It could be said that life is nothing but a series of inconveniences you have to work around. Colinaude knew, if nothing else, that this was excessively true in his case. Thus he was not surprised when his meeting with Peter Cooley was rudely interrupted, forcing him to make scarce from an office of the "Traverse Tracks," home of a dissemination against his character now for seven years, as long as the Eidolon had been in service of the usual heroic code. Cooley was his best source for information in this role. Cooley was also an ace reporter. He was also known as Solvent, formula-filling extraordinaire.
The intruder’s name was Rex Preston, and he was Cooley’s supervising editor. Preston was among those who frowned on the likes of Eidolon, not in a personal way, filled with vitriol and venom at the mention, but rather in a cynical fashion, dismissive and condescending, which was probably worse. If he’d been able to explain his presence to anyone else, Colinaude had no chance against Preston. Cooley would have lost his job on the spot, which was a prospect his friend had no interest in being responsible for.
The moment he’d heard the approach, Colinaude had already analyzed his options. This was a rare event, like Beacon Street, but that only emphasized the urgency. Cooley had a closet. Yes, Colinaude could hide in there, but he would have felt endlessly foolish doing it. He could hide under Cooley’s desk, but that was another awkward prospect dismissed out of hand. He could try hiding behind the office door, or clinging to the ceiling, but that wasn’t his style, and Colinaude besides did not like to take such risks. It quickly boiled down to a single option, as always: out the window, where he’d come from in the first place. In the split-second available to him to consider these options and implement the most likely one, Colinaude was gone, his cape licking out and the window swinging shut just as Preston entered the room.
It set Colinaude’s heart racing, but he was controlled enough to avoid the adrenaline rush which might complicate things further. He was cool, calm. It was still broad daylight out, and he was clinging to the side of a building in full view. There was a giant risk involved, but he wasn’t leaving just yet. He wasn’t done with Cooley and he didn’t feel like wasting more of his time trying to move on and hope the hectic later hours the reporter was always faced with would provide such an available window, no pun intended. Right now he was banking on the heavy traffic at the moment distracting bystanders to his presence. Traverse was not a particular tourist attraction, not even for its heroes, which was such a point for several others Colinaude could think of. This was one of the reasons he was staying there, on not moving on because of the many other reasons to move on, or get out of the business entirely.
"Was there someone just in here?" Preston’s voice sounded. "I could swear I could hear you talking."
"If there was, I couldn’t hear them," Cooley replied, more truthfully than the true answer would have been. "I’m a reporter. I write. I like to sound off ideas. Maybe that explains it."
"Maybe" the unconvinced Preston said, as Colinaude was slowly crawling upward. If he had a gizmo threaded into his costume that could camouflage it to blend in with the building, he’d feel more comfortable, but he was having to make do, a situation that meant he couldn’t continue eavesdropping on the conversation. Cooley was not far from the top, which made things easier. In the time it took to reach the roof, Colinaude avoided looking around to see if anyone was watching him, which would have inevitably spoiled his task. That was another sign of his disciplined mind.
Finally, he reached the ledge and pulled himself over. All the while he’d been holding onto his cape, as its flapping about would have been chief among dead giveaways. Slipping through the window in the quickest fashion and most undetectable in the circumstances dictated such an action. This meant in addition to everything else that he had needed to take the cape off as he made his escape and position it in an unhampering way. Such a cumbersome process was a good argument for doing away with the cape entirely, but that was another example of pros outweighing cons, a struggle carried out constantly, and not always in the same direction.
Removing the cape made him able to move about more freely, which would have facilitated the illusion he’d gone after in the escape. Even if anyone had seen him on the side of the building, he’d intended on obscuring what, if any, window he’d come out from, the reverse of the action he took every time he met with Cooley, who joked Colinaude needed to be a better-than-Olympic-level gymnast to accomplish the trick. Colinaude, being modest, preferred not to indulge in the comparison, but in truth he had at one point in his life trained in that regard. Being a super hero meant total mind and body discipline, at least for those interested in the best results.
From the rooftop Colinaude could now settle into a more relaxed position. He couldn’t know how long Preston would be there, but he could put a reasonable timeframe, consistent with his own availability. He gave the conversation twenty-seven minutes tops. Was there a possibility Cooley could be drawn out of his office after that, for a broader meeting, and thus eat more time? Sure, but he had long since negotiated a working policy of relative isolation, starting chiefly in the morning, which meant he needed to get his Solvent-related business done then, which in turn meant that was the best time for Colinaude to swing by. There was also the following period where Cooley concentrated on his street beat, but they tried not to meet then. They each had other things to do then. Colinaude did have a job, which took up most evenings and thus constricted his canvassing time to daylight. Nighttime was reserved for his busiest time as Eidolon, which would soon include taking care of Cad.
But all of that was an afterthought right now. Right now, he waited. This might be an ideal time to catch some more rest, but he had too much on his mind. It was in these moments that his problems with his current path asserted themselves. He’d had no problems handling Random Red or Vinny Vegas at the time, but now he could begin to think about them. This was always dangerous. He understood that people like them always had and would exist, and that they were the very reasons he had chosen this path, but that didn’t prevent him from becoming frustrated at the thought of them existing, of them running amok, causing him figurative and literal headaches, making sure his job was never done and constantly disrupting the lives, potentially and otherwise when he wasn’t around to prevent it, of people like Aubrey Oldenburgh, who never deserved it.
He was growing angry at the thought of it, his fists clenched. Colinaude’s brow was beginning to sweat, and it had nothing to do with the mask, nothing to do with the heat. He was losing control. There was a vent not far from him. He could imagine letting loose, sending his fists into it. He could imagine it vividly. He knew this was a tantrum, and that he was better than that, more disciplined, more aware and in control of himself than that. But it was happening. He was pounding the roof with his fists, bruising his hands and not caring. He could break them and not care. This was the price he paid, and he knew he was alone. There was no one he could turn to, not even Cooley. Certainly not other heroes. There was no support group. And he still had Godsend waiting for him later. He pounded harder, and it was all he could do to not howl.
After a few minutes, he calmed down. He regained control, admonished himself. He was not proud of himself for doing this. It was a terrible coping mechanism, and he was well aware of that. But he couldn’t handle it any other way, and he knew this was only going to become a greater problem if he continued to let himself succumb to it without finding another way. He couldn’t see any other way, however. Not anything short of hanging up his ideals, and he couldn’t imagine how he would eventually come around to that, either. He was damned. He knew that most especially.
The one device Colinaude had on him was a conventional watch. He now turned to it, and saw all but five of the twenty-seven minutes had expired. He collected himself, stood atop the roof he’d raged against. The horizon, normally a favorite comfort, failed to serve him. He looked to the sky and saw gathering clouds, but made no conclusions based on them. Despite himself, Colinaude knew life was exactly what it was, and he could do nothing to change it. All he could hope to do was make a difference in his finite, infinitesimal way. He had always understood what he had been getting himself into; the problem was in accepting it.
Colinaude glanced over the side of the building. Traffic was still the same. That was the way of it, even in a city the relatively small size of Traverse. He thought about what he might say to Rex Preston if he ever met him. None of it sounded pleasant, even inside his head, and that brought a smile to his face. He released then and there the episode on the rooftop, looked at his watch, and saw that time was up. With that, he left the rooftop itself behind, and prepared to finish things with Cooley.
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