It has been years, and it feels like it will never end.
This month, like every other month since our city has become a target, we have been subjected to four attacks. An explosion which damaged half of an office building downtown. An attempted robbery of an armored truck. A hostage situation at a community fair in the suburbs. And a shootout in the middle of our streets.
Yes, there is crime. This might seem nothing compared to what the CPD deals with every day. But this is targeted.
This is Snitch Gravel.
This is stopped by people who have no obligation to do so, but put their lives on the line to rid us of the menace.
These crimes have zero casualties because of them.
We are all familiar with the Grant brothers. Former adventurers, they now risk everything to watch over Chicago and prevent this mad man from hurting anyone.
Snitch Gravel
No one remembers who he really is, and anyone who might know is either dead or not talking. But everyone does know that he started out here, in this very city, and that his reign of terror started 25 years ago with the Saint Agnes riots.
Responsible for the death of over 20 students, he and his band of misfits fled the city like rats abandoning a sinking ship. The police lost their trace and there were rumors he was dead.
Those rumors ended after twenty years, after he tried to eradicate the children of the man who brought him out in the open, Freider Grant.
His fate has become clear over the past two years. His resources are limitless, his appetite for death and destruction just the same. His targets are still those innocent young men and everyone around them.
So far, he has been unsuccessful. So far, we have been lucky.
Our Guardian Angels
By now, we all know who they are. The press has been following them around constantly since they last faced Snitch Gravel abroad, three years ago. There are more details and rumors about their lives than one lone article could ever cover.
Maybe we are wrong to leech on their energy when they only use it to save us. Maybe we should let them keep their masks and bury their capes and lead a normal life when not saving people.
Sam and Tom Grant are students, Sam with a very predictable history major and Tom with a very surprising genetic engineering one.
Christine Palmer, Sam's long term girlfriend, is also in college, even of she changes her majors as often as she changes her shoes.
Angie Jones, Tom's girlfriend, has just started law school.
Kay Dickens works in forensics for CPD, and Kyle Grant is unsurprisingly the youngest leaders one of our city's SWAT units has ever had.
They have lives, they have careers. And yet, they risk their safety for us time and time again.
Back From Out of Town
Gone for years to study, Jimmy and Jerry are back in town together with Jessie Stefani.
Jimmy has finished MIT in record time while Jessie has come back with a pre-med Harvard degree and has started med school here in Chicago.
Jerry Grant has also returned from his internship with NASA and is currently still working for them from the comfort of his own home, coming and going as his job requires.
After years, the team is back together. And the joy to have found each other again shows as recent pictures have given us a more relaxed feel.
We should let them be. We should appreciate the angels watching over Chicago and not try to pluck their feathers.
If you see them, leave them alone. They want their privacy. They want their peace. They want to figure themselves out like the rest of us.
Just admire them from a distance.
Let them fly.
Let them live.
Article by L. Stanley
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