet he was pleased that he could do at least that, prevent opportunists from emerging, to help society, in his new, much-maligned capacity as a hero. This would have made a good argument to use against Godsend, if only he’d thought of it then. There was always the next time, and with Godsend, there would always be a next time to count on. Sometimes it was the constants like that which allowed Colinaude to keep going, the steady regularity. As depressing as everything else was, there were always things to pick him up again. Were they enough? In hindsight they seemed to be, but in the moment, not a chance. And that was the big catch.
He needed something to break that fall. He knew he wasn’t going to find it hunting the Cad, but he also knew he couldn’t leave Cad be, not now. It had become his commitment, perhaps his singular commitment. Perhaps it was an obsession. And maybe that was Colinaude’s problem; not that he didn’t have perspective but that he had transformed his role as a hero into an obsession, a charge into an obligation. That he’d lost perspective not on what he was doing but in how far he had to go to do it. And in that, he had to admit once more that maybe Godsend had bee right about him. Perhaps it wasn’t too late to turn back.
He would try, that was as much as he could promise himself. He would have to reclaim himself from this obsession, reclaim the Colinaude that resided inside the figure of the Eidolon. There was an ideal he claimed to stand for, and was now going to have to try and live up to. If the Eidolon was an impersonal challenge, he was making a personal challenge for Colinaude. Yes, he was fighting himself, and damned if he was going to let himself lose. Because there really was no other way, no matter how he would manage to rationalize it. There was the night before him, and the Cad, and Cassandra Dawes, too. He struck out to embrace it.
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