[center] [b]12:01 PM, November 3rd
 The Wedge; Hub City[/b]

[img]https://i.imgur.com/H5kYOij.jpg[/img]

It was Sunday.

That meant no school, and [i]that[/i] meant Karen Hernandez was a very happy camper.

Her father was at church right now, so she had the house all to herself. He kept trying to push her to go, but she honestly wanted nothing to do with that crap anymore. She had never really believed in God to begin with, and after what happened with her mother, she just didn’t have the patience to even pretend.

Kicking back on her couch, the twelve-year-old clicked the remote as their television flashed on to reveal a man being kicked in the nuts by a goat. Already it felt like she making a more productive use of her Sunday than hearing the same sermon for the fifteenth time.

Most of her community was religious – a mix of Catholic and Protestant, to be precise. Brothers and sisters in Christ, sworn to honor thy neighbor and disavow murder.

[i]Boy[/i] did they ever fail to take [i]that[/i] lesson to heart, as the crack of a distant gunshot reminded her.

[i]The Wedge[/i] was no place for loving your enemy. It was an urban wasteland of gang violence and drug trafficking. [i]The 4th Street Crew[/i] and [i]Spring Grove Boys[/i] were competing to see who could wreck the place harder, it was great. Gone were the days when they actually, you know, [i]looked out[/i] for their neighborhoods. Good motives tended to decay like that when their leaders get ambitious.

Tomorrow she would have to head back to school, which meant another day where her life was potentially on the line. They didn’t [i]usually[/i] mess with a kid like her, but this was a place the cops had given up on, and she wasn’t about to forget what that meant.

“Hmm…wasn’t there something on today I kind of wanted to see?” Karen muttered to herself, kicking her legs over the armrest of the couch as she lay sprawled across it. Flipping through the channels, she picked her brain for the answer. It wasn’t a series or anything, so that was out. Maybe it was—

“Oh shit, that’s right!” She sat up, punching in the number for the sports channel. “Chris Ives is fighting that little guy, right? What was his name…” [/center]