Idiot Box is the sort of person who doesn’t see it coming. They ask for it, a million times a day, but they just don’t see it coming. Idiot Box managed to capture this elusive emotion by thinking he was going to take over Cockeye’s neighborhood. It’s a little known fact that Cockeye isn’t even from Traverse. He was born here, yes, but he spent the first three years of his life tucked away in McGregor, Illinois. He turned four in Alabama, and he figures he may eventually return to the old state, even though he has ambitions for other destinations. He never met a prospect he didn’t like, but he doesn’t know what he’s going to actually become, because he writes. Cockeye writes because he doesn’t know what else to do. He’s a vigilante, yes, but that doesn’t pay the bills, either. Mostly, he inhabits space, and Idiot Box thinks he’s going to take that from him. Idiot Box has another thing coming.
In a prior life, owning this neighborhood meant something completely different. Cockeye was never in a position where he could say such things, but he was a part of that movement. He knew all the stories that said white boys don’t have gangs around here, but he’s heard, and told, so many stories that they become as true as fiction. He knows what life here is like, the great white way, the good old life. Everyone is quick to help out. You can sit outside in a rocking chair at the finer establishments. That and the fact that there’s a latent hostility to anything unfamiliar. It’s everywhere, but it’s here. Cockeye understands this, and he understands who this Idiot Box is. He’s the enemy, and at this time, the enemy means war. There’s nothing for him to do but declare it. There’s also one thing. He’s a vigilante in theory, a hero in training, if you will, and self-taught at that. Some of them will take you under their wing, but the majority of the establishment will leave you behind and hope you can fend for yourself. That happens to be how Cockeye was conceived in the first place. He used to be bitter about it, but things had a way of steering him in more useful directions. He used to be angry, heck, can still sometimes reach new heights of anger, of despair. But he’s feeling, these days, like he can handle it better because he can see his future more clearly. Vision is key to the future.
He also happens to be alone. Cockeye wasn’t always alone. He has a father he’s estranged from, but he’s seen worse days between them. He used to be particularly angry about this, because someone had to point out how miserable things really were in his family. That was the day he snapped, that Cockeye. He spent so much time trying to figure that out, he found the man again, asked for answers, wasn’t given any. He found other things, things that facilitated his journey to becoming Cockeye. Cockeye, another vigilante, another hero without any powers at all. He’s not even much of a fighter, but he scraps along. That’s a lot of what he’s done all his life, maybe not in the sense that he’s been in so many fights that he knows his way around them. He’s never been in a single fight, which of course makes a confrontation he knows is coming with Idiot Box that much more of a question mark.
He’s never had anything handed to him, not outright. He’s stumbled into a few things here and there, but to never have been given the kinds of advantages he hears about, reads about, can see around him, has been a constant source of frustration. He’s even had a few relationships that he thought might lead to that kind of advantage, but they never work out. The closest one came to a dead end when he realized the man was dead, but he was able to capitalize anyway. He found so much stuff that was just left behind. Some of it was more than he wanted to know.
But still, he doesn’t like to concentrate on such things, especially when there are more pressing matters at hand, such as Idiot Box. He’s stepped into Cockeye’s turf, the little spot of earth he’s claimed as his own, to defend against predators. He’s the shepherd to a flock that doesn’t know him, but he’s there. He’s made the commitment, even sent out messages. The first one came as a warning, a note he hastily scribbled out after watching police drag away suspects he’d been watching for a week. He knew what was really going on, and he said so in the note, which he left in the jacket one of the officers left in the squad car, one of those look-at-me reflector-themed numbers. These mooks were innocent of everything but being imbeciles. All they’d really been doing was getting high. He’d known to surveillance them because he’d once included himself in their numbers. They would never have done anything serious, not even in the days they used to hire themselves out as ground-level thugs to the local heavies, asking questions of their own, for answers they couldn’t care less about. They were dangerous in those days, but more danger to themselves than anyone else.
Cockeye should know. That’s how all this happened. He no longer regrets any of it, because it led him to a better life than he could have ever known, to a peace of mind he could have never known without it. He transformed himself from a nobody known as Lincoln Mather, called Random Red, into a self-styled avenger, one who needn’t worry about his life being ruined for nothing. His old gang, innocent of what the boys in blue suspected them, but guilty on so many other levels. They’re still in lockup. Now all he has to worry about is a war. How did that even happen? He had been aware of it for years, but never concerned himself with the reality of it. He was far from it, even if it was in his own city. It never affected him, not with all the battles reported in the Traverse Tracks, which he began reading again, a paper he used to deliver, because of this war. He’s got stacks of it in his room now, copies he’s saved because of articles he finds historically pertinent. The one from Xenon’s death? It holds a special place.
He’s heard a lot about the war. In his neighborhood, as Lincoln, he can move about it and find out what the locals are thinking. He doesn’t consider himself one of them, and he understands why when he hears people talking about what Traverse means to them, how they sympathize with men like Viper, Benjamin Russ, and the mayor, Malcolm Bidd, even though they oppose famous heroes like Godsend, Dust, and The Eidolon. Cockeye’s papers know who’s on what side, who’s the attacker and who’s defending home soil. That’s how it’s reported, by newsmen and streetwalkers alike. It’s a war, except it’s not between heroes and villains, but home and away teams. It’s almost like a game. And the home team is the easy one to root for. Cockeye never has, not even when he seemed to be a part of it. He knew he didn’t belong then, and he knows he doesn’t want to now. But he understands what everyone means, he understands both sides. Cockeye exists to protect something, and now that he’s being threatened, he wants to put up a fight. Does it matter that he can name his foe? Surely Idiot Box can say the same thing. Surely Idiot Box thinks he’s only defending something, too.
From what Cockeye knows, Idiot Box has a claim to this neighborhood, too. He’s familiar with its virtues, its vices. He’s a product of its attributes, much as Cockeye is. Like Cockeye, he’s seems late in the game in claiming it, or at least staking that claim. Cockeye came first, sure, but now here’s Idiot Box, who knows how to fight. His own dad owned the local gym, until it closed. Used to box, naturally. The son specializes in pounding his opponents into submission, with no real finesse to it, just so the job gets done. Idiot Box, then. Cockeye doesn’t know if that’s a self-made moniker, or if someone gave it to him, and he doesn’t care. Regardless, he’s going to become very familiar with the message behind it. He’s going to enter the fray, he’s going to fight this man, in this war, because of this war.
Because of it? Really? Cockeye’s had the benefit of sitting on the sideline all these years. While others have been fighting, experiencing what this war really is, he’s been sitting on the sideline and thinking. He knows what the war means to him. Plenty others think it’s a cause better left unchallenged. They want the costumed folks to just give up, already, retreat, whatever, go home. They’re needed for other things, or maybe, too, to just have a break, not risk their lives for a change. So many have died already. The names almost become meaningless, unless you happen to have a personal connection to them. If they’re needed again here, then they can come back. But this war, this meaningless war, waged over what? a trophy? someone’s grudge? has got to go away already. There’s just no winning it, and everyone knows how clear that is. The leader of the home team is gone, even, executed, as it were. For Cockeye, that’s not this war. He’s about to become a part of it, and not because someone drafted him, but because he’s chosen to. It’s never been about winning something, unless the victory means the world will be a safer place, with a little more order to it. Order can’t be bad, can it? He sees what kind of order there is now, and doesn’t like it. In his neighborhood, he hears whimpers at night, whimpers that seem to say, does the morning really have to come? That feeling, to him, is the worst, even in a world that knows so many who won’t wake up in the morning for a thousand worse reasons. Cockeye believes that you should always look forward to another day, and he should know, having so many times feared them. He decided to become a champion so he could do his part in making that feeling go away, even if in only one person, even if only in himself. The point in this war? There’s no point, there never is in war. War is destruction. Cockeye sees in it, though, a chance to build, too.
This neighborhood of his, yes, he has claimed it, claimed it so he can see it become, one day, a place where his own past can’t be duplicated. He became Cockeye so he could begin to struggle against those who would rather see it stay the way it is, a place where boys cry themselves to sleep at night, where their fathers can’t live up to the duties they’re meant for because they’re too busy still trying to make their own lives work out. Now he’s got to prepare to face the consequences. Now he’s got to prepare to fight Idiot Box. It’s his first fight in this war, his first fight as a vigilante. For ten years now, he’s been headed down this road, preparing himself for the day his new resolve would overtake his dreams, when he could seize the destiny he knew he wanted. The idea of Cockeye was impregnated for so long within him, he could imagine everything about this hero, this champion, without seeing any of it in reality. He would train, a little, but he trusted his instincts most of all, because he knew that they would be the only things that would be with him in the end. In the end, all he has is himself.
Within the past couple of months, he has stepped up his preparation, even though he has been doing things for a few years now, things he knows to have been helpful, things that haven’t been so different from what he is today, this figure he calls Cockeye, small things. He’s never allowed himself to call these activities vigilantism. He reserves such thoughts for others, because he’s never done anything great, anything he’s found in the paper, in the Tracks. He’s helped others, sure, he even believes he’s assisted the Eidolon, even, the Eidolon, who put all this in motion. Imagine! But very soon now, Cockeye is going to make his debut as a functional reality, as a figure tested and not just conceived. Fights are everything. Heroes aren’t really heroes until they’ve confronted enemies. They can do all the good deeds they want, but until they’ve been in a fight no one is going to respect them, remember them, or expect them. Heroes don’t just wait for fights, either, and that’s why they’re such interesting figures, why they get talked about so much. Sometimes when they do go looking, their image changes, and they may end up being remembered more for that than for what they really are. This doesn’t concern Cockeye. Idiot Box hasn’t, technically, provoked him yet. But he’s still going to do this, have this fight. It’s the only thing that can happen now. It’s either hold this ground, or yield it, surrender it. Can you imagine? Idiot Box isn’t a major figure by any measure. No one will have heard of him when the news gets out what happened. This doesn’t concern Cockeye, either.
He does have one concern, though. The source of his power, so to speak, does, the lair of the Dread Poet, which his discovery of prompted, above all, the change of direction in his life. When he found that place, deep below the earth, beyond darkness, past telling, he discovered a new direction that had seemingly been mapped out for him. The Dread Poet’s lair? It was the stuff of legend, and to have found it was to vindicate Cockeye’s existence. In his youth, Cockeye had always believed in destiny, yes, but also in the power of redemption, and that’s what he found in the Dread Poet’s lair. All the files he found, meticulously kept, the journals, the books, each of them seemed to have been created out of a need to rejuvenate the earth. Rejuvenate for what? There were files on every aspect of the city, the journals will filled with the Dread Poet’s own recollections, and the books covered every subject imaginable. Cockeye had somehow always known how important Traverse was, and this was a confirmation.
In the files there were copies of every Traverse Tracks, dating from its very inception to the last edition printed before the Dread Poet’s death. Cockeye poured over all of these. For months, years, all he did was read. He ignored the rest of the world. He was aware of the world and yet he was not a part of it, because there was another layer that concerned him, interested him, so much more. This was his education, his emergence into the wider world, all laid out, as if by design, before him. Gradually, he became aware that he could trace his own life, too, when he came upon the issues devoted to the Eidolon’s mysterious disappearance. He had been a part of that catharsis, too. He never found himself, of course, in those words, but he could follow his journey through them all the same. He began reading back into the past, retracing his life backward, until he discovered a startling fact. There was no record of his birth. He knew he’d been born here. Why wasn’t it here? Why was there such an oversight? He poured still further, trying to confirm a thought he couldn’t understand. He traced lives from birth to death, countless of them. It bothered him that he couldn’t find that one, stupid notice. He could have just written it down as a mistake, but then he remembered how his father had always talked about how remarkable a birth it had been, a miracle. Nowhere in the paper, nowhere in the notes. He began to suspect that the Dread Poet might have known something, that his discovery of this lair really had been destiny.
But what did it mean? It meant that Cockeye had been adopted. His life had been, on all accounts, a lie. This filled him with new resolve, because he began to embrace that lie as never before. That was when he reconnected with his father, or at least the man he had known for so long by that name. He looked back wistfully at the event that had caused his life to turn around, the day the Eidolon told him what a waste his father had been. When he had completed this journey, Cockeye burned the Dread Poet’s lair, and began anew.
Recently he has become aware that his new life came about because of a decision, and so it has been with a newfound resolution that he has taken on this role, this challenge. He sees now that there are no answers, just questions he is going to have to deal with, no matter how angry or happy they make him, how much trouble he can get in because of them. Idiot Box he’s not afraid of. He’s going to survive this, because he knows there are other challenges ahead. He wants to track someone down, someone he knows is out there, even though he doesn’t know who they are, or why they are important. They will have more questions for him, that’s all he knows, questions that will lead to more questions, until the day he dies. Because this is wartime, he knows there are no guarantees.
“So,” he begins, “it looks the day has finally arrived.”
Staring back at him is Idiot Box himself. Neither is dressed very elegantly; Cockeye in a blue track suit, Box in something he found in an army surplus store. Cockeye has dropped in on him in his own home, an apartment that, ten years ago, looked better, but only slightly, not even owing to anything Box himself may have contributed with his characteristically careless lifestyle, boxes and bottles being some of the main things noticeable. That he’s in his uniform already is one key to his state of mind. The environment is another. “You’ve got some nerve, punk,” are words that serve as more indications. Cockeye isn’t concerned.
“You don’t know this, but you’ve had this coming for months” he says. “You think you own this place, that you have a right. You’re wrong. You forfeited that right the day you decided you were going to be so ridiculously reckless about it. You can’t take what’s not yours, right? And you especially can’t take something when you’re going to treat it so badly. You claimed this place, and the first thing you did was round up a few of its residents and shoot their motherfucking brains out. Why did they deserve that? Because they were a threat, to whatever pea-brained shit was rolling around your sorry ass that day. I actually pity you. I’m here talking all this shit and you’re actually letting me get away with it. Well, here you go, asshole.”
He takes Idiot Box out without a fight, just like that. He does it so easily because he does it with a bullet, right to the kneecap. No leg, no heft behind the punch, or so he correctly figured when he was planning this. Cockeye wins. Idiot Box is already crying when his own phone is used to call the medics, and the police. Cockeye would almost do more, but he’s already planning his victory speech, which he’s going to deliver once the news gets out what happened here today. Everyone’s going to hear, and then they’re all going to gather, at the local bar, at Tin Car, which Cockeye owns. Not much of a fight, but it’s a victory. He’s taken down his first foe. He knows what everyone’s going to say about his chosen method, everyone who counts, but it’s something he’s willing to live with. It’s for the right cause. Everyone has their weapons. He’s chosen one that’s a little out of the usual for his line of work, but he’s not playing by rules because they don’t really exist. It was only ever a code. In wartime, though, things change. It’s his first action as a hero, basically, and people will say he didn’t choose it very carefully, but what he’ll say to them, if he has half the chance, is that it doesn’t matter. That’s going to be a part of his speech, too. It doesn’t matter. He won, that’s all there is to it. He’s prepared to deal with the consequences, because that’s all he’s been doing all his life. He’s won this fight, and chosen this manner to do so, because it was the strategy that worked, the strategy that was best against this foe. He had it all figured out, and it worked, so easily. Idiot Box didn’t even put up a fight, just some angry words, really, and those don’t add up to much, not in this arena. And just like that, Cockeye is a combatant. He’s joined the ranks, his ranks, and not just as a number, but one of them. He doesn’t need their understanding, because he knows what he is. He’s a hero. Idiot Box is gone, before he can ruin the neighborhood. Cockeye has done his part.
There are other matters, now, other threats to face, because this one battle doesn’t mean the end of it. Idiot Box was a minor foe, almost insignificant, unless you were really paying attention. He was transforming this place into fear, and now that is over, that threat turned away. Now Cockeye has to venture out, do it again, do it so it counts for more than just a block of this city. He may even, he will, have to do that again, even here, because where there’s one, there’s always more. He’s become a part of the fight, all right. He’s beginning to understand it for the first time. He’s beginning to see what he’s gotten himself into. He sees and doesn’t have a problem, not a single one. The way he sees it, he’s needed, and that’s why Cockeye was born, and why he will persist, as others have before him. There will be obstacles, and he will face them, because he must. If life as a whole isn’t easy, there’s no reason to believe that this will be any different. So he’s going to dive right in.
The war Cockeye now enters has its own expectations for him. He’s another number in an equation that is hungry, because it is always working, always adding, subtracting, dividing, multiplying. It is a beast, and oh, is it hungry. Is there an end in sight? Not so clearly, even ten years in. The forces at work have their vested interests, sure, but they are also impersonal, removed, detached. Whatever happens here will have its ramifications, but it won’t dictate the course of the world. That course knows only one destination. It’s a journey around a sun that gives as much as it takes, and it’s a constant journey, no matter what’s happening or for how long it will continue. Once it ends, it ends, and that’s all that really matters. Cockeye is a single person on this world, and no matter who is father is and how he fares in this war, his life is not going to change the world from spinning. But there are always consequences, and for now, they do mean something. And they cannot be seen coming.
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