[b]FULLER PARK
6:32 PM[/B]

[center][b][i]The "Ballsy Hero"[/i][/b][/center]

I heard words drifting in and out between the ringing in my ears, something about balls and cops and heroes and waking up. Yet like an early morning alarm screaming on your nightstand, the sound hardly registered as anything more than a part of your dreams. Only, I wasn’t dreaming. I wasn’t sure what it was that I was doing, technically. In a way, it reminded me of the one time I had been convinced to go to a party with my peers. In a desperate attempt to escape from the bore of socializing with a bunch of assholes, I had taken to drinking straight from a plastic, goliath sized bottle of vodka. At least that was what I was told by piecing together evidence from pictures on the Internet. All I know is that I spent the next morning on the floor, my entire body dehydrated and hurting as I stared at some strange ceiling and fought off the worst migraine of my young life. 

And like a hungover prick who’s still probably drunk, I reacted very poorly to outside stimulus. Normally when somebody felt their body get shaken while they were in some sort of sleep they’d do something about as drastic as opening their eyes, muttering under their breath, or even sitting up. Me? When I felt a hand push into side I was suddenly overwhelmed with the realization that I was in the middle of one of the most dangerous neighborhoods in Chicago taking a snooze after accidentally committing an act of terrorism. A hundred scenarios ran through my head of who I’d see when I opened my eyes. None of them were good—a dealer whose friend I busted, a cop who didn’t like people doing a better job than him, the ghost of Demolition Derby, one of the Iconoclasts waiting to collapse in my skull.

So I struck out in an attempt to blindly fight them and threw a kick out in the direction of the hand. Pain forced my eyes open as my shin cracked against something wooden and a yelp like a tiny dog being caught underfoot escaped from my lips before I could stop it. I rolled over in the trash and tucked my knee into my chest, rubbing my raw leg and making a mental note to purchase shinguards. I lowered  my mask down over my chin again and winced as some loose strands of black hair got pulled with it, but at the very least I could actually see now. A pair of goggles held up by a black bandanna was staring at me, although it was kind of hard to tell, and the wooden object my leg had lost to took on the shape of a bat, only it had all of these weird wires laced around it. It was the lightning bolt on the man’s chest that made me realize it was that other vigilante—Arc.

I didn’t know what to feel. I doubted that I had actually saved Arc, really. I heard him call me “hero”, but in my ears it had the tongue-biting tone ringing behind it like when somebody called a fat buy “tiny”. Still, I should’ve at least felt relieved that he hadn’t been murdered by the big bang. Yet there was a part of me that was disappointed, even angry that the man I had stuck my neck out for had been Arc. The baseball god of thunder had unjustifiably taken numerous lives in the past all under the pretense of justice. He wasn’t as bad as someone like Derby or Big Rig, but he was still a killer. Like I was now, technically. My body bristled at the thought. No, fuck that. The reason Derby was dead was because Arc forced me to act. The blood’s on both of their hands, not mine. The only thing I did was survive a massive explosion due to their cock-up. 

Yeah, that’s right. I managed to not only stop a terror attack with a taser but walk away to tell the tale. Fuck, what a rush, what a rush. 

[center][b][i]FLARE[/i][/b][/center]

Flare pushed themselves up, the black bags and loose trash shifting beneath their body as they tried to find a way to steady their body. Finding some kind of support on the crunched trashcan, the vigilante picked a piece of garbage off of their tactical vest and then looked over at Arc. A moment of silence fell between the two as Flare sized him up, deciding on whether or not they should even say anything. [i]Fuck it,[/i] they thought. They weren’t going to get far until their own feet steadied, and the odds that this person was both a recent graduate from their school as well as somebody who’d recognize the voice of that bitch who got expelled was unlikely.

“Yeah, I got some huge fucking brass balls. Enormous,” she said, her voice strained and weary. [i]About as much balls as I have brains.[/i] She held out her hand expectantly. “Well? You just going to leave me in the trash?”

Her hand fell before Arc had a chance to take it, dropping to where her taser should’ve been as a shadow emerged from the alley and into the burning street. Her fingers scrambled frantically over her vest, but her weapon was nowhere to be found—a quick glance to her right saw that it had been dropped a few yards from the trash pile that was now slowly turning into her place of residence. [i]Shit.[/i] Her fingers snapped the vibrantly marked pepper spray off of her chest, but by then the figure had already fully emerged. Flare’s hand relaxed as her eyes darted over the person: white jacket, toolbelt, black mask, pipes, spray paint—Toy King, if Flare remembered the moniker correctly. Why they were here was a mystery, however. Fuller Park never had any corporate fat cats hanging around its streets, and Flare somehow doubted Derby’s alter ego had been that of a board member. An eyebrow went up under Flare’s mask as Toy King made some kind of gesture.

“What the hell?” said Flare, unintentionally translating Toy King’s signing. 

To Flare, when they heard the term “ASL” they thought of creepy dudes in anonymous chat rooms. She shook her head in slight disbelief, her hood bouncing back and forth. She was going to ask the two of them what the hell they were doing in [i]her[/i] territory, but the familiar sound of sirens dipped between the tinnitus in her ears. Late as always. She hadn’t even fired off a flare, but with an explosion that big she didn’t need to—nor did she want to be tied to what had happened in Fuller Park.  A heavy sigh escaped from her lips, as if she was somehow upset and burdened by the other two for being there.

“Look, we can swap origin stories or whatever the hell it is that vigilantes do when they run into each other later,” she said. “Let’s get off of the streets.”

With that said she rolled off of the garbage, grabbed her taser, and began to unsteadily struggle to her feet.