November 4, 2022

The sheep-bear sped away from Grovedale, up Highway 40, bitter tears stinging behind her helmet’s visor. A few minutes down the road, she pulled into a Tim Hortons, and spent a long time sitting and staring out the window as she sipped at her double-double.

Granddad had always known. Roger Oakes was a rotten thug from the get-go, but he and the rest of the Oakes had convinced themselves Maddy should not only uphold his legend, but redeem the man behind it. The thought made them seethe.

She pulled out her phone. The sheep-bear was inside Grande Prairie city limits, and as long as she was there, she might as well see the Heartwood memorial. It was a statue, she understood; the city had commissioned it in memory of its favourite son. Despite the fact that he was born in nearby Clairmont and spent much of his early Hero career criss-crossing Peace River Country, all along the chain of towns sprawling through the surrounding valley, he’d been claimed by the citizens of Grande Prairie as their own. There were enough fans to support a local “Heartwood Memorial Foundation” responsible for raising funds for the thing, even. The sheep-bear wasn’t exactly sure where it was, though, until the internet turned up the location: Muskoseepi Park, near the city reservoir.

Maddy (and Mom, and Brianna) had been invited to the unveiling, several years back, but had declined. The sheep-bear hadn’t had much interest in attending—they hardly wanted to be called ‘Heartwood II’ by gushing local media, right as they were insistently pitching OH to let them assume a different Hero name—but now they shuddered, knowing now how painful it would have been for Mom to see her abuser immortalized like that, and recalling how the sheep had refused even to look at the photos attached to the registered letter.

Crumpling up her tattered coffee cup and tossing it into the trash on her way out the door—she missed when ‘Roll Up the Rim to Win’ had involved the tactile sensation of actually rolling up the rim, rather than just scanning a QR code into the Tims app, but habitually picked at the paper regardless—Maddy returned to the parking lot, and straddling her bike, got back on the road.

It took only a few more minutes through commercial sprawl to reach the park, a gently sloping ravine that cut through the city on either side of a winding creek. The sheep-bear slowed down when they reached the turn-off to the paved waterfront path, and slowly puttered along; there was nobody around, thankfully, but they still didn’t intend to draw undue attention. Following the creek, Maddy eventually reached the reservoir, and overlooking it, they found their objective.

The statue of Roger Oakes stood tall on a plinth, his arm raised in a cheery salute. She looked at his face; it wasn’t a good likeness. It captured none of the hate and rage she’d seen from the fatal press conference, nor the callow arrogance he’d displayed in the other memory-holed news clips Grace had shown her, even when he wasn’t seconds away from bursting a blood vessel in his brain. The whole thing was as grotesque as she’d imagined—Heartwood as the idol of some Ancient Greek god, patron of the city, looming over his eager worshippers—and her gorge rose.

They were going to join the Korps. That was a foregone conclusion; they knew they’d never see the inside of the OH Lakeview facility again. (Not with a security clearance, anyway.) Maddy was no longer a Hero, no longer an Oakes, and no longer willing to let their father’s odious monument stand. They gulped, steeling themself as they prepared to commit their first real act of villainy.

Maddy Gillespie focused her telekinetic power, and silently extending a middle finger at the vile effigy before her, concentrated on the statue’s head until it exploded in a hail of marble shards. She spent the next fifteen minutes meticulously breaking the rest apart with her powers, bit by bit, visualizing it as crushing the statue between massive fingers. By the time the job was complete, she was winded; it took a moment to recover before she was able to gather up every trace of the monument’s remains, and with the power of her mind, hurled them across the surface of the reservoir. They skipped along the rippling water, and then sank.

The sheep-bear put on their helmet with a satisfied growl, and gunned their bike along the path until swinging onto the highway in a wide arc. The gibbous moon shone on the former Hero’s shoulders as they roared the Yamaha down the highway, leaving the stifling dust of Grande Prairie in their wake.

It was time to go back to Toronto, and start a new life.