Over the last couple of days, I’ve discovered there is a very big difference between being invisible and actively being a social pariah.

On the weekend, while I was laying low in the aftermath of the protest, rumors about my “totally unprovoked attack” on New Guy, and my “single-handed destruction of a peaceful protest” spread to every single person at Ring City High. Thank you, text messaging!

Actually, the quotes above aren’t from texts. They’re from the Ring High Righer. So double thanks to Aurora!

The article didn’t mention me by name, but by the way the table cleared out when I sat down at lunch, it was pretty obvious that I was no “anonymous assailant.”

My whole life, I’ve moved through school hallways and breakyards unnoticed, which is fine, because superheroes gotta keep a low profile. It’s the one profession where being invisible is a good thing.
But I’ve never experienced this whole staring and whispering thing before. Someone even put gum on my locker. Gum.

Not only does that suck, it makes me wonder who cares so much about a protest against CO2 emissions getting wrecked? These are the same people who decided that recycling was a pointless pipedream last week.

I’m guessing they’re probably more cheesed about New Guy’s black eye.

The only person who hasn’t made a point of shedding their glare-light on me is Aurora. Even though I’ve been looking, I haven’t seen her yet this week. Haven’t seen New Guy, either.

Assessment:

Aurora: avoider!

New Guy: Yeah, he better be scared.

Heh. I wish that actually sounded funny, and not depressing.

I’ve pretty much been laying low since the protest. You’ll quickly understand why. Anyway, at least it gave me some time to fool around with Toon-FX a lot more.

So who really ruined the protest? Me, or New Guy? He was the one that came barging in, arguing with Aurora and bugging her to leave.

I guess I should be thinking about what I just did, and how pissed Aurora is going to be, but all I can think about is that stupid recycling center full of boxes.

If the center was full of boxes, what’s in the plant? It wouldn’t hurt to get a look at the place. Poke around, see what else they’re up to behind those smokestacks and shiny silver walls.

I don’t like sleeping at night anyway.

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Okay, maybe it’s just me, but it seems like there’s an almost anti-planet-friendly hysteria building up in Ring City right now?

I don’t know if it’s because people like to argue, or because they don’t want to change their lifestyle, but more and more I’m hearing “global warming doesn’t exist,” and “there’s no proof that we created the holes in the ozone layer,” and “looking for alternative fuel sources is a waste of time.”

No kidding!

In Ring City, first it was this “recycling doesn’t work” thing, and now there’s all the trouble surrounding the JoyTech plant. All in the space of a week. WTF?

Some background: When all the towns and cities that got surrounded by the Ring Road became the Western Conurbation Area a,k.a. Ring City, there was all this green space in the middle that divided a few of the bigger cites, and only had a few small towns (or ‘neighborhoods’ as they’re now called) in it.

I live in one of those towns.

The Conurbation Council originally promised that all the green space would become protected parkland.

Then the JoyTech Global Improvement Company came to town.

They bought up a huge chunk of land between my ‘neighborhood’ and the urban center across the Blood River, and built the plant, outbuildings, and sprawling parking and warehousing areas surrounding it.

So much for green space, and so much for clean air.

The JoyTech plant belches black smoke 24/7, viololating “every CO2 emissions standards law in existence,” according to Aurora. Standards which, Jerry is quick to point out, are already pathetically low.

The point of all this is to say that Aurora has somehow miraculously mobilized this big protest, planned for tomorrow in front of the JoyTech plant, and we just found out that there’s going to be a counter-protest to protest Aurora’s protest!

They say the air quality in the area hasn’t gone down, and that the original protesters are just left-wing nutjobs that are trying to destroy the industries that built this country.

It seems like everybody is missing a simple truth here: the planet is fragile. Our ecosystem is not indestructible, and the nicer we are to it, the longer it will take care of us.

Show me all the facts and statistics in the world to prove that a problem doesn’t exist, you’ll never convince me that what we’re doing to the ecosystem is without consequence.

Anyway, we’ll see what happens tomorrow. I’ll be going as my regular self, because something tells me they’ll have some thugs on crowd control that might recognize my mask.

As usual, all the photos in this post were tooned using Toon-Photo.