[b]CHINATOWN, CHICAGO
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14, 2016
6:10 PM[/b]

[center][i][b]The Deadbeat[/b][/i][/center]

Friday night. At some point in my youth I was programmed to believe that this night, out of all of the nights of the week, was the greatest of nights—excluding the night before Christmas or New Year, or the night of Thanksgiving where we all gathered in the family’s car after overeating to engage in a binge of consumerism and herd mentality, ready to pop some bitch in the mouth over a Wii. Teenage pop stars sing songs written by forty-year-old white dudes about how great it is that it’s Friday night. For people my age, Friday night’s the night to go to some party full of people you don’t really like and listen to those aforementioned shitty songs  turned up way too loud so you don’t have to realize that nobody actually has anything to talk about and they’re all just regurgitating some bullshit they saw on Reddit. Meanwhile, the whole time you’re drinking cheap light beer and vodka that comes in plastic bottles with the hope that by the end of the night you’ll lose enough of your self-conscious or your self-respect to makeout with somebody you’re not really attracted to and maybe get to third base before one of you throws up, pisses themselves, and ruins the mood.

Of course, for me it means delivering Chinese food to the losers who stay home on a Friday night. Families who don’t want to subject waitresses to the abject horror that is their young children. Fratty dudes who’d rather play video games then put up with the ten dollar parking just so they can spend another fistful of cash buying drinks for women who will ultimately go home with some other douchebag. Old widowers who answer their door in various stages of undress that nobody deserves to witness. The losers who don’t get invited to the parties. Losers like me, although I’d never be caught dead at one of those parties anyway. Still, I’d rather be in my room reading a book or finding an all-ages show that I can ride my bike to than delivering Kung Pao Chicken to delightful people that think the delivery fee covers the need to give me a tip. 

I complain, but in actuality the worst part of the job is how slow it was. As it turns out, a Chinese restaurant run by a Polish chef who got fired from every kitchen he ever worked in just wasn’t that popular in Chinatown. Mostly it’s because the food was absolute garbage, but it didn’t help that the store looked like a complete shithole. The restaurant has the aesthetic and feel of a laundromat, between its buzzing fluorescent lights, its stark white walls, and even its old arcade machine that no longer works. There are a few tables, hardly more than cheap card tables with folding chairs, but even with less than ten spots to sit it’s an unrealistically optimistic setup. A small tube television hung on the wall, and a spider had taken to using the antenna as a support beam when building its house. There’s a red door that leads to the kitchen behind a sparse counter and underneath a sign with sad, sad pictures of the menu, although I completely refused to go beyond the door out of fear of black mold. Usually my shifts consisted of me sitting in an uncomfortable, plastic chair while thumbing through my phone and pretending to be texting somebody important, trying to avoid having any conversations with my uncle, the aforementioned “chef”. 

Tonight was no different. Well, except for the fact that I might die tonight—but even I didn’t know that as I peered over the screen of my obsolete smartphone at the subtitled news broadcast. I saw the word “Iconoclasts” and I tensed up. I hated myself for reacting like that, because for the last week I had been jumping at the very mention of their name like a crackhead who heard sirens. I thought about running away when I first heard them announce my hometown as their next target—yeah, for two whole fucking seconds before I shoved that idea out the window. But it bothered me that I had the thought it in the first place. Turning and running, putting my brother in danger, yeah right. I shook my head and smiled as the news report shifted over to the world of sports. Part of me hoped that the Iconoclasts striked tonight. If they did, I’d put them in their place and light up the damn sky like it was the Fourth of fucking July.

A strangely wet plastic bag radiating a rather lethal smell plopped down in my lap. Man, I really, really hoped tonight was the night—anything was better than working, especially working a job that made me bike a forty minute round trip to Fuller Park for a ten dollar ticket. Still, it was better than spending the rest of my life stuck in that uncomfortable chair. I zipped up my hoodie and grabbed my backpack from underneath the table. Throwing it over my shoulder, I picked my bicycle up from where it leaned against the wall and wheeled it outside where, of course, it was raining and already getting dark. I nearly threw my back out with a sigh as I uncaringly dropped the plastic bag in the bike’s basket and jumped on, spinning my way through the emptying Chinatown streets.

Fuck Friday nights. 

[b]FULLER PARK
6:27 PM[/b]

[center][i][b]Flare[/b][/i][/center]

They had intended to ignore it at first when they overheard their scanner make mention of an armed vigilante in Fuller Park. After all, what purpose did Flare have dealing with other vigilantes? True, they didn’t like how some of their contemporaries deemed they were justified in their murders, but as long as they didn’t harm any innocents then Flare could shrug it off as a necessary evil. Besides, only an idiot would want someone like that lunatic, redneck trucker or the creep with the fetish for genital mutilation on their back. There was an unwritten rule in the vigilante community: don’t fuck with me, I don’t fuck with you. Unfortunately, there was a second unwritten rule, a sort of exemption clause. The way Flare saw it, vigilantes who harmed innocents were just criminals wearing stupid costumes. No exceptions. Plus, assholes like that gave the rest of vigilantes that tried to do some actual good a bad rap.

So, Flare dumped the sack of food into a trash can; somebody would be going hungry tonight, but at least they’d have a home to be hungry in. Already, while dressed as a civvie, the vigilante had been passed by enough running people to know that the situation was bad. When they not only heard but felt the explosion that rocked through the neighborhood they had veered their bike into an alley, unlocked and unzipped their backpack, and quickly upgraded their already dark outfit with a tactical vest and a black airsoft mask. Snapping on gloves, Flare flipped their phone off and stashed it in their backpack, securing the bag to their bike and chaining that through a loop on the green dumpster. The last thing the vigilante wanted to do while fighting crime was become a victim of a crime of opportunity. 

Sticking to the service alleys and side roads, Flare made their way towards the explosions as the blackened sky above threatened to flood the whole city and sink it into Lake Michigan—all things considered, a small improvement. The only sound they made were the quiet splashes of their feet in the water pooling in the divots and potholes as they sprinted past gray cans overflowing with loose trash and cardboard shelters slowly being demolished by the rain. There was enough light out still that Flare could see black smoke rising over the low rooftops, adding itself into the swirl of storm clouds above. Squeezing between two old and vandalized buildings, Flare could feel burning alcohol vapors sting their eyes and choke their throat as they approached the street. They could see the pyre now as it roared with an unnerving ferocity, the cool rain waters doing little to quell its fury as it licked at the edges of a neighboring building.

The inferno was almost as loud as the asshole throwing all the goddamn bombs and yelling into the void like a doomsday preacher.

One week and a hundred and forty-something years ago, the Great Chicago Fire was allegedly started by some old lady’s cow kicking over a lantern in some barn. Or maybe it was a bunch of gamblers. Hell, Flare didn’t care how it was really started. They just knew that three hundred people died because nobody reacted fast enough to the crisis, thinking that surely someone else would be their with a bucket of water to put out the blaze. Well, that, and back then everything was made out of kindling, so they were kind of screwed in the first place. Regardless, Flare wouldn’t be able to sleep at night if they let someone as idiotic, careless, and racist as Demolition fucking Derby wipe out an entire neighborhood and go down in history as the starter of the Second, Slightly Shittier Chicago Fire. 

Still, even though Demoliton Derby was never the most stable of vigilantes, it disturbed Flare how he had been driven by the threat of the Iconoclasts to act so irrational. The threat had already come little more than a week ago, and already Flare had seen plenty of evidence that their words had affected the city and its vigilantes. Namely, the amount of crimes that went unpunished had risen in the past few days, and the amount of reports about vigilante activity in the area had fallen. It seemed to Flare that the only vigilantes left in the city were like Demolition Derby, absolutely crazy and showing it, or like themself, also crazy but better at hiding it. Flare pitied the man almost as much as they hated him—both of Flare’s parents had been [i]filthy[/i] immigrants after all, and their cheeks burned with a heat that wasn’t from the nearby blaze. Still, he was just misguided, little different than the gangbangers that he believed he was throwing bombs at. Regardless, they had to stop him before he hurted someone, even if that meant crippling him.

Unfortunately, anger and a loose sense of justice weren’t enough to stop a mad bomber that casually lobbed bombs like they were delivering papers while screaming challenges that echoed off of the emptied streets. Normally, Flare would take their time stalking their target, engaging them only when they knew that they were alone and lulled into a false sense of security; with Demolition Derby, every passing second was enough time for him to destroy somebody’s livelihood if not their life. Also, normally their targets were armed with at most a glock and the delusion that having a positive kill-death ratio in Call of Duty meant they knew how to actually shoot a real gun. With the way Demolition Derby was acting, it wouldn’t shock Flare if he took a play out of the “filthy immigrants” book that he so hated and wore a special vest set to explode himself and half of the block underneath his ugly suit. If Flare had to get close, it could get ugly for them.

And to make matters worse, Flare [i]had[/i] to get close. Even with their fancy pepper spray gun, their mace only had a range of about twenty five feet while their taser shot only about fifteen feet. Flare didn’t know much about explosives, but they assumed that was too close for comfort. If it was a summer blockbuster, Flare could pull out their orange flare gun, step into the streets like some dueling cowboy, and hit Demolition Derby in just the right spot to trigger a chain reaction of explosions that’d even make Michael Bay call bullshit. Of course, in reality that’d be next to impossible. The flare would corkscrew past Derby’s stupid little hat and smash into somebody’s window, where it’d probably start a fire and put Derby one step closer to purging the entire city. Flare should’ve just kept one of those stolen guns they lifted from dealers instead of tossing them off of the pier in a fruitless, one-person attempt to disarm the city. 

[i]Fuck it, let’s wing it.[/i] Probably the last thought of every vigilante ever, excluding [i]I can make that jump[/i].

Checking to make sure that no other idiots were in the streets, Flare stepped out of the alley and crouched behind a stoop. They estimated that Derby was about a hundred paces away; that gave Flare plenty of steps to fuck up and make enough noise so that Derby could turn around and spot them. It also gave them enough steps to realize what a terrible idea this had been and turn back, leaving Derby up to the SWAT or any vigilantes that were more qualified for the job (which was most of them). More than anything, though, it gave Flare plenty of time to get hyped. Adrenaline coursed through their body and the sound of their quickened heart beat in their ear as they pulled out their switchblade, quietly dashing behind a large blue mailbox. They had never taken out a terrorist before. Beneath the mask, Flare smirked. No matter what happened, it’d be a blast.