Short Story: City of Grey

My mind raced. I could never beat him in a fistfight, I had to improvise. I scanned the crowd, looking for a gap to escape through, but as soon as I saw one, Thrash’s cronies filled the gap. Finally, I saw my chance, a kid in the middle of eating a tubie. If you didn’t know, a Tubie is named for its shape, a kind of dessert that’s like a tube of cake filled with cream (all synthetic of course), and what happens to children when they eat it. I didn’t care about the tubie. However, the plastic wrapper caught my eye. It wasn’t gray like everything else here, it was purple.

Perfect.

See, I had one thing  87% of the other humans didn’t, I was a Weaver, of the Polychrome variety. Most people don’t like us, Weavers in general that is.  The Keepers make sure I have absolutely nothing colored, not that rules have ever stopped me.

I backed towards the kid with the snack (who I now saw was a boy named Slip) as Thrash and his gang taunted me.

 “Come on Azul! Fight me! Or are you too chicken?” Thrash yelled.

“Crush him, Thrash!”

“Make him pay T-man!”

“Smoke him!”

Thrash had enough of taunting and decided to charge. I stepped nimbly to the side as he crashed into the wall of onlookers. Slip well, slipped, and the Tubie, still partially wrapped, went flying. A couple of steps to the right… and I caught it.

Why is that so important you ask? Polychromes can absorb color from objects, and use it in a form called chróma. Most are dangerous, all are useful in this situation.

I felt the color drain out of the wrapper and into my hand. The feel of chróma staining my skin was beautiful, nearly as good of a feeling I got when I saw Thrash’s face when he saw me drop the tubie, now in low contrast mode, to the ground. 

“You’re not allowed to do that here!” He said, his eyes widening in fear. “You’re right,” I said, “but, then again, so is fighting.”

His mouth shot open and he tried to shout for a Keeper, but it was too late. I fired from the hip a burst of purple chróma at his head, and it sealed to his face like a suction cup. Bullies were so easy to deal with when you had superpowers.

I turned away from his struggling form. The jeering crowd hushed as they saw Thrash trying to pull the chróma from his face, only getting his hands stuck to the chróma as well.

 I raised my arms to the crowd and said, “Well?” There was a short pause, then one kid started clapping, then a roar and the whole crowd started cheering. I closed my eyes and soaked up the adoration. Being awesome felt so good.

Suddenly a cry of, “Keepers!” and my adoring crowd scurried like roaches to get away. The fight had lasted longer than I thought and our ever-vigilant Keepers had finally noticed. I ran away, hoping to hide in the mob, but I was too slow and a Keeper shot me in the back with a Sleeper Slug.

My last thought as I stared at the fast-approaching ground was, That’s gonna hurt.