A few years ago…
“What makes Ali one of the greatest of all time?”
Wes sat on a bench in the corner of the GBG, breathing heavily. It was a late spring afternoon, and the old ceiling fan was only spinning around muggy air rather than actually cooling them down. His gloves and wraps lay in a heap at his feet. He was bruised and battered for sure - Hart was the better fighter and a good partner, but one thing he hadn’t mastered was how to properly pull his punches during sparring. Wes rubbed a spot on his cheek that was already beginning to darken as he looked up balefully into Coach Grayson’s eyes. Black diamonds in a deep nest of crows-feet.
“Huh?”
“Hart didn’t smack you around hard enough for you to be that spacey. You heard what I said.”
“I mean, like, everything, I guess.” Wes cocked his head slightly. The question seemed obvious. The legend, the GOAT, a heavyweight that moved like a lightweight, a peerless athlete standing atop the shoulders of all the giants that had come before. “He was in a league of his own.”
“Nah. Not about his boxin’. That’s plain as day for anyone watching to see. I’m asking, what made the individual Muhammad Ali one of the greatest people of all time?”
“Dunno.” Wes sensed a lecture behind the rhetorical question, and opted to take a long drink of unfortunately lukewarm water. The squeezy-top tasted like sweat - though that might just have been the inside of his mouth.
“Ali refused the draft in ‘67, at the ripe age of 25, in the prime of his career, just having been crowned heavyweight champ. And still!” Coach Grayson grabbed Wes’ wrist suddenly, and yanked the young man to his feet with surprising strength. The bottle clunked to the floor, spilling. Though Wes was taller than the coach, the coach’s eyes burned into him, igniting the bubbling mix of exhausted frustration in his gut.
“His boxin’ was never the same after he came back. Was still stellar, no doubt - but conventional. Went to the rope-a-dope instead of his old no-guard style. Why?”
“Jesus, what’s your deal?” Wes grimaced as he yanked his hand away. “We’re done for the day. I’m wiped. Can’t the history lesson wait, old man?” But that was about all the defense he could muster. Lacking both in the ring and outside it, he thought sourly.
“It’s about mental fight, Wes. Ali was the real deal, both inside the ring and out. He was willing to give up the most important thing in his life - his boxing - for his beliefs.” The fire that had filled Coach Grayson dimmed, and he sighed. “That’s what you’re missing.”
“With all due respect, Coach,” Wes turned around and began picking up his belongings. “I don’t really know how to work on that. Tell me to watch for body shots while throwing hooks, or work on smoother double-jab footwork, or something.” Still not turning around, he rolled his shoulders, as if that would release the tension. “How am I supposed to become, what, a badass? Like Ali?”
“No. You’re you, and the GOAT’s a GOAT. No offence.” Though Wes had turned around, he could hear the shrug in his coach’s voice. “But you’re not fighting to win.”
“ ’Scuse you?”
“You’re takin’ hits that you don’t need to be taking. Risks without big payoffs. Smiling like an idiot. Ain’t nothing wrong with enjoying the match, but you’re an adrenaline junkie. Fighting to fight. Not to win.”
Wes balled his hands into fists. The welts where the wraps had been tied a little too tightly ached. He said nothing, and didn’t turn around. He couldn’t trust his face not to show how forlorn he felt.
“You’re from the same Towers I am, Wes. You know junkies as well as I do. They’re all trying to escape, right? Into dope, booze, sex. Boxing.” He felt a gnarled hand gently clap him on the shoulder.
“What are you running from?”
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A metal table sailed through the air and slammed into a gaggle of NG, bowling them over like pins. Wes laughed - though he still couldn’t hear it - as he grabbed one of the remaining chairs from the other table he’d kicked over as cover from the various glasses, bottles and other missiles sailing through the air in their general direction. Behind the DJ’s mixer, Penelope darted off shots that were plenty accurate enough to knock the stragglers that made it through his defensive area out cold. Occasionally, Wes caught a blaze of purple light when she’d needed to invoke her ability to hit a particularly persistent raver.
Wes’ initial burst of supernatural power had allowed them to push through the uncoordinated first wave. From the dance floor, they had slowly progressed up and vaguely to the left as the crowd had attempted to rush them. Though the ravers were numerous, they were jerky and uncoordinated, as well as still seemingly retaining some sense of intelligence - or at least, enough to not run into Wes wildly slinging a table at them after the third time. For now, they had backed off into a rough semicircle between them and the door.
Wes saw Penelope’s mouth move, but he couldn’t make out the words. Something with one syllable, a part of his brain that wasn’t cackling supplied. “Bar”? “Us?” A particularly brave raver took his chance while Wes was distracted and unsteadily jerked towards the left side of the kicked-over table. Pain exploded across the left side of his face along with a spray of black stars and fragments of green glass. He gritted his teeth, and felt a warm trickle of blood begin to run down his face, tasting metal. In one motion, Wes whirled around with an outstretched, burning-red backfist. Wes felt the raver’s jaw CRUNCH, and the force was enough to cause him to sail a full meter through the air over the impromptu barricade, back the way he came.
Wes angrily made a chopping motion forward, towards the door. We have to push through. Penelope nodded, and shoved her slingshot inside her jacket, instead drawing her automatic. She held out three fingers. Wes nodded in understanding, and she trained her gun on the mixer box. Neo-N had long since left the scene, taking his case with him.
Three. Wes grabbed the center supporting pole that would’ve held the table up if it weren’t already sideways.
Two. He hefted it up as if it were a bag of groceries. The part of his mind still able to count noted that he probably wouldn’t have been able to do that a week ago.
One. He turned to the crowd of about sixty ravers total, and figured he’d probably have to go through about ten. Wes crouched down slightly, ready to explode forward, his grip tightening around the newly christened battering ram.
“Come and get it, you drooling fucks!”
Wes couldn’t hear the shots, but the bright muzzle flash striking harsh contrast against the grungy UV was enough. At the same time, the ravers tottered slightly, as if they had all heard the same strange noise outside. He roared, and charged. Penelope following close behind, he sprinted forward, uncaring, barreling through anything and everything in his way. Discarded phones shattered underfoot. Broken glass sprayed. Unconscious bodies crunched.
His vision tunneled in, as if he was experiencing G-forces in a jet fighter. NG were batted aside like rag dolls and sent sprawling. A girl in a sequined top had her left arm and side caught and flew straight over the pair, smacking spread-eagled into a ceiling pipe. A man with a mohawk wasn’t so lucky, and was lifted off his feet, carried forward by Wes’ momentum - Wes spared a glance backward to see Penelope mouth the same word again, not even seeing or sensing the NG pinned to the front of the ram - straight into the front door.
With a titanic CRASH, the locked doors flew open. Wes let go of the ram, and both the table and the man with the mohawk were catapulted into the middle of the street. The stone table bounced off the asphalt before coming to a spark-spraying stop near their van. Wes skidded to a stop, and quickly scanned for cars. His hearing was still out. He grabbed unconscious mohawked NG by the collar and hefted him back onto the sidewalk with one arm, and called out.
“I’ll drive!”
Penelope vigorously shook her head, then flinched her head right in alarm, and began sprinting across the intersection. She dived just as Wes followed her gaze to see a long, white vehicle emblazoned with fluorescent graffiti careen around the corner and come to a rough, grinding halt. UV light oozed from polarized windows, setting off the N.G. 4 EVA in bright pink spray painted over the hood. Though he couldn’t hear, he felt a spray of gravel and smelled the hot chemical tang of burning rubber. As he grabbed the roof of the van and threw himself into the driver’s seat, turning the key in the ignition and feeling the van rumble to life at an agonizing speed, Wes thought:
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Ah. She meant “bus”.
“Shoot out the tires!”
Penelope says something, but he can’t make it out. Wes looks at Penelope blankly as he shifts the car into reverse and begins to agonizingly pull away from the sidewalk and the bus. She shakes her head in frustration, breathes on the window, and in the patch of misty glass writes a number 7, then X’s it out.
“Are you out of bullets?”
She seems to consider it for a second, then nods. Wes detected a that’s not the whole story, but with more NG disembarking from the bus, there wasn’t time. Marv’s words echoed in his head. Only Neo-N’s inner circle was around late, and nothing was sadder than hanging out in a dead club. The only conclusion - the party moved, got smaller, more intimate.
“Our guy’s on that bus.”
As if in response, the party bus’ high beams blazed to life, causing Wes to wince and shut his eyes. The light blasted straight through his eyelids, coloring his vision red. Around him, he felt the van begin to move. He opened his eyes, squinting into the glare, and watched as the bus bore down on them menacingly. It accelerated slowly, but surely - that mass holding it back at the moment smashing into them at full force would flatten them into red paste.
Wes heard the van’s engine rev, and felt the sparks of power licking up his spine and down his arms begin to lose their heat. In place of the sharp buzz of adrenaline burning across his nerves, a cold knot of fear - the anxiety that he could lose this match - began to grind together in his gut. Across from him, a distant rumble signaled that the bus was ready as well. His hearing had come back, despite the earplugs. A bad time. The engines of both vehicles burned, and neither moved. Sharp chemicals and exhaust flavored the air.
“They’re fucking playing chicken with us.” Penelope breathed. Wes ground his teeth together. Although the van was smaller and faster, he would have to make a high-speed reverse turn around a sharp corner. If he gunned it, there was no guarantee of safety, and there was more reverse racing in store directly after. If he took it slow, the bus only had to travel forward. It had every advantage.
Wes spoke with gritted teeth, eyes facing forward, foot the barest distance away from the clutch pedal. “If you can’t use your powers, can you still nail the windshield?”
Penelope loaded up a ball bearing and yanked the elastic all the way back with a grunt of effort. “Yeah.”
“On my go, then.”
Wes imagined the masked visage of the DJ behind the polarized glass of the party bus, strobing obnoxious colors. His knuckles tightened on the steering wheel. The bus’ high beams flashed on and off briefly, goading him into action. He held. He heard Penelope curse, saw her arms shake with the effort of keeping tension on the band without shooting it just yet -
The bus’ wheels began to spin.
“Go!”
Penelope leaned her upper body down to her ribcage out the window as the bus roared forward. The shot flew straight into the bus’ windshield, punching a finger-sized hole into the lower right quadrant of the glass. Fine-lined cracks spiderwebbed through the safety glass of the entire windshield like a sheet of lake ice. At the same time, Wes floored the clutch and the accelerator while spinning the steering wheel hard to the left. The van screeched in protest as the gears ground together and the van jerked backwards, drunkenly careening around the bend in reverse. Wes desperately craned his neck from the rearview mirrors to try and look through the back window, only to realize the mound of gear blocked his view.
“Would it fucking kill you to clean this thing out?!”
Penelope drew back inside, looked where Wes was looking and her eyes widened -
“Watch the left!”
Wes heard the bus roar as it turned the corner, and made the mistake of looking up. Metal ground against concrete in a shearing cacophony as the lengthy bus attempted to turn an unforeseen tight corner at high speed. The right headlamp of the bus exploded in a shower of sparks as it violently shattered against a fire hydrant. The left flank of the bus had the white paint scoured from it in a long, angry rent that stretched from the middle to near the indicator light.
The fireworks were abruptly interrupted by a CRASH and a juddering impact that threw Wes and Penelope forward in their seats. Wes’ forehead painfully smacked against his knuckles as his upper body rebounded off of the headrest and chair. Penelope’s seatbelt kept her from jolting forward, and as they came to a sudden halt, she turned slowly to Wes, face set half in exasperation, half in panic.
“There was a fucking streetlamp there, Wes.”
Wes rubbed the sore spot on his forehead. “The bus’s stuck too. First things first, we have to get lost. Like, right now.”
“It’s a company van…” Penelope looked at the caved-in back left side of the van. The boot door had crumpled and torn along the damaged side, exposing the contents of the van.
“We’re not getting the car out of this mess unless we’re still around to drive it!”
“Shit.” Penelope swore. She unbuckled her seat belt and watched as the bus continued to struggle to grind around the corner. It was making progress, and shedding pieces of hot metal like so much confetti. “Fine.”
They dropped out of the van into a deserted street save for a red SUV. Wes broke into a jog as he approached the car and Penelope did from the opposite side. The car seemed vaguely familiar to Wes, but they would have gone into a full run past the car if not for the voice that stage-whispered from inside.
“Hey! You guys! In here!”
Wes paused. “Marv?”
A figure in a hood in the driver’s seat stirred in a gangly, sleepy way that could only be Marv. “Who else would be dumb enough to follow you around? Get in!”
The bus appeared to have gotten itself jammed in the corner. It slowly began to reverse and correct its angle, the rent along its side being scratched ever deeper in the process. Wes slunk quickly into the shotgun seat, and Penelope folded herself into the back. Marv, as casually as he could, began to make a 180-degree turn away from the scene.
“Why’d you follow us?” Penelope asked, warily.
“Had a hunch you’d be in trouble.” Marv sighed. “No more, no less. And look where I found you.”
The bus gave up, and a door near the front hissed open. Tough-looking men and women began to climb out, all wearing LCD masks in the same vein as Neo-N’s, in addition to large headphones similar to his. They all held various weapons - Wes spotted baseball bats, hammers and pocket knives. Wes swallowed a lump of fear in his throat as an overbearing man in a tank top with a fire axe jumped down the stairs.
“Fuck me.” Marv whispered. “Lie down flat. Don’t let ‘em see you.”
The gang ambled slowly towards Penelope's van, and spread out in a shaggy circle, hefting their weapons. The largest thug cocked his head slightly to the left as he inspected the driver’s and passenger doors. He turned to the pack, and shook his head. With eerie synchronization, the group then simultaneously turned to Marv’s car. They silently crowded around, masked faces staring at the car, unblinking.
One of the masks stepped forward. His mask had pink X’d-out eyes in neon tubing, setting off his similarly pick shock of hair. Wes, crouched in a tight ball under the glove compartment, breathed in sharply. Thinking quickly, he pulled his newly-cracked phone out of his pocket. Pink-hair leaned close into the driver’s side, and Marv instinctively drew back. He hefted a crowbar across his shoulder. He leaned closer and closer, until Wes heard a clack and his mask pressed up against the glass -
Vmmm. The window wound down. Wes heard Marv fight to keep down a wave of panic. “So!” He cleared his throat. Pink-hair stayed put, inscrutable. “You guys are, uh, out a bit late.” Marv’s voice wound down as the large man with the fire axe circled around to Wes’ side. Wes quietly sucked in as much air as he could, and exhaled through his nose, relaxing every limb in turn. Just a bag in the passenger seat. Random lump of stuff in a stoner’s car.
Simultaneously, every single NG surrounding therm perks up. They flinch upward in unison, as if on a bungee cord, and turn around. Slowly but steadily, they pile back onto the bus. When the last NG is out of sight, Wes breathes a huge sigh of relief. He hears a similar exhale from the back seat.
“Holy shit. I owe you big, man. Whatever you need.” Wes unfolded his long limbs out of the cramped foot-rest area of the passenger seat, and stretched as far as he could in his chair. In front of them, the bus finally unjammed itself after minutes of shuffling back and forth. Gingerly, it reversed out of the corner and out of sight.
“Don’t sweat it.” Marv’s voice shook, and Wes noticed, so did his hands on the wheel. He laid a reassuring hand on Marv’s shoulder, accidentally smearing blood on the already ratty hoodie. Wes flinched his hand back, but Marv didn’t notice.
Penelope sat back up in the back seat, throwing off the bags and detritus covering her. She cracked her knuckles experimentally, and for a moment, Wes saw the faint outline of her power shroud her head - but not the usual electric violet; this was a harsh, contrasting black with a white outline, like a photo-negative or an x-ray in 3D.
She sighed as she cast her eyes back to the front to the ruined company car.
“That’s coming out of our pay.”
“Our?” Wes tentatively asked.
“Yep.” Penelope shook her head.
“What if I told you I had something that might make up for the van?” Wes tendered, with his most winning - and slightly bloody - smile. He placed his phone down on the armrest between the drivers’ and passenger seats, and hit play. On screen, a shaky video from under the seat of the NG approaching their car.
Penelope raised an eyebrow and leaned closer.
The camera turned over to the driver’s side and zoomed in on a shock of pink hair, as well as a similarly pink mask.
Penelope smiled.
“I’d say that’s a start.”