MASK OR MENACE

WHO: Robbie Baldwin, open
WHERE: A coffee shop in Heropa
WHEN: Feb 24-27
WHAT: Robbie is infected with the mind clone virus, namely with a Hornet named Simone Lee, who is rather maternal.
WARNINGS: Violence likely.

It started small, as most things do. The little boy who fell and skinned his knee, that was when Robbie had first felt the surge of concern. It wasn't wholly unfamiliar - he didn't decide to be a superhero out of a lack of concern for the welfare of others. It was only a skinned knee, and he had no idea where the dramatic "Oh!" reaction had come from.

The kid shook it off like a champ, though. That was the next thought that bubbled to the surface. Cute little guy. Hope his mom has a lollipop for him.

And that had been that, a bout of sentimentality that was so dismissible he hadn't thought to dismiss it. Of course, Robbie had berated a young mother in the grocery store for spanking her child, but he's more embarrassed about using the phrase "you should be ashamed of yourself" than the disruption he'd caused.

And then the girl who's been arguing with her brutish looking boyfriend... the man he'd given his umbrella to... the teenagers who'd come up short at the counter for their coffees... Robbie has had a full day of being a lot more invested in the people around him, so much that he hasn't actually gotten half the things he was supposed to do today done. Isn't that always the way of it?

At this point, it doesn't matter if he wastes half an hour in the coffee shop, sipping his drink and making silly faces at the baby parked in her stroller at the next table. At no point does he stop to think over what's causing any of this.

Or why he's suddenly so concerned with playing Spot the Import, staring at the wrist of every seedy, tough, or otherwise scruffy-looking person for invisible tattoos and eavesdropping for news of the government's schemes because they're all in on it. He's not about to sit here dumping coffee while some nuclear imPort gives them all cancer.