Nice asses.
That was the thought that drifted through David's mind as he leaned back in the cracked leather booth, nursing a glass of something cheap and brown. The stripper on stage was bent over, arching her back, twerking to some bass-heavy track that made the walls vibrate. Her ass was round and tan, jiggling with every movement, catching the neon pink lighting that bathed the whole club in a sickly glow.
He watched her with the enthusiasm of a man viewing paint dry.
"David."
He blinked. Looked up.
Rory was standing at the edge of his booth, arms crossed, her leather jacket straining against her chest. She was shorter than him, with a compact, athletic build, and hair that was dyed a bright crimson, cut short in a practical bob. Her amber eyes were narrowed, her jaw set, and she looked at him like he was something she'd scraped off her shoe.
"...Rory. Hey, girl." He flashed her a grin that was all teeth. "It's been a while. You look good."
"Don't 'hey girl' me, you piece of shit." She slid into the booth across from him, her voice low and sharp. "I've been looking for you for two weeks. I finally found you."
"Took you that long?" He took a sip of his drink, raising an eyebrow. "I thought I was being subtle."
"You were jacking off in a public park, David. That's not subtle."
"...I wasn't jacking off, I was taking a nap."
"You had your hand down your pants."
"IT WAS ITCHY."
She pinched the bridge of her nose, exhaling slowly.
"Unbelievable. You're unbelievable, you know that? I've been scouring the city for you because I thought you might be in trouble. And instead, I find you in a strip club at 10 AM on a Saturday, drinking like it's your last day on Earth, watching some poor girl shake her tits to a song about... whatever this garbage is."
"It's a classic, actually. Blake Shelton."
"I don't care if it's Beethoven, you need to get your shit together and come back."
David took another sip of his drink.
"No thanks."
"...What do you mean, 'no thanks'?"
"I mean no thanks, Rory. I'm not coming back." He gestured around him with the glass, a lazy sweep. "This is my life now. Strip clubs, cheap alcohol, and no rules. It's simple. I like it."
She stared at him, disbelief written clear on her face.
"Get the fuck out of here. You're telling me this is what you want? This is what you're doing with your life? Wasting your powers on getting drunk and watching strippers?"
"It's a living."
"It's a disgrace."
David shrugged. "Call it whatever you want."
Rory leaned forward, her voice dropping low enough that only he could hear it.
"This isn't you, David. I know what happened. I know what happened with—"
"Don't."
His voice was flat. Cold. The grin on his face had evaporated like it had never been there.
Rory stopped.
"...I'm sorry. I know it's still painful."
"Then why are you bringing it up?"
"Because you're throwing your life away! You were one of the best rookies in the agency. You could have been A-rank by now. You could have been making a difference. Instead, you're—" She looked around, disgust at the club painted across her face. "—here."
"I'm making a difference. In my own way. I take out drug dealers. I stop muggings. I do what I want, when I want, without having to answer to some corporate suit who's more interested in brand deals than justice."
"Bullshit. You know that's bullshit. You're not helping anyone, David. You're just running away. You're hiding."
"I'm not hiding from anything."
"You're hiding from everything." Her eyes were hard, glistening with something. "You're hiding from the truth. What happened to — it wasn't your fault."
David slammed his glass down on the table.
The sound echoed through the club. A few people turned to look, then quickly looked away when they saw the look on his face.
"Don't," he said again, his voice a low growl. "Don't you fucking dare."
"I'm just trying to—"
"You don't know anything, Rory. You don't know what it was like. You weren't there. You didn't see the way she looked at me. You didn't see her eyes when she realized that I was leaving her behind. You didn't hear the sound she made when—"
He stopped. His jaw was tight, his eyes burning.
"Forget it. Just... leave me alone."
Rory stared at him for a long moment. Something shifted in her expression. Anger. Hurt. And a little bit of pity that made David's stomach turn.
"...Fine. If that's what you want, then fine."
She slid out of the booth. Her drink untouched.
"Just so you know, the agency has been trying to find you for months because we need speedsters. The Gate Surge is getting worse. We're losing people. We need every hand we can get."
"Then hire someone else."
"There is no one else." She paused, her back still to him. "You were the best of us, David. Maybe you don't believe that anymore. But you were."
She walked away. Her footsteps echoed on the sticky floor, fading into the thumping bass and the jangle of the stripper's pasties as she collected her dollar bills.
David watched her go.
He ordered another drink.
"..."
When the drink came, he downed it. The liquid burned its way down his throat, and he closed his eyes, letting the darkness take over.
He didn't sleep much these days.
When he did, he saw her.
He ordered another drink. Then another. The first one was still burning a hole in his stomach, but he didn't care anymore.
At this point, he thought, what was the point of even pretending to be sober? The day had started with a dead-end hangover and found its way to a dead-end conversation. Maybe he should just stop the pretense and drink until he couldn't remember his own name.
As he brought the glass to his lips, his mind drifted to the alley last night. The pale kid with the dead-eyed stare and the crumpled phone.
...He felt a flicker of something. Guilt? Nah. Maybe that's too generous.
She wouldn't have liked that.
The thought came unbidden, and he frowned into his drink.
She wouldn't have liked a lot of things about you, Collins. She wouldn't have liked the drinking. The strip clubs. The way you've been coasting through life like a ghost.
She definitely wouldn't have liked seeing you throw some random kid into a wall just because he was being a little shit.
He sighed, running a hand through his short hair.
The kid had it coming, though. Really, what kind of idiot tries to blackmail a speedster? It was practically a public service, teaching him a lesson. You don't grab a tiger's tail and expect a hug.
But the look in the kid's eyes at the end...
He'd been smiling. Beaten, bleeding, phone shattered, and he'd been smiling.
Yeah, that's what a concussion does to you, I guess.
The stripper finished her set, her round ass jiggling as she gave one final shake. She looked over at him and winked, a practiced gesture she probably gave every guy who'd been sitting there for more than two drinks.
David didn't even react. He probably did her before. Maybe. Did he? The days blurred together, one indistinguishable from the next.
He was just another piece of meat in this city, and she was just another pair of tits. They'd probably hooked up at some point, or maybe he'd just imagined it. Whatever. It all mixed together in his head these days. The alcohol pickled any memory that tried to form.
He was on his fourth drink, the world starting to blur at the edges, when he felt a presence settle into the seat across from him.
"Yo! And we meet again."
David blinked.
The pale kid from the alley.
The same messy black hair. The same dark circles under his eyes. The same hoodie, now slightly more torn and dirty than last night. He was nursing a soft drink, not alcohol, and wearing an annoying smile on his face.
For a moment, David thought he was imagining it. His eyes narrowed, squinting through the haze of cheap whiskey.
"No fucking way..."
"Way!" The kid took a sip of his soda. "Small world, right? Or maybe not so small. This city's got like eight million people, and I still run into you twice in twelve hours. What are the odds?"
David stared at him, his brain chugging through the thought process.
"...How did you find me?"
"Just got lucky, I guess. Saw a familiar face and thought I'd say hi." He raised his cup. "No hard feelings about yesterday, right? I was being a bit of a prick, I'll admit that. But you smashed my phone. I think we're even now."
"You were filming me!"
"And you broke my stuff. Even Steven."
"That's—" David stopped. Sighed. "That's not how that works."
"Sounds like it works that way to me."
David opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. This kid was... exhausting.
He should just leave. He should get up and walk out of this club and find a new place to get drunk, somewhere far away from this creepy little stalker.
But instead, he leaned back and sighed.
"What do you want, kid?"
"I was in the neighborhood. Saw the lights. Thought I'd grab a drink." He raised his soda again. "What about you? You look like you're having a rough day."
"That's... a way to put it."
"I saw the redhead storming out earlier. Girlfriend trouble?"
"None of your business."
"Right, right. My bad." The kid took another sip, unbothered. "So... you come here often?"
David stared at him.
"...Are you hitting on me?"
"No! Gross. God no, I'm not hitting on you. I'm just making conversation."
"You're bad at it."
"Yeah, I get that a lot."
They sat in awkward silence for a moment. The stripper on stage was now wearing a cowboy hat and nothing else, twerking to some country song that the DJ probably thought was ironic.
The kid, who David had definitely not come to think of as "that creepy alley kid," looked around the club with a curiosity that wasn't quite normal.
"So, this is your scene? What, you come here to get drunk and watch girls shake their ass for ones?"
"What's it to you?"
"Just curious. Seems kind of sad, honestly."
"Excuse me?"
"Not in a mean way. Just... you're a hero. You can run, like, 200 kilometers an hour. You could be out there stopping crimes or saving kittens or whatever heroes do. Instead, you're here, drinking cheap booze and watching strippers at 10 AM."
David's eye twitched.
"For your information, I'm not a hero anymore. I'm a vigilante."
"Same thing, different title."
"It's not the same thing."
"Could've fooled me."
David wanted to reach over and smack the smug smile off the kid's face. But he remembered what had happened last time, and the guilt—faint as it was—nagged at him. He shouldn't've thrown the kid into that wall.
...No. He shouldn't have done it.
That's what they'd made him. A guy who'll break anyone who gets in his way.
"Listen, kid. I don't know why you're here. But if you're looking for a handout or something, you're wasting your time. I'm broke."
"I'm not looking for a handout." The kid's smile widened. "Just wanted to see if you were okay. You seem like you got a lot on your mind."
David opened his mouth to respond—something sarcastic, probably, or maybe just a grunt to get the kid to leave him alone—when movement caught his eye.
A group of men in bizarre, mismatched suits slipped through a door backstage. The door was marked "EMPLOYEES ONLY" but it was the kind of door that looked like it might have had a bouncer in front of it if the club had been classier. The men wore an assortment of leather jackets, ski masks, and cheap-looking armor plates. One of them had a hockey mask. Another had a bandana tied around his face like some kind of bargain-bin ninja.
David's eyes narrowed.
So they're doing this now?
The Alleyway Boys. A two-bit gang of D-rank and E-rank superpowered scum who thought they were the next big thing in Calder City's underworld. They'd been making noise for a few months—petty theft, intimidation, the occasional drug deal. Nothing that would get the big heroes involved, but enough to make the local vigilantes twitch.
David had heard through the grapevine that they were meeting with another crew here today. A big shipment. Something that would put a lot of drugs on the street.
And he was here because he'd decided, in his own drunken, half-hearted way, that maybe he'd try to do something about it.
Or maybe he'd just decided to drink until the world went away.
Either way.
The kid beside him also noticed the men. His head turned, and those dark eyes tracked the group as they disappeared through the backstage door.
"Woah, their costumes are way too flashy. What superhero agency are they from?"
David snorted.
"Not superheroes."
"Huh... then they are—"
"Villains. The Alleyway Boys. A bunch of small-time gangbangers with powers that aren't worth the paper their IDs are printed on." David took a long sip of his drink. "They're here for a drug deal. The Shades of the city, some other crew. They're gonna meet backstage and work out a deal for a shipment of some new street drug that's been making the rounds."
The kid's eyebrows rose.
"Wait, for real? And you're just... sitting here?"
"What do you expect me to do? Charge in and stop them?"
"I mean... kinda? I don't know. You're a hero. Isn't that what heroes do?"
"I told you, I'm not a hero. I'm a vigilante. There's a difference."
"What difference?"
"Heroes get paid to fight crime. Vigilantes pick their battles." David's eyes flicked toward the backstage door. "And sometimes they don't pick any at all."
The kid was quiet for a moment, processing that.
"So... you're just gonna let them do their deal? Even though they're selling drugs that'll probably ruin a bunch of lives?"
"It's not my problem."
"But you could stop them."
"It's still not my problem."
"Then why are you here?"
David hesitated.
Why was he here? He'd told himself it was recon. That he was just scoping the place out, seeing if there was an opportunity to do something. But maybe he'd just been looking for an excuse to drink in a place where no one would judge him.
Maybe he wanted to feel close to something that mattered, even if he couldn't actually do anything about it.
"I'm here to drink," he said finally. "And if you know what's better for you, you'd better leave this place right now, kid."
"I'm not leaving."
"Did you hear what I said? There's gonna be a drug deal going down in the next hour. Men with guns. Superpowers. The kind of people who don't care if a random kid gets caught in the crossfire."
"I heard you."
"And?"
"And I'm staying."
David stared at the kid, genuinely confused.
"You're insane."
"Probably." The kid shrugged. "But I'm also curious. What happens if the deal goes well?"
David blinked, thrown off by the sudden shift in tone.
"...If it goes well, they'll probably pay for everyone's drinks. They do that, sometimes. Keep the locals happy so they'll look the other way."
"That's actually kinda smart, in a scummy way."
"Yeah."
"Oh! And if it went bad?"
"Heh, then they will—"
*POP POP POP POP POP!*
Gunfire erupted from backstage. Rapid, chaotic, the sound of automatic weapons going off in a confined space. Overlaid with it were shouts, screaming, and the sound of glass shattering.
The stripper on stage froze. The music screeched to a halt. For a moment, the entire club was silent.
Then, as if a switch had been flipped, chaos erupted.
Patrons screamed. Bottles crashed to the floor. People dove for cover, overturning tables and chairs. The bartender ducked behind the counter, pulling out what looked like a shotgun from under the bar.
The kid turned to David, eyes wide.
David sighed, set down his drink, and stood up.
"This happens."