It’s a gunshot that stops the crowd from getting any nearer to Skipper, like a full stop to all the chaos. I instinctively duck, grabbing Phoebe by the arm and pulling her close, but she’s already low, just like everyone else. The sound carries in the air, bouncing off the abandoned buildings surrounding us. Where? I look at the rooftops, the windows, but there’s nothing I can see. Heck, I can barely see compared to what I normally can. My senses feel so dull. They feel like they have been for the better part of my life before I got my powers, better yet, before I died a few days ago.

Suddenly, the world is a lot more bland and colorless, the volume turned down and the smells getting turned into whiffs that get snatched off into the wind. But gunpowder stinks. That’s something anyone can smell. And it comes from the men in the suits and the hats, specifically a guy in front of the group, his arm raised to the sky and a smoking silver gun directed at the sun. His hat shades the upper half of his face, leaving his face partly black, but the lower half of his stubble covered jaw is a mess of ugly scars and flesh wounds, as if the guy woke up this morning and used a lawn mower to trim his beard down to the skin. Slowly, carefully, he lowers his arm, but doesn’t put the gun away. He stares at us, and for a moment, it almost feels like we’ve locked eyes before he speaks.

“Nobody likes a brawl,” he says gravely. Cigarettes. Age. Maybe the mess of his mouth changing his voice into a baritone makes the wind ease up and the birds perched on old telephone poles scatter into the sky. “So how’s about you all calm down and go home. Find something else to do.” He slides the gun back into a holster behind his deep black blazer, leather-gloved hands easy with snapping the safety back on. “Skippa,” he says. “Come here.”

Skipper looks around, as if there’s someone else in a superhero costume to speak of, even pointing at his own chest. The man in the suit doesn’t bother saying anything else or even looking up from the piece of candy he’s put into his mouth, chewing down on it, making it splinter and crack and echo just like his gun had a second ago.

There’s something off about him, I think. Duh, you’d think the same, but there’s this feeling bubbling away underneath my skin, as if my blood is simmering, making me itch. My stomach tenses as he stops chewing and looks up from the dirt, hands in his pockets as we again lock eyes. They’re gray. So gray that I wonder if he’s blind or not. The feeling under my skin only gets worse, and it’s Phoebe who steps in front of me, staring at him dead. He tilts his head and smiles a little, as if amused by something, before Skipper slowly walks his way toward the man.

Right now would be an awesome time for my powers to come back, but nothing. I watch as the superhero nervously trudges toward the man, almost in a daze. What're you doing following his orders so easily! I want to shout, to make him stop.

'Cause people like the man in black look like they know how to deal with a Supe, however strong, but Skipper isn't a normal Supe. He doesn't have the drive for it. He fights here for the cash every other week, battered to hell and back for spare change.

Whatever his reason is for fighting, it's not strong enough inside him to make his legs pause.

Skipper stops in front of the man, his tattered cape loosely fluttering in the wind.

The man in the black suit stares him down long enough to make the Supe who just blew someone apart with a sneeze shuffle from foot to foot. I watch anxiously, my stomach in a boil, wondering what I should do now. These guys wanted Big Ben to win. They’re the big betters for whatever reason. But they also look like the kinds of guys who would not so gently leave you broken and battered in your bathtub with a note on your corpse telling the police you slipped and fell whilst taking a shower. Gangsters, maybe. Not sure. A frantic mind isn’t helping either.

The man jerks his head, a silent command to follow, as the group turns around to leave, Cape in tow.

Rather stupidly, my mouth works faster than my brain does. “Hey!” I shout. They stop. The man with the ugly mouth glances over his shoulder. Skipper fully turns around, some kind of hope in his eyes—a little too much hope for someone who can’t even fly right now, but fuck it. I can’t let this happen. Powers or not, I had a duty, didn't I? Some kind of responsibility or whatever. At least to her. Phoebe swears at me, asking what the fuck I’m doing as I walk across the grass and get about a few feet from the man in the suit, standing in front of Skipper. I put one fist on my hip and flip my hand out to the guy. “I bet on him. I was the only person to bet on him, and unless you’re gonna pay for my bus back home, then you’re gonna cough up my winning share, dude, and let my cash cow go.”

Him and his posse stare at me, like they’ve just watched a dog stand and start talking to them.

“Who the fuck does the broad think she’s talking to?” one of them asks, reaching for his coat.

"A bunch of bastard sore losers who want to steal my winner, that's who I'm talking to."

The man in front raises his hand, stopping his boys from putting one through me, then walks toward me. He towers over me, casting me in his shadow, and God, the feeling is only getting worse. It’s almost like an allergic reaction to getting this close to him. I feel like picking my skin off and washing every inch of it down to get rid of the pinpricks of painful heat running through it.

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I don’t step back, though, because he owes me my money, and Phoebe deserves lunch at least.

“How old are you?” he asks me, his breath a mix of foul smells underlined by the sweetness of candy.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it?”

He chuckles, then runs his tongue along the bottom row of his teeth. His eyes gleam, almost hungry, as he swallows the candy and continues. “Guess it don’t. Want your cash?” I splay out my hand even more in front of him. He slowly tilts his head. “Don’t just stand there. Take it from me, kid.” He pulls a wad of cash out and slides it inside his shirt’s chest pocket. “Want it? Prove you actually do, hotshot.”

Before I can even snatch it from his pocket, the back of his hand smacks against my jaw. I stumble back, the world a spinning mess as I taste blood, tounging a loose molar in my mouth. I shake my head, then spit blood onto the dirt. Fuck, that actually hurt. I can’t move my mouth without wincing, but that doesn’t stop me from trying again, getting my hand grabbed onto and a fist put so hard into my gut I puke into my mouth and collapse at his feet, hitting the dirt on my knees and gasping for air. I clutch my gut, feeling like my stomach is going to dribble out of my mouth just like my saliva. I hear Phoebe shout, then she’s beside me, arm around my shoulders, saying something. Then the man gets closer, slowly walking toward us, but it’s Skipper who stands in front of me, his arms spread and blanket-esque cape billowing, stopping the man in the suit from getting any closer to us.

“Move,” the man says. The crowd behind us has taken their cue to leave, meaning it’s only us and a pair of legs standing on their own somewhere behind us. Can’t think properly, though. My head is still spinning, and the ache of his knuckles in my stomach feels like a fiery prong pressing hard against my skin. “Move, you bastard.”

“N-no,” Skipper says. “”Y-you don’t h-hit kids. G-g-give her the money, and I’ll c-come with you.”

“What?” I wheeze. “Are you crazy? Look at these guys. Don’t go with them.” The only reason I didn’t come here to try to stop them from taking Skipper is because, well, what can they even do to stop him from coming?

For whatever reason, though, the man in black gets closer to Skipper. “You blew through our draw in less than a second, you filthy little fuck. We’ve got a boss who won’t be happy on what was supposed to be a sure fire win under any normal circumstance, but these ain’t normal circumstances. He’ll only be happy once he either gets a hand on your, or you work off your debt to him. This money? This ain’t hers. She wants it so badly, then she can die for it like any other little brat running around on these streets.” He pushes Skipper aside, making the Supe stumble as his feet trip over a pile of discarded cinder blocks. Phoebe and I both look up at him. “You still want your cash?”

Phoebe stands up, fists balled at her sides. He’s taller. Bigger. I try to get up, but my stomach heaves and sends an arch of pain lancing through my body. “I guess she forgot to use the magic words,” she says. “Fuck you.”

He would have hit Phoebe right there and then, if not for Skipper lunging at him.

It happens in a blink. One moment he’s in a heap on some old tires. The next, both of them are in a shallow divot in the dirt, dug up by how hard the landing was when Skipper smacked against him. At least, that’s what I think happens. It happened too fast for me to see. Too fast for any of us to really comprehend. I blink, and the man in black is suddenly not in front of us, and then we’re all battered by a blast of wind that sends all of us—guys in suits and both Phoebe and I—rolling backward, tossed like leaves in a harsh wind. I groan, Phoebe on top of me, also groaning as she rolls off and onto the dirt. I blink thoroughly as the dust settles again, making both of us cough up a lung as we get onto an elbow, watching as Skipper stands above the man in black, his cowl loose once more.

“How’s he moving so fast?” Phoebe asks quietly. “Skip barely even registers a Category on a normal day.”

He looks at us, as if we’ve caught his attention. Then we freeze.

His eyes are a stark burning blue, his jaw a line so hard, his smile a grin so garish, he doesn’t even look like a human being anymore. Both of us slowly get off the ground, aching and cut up, bleeding from noses and busted lips, watching as Skipper turns back around and grabs the somehow still alive man in black by the throat, lifting him with one hand above him. The man grunts, bearing his teeth as he clutches onto Skipper’s arm. Then he starts to slowly squeeze. Making the man’s face go redder and redder, his hat now gone, and his blonde hair a mess in the wind as his eyes go bloodshot and—Fuck, he’s gonna kill him. I stagger, then stumble, then run and shout, “Stop!”

To my surprise, he does actually stop. As if he’s broken out of a trance, Skip freezes, then drops him. The man gasps for air, tugging at his collar, loosening his tie as he drinks in air. His posse gathers like a flock of ravens, guns drawn, but not steadily. Not sure. Firing bullets at a Supe is never a smart idea. It can come back at you, or it can get absorbed and turned into something else entirely. It’s a gamble, and these guys aren’t very lucky with those.

I pant, hurting all over, as I say, “It’s fine. I don’t need the money. Just don’t kill him.”

“He hurt you,” Skipper says. His voice is different. Deeper, more hollow, coming not from his chest but someplace else. Even his mouth moves strangely, like the words he’s saying are a bad translation to what’s actually coming out of it. That, and he’s stopped stuttering. And once more, his eyes burn blue. “He’ll hurt others. He’s hurt so many. You can feel it, his essence of hate. It crawls through your body, Chosen. Through your blood. It makes you ill with unease for this man of depravity. The Earth deserves to be cleansed of the maggot-filled corpses who spread their diseases far and wide. The world must heal. And it will heal through extermination. Through purity.” I’ve heard this voice before. But I can’t place it. Not before he lifts his foot over the man’s head, staring him down.

Just like you would a roach before killing it.