Chapter Text
“First and ten, ball on the Houston 30 yard line, Seattle in the gun with fifteen seconds on the clock and no timeouts, they need seven to win.”
“Seattle has time for maybe one more play—”
“They’re gonna throw! Oleander has protection! He rolls right! Throws, looking for Jardin-!”
“Oh my god.”
“That is a disgusting dirty hit from Bojeras, but IT DOESN’T MATTER! TOUCHDOWN SEATTLE! TIE GAME!”
“Tied the game, but at what cost? Oleander’s still down after that hit, and it looks bad. Looks like number eighty-two off the bench, that big linebacker, Knox, he just came on the field and he’s trying to fight Bojeras, and there’s MULTIPLE flags on that one.”
“...and it looks like the call is roughing the passer on number fifty-six, Brandon Bojeras, and Seattle is gonna decline that and take that field goal attempt with three seconds left on the play clock. If they make the PAT, this game is over.”
“Yeah, but let’s take another look at that hit, that is Bojeras’ third illegal contact in the playoffs alone, and it could not have come at a worse possible time for either of these two. You see, Oleander has already thrown the ball, he’s still in motion, and THEN Bojeras lowers his shoulders and goes for the cut on Oleander. There’s no way he didn’t see that ball was gone.”
“That was absolutely a penalty, no contest there, seems even the Houston faithful are in shock after that hit, and the second year QB from Seattle is still not up after the play, he’s motioning to his leg. This could be bad.”
Click.
“Yeah, but let’s take another look at that hit, that is Bojeras’ third illegal contact in the playoffs alone, and it could not have come at a worse possible time for either of these two. You see, Oleander has already thrown the ball, he’s still in motion, and THEN Bojeras lowers his shoulders and goes for the cut on Oleander. There’s no way he didn’t see that ball was gone.”
“That was absolutely a penalty, no contest there, seems even the Houston faithful are in shock after that hit, and the second year QB from Seattle is still not up after the play, he’s motioning to his leg. This could be bad.”
Click.
“Yeah, but let’s take another look at that hit, that is Bojeras’ third illegal contact in the playoffs alone, and it could not have come at a worse possible time for either of these two. You see, Oleander has already thrown the ball, he’s still in motion, and THEN Bojeras lowers his shoulders and goes for the cut on Oleander. There’s no way he didn’t see that ball was gone.”
“That was absolutely a penalty, no contest there, seems even the Houston faithful are in shock after that hit, and the second year QB from Seattle is still not up after the play, he’s motioning to his leg. This could be bad.”
Click.
“Yeah, but let’s take another look at that hit, that is Bojeras’ third illegal contact in the playoffs alone, and it could not have come at a worse possible time for either of these two. You see, Oleander has already thrown the ball, he’s still in motion, and THEN Bojeras lowers his shoulders and goes for the cut on Oleander. There’s no way he didn’t see that ball was gone.”
“That was absolutely a penalty, no contest there, seems even the Houston faithful are in shock after that hit, and the second year QB from Seattle is still not up after the play, he’s motioning to his leg. This could be bad.”
Click.
I’ve watched this specific play more than any other play in my football career. I watched my first pro interception dozens upon dozens of times, trying to see what I did wrong. I watched my first pro sack dozens upon dozens of times, trying to see if my footwork was off, if I missed my open man, if I didn’t do my progressions properly.
But I always come back to this play.
It’s the last snap I ever played. Ever. Not as a Seahawk, not in the NFL. Ever .
This was the day where my life was ruined. Sunday, February 8th, 2004. The day I carried an entire city on my back, and I failed.
I watch it every day, some days more than others. And I remember everything. I remember seeing Brandon Bojeras, Number 56, drafted 98 out of Houston by way of Colorado Christian, out of the corner of my eye at the last possible second. I remember feeling the ligaments in my knee get reduced to ribbons at the point of contact. I remember being dragged off the field by the refs and begging them to please just take me to the sideline so that I can see the kick. I remember Knox and Knight and Masters and Highe in the back hugging me, and we were all crying because they knew I wasn’t gonna be out there for the Big Game. I remember sitting in a hospital with my baby girl in my arms and her cooing and awwing and drooling all over the place and wanting to die anyway while I watched my team lose the Super Bowl and I wasn't there to help. I remember every commentator, every fan, every interviewer, asking if the game would have been different if I’d been there.
I remember going back to the practice field for the first time after rehabbing the injury. I remember my 40 yard dash going from a 4.4 to a 5.2. I remember limping off the field on a no-contact play. I remember the looks I got from the guys because I couldn’t scramble like I used to. I remember when they brought that new kid in from Brockton U, the kid who didn’t even get drafted. I remember when they sat me down and broke the news. 'MJ, you're just not the same guy you were before you got hurt. This isn't going to work. We're going to have to move on'.
How dare they? How dare they tell me I wasn't good enough, after everything I did for them. After I moved across the entire country to play for their poverty franchise and drag them to a point where they could build an entire team around me, to drag Seattle back to relevance after Leviathan tore this city a new asshole back in '03. I put my body on the line for these bastards each and every week for two whole years of my life, I missed my 3rd anniversary to go lay a one-sided beatdown on Cleveland that I could have skipped anyway and spent with my wife and our new baby girl, and they had the audacity, they had the nerve to tell me that I wasn't good enough.
That was the last straw. Something snapped, and life was never the same after that moment.
The worst day of my life.
I triggered, then, apparently. Popped like a zit. Lost my shit. Got powers. If God were real, he’d have given me my leg back, sure I wouldn’t have been able to play, but at least then I’d be able to walk without a limp. But no, I got this… whatever this is.
This whole power thing sucks a lot worse than you think it does, once it actually happens to you.
And the worst part is? I get called a ‘cape’. A ‘cape’. Like I’m some kind of superhero. All because the GM heard me begging for some kind of job in the organization, but they didn’t want me coaching. Said that with the nature of my ‘powers’ there was no way the league could be sure I wasn’t cheating. I pity the guy who triggered with the ability to perfectly call the defense just by looking at them on the sideline, and I wish he were me, cause then I might actually at least have fun watching the game again.
I’m not a cape, I’m a mascot, or rather, I was. I was the pity hire, “oh, Magic got hurt and ended his career but he was so good for us for two years and he was loyal and never asked for a raise after winning rookie of the year and offensive player of the year in his first year.”
I’m the first NFL player in history to have my Walter Peyton revoked. I’m a failed gunslinger from a failed football franchise that just lost its best shot at the Super Bowl. I’m already being talked about as possibly the worst draft bust in NFL history because the ‘Hawks traded seven picks to have me for two years. I’m a parahuman. I’m a 26-year old divorcee living in a McMansion in Seattle, coasting off royalties from a documentary about my own damn downfall.
They used to call me The Big O, or Magic, but now, I’m something else. My ex-wife calls me MJ. My agent calls me 'sir'. The media calls me Quarterback. It's a stupid name, but it wasn't my pick.
Currently, I'm thinking about shooting myself in the head.
This would indeed be a very drastic course of action, but, in my mind, I had justified a lot of drastic actions up to this point. I’d given everything I had to make it to the big time. I was ‘too much of a pussy’ and ‘a fucking wuss’ according to my old man. I was ‘too small’ and ‘too cocky’ for the Draft pundits. I was ‘too brash’ and ‘talked too much trash’ for the media, who hung onto every word I said and repeated it like it was Scripture every week anyway, almost as if they’re a bunch of hypocrites.
I worked hard to get where I was on that day in 2004. I worked harder than anyone I know that isn’t my ex-wife. I went out there every week and provided for my wife and my daughter with my body, and I got hammered, again and again and again, and I had one bad week. One bad rehab. One bad practice. And then it’s over. My life is over.
And it all just spirals out of control. I never had a good hold on my anger. I’m not proud of that. I channeled that aggression into my game, into my talk on the field. I never wanted to take it out on her. She knows that. But she doesn’t want to deal with it. And in all honesty? She’s got every right. Imagine having an argument with a sad, washed up failure every morning, every day, for nearly a year straight. What that does to you. What that does to your daughter. To my daughter. About the only thing I did right was never lay a hand on her in anger, and that’s a low standard for a man, in my honest opinion.
Why shouldn’t I just shoot myself and-
Of course, I get answered by the phone ringing. I’m pretty sure I know who it is, it’s a pretty limited number of people who call me, nowadays. Jas moved away with Jordynne, but I still have visitation. She was willing to give me whatever time I wanted, supervised, but I felt like shit, so I barely took her up on it last year. Maybe twice in the whole year. I don’t want to be a deadbeat, so I think maybe I’ll try to at least make it once every other month, but I don’t think it’s her. She works weekday mornings.
Could be my agent, maybe. After that documentary about my downfall, I’ve got so many royalty checks it’s not even funny. Turns out the secret to success is to be successful for exactly two years and then flame out in spectacular fashion while getting addicted to pain pills and making extremely irresponsible financial decisions while having the most on-off revenue stream you can physically have without being dead broke. Silvio was a vulture, but at least he knew how to keep food on my table and the bottles of Vicodin on my nightstand.
Could be the rehab center I wanted to check into. I’m a lazy, sad sack of shit, but deep down, I don’t want this. I’m not happy like this, I wouldn’t be thinking the way I’m thinking otherwise. But rehab is expensive, and it’s also a lot of effort that I don’t want to go through.
Or, it could be… her . That was the most likely option, the one I was most willing to accept.
I answer the phone, holding it up to my ear and finally silencing the ringtone I keep forgetting to get rid of every year. Sure enough, it is her. God dammit. She calls at the worst times, all the time. The only cape in Seattle who even sees me as a peer, and not as some sort of sideshow freak.
“Hey, QB! Did I catch you at a bad time?”
As much as I kind of wanted to say ‘yes’, hang up, and be dramatic about it, I wasn’t that mean. I knew that Lifeline was just trying to help. As I said, most of the capes in Seattle didn’t have a lot of respect for me. I was a novelty, a celebrity with a known name and face who now had a very public breakdown and nasty history of bad decisions.
That being said, it was a one-of-a-kind publicity opportunity, if you didn’t count that guy on the Ravens who triggered in ‘05 in the middle of a game. I mean, come on, an NFL Franchise cape , wasn’t that something? More than that, not just some corporate cape who wants a sponsorship, but a former player . A former star player, in my case. But I wasn’t a crime-fighter. My power could maybe let me do some work, but I’m not that kind of guy. I was a football player, that didn’t automatically make me good in a fight, and that was before I walked with a limp.
Putting my self-destructive thoughts in the back of my mind for the moment, I focused on the lady on the other end of the line. Every other cape in Seattle thought I was a joke, even the good guys. Not Lifeline, though. She said that every parahuman has their own journey to getting their powers. When she heard about mine, she felt sympathy. She said she wanted to try and be a shoulder to lean on, when she wasn’t busy with hero shit. I never said no, so… here we were, years on.
“Nah, Lifeline, I’m not doing anything,” I replied, leaning back on my couch and reaching for the TV remote to turn the damn thing off before I go back to reliving that hit again. She sounded happy to hear from me, probably the only person in the world besides Jas and my little Jordie. “How’s things?”
“I can’t complain too much, just busy. The High Rollers hit a bank this morning, don’t know if you saw the news.”
I hadn't watched the news. I normally don't, actually. I stopped making a habit of it after the scandals started hitting the mainstream. I got tired of seeing my own damn face. Now, I almost wished they were paying attention to me again. It’s a vicious little thing. One moment, you want the entire world to forget you exist. Then, they do, and all you can think about is how bad you wish they’d notice you.
“Yeah, I heard,” I lied. “You and yours okay?”
“Snubnose roughed ‘em up a little bit, but unfortunately they managed to make a break for it. They left most of their loot behind, a bit of gear too. Could have used an extra hand out there, you know.”
“That’s your worst one yet.”
“Had to try.”
“The fuck am I gonna do, come on, now. I’d probably just end up getting someone hurt.”
“What are you gonna do on your couch?”
Touché. I wasn’t gonna let her hear me say it, but touché. I wasn’t really doing anything with this power, not that I felt I could. I mean, I could do some heinous shit with it. On my darkest days, right after I got bitched by the front office on my way out… I thought about it. I thought about it long and hard. The PRT usually checks in on new triggers, and considering my profile and situation they’d been very interested, but the Protectorate never made any serious efforts at poaching me. The whole ‘messy, public divorce’, ‘frequent Ambien, Vicodin, and Percocet fueled public meltdowns’ and …the incident… probably didn’t help much. The fact that Lifeline was still trying to get me involved in capeshit was nothing short of inspiringly tenacious in the face of such a rampant PR disaster.
She was a sweet girl. An independent hero with marketable powers. A person my kid could look up to. What was she doing wasting her time talking to me, again ? We’d been doing this dance ever since the incident. She’d even offered to help me test my powers, when I first got the corporate cape gig. Helped me figure out how they worked, what I could and couldn’t do. More than the organization ever did for me. She said the Protectorate would be able to do more for me, but she never pushed me too far. If I said ‘no’, that was usually the end of it, and if it didn’t stop on the first no, it never went past the second one. I asked her a few times why she wasn't aboard with the Protectorate. She said 'money'. I knew she was lying.
“I’m gonna keep doing what I do and leave you guys to do the whole heroic thing. You know me by now, Lifeline, that’s… that’s not me.”
“I really wish you’d stop saying that. Are you okay? I know the, uh… the day’s getting close.”
I never told her ‘no’. Didn’t plan to. A cape, a real cape is offering you assistance and a sympathetic ear free of charge, and you’re gonna whine to her about your depression? Get out of here. I wish she hadn’t reminded me of the date. I didn’t need any help recalling it.
“I’m getting by, per the usual. Thinking about calling the missus and seeing about flying out to Houston to visit the kid. Need to get up and go a little bit, you know?”
“You should. A change of scenery might do you some good, you never know.”
“Maybe. I shouldn’t keep you, it sounds like you’ve got a lot going on today.”
“The Protectorate wrapped everything up this morning, QB, I didn't do anything other than rescue a hostage or two to distract 'em. It’s just been a while since I checked in with you. Wanted to make sure you were hanging in there.”
“I appreciate it, I do. I’ll try and keep in touch from now on, if that eases your mind.”
“It would. Take care of yourself, okay?”
“Sure. Talk to you later.”
“Talk to you later.”
Beep. Line dead. Last person who gave a shit about what I was doing today, gone with the wind.
I knew about the High Rollers. In the time since I’d gotten my powers, they’d done a few odd jobs around Seattle, gotten into a few skirmishes with the local Protectorate. There were other guys, too - There was that Tinker, Armada, who had gone awfully quiet after a really big fuss earlier in the year. There was that freak, Bloodsport, but he’d been Birdcaged after one spree too many back in June. That was the last time I talked to Lifeline, if I remembered right. She’d gotten torn up pretty bad. It was the first time I’d left the house for anything but groceries or drugs since… probably January.
She’d asked me to come out and help. I’d stayed home. Someone died that day. I always asked myself if Pisces would still be alive if I had actually gone. No one complained that I didn’t. No one expected me to do shit at that point.
When I got brought on by the organization as what basically amounted to their own personal cape mascot, I was given a brief by some focus guy about who all was running around Seattle, people that might start something with me to try and boost their credibility. I’d bought into it at first, before I realized that no one in this city saw me as credible in the first place. Why would some villain try to pick a fight with me? If they won, they basically beat up the city’s resident object of pity. If they lost, they got washed by a beat up, broken down ex-football player going through a public, messy divorce and multiple other personal crises. I’d been in one ‘cape fight’ in my entire life. One, against the aforementioned Armada, and… I’d messed up. I’d messed up bad . That was actually when I’d met Lifeline. She happened to show up to the scene to try and help. Not to judge me for fucking it up. To help .
I didn’t feel any better now than I had when she called. Just because the play wasn’t on the TV anymore didn’t mean that it wasn’t following me. That it didn’t live rent free in my head every moment of every day, the same as that conversation in the office. That everything that happened after didn’t weigh on me even worse.
I decided that I needed to go out tonight. I had a place.
I grew up in West Texas, out in the land of dust and tumbleweeds. Seattle was different. A concrete jungle was the perfect word to describe it. Alive, vibrant, but also… cold. Indifferent. I never noticed it when I was the big man on campus. The nightlife, the parties, the culture, that was what I noticed back then. Now, though? Now that I was just a guy, albeit one that used to be famous…
It felt empty and full to bursting at the same time. Sometimes, I just needed to escape.
I had a place, though. Lorenzo Esch, a linebacker on the Seahawks during my rookie season, told me about it. Big hippy, that Lorenzo. He loved nature, loved spending time out in the world and just… being. It was how he separated himself from the kind of wood you had to lay down as a LB1. He hurt people for a living, and was simultaneously one of the sweetest human beings I’d ever met. Zo would take some of us out here and bring a little George Foreman, and we’d have ourselves a little beer and brats party on Alki Beach. I made friends that I thought would last the rest of my life here. Some of them stayed. Some didn’t. With the lifestyle we lived, not all of us made it to where I was now.
This time of year? Nobody was out on Alki. It’s October, summer’s over. School’s back in session, the parties aren’t happening until maybe Halloween, and who has a Halloween party on the beach? I knew I wouldn’t. I wasn’t really up for costumes anymore, even recreationally. As much as I hated how everything went down, how I wished I could still be big number 3, I just… couldn’t find it in me to do anything about it. To try and be anyone else but the MJ I was now.
I’d brought my cooler with me, and parked my car just off the road to the beach. I’d always been a Natty Ice guy since college, and that hadn’t changed even when my tax bracket did. I’d already knocked back one since driving out here, and since I wasn’t planning on driving home until sunup anyway, I saw no harm in getting a little tipsy.
I’d waited until night to come out here because it was supposed to be clear out, and lo, it was. Nothing but empty sky and the full moon over Puget Sound. Whereas the city felt congested, yet empty, there was something… different, about the vacancy out here. The vastness of it. It was almost calming. A lot of people had bad memories of Puget Sound from Leviathan’s attack back in ‘03, mostly older folks, but I definitely wasn’t one of them. It wasn’t like he was going to come back, anyway. No, the Sound was almost always calm, these days. I would know- I come out here at least twice a week. Just to think about things. Where everything went wrong.
I always told myself that if I was going to do something stupid, I was going to do it here. I had no intention of doing it tonight, anyhow. I just needed time. I needed to be away . This was probably the only ritual I had that wasn’t actively making my life worse, so I might as well indulge it when I felt the need arise, right?
I tried to focus on my power. I hated the damn thing so much, but it was still a part of who I was now. No matter what I was wearing, no matter what I was doing, it always looked exactly the same. It didn’t walk with a limp. It didn’t hobble to the bedside table to down a handful of pills when it got tired of being for the day. It was built like an athlete, it moved like an athlete, and it had all the poise and confidence I used to have without even having a fucking face .
And there were more of it than there were of me.
One of them popped up, a little streak of blue-green flame scorching the sand next to me, standing motionless. The reflection of the flame danced on the Sound, growing in intensity as I focused on the thing. I could make them stronger, if I wanted to. I could burn a building down without even setting foot in it, if I made it burn hot enough.
Or I could just make more of it. I’d never pushed too hard, mostly because of the effect it had on me. It seemed like the more I put into my power, the more it took out of me. I’d seen myself after Lifeline and I tested it. It looked like I’d had all the moisture sucked out of me. Like I’d come face to face with a ghost. That was when I made 11 of the damn things.
They responded to my thoughts quickly and efficiently. I never had to really focus on one of them. I could think about what I wanted them to do, and they’d do it, but it was definitely a bit easier to coordinate, with less of them. As it was, eleven of the things could probably start some pretty nasty fires, Took a lot more effort to keep them all going, though, and a strong wind could knock them away pretty easily.
I had my own 21 personnel made of walking fireballs.
The problem with that, of course, was that fire was hard to control, and my power just brought the guys to life and let me control them. I couldn’t tell them not to burn what they touched. They just did. The big one, when I put my whole heart into it? Asphalt turned to tar. Plants shriveled up and burned just from proximity. People couldn’t breathe. That was pretty hard to market to the front office. A power that was only really useful for burning shit down. Real heroic.
Made for a pretty light show, though. A nice little constellation of flickering blue-white lights, the green color fading as more of them appeared, shimmering against the evening tide of the Puget Sound. It wasn’t anything impressive, hardly heroic, but… It let me make peace with it, or try to, anyway.
Who was I kidding? February 8th, 2004 was 977 days in the past, but for how I was living, you’d have thought it was last week. No matter how long I stared into the faceless flames in front of me, it never felt any easier. It never made up for the lost years. It never fixed what was broken. It never made up for the incident. It never made it easier to get out of the bed and spend even the first five minutes of my day sober. At this point, I wasn’t sure if it ever would.
I cracked open another beer, and tried not to think about it. Deep down, I knew it wouldn't work. It never did.
When had that stopped me before?