Gas stations are almost as controversial as villains themselves. They provide a service, but their dealings are shifty at best and contribute greatly to the failing of the environment and often, the economy. Although, despite their downfalls and their carbon footprints and their marine-murdering oil spills, gas stations do come in handy a great deal—especially when you are on the run at night or starving at one o'clock in the morning after swimming all the way to the mainland from a certain central volcano. Their coffees might not be satisfying following a rough night of drying out all your soggy notebooks and hiding from camera drones, but the other curios they provide can certainly improve a grisly situation. For example, a new hat can be purchased to hide your receding hairline and double as a disguise. You can buy a handheld fan to help speed up the recovery of your critical notes. You could even buy fireworks and a lighter to take out a few unwelcome drones with style.

Or, you could buy several gallons of weed killer, ten bags of ice and a cooler, a pack of sodas, a box of wine, and assorted snacks, then be on your way. Tobias was not used to shopping with teenagers and hadn't the energy to say no to them when he placed his ice, wine, and weed killer on the counter and watched the pile grow through tired eyes.

Dizzy slid the pack of sodas next to a gallon of weed killer. Milk Chocolate added chocolate milk and a box of cereal on top. Hiccup added a few packets of potato chips, a bag of gummy worms, and a couple tubes of trail mix. They each said thank you and waited patiently nearby to take their things while he fingered, frowning, through a wad of cash.

Tobias handed the payment to the cashier and picked up as many of the weed killer jugs as he could carry.

"Looks like you've got a lotta weeds, eh?" the cashier remarked offhandedly, sliding the register drawer shut.

"Are you paid enough to care?" Tobias returned snidely.

The cashier shrugged. "Nope."

Tobias sniffed and looked to his young companions, who had taken their own items from the bench and left his pile alone. He frowned and gestured to his things with a nod. "Give me a hand, girls, if you please."

Hiccup moaned and tilted her head back. She dropped her hoard of treats into Milk Chocolate's arms and dragged her feet over to the counter. The smallest girl waddled out the sliding doors towards the van while the others started to pick up what was left.

They filled their arms and each left the store, laden. Hiccup raced to get back to her snacks, the cooler balanced on her back, filled with unopened ice bags. Though she moved as fast as she could, the weight slowed her greatly.

Dizzy bumped into Tobias's shoulder, causing him to stagger under the weight of the jugs in his grip. She grinned lopsidedly. Her spiky hair was flopping, the gel wearing out. "What are you frowning about, Doc? For a couple of kids and a cripple, we did pretty good tonight. We should celebrate."

Tobias's mind was stuck on the moment in his recent past where he should have said "no" to three teenagers. He blinked and readjusted his jugs. "Cripple. I wouldn't say that. Although, now that you bring it up, I have been considering getting a cane. After tonight, I realized that having to actively think about taking a step every time that I take a step with this prosthetic really taxes my stamina. I'm unused to it."

"You must have missed when I said, we should celebrate." Dizzy, rolling her eyes, pushed her cargo into the back of the van. Hiccup started to arrange everything in the space.

"I didn't miss it." Tobias carefully passed his things to Hiccup, then bent to rub his sore stub over his baggy jeans. The doctors in the hospital, following the bomb incident, had shortened it when they had inserted the prosthetic.

Milk Chocolate jumped down from the van and paced absently by the gas pump, swinging her legs out extra far to stretch.

"Now, don't go opening that, Annie," Tobias scolded quickly, catching her gloves wrapping around the cap of her chocolate milk. She pouted at him and he shook his head and straightened out. "It is the middle of the night. We need you to get some sleep, not go bouncing off the walls."

Dizzy snickered, Hiccup groaned.

"I bet you're more tired than I am," Milk Chocolate mumbled, folding her arms. She sat on the ground, cross-legged, and glared at Tobias out of the corner of her eye.

"I haven't been drinking copious amounts of soda," Tobias returned. He bent over the back of the van, and shook out a pair of blue latex gloves from a pocket. "Dust yourself off, climb inside, and try and sleep, please. That goes for all of you. Get some sleep."

Dizzy took a can of soda from her pack, grinning.

"That includes you, Dizzy." Tobias earned Hiccup's attention with a wave of his hand. "Ellie, could you please empty as many bags of ice as can fit into that cooler? Then push it over to me."

Dizzy frowned. "But, I'm driving." While he was preoccupied, she slid her hand quickly in and out of his pocket, taking a roll of dollar bills.

His face scrunched and, though he held his clean gloved hands away from her, he eyed the money and the girl with a warning look. "Dizzy, for the love of..."

She took out a few bills and came towards him again. He flinched away, until he realized she was only returning the roll to where it had come from. "Relax, Doc." Her lips twisted in a familiar smirk and she waved the money. "If you want a cane, now's a good time to get one."

Tobias's brows knit.

Dizzy bent over Milk Chocolate and traded her the money for her chocolate milk. "See if you can find a cane that will match his costume, how about it?"

The younger girl nodded, her lips peeling from her teeth excitedly. Dizzy helped her up and she skipped back to the gas station store. Dizzy tossed the chocolate milk into the van.

Tobias looked away from her when the cooler of ice came into his reach. He smiled and thanked Hiccup, then pulled a jar from his hoodie's pocket.

"Dizzy, you deserve a rest. I will drive." Tobias very carefully opened the jar and took out a sealed plastic bag marked with a yellow hazard symbol. He dug a hole in the ice and very gently lay the bag into it, then brushed ice over the top. He closed the cooler. The remaining seven bags of ice were piled on top of one another in a long steel box along the side of the van—a box once used for tool storage by the previous owners.

Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.

Hiccup puffed up her cheeks, looking from him to the cooler. She draped her gangly, freckled arms over the top of it, giving it a hug.

"Can I see what it looks like? The virus? Please, Doctor?"

He shook his head. "It is dangerous and I don't want the bag opened yet, I'm afraid. I promise it isn't as interesting to look at as you are imagining." He stood back to squint at the doors of the store as they slid open. Milk Chocolate shuffled out, wielding a green and black wooden cane like a sorcerer's staff between both small hands. She waved it around every couple of steps.

Hiccup moaned and slid off the cooler to the floor. "No fun."

"Yeah, no fun," Dizzy groused, draping herself against one of the open doors of the van. "No celebration, no virus, no nothing."

"I'm sorry." Tobias combed his fingers through his oily hair, cringing at the unclean feeling. "Maybe tomorrow. Let's just try and get some rest, now. Please."

Hiccup dragged the cooler nearer to the rest of the ice, then sat in front of him on the back of the van, dangling her legs over the edge. She picked up a pack of chips and tossed it from hand to hand. "Don't we have to go get the key to the volcano place, still?"

"We're an hour away from the docks, where the realtor is meeting us." He pulled off his gloves and threw them in the nearby bin. They sank into piles of window-cleaning wipes. "Sleep while you can, Ellie."

"You can't drive," Dizzy pointed out, giving him one of her blandest red-eyed looks. "I'm either going to open this can or drive with double-vision, Doc."

He opened his mouth to argue, but the can hissed before he could, and he dragged his hand over his prosthetic face.

"I can try to drive if you would like to sleep," he offered meekly. "You have been very helpful already, and I feel as if I am asking too much of you."

Milk Chocolate presented him his new walking stick; a bumpy thing with an almost flat handle. She kneeled as if presenting a sword to a knight. "A cane for gramps."

Tobias scowled and rolled his eyes, taking the stick. "Thank you, Annie."

"You just point me in the right direction and steel your wits, Doc. I haven't been in Central Benediction before." Dizzy lifted Milk Chocolate up and into the van, then closed the doors. She walked around to the driver's seat and climbed inside and Tobias, after a reluctant sigh, shuffled to the passenger's side and buckled his seatbelt, cane between his legs.

***

Golden lights washed the docks in a thin barrier against the night's encompassing dark. Tobias left all three girls in the van when he stepped out. They parked against a boathouse, hidden in its shadow. Red lights blinked from boats. Green lights, blue lights. Small dots of every color speckled the water; a black mass flickering with white and red reflections from the moon, from the volcano.

A slender figure leaned against a lamppost, bathed in its light, dressed smartly in a fully black suit. It was the kind of lighting that reminded you that it was dark. It was the kind of lighting that made you uneasy, suspicious. It was the kind of lighting that strained your eyes and weighed on your senses.

Waves climbed the barnacled sea wall. They lapped at the supports beneath the dock, mocking wet footsteps. Tobias stepped out of the dark, gripping his new cane. There was nothing to fear from the realtor, as far as he could detect. Possible futures depicted low chances of the woman turning away Tobias's business, but no sign of violence.

"Good evening," Tobias greeted, approaching carefully. It felt wrong to do business in the dark. Shady and sneaky and against his ingrained heroic nature. Corruption and evil always seemed to cultivate and thrive in hours such as these.

The realtor extended her hand to him, coming away from the lamppost. "Good morning."

It was that time already, indeed.

Tobias eyed her manicured nails wearily, hesitant. He wasn't wearing gloves. He pursed his lips and very lightly slipped his hand into her grip. "The payment should go through by eight, tomorrow," he assured.

She turned his blackened hand over in hers and marveled at his missing fingers. He flinched away and hid the injuries beneath his left hand on top of the cane's head. The realtor smiled at him. "Powerful Real Estate takes pride in the connections we maintain to assure fast business without a hitch, no questions asked." Her eyes flicked to his fingers briefly, then returned to his bespectacled gaze. She reached behind herself to pick up a clipboard. A pen dangled from a cord attached to the clip, marked with the company's palm tree logo. "The money was received. If you sign the legal agreements I have prepared for you, the property deed will be yours. It comes with a boat for transport, left by the previous owner, which has a built-in transmitter that opens the lower lair entrance. Blueprints are under one of the seats, for your convenience. The facilities are state-of-the-art and run on a combination of solar, thermal, and hydropower. Broadcasting connections and internet signals will be turned on from eight o'clock in the morning tomorrow and all passwords will be reset... assuming that you sign the required papers tonight. Do you have any questions?"

Tobias frowned thoughtfully, taking the clipboard. He leaned his cane against the lamppost and began to read the lengthy pages. It was in a record short amount of time that he gave up on reading, heaving one long sigh. He wanted the volcano lair, and that was final. No condition in their terms and agreements, their NDAs, or their insurance policies would change that.

The fallen hero pushed up his spectacles and raised his gaze resignedly to his company. "What name do you have me under?"

"We were given your non-typical alias." The woman's eyes narrowed briefly, wandering over his person, lingering on his titanium leg. Her teeth bared to him in a perfect smile behind lipstick the color of blood. "Doctor Chance."

Tobias stepped back, straightening sharply. Breath escaped him in a harsh huff. The pen fell from his grasp. His brows sunk low. "That name cannot be made public."

"Thanks to our personal non-typical team and our company connections, we can reinforce that no names will be released to the public or the authorities unless your end of the agreement is broken. You can be assured that your identity is in safe hands with Powerful Real Estate." Her hands clasped neatly and she spoke with the confidence of someone who had said all the same words many times before. "We have many reclusive non-typicals in lairs across the nation; most of whom even Higher Defense Headquarters does not know of."

The churning black below seized his senses as he sunk into the depths of thought. A salty taste, an oily smell. The powerful splashing of polluted Central Benediction seawater against crumbling cement filled his ears—reminiscent of the thick magma that sloshed from the cracks of the island. Powerful Real Estate sold to villains without discrimination. They had a reputation for hiding identities and brushing unethical sales under the rug. He would only need the property for a handful of days, he thought. What did he have to lose? A shred of ethical controversy now would mean nothing over the ethical battlefield in his looming future.

He reigned in the pen by its cord and took it in his blackened hand. The smooth plastic ached against the palest patches of his palm. In a trembling cursive scrawl, his new hero—some may argue with the use of hero—identity filled eight lines over twenty-three pages of small printed text that made his weary eyes go cross.

The realtor watched him drag his shaky hand over each page until the pages ran out. She smiled and took the clipboard and pen back. In exchange, she drew a ring of assorted keys from her blazer's pocket and passed them into his grip. The metals jangled until he slipped them consciously into the pouch of his hoodie.

"That's all?" he asked uncertainly.

She gestured along the dock to a long, low motorboat. Its aluminum hull glinted. The call of the waters seemed to echo through it. "This is your chariot. It has been a pleasure doing business with you, Doctor. If you have any concerns, do not hesitate to contact Powerful Real Estate by anonymous e-mail. Thank you, and may you enjoy the rest of your morning."

Her receding black heels filled his vision, his eyebrows sinking towards the ground. He felt the keys in his pocket and turned back towards the boat. After fetching the girls and loading up the boat, perhaps, if odds were in his favor, he might be granted some much-needed sleep. He smiled thinly at the notion and picked up his cane, starting back towards the van.

Oh, what he would give for a nap.