Nate continued glaring at the TV, as the silver haired man at the podium who sounded like Tom Hanks concluded his short speech. “You’d think they’d have learned from Nixon’s antics” he growled unhappily. “But no, instead these people make Linderman look like Honest Abe. Or they would, if they didn’t fuck everything up so badly”.
After President Worf’s second term came to an end and the election of President Barker as a seeming backlash by conservatives, the world was more polarised than ever. And Evos of course got caught in the middle - vilified by one side and a cause celebre for the other, his own actions certainly hadn’t helped. For every Evo that appeared on a reality TV show or made the news as a feel-good community story, there was yet another preacher spewing hate insisting that they were “demons in human clothing” and “abominations before the eyes of God” or yet another moron blaming vaccines for causing their kids to start fires in their crib.
The regulations on Evos had tightened - no longer allowed to serve in the military, with new regulations put in place restricting work and medical assistance, and even talk of them being rounded up as a “danger to humanity” as the new President ranted and raved, those once considered the next leap in human history were once again hiding. Watching the neighbourhoods and each other’s doors became second nature.
Of course, that was for the majority - the “green-tagged” people with harmless or useless powers, who were still allowed to walk around freely as long as they knew their place. For red-tags, flagged in the system as possessing dangerous powers or as involved with the Petrelli movement, it was worse - living in hiding in the abandoned places for some, and the houses owned by so many offshore shell corporations finding the actual owner was a needle in a planet of needles for others.
The movement did their best to help out, with people like Rebel and Kane regularly getting into the computer systems and wreaking havoc with every database they could find - but in this they were hindered by Quislings, powered individuals who preferred to suck up to power and turn against their own kind. Every time the resistance gained ground they had it pulled out from under them.
And people had died - a counterprotestor at a hate rally who was mowed down, a group of right-wing rioters killed when the masked vigilante the Internet had dubbed Warhammer dropped a truck on them from a barricade. The President screamed and railed about “criminals that would be dealt with in the STRONGEST MANNER!” while all around both sides tried to put out the fires. Thankfully, nobody with nucleokinetic powers like Ted had decided to get involved in either side - the thought of a human nuke popping up in this mess made Nate shudder and unconsciously rub his face.
Among all this, Russia had decided to get in on the action - using cyberpropaganda to fan the flames on all sides to the extent there was a report made on whether Barker had actually conspired with them. Arrests had been made, people had been imprisoned, and everyone was on tenterhooks waiting for the next news bomb. A brave new world indeed, he mused as the talking heads on TV started to babble away.
Claire sighed as she heard Nathan speak. “You’re forgetting, most voters now are too young to remember Nixon. And most people have no idea what it’s like as an Evo.” God, she hated that term. But there was no better term out there. Yeah, they were ‘the evolved people’, but did they really have to make it sound so impersonal? They were still people, after all?
Claire was lucky. Although she wasn’t considered a green tag because of all the implications that rapid cellular regeneration brought, she wasn’t considered a red tag because of her very public non-violent protests. People knew she wasn’t out there to hurt anyone. She had made it a point to speak about how most people with abilities wanted to just be normal people, wanted to do normal things. And, lucky for her, most people seemed to believe her... at least about herself. The government still kept a rather keen eye. She would always see a half-dozen suits at her rallies, but what could you do about that? Stopping them would only make people think that she was scared. And the government didn’t scare her. No, it was the general public, the ones that made it their business to wipe the Evos off the map that scared her. She doubted they’d actually manage to do anything to her, but what about Nathan? What about Micah? Or Molly? Mohinder? And what about their loved ones, the ones without powers?
Slowly, her gaze turned to Nathan. “Maybe it’s time to try your hand at politics again? Show people you’ve learned from your mistakes? Can’t be worse then what we have right now.” Besides, now he would have his own butt on the line if things don’t end out well, but still. Who better to show the world that you can be both?... if the public even allowed him with Peter’s movement using the name ‘Petrelli’. She had tried to mitigate the fallout in that by taking Petrelli as her own surname for her public image, that and to protect the Bennet-side of her family.
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