Anger

WARNING: The following contains an implied instance of transphobia and thus may be distressing to certain readers. Also the word 'gringo' is used. Discretion is advised.

He knew he shouldn't really have been up here. He had to help the others in the juice bar. Grandma Micaela was out to get ingredients, and it was late afternoon in Agama, which meant heat and stickiness. Customers would be flocking into the bar in droves, and there'd be only two others tending bar. Both of whom would be rushed off their feet keeping up with demand.

But Valério Freitas needed to be in his room so he could work out some anger.

Thump. Thump, thump-thump.

His room was a mess, he knew that. A fine layer of dust covered everything from his bedside table to the floor. Old shirts and underwear lay strewn on the floor near the wardrobe and his bedsheets were a crumpled mess. The corner of some magazine stuck out from underneath the mattress, a tell-tale heart of glossy, dog-eared pages. He knew Micaela would probably shake her head at him if she ever saw this, and the other two would have some choice words as well. 

But Valério couldn't care less at the minute. He was too busy abusing his punching bag as though it had insulted the memory of his mother. 

The brunette's teeth were gritted as his body swung left and right in time to his staccato blows. The air around him was thick with dust, made hazy honey-gold by the late afternoon sun. The orange punching bag, already looking as thought it was about to collapse upon itself, swung back and forth on its chain with an almost dispassionate slowness, the leather skin rippling from the force of each punch. His blows handed with hammer force, beating a veritable tattoo of violence on the worn-out surface and battered stuffing.

Thump-thump-thump. Thump-thump.

Valério knew he'd always been an angry boy. From the moment he was old enough to understand anything, he'd been angry. With his life, with himself, with the world around him. of course, the world had given him no reason he shouldn't be. When you were trapped on the rougher side of the neighbourhood with idiot parents, and when everyone around you took every opportunity to kick you, why be anything else? How could you do anything but punch back? And then keep punching until the person who'd been doing the kicking screamed for mercy?

But that remit only went so far. And it stopped the day the son of the local police chief fired a slur at him and ended up spitting teeth into the gutter. Everything spiralled out of control after that - there were men in caps and with badges, questions, threats. A brawl that ended with a baton to the back of the head. Long waits in a jail cell with nobody who cared to talk to him. A court-appointed defence attorney, already devoting half a pinkie's worth of effort to pretending they hadn't been bribed, throwing the case right in the bin. He could still remember the look on mãe and pai's face as the judge passed sentence.

That had resulted in a week in juvie and solved absolutely nothing. A burning hatred of authority grew where those crooks had hoped to plant obedience.

Thump, thump, thump.

The punching bag was supposed to be the cure for that. The moment he felt the anger, the needles in his brain and the vice in his chest, he could come up here and work it out on something that couldn't fight back and certainly couldn't shout slurs at him. Then he could come back down and pretend to be a functioning human being amongst the rest of society. And, up until now, it had been working.

Recently, however, there was more anger. More to be angry about. And no matter how hard he whaled on the bag, the dust flying off his fists; no matter how hard he tried to picture a face he hated on the sagging orange leather, it just wouldn't go away.

Because nobody else...

Thump, thump, thump-thump-thump.

Nobody else was getting angry about it.

"Fuck," he hissed between his teeth, although he wasn't aware of it. The anger churned in his belly and chest and the spikes pierced right through his skull. His sweat-soaked magenta t-shirt stuck to his skin.

Couldn't anyone see it? Everything was going wrong! Agama was changing for the worse, and why did nobody see it happening! How could they not look at their city and see what the gringos and the Kobbers were doing to it?! To the land they'd grown up in?! 

Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-thump-

The punches were growing faster. Something hot was rising in Valerio like a fire spreading on oil, and something more than sunlight shimmered off his bare arms. He knew what it meant, and tried to swallow it back, but-

"Fuck," he growled again, landing a sollid gut blow.

It didn't feel like home anymore.

He remembered the days when everything was red brick and wooden stalls and everyone knew everyone else. He remembered smiles on street corners and pleasant conversation as you bought the fish you were going to have for dinner with the família. He remembered when there weren't such things as smartphones and everything was powered by good, honest crystal, and when you wanted to go into town you hopped onto a rickshaw or a bicycle you bugged your avó for weeks about.

But that was all going away. It was turning into cold metal shop fronts and surly cashiers who didn't care for your name. It was turning into electric lights and pedicabs and vending machines, none of which had a cheerful face that you recognized attached to them anymore. It didn't feel like Agama now. It felt like every other city in the world. Cold, efficient, uncaring. You did your business then went back home, and nothing meaningful happened in between those two things.

He paused, his knuckles singing with friction and abuse. His breath came in deep gasps as he watched the bag swinging back and forth on the ends of its chain.

"God damn it," he panted.

And nobody else seemed to have noticed it had happened. That was the worst part. Nobody had batted an eye when the rickshaws went away, or the stalls on the market began to dwindle away. Nobody saw anything wrong with the things from the outside coming in, or with the idiot tourists who came for the sightseeing or the sports, then got pissed and roamed the streets shouting at night and keeping people awake. Nobody...

Nobody else sees it.

He didn't know what those were. His thoughts? A voice? He didn't care. Their mere presence, rolling in his brain like black tar in a steel drum, kindled something darker than mere anger in him, something with an almost lethally-sharp mind of its own. It was enough to get his fists going again., faster and harder than before, the heat rising in his chest again.

Nobody else sees it. They're blind. They can't see their futures being taken away. But you can.

Yes... he could! He could see it! And now that line of thought was in his head, it kept going, unhindered by second thoughts that were being shouted down by the impotent fury that Valério Freitas had carried since he'd been old enough to understand anything.

Thump-thump-thumpthumpthumpthumpthump-

His teeth clenched.

"Fucking gringo pieces of SHIT!" he roared, now fully aware of what he was doing and saying.

They were ruining it! They were rubbing out everything that was Agama! They'd moved in, they'd brought in their own culture and ideas of how a city should be, and they hadn't shoved them down their throats, oh no! They'd been sneaky about it! They'd slipped them in quietly, slowly, so that nobody thought it was strange when stupid fucking bars or arcades began showing up where they didn't belong! And then the Kobbers had arrived, bringing in even worse things - machines, magic and the monsters that wanted both! Dark things had risen up that would have stayed put had they not arrived, and innocent people had died in the crossfire, but that was okay, because they were the heroes!

The heat was turning into an inferno in his chest. Even as his fists turned into pneumatic blurs, reddish-pink fire, smoky and ethereal, seemed to be dancing over his body in time to his growing fury.

THUMPTHUMPTHUMPTHUMP

And nobody cared! Nobody cared that neighbourhoods where generations had lived and died were being filled up with foreigners! Nobody cared that dumbass tourists with their loud shirts and fucking fake shades were trampling over the greenery and taking pictures of crumbling temples, going 'oh, how quaint' as if it all existed for their amusement! Nobody cared that the Metal Fetish Killer had been among them and dozens of people had met gruesome ends because of him! Agama was dying, and nobody-

"RAAAAAAGH!"

WHAM!

His fist did not travel alone. Accompanied by the magenta limb that surged from the ether behind him, it struck the bag like a speeding train. The leather finally conceded after ten years of abuse and split asunder, sand pouring from it like the blood and intestines of some slain old warrior gracefully facing his final defeat.

Gasping, Valério held the pose for a few more moments. He hadn't realized he'd clenched his fists so hard until he saw the blood oozing from between his fingers. Shit. He was going to need to wear the gloves again. Couldn't serve literal Bloody Marys , there'd definitely be complaints. He drew in deep breath, swallowed and stood up, feeling the fiery presence of his Eidolon fading back into the background.

For some awful reason, the face of his defence attorney flashed up in his mind. He didn't know why, and wished it didn't keep doing that.

"My client may be many things, your honour. Rude, violent, distrustful and disrespectful of both the law and of authority. But I would suggest to both you and the jury that she has no choice but to be anything else. Growing up in that environment, I can see why-"

She.

That was how little that man had tried.

He sighed, and ran a bruised and stinging hand through the sweat-matted tangle of brown he dared to call hair with a straight face. Self-loathing, especially at his flagrant use of the 'G-Word', as Grandma Micaela would have called it, bubbled in his stomach to replace the now-evaporated anger.

"I'm so fucked up," he muttered.

And then, knowing that screaming into the void would accomplish nothing but a sore throat, Valério Freitas went downstairs to do his actual job.