Riley buried his face into his desk. “Someone asked me out again today.”

Miles looked up from his phone. “For real? You’ve been bitching all week about not having a girlfriend.”

Riley looked up to glare at Miles. “By a man. I was asked out by a man.”

Miles couldn’t suppress a grin at that. “And what’s wrong about that? Maybe you need to be more open-minded.”

“Nnnnggghh,” was the only response Miles got from Riley. Miles took this as a sign to keep teasing him. 

“You know, maybe you gotta embrace your feminine side. This is, what, the ninth time this week? I’ve seen girls cry when they see you. You’ve been asked out by actors and football quarterbacks, and every girl I know is jealous. And the boys… well, they’re too busy staring at your legs.”

Riley was quiet for a long time. Miles began to wonder if Riley was seriously considering it until he realized that his friend was vibrating. Riley was shaking with rage, the intensity slowly increasing. 

Miles had been friends with Riley for a long time. Ever since fifth grade, when Miles had worked up the courage to ask out Riley and woke up eight hours later with several bruises. At a certain point, when you were friends with a person with such a severe temper, you learned not to piss them off too much. Yelling? Sure. Punching? Completely healthy. Shaking? Run in the opposite direction. 

Miles quickly backpedaled, not taking his eyes off Riley. He tapped his teacher on the shoulder, swallowing and improvising some excuse about having a stomachache. 

As soon as he was out of the school, he ran. He couldn’t go home, Riley knew where he lived. That was okay, he had a couple bunkers for cases like this. Riley was known to chase him a couple miles when he got even a little ticked off. Full blown anger though, Miles was not prepared to deal with. 

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No one was. 

Riley began to breathe in and out slowly, using the breathing exercises his therapist taught him. He was still vibrating, that was unavoidable, but hopefully it would blow over by the end of school. Which was in three hours. 

Riley just couldn’t help it, he was so angry. It felt like he was choking and couldn’t breathe, the only way for it to end being to hurt someone. 

He sighed. Whatever. He was used to this. 

As he walked home from school, his anger began to deflate. It was silly to be so angry, he should just relax. Anger did nothing for him—

“Hey,” yelled a voice from behind Riley. “Gimme all your money!” 

Riley turned to see a man in all black, his face obscured by a black ski mask. What a comical representation of the criminal community, he thought. 

He sucker-punched the man in the stomach!

The man doubled over, wheezing for breath as he tried to formulate a response. But Riley wouldn’t let him!

He kneed the man in the face!

As the man twitched on the ground, Riley pulled out his phone, typing the familiar numbers. It was… disturbing… how many criminals he drew. Did he look like an easy target or something? Something to consider.  

The number you are calling is not available at this time…

Huh. Riley didn’t know that was possible. He supposed that he had formed a sort of overreliance on the concept of the authority of police authority and this had not considered that even the police was capable of such a possibility. Or maybe Riley was overthinking things. 

…not available-available- at th-this t-t-timmmmmmmmm

The phone in Riley’s hands became hot and began to vibrate violently, much like Riley himself when angry. He dropped it, swearing. As he watched, the phone’s screen began to flicker with random colors swirling in a sickening vortex. At once, the colors faded into darkness, leaving only a blue rectangle on the screen. 

Welcome to the beginning of the system integration of the 434th universe. Beginning tutorial. 

A moment later, the same blue screen appeared in front of Riley’s eyes in the real world. 

Well now. That wasn’t normal.