It's Friday night, motherfuckers, and I'm getting drunk. Just got off the shift at the local superstore, hating life as usual, and boy, am I ready for something to drown my god damn sorrows in. And there's no place for that like the good old Last Call, where the bartenders don't know your name and don't care to find out either. They know your face, they know what you like to order, they know whether you're good for credit, and that's it. They're not here for your worries or whatever else may be going on in your life, they're here to serve you your booze and do it well. If you want to cry, do it towards one of the other patrons. Mind, that's actually something that happens quite a lot, there's usually someone willing to commiserate around. Hell, I've been on both sides more than my share of times.

When I head through the heavy door, the atmosphere is very light. Not a lot of people in right now, which isn't necessarily unusual, sometimes this place is rather slow. I make my way down to the bar, hop onto my usual stool and flag down one of the bartenders, ordering a basic gin and tonic. No sense in going in with the fancy stuff right away, after all, the night is still long, and I want to take some time to see who's around today. A lot of faces are familiar, but there's one I haven't seen before, the one actually sitting right next to me, staring down an empty glass. Chatting guys up here is always a risky maneuver, since you don't really know whether they're up for conversation or not, but hey, sometimes, it's worth a shot, and my instincts tell me that this guy needs someone to talk to. So I put on a friendly face, and ask, "Hey, you're new here, aren't you? Life got you down?"

While it takes him a moment to react, thankfully, it seems he isn't angry at me and just lets out a sigh. "Yeah, I've never had something in my life that made me think I needed to drink the pain away, but tonight's that night, I guess," he replies. "Great fucking super reveal I had." That addition says a lot, namely that he's a super. In recent years, there has been a development of a rare set of people randomly developing superpowers in their early twenties. It announces itself with a specific sort of illness where you feel like garbage for about a week while your body recombobulates itself or whatever, and then, one day, poof, you've got some sort of power and you're a "super" now. And if he's talking about his super reveal, that means today he learned what his power is. And given that he's here, it means he's got a dud, some sort of garbage power that can't be useful at all. Usually, becoming a super is like winning the lottery, a free track to riches or prestige. But drawing a dud is kind of like winning the lottery, then being told your ticket was never actually registered due to some computer error.

Again, asking for details here is risky, but he brought it up, so maybe I'm in the clear? "So... what is it?" I just ask, hoping he opens up on his own.

Another sigh. "Yo, Jackie, show this guy the shit I did to your mint stash!" he yells in the direction of one particular bartender, who, with a rather grumpy look on his face, picks up a small planter. That's the kind where a bartender would be growing some mint for cocktail purposes in, but when he shows it to me, yes, there is some mint in there, but it's absolutely buried in a veritable bouquet of flowers. No real rhyme or reason to them, just a bunch of local flowers you'd see in a forest or park strewn about, but actually planted in there. "That's what I got. Point at a patch of soil and think a little, bam, fuckin' flowers. Can't even make anything specific, so it's not like I could make some sort of flower shop or gardening business with it, it's just flowers. Fucking useless," he bemoans, and yeah, I guess I can see that.

Still... "Well, I think they're pretty," I reply, and it's not even meant to be an empty platitude. There's something wild about them, like they're just nature's expression rather than some sort of cohesive creation from human hands. A sort of chaotic, natural work of art. I don't know, maybe I'm talking out of my ass here, but I like it. He is right that it's not easily made commercial, and it's nothing that's going to impact lives, so it's very much a dud, but still...

To my surprise, I find the hint of a smile coming to his face. "You're just saying that shit, man. You don't mean it," he tells me, almost trying to convince himself of it, that obviously nobody could find such a dork-ass power to be worth something, but I really think I do.

"No, man, I mean it. That's really beautiful in a way. Like, I dunno, I think it's neat, anyway," I stammer, unable to put the more eloquent thoughts I have into words. "You... you wanna hang out? I got a little patch of grass with my ground floor apartment, and I think it could be wonderful if you worked your magic on it. And, I mean, if you wanna get drunk, we can do that at my place too, I got plenty of booze for bad nights," I then offer. For some reason, I'm moving really fast here, but something about this guy intrigues me. "Oh, I'm Matt, by the way," I finally add, holding out my hand.

Surprisingly enough, he accepts. Normals and supers don't really mesh, but then again, the supers that draw duds for their power are much closer to us normals than their other super brethren. "Greg. You know... yeah, I think I'm down," he says, and after I pound down the gin and tonic, we make our way out of the Last Call and walk the short distance over to the crappy little row house whose ground floor apartment I call my home.