Despite his name, Cotton was not a son of the South. Simon and Eileen Colinaude chose that name, they always insisted, on a whim, perhaps a whim based on the convergence their career paths happened to take. Simon, point man for a department chain, met Eileen Blackman, fashion designer, on one of his many business trips, this one to New York. They settled down in his native New England, where they found the time to raise one son, Cotton Colinaude, who thereafter followed Simon on all his business trips. One, when Cotton was eleven years old, brought them to the Alabama city of Traverse. It had been the farthest Cotton had ever traveled. He was not an alert child as it was, and the trip had only dulled him further, but not enough to rouse him from his one true passion, and that was to wander off on his own, in search of adventure.
It wasn’t adventure Cotton found in Traverse, at least not right away. It was a small boy with oversized ears named Denny. Denny was lost, having been separated from his parents on the subway, and Cotton took it upon himself to take care of him. This amounted to recruiting Denny into his adventure, which was the exploration of the city, which if he had asked would have been the last thing Denny wanted to do right then.
But he didn’t, and so the two boys began their adventure. They must have searched every nook and cranny of the business district, Cotton never once getting bored, always finding something to amuse himself. There was no one looking for him, which liberated his intentions, allowed him to become careless. They found themselves soon enough thoroughly engulfed in the world they had created for themselves, and the result was that the worries they’d left behind came back to haunt them.
Denny noticed it first. In his twitching way, he indicated to Cotton that they were being followed, which Cotton brushed off at first as paranoia. He insisted to Denny that they had nothing to worry about, and they carried on, as if it really was true, but the truth caught up with them in Stonewine Alley. Denny panicked first, running off, forcing Cotton to try and keep up with him, which he managed to do by the time they’d reached the end of the alley. But by that time, they realized they were cornered, a gang of four, each emblazoned with handkerchiefs reading "Nashville Deep" covering their faces, fast approaching.
And Cotton froze. He lost all awareness, of Denny, of where he was, of what he was doing in Traverse. For the first time in his life, he was powerless, and it wasn’t because he had trusted his father to always be there, or because he had followed his father on the business trips, or on one business trip too many, or because this one had been the farthest yet. He had allowed himself to be lost in his own world.
The next thing the boy knew, he was in a hospital, in a bed next to Denny’s, and his father was watching over him. He wondered aloud why Denny didn’t have anyone with him. His father said because there was no one to come see Denny. He wondered aloud what had happened. His father said that Cotton had fought off the gang members, saved Denny and himself. Cotton couldn’t understand, about why Denny didn’t have his parents with him or what his own father had said about how he and Denny had survived Stonewine Alley. He couldn’t remember doing that, fighting the gang members. He couldn’t remember being a hero. He didn’t believe it even after the story in the paper, the story in the news he wasn’t featured in because his father said Cotton wasn’t strong enough yet. He didn’t believe it when the mayor gave him the keys to the city in a special ceremony two weeks later, and he couldn’t believe it when his father told him he couldn’t see Denny again, because he had been taken in by a shelter and they would have to go back home. What was a shelter? What was home?
He didn’t know anything anymore. Cotton never went on another business trip with his father. He instead spent the time trying to figure out what had happened in Traverse, what had happened in Stonewine Alley. He read stories of real heroes, of a hero called the Sidewinder who had made his home in Traverse a century ago. He tried to imagine himself as a hero, and could only ever fail. No, it wasn’t possible. He had frozen, he had failed. He had led Denny into a trap. Denny was taken away because of him, would never see his parents again because of him.
Because of this, Traverse became an obsession for Cotton. He grew up, knowing he would go back there. It had become his destiny. He owed it to Denny. He also owed Denny his life, and the way he would accomplish that would be to live up to all the lies that had been told about Stonewine Alley, about how he had been a hero. He read the reports of what became of the Nashville Deep, how the members who had been there in the alley never rose from that life, how the Nashville Deep evolved with their offspring, a product of a news story that had seen them defeated by an eleven-year-old. It had no doubt created a stain on them, something they could only hope to redeem themselves from.
Cotton was looking for his own redemption. He trained himself, day and night, trained even to go without sleep. He couldn’t sleep, not with the nightmares always there. He perfected his body, but never had a means to measure his abilities by. He was a solitary figure, always the outcast in school, looking from the outside on social groups. He distrusted them, and trusted only himself. It was the only way, he continually told himself, the only way to avenge Denny, the only way to redeem himself. His parents had no idea how to handle him anymore. He distanced himself from them as well.
If there was a saving grace, it was that he very soon learned, when he began to seriously look into becoming a hero the likes of which he’d read about, that he couldn’t hope to achieve success without help, not the kind of success he set his hopes for. Following the Nashville Deep had forced him to realize how complicated things could be. He did not want to make a cursory attempt. He didn’t even want to make an attempt. He wanted to do, and to be a hero he would need connections, to reprogram his aversion to others, to outside trust.
It was in this way that he first encountered Godsend. Cotton was in search of an approach, and found the Alabama Lamb, nestled right in Traverse. Godsend was the ideal, in most regards, the kind the general public thought first of when they thought of super heroes, so naturally he was the first one Cotton thought of, too. For a while, the Eidolon employed the only thing he was sure of in his arsenal, his ability to get around, to shadow Godsend. He had never lost his taste for wandering; in fact it had only enhanced his opportunities to contemplate things. If Stonewine had robbed him of that, the Eidolon would never have been born, and who knows what the fate of Cotton Colinaude would have been.
By copying Godsend’s meager approach, mostly limited to other heroes like Moonraker and Threshold, Cotton gained the confidence to start his own contact group, and although he never realized it Denny was the first. It was on the subway, where Denny seemed to live. He was known as Hopper now.
When Cotton finally got around to designing a costume, he chose his mother’s old crew, but she never found out because Simon and Eileen Colinaude passed away in a car accident before the Eidolon had a chance to emerge. He mourned them, briefly, and moved on, straight to Traverse. With the costumes the family friend made, thinking Cotton was part of a production team and not knowing him well enough to ever think otherwise, Cotton set about his new life. He never forgot what had set him on this path, but he did stray from it.
Godsend was as much the reason why he grew confident in his craft as he was the reason Colinaude drifted away from his original focus. He began to see himself as a hero, not in the sense of accepting what everyone had always told him about Stonewine, but as the man beneath the cowl of the Eidolon, as half of the Terrific Tandem, as the figure who regularly sparred with the likes of Viper and Rancor, who fought foes like Lt. Limbo and thought nothing of it. It was as if he was becoming cocky, arrogant. He did worse than despaired of others. He despised himself. That was how Colinaude, the Eidolon, came to battle himself. And nothing he did, follow the example of Switchblade, pursue those others felt unimportant, could, or would, change it.
The Eidolon was born impure, and Colinaude had no idea how to change it. He didn’t even know if he wanted to. His singular thought was in redeeming himself, and everywhere he turned he found another opportunity to do just the opposite. As much as Traverse was his destiny, the city had also always promised to be his downfall. But he knew no other way. Here he made his stand, here he awaited his fate. Here he would find out what would become of Cotton Colinaude. This was the end of his exploring, the end of his adventure.
No comments:
Post a Comment