Speedster carefully finished packing the hooker's corpse into the garbage disposal unit with his foot. Man, it was such bullshit he had to do all this extra work.

Last week, he had gotten sloppy and Brick had spotted a severed arm he left laying on the floor. Another three or six more times of that, and he might get in hot water. Like a 3% pay cut!

He was really running out of excuses.

The sudden escalating tremors proved his dutifulness was the right call, as the gorilla once again opened his door, just tearing through the locks like it always did. And gorilla'd its way in front of Speedster.

"What do you think you're doing, Speedie?"

"Uh, just, you know, living. In my apartment?"

Brick snorted. "I bet." He leaned close, his glare could cut a pumpkin. "I'm watching you, Speedie." His breath could kill a banana.

Then he stomped out and slammed the door. A dead hooker fell to the floor, dislodged from where it was packed in the rafters.

"Damn it Brick..."

----------------------------------------

Speedster wasn't any different from any other guy. He just wanted to have fun and collect a paycheck. Why was the world so cruel?

But unfortunately he had a quota of exactly one crime he had to bust per day, or he'd be put on probation. If he was tired of how much up his ass Brick was now, he shuddered to imagine how deep he would go if he was on probation.

So now he was on the street, scanning through the hazard control reports. Typical stuff: a crowd of people seemed to be performing a devil summoning ritual, a car suspected to be haunted by a shark, someone's dog got hit by a car...

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Haah... it all blended together after the first week of Summer. At least it looks like the doggo was alright. Not quite sure what a "Buzzer transplant" was but that wasn't his job, now was it?

"Hey buster, you gotta pay the toll."

A cold chill ran up his back. Looking down, there was some mutie kid standing by his tiny mutie friend, who was holding an oversized mutie toy gun at him.

Oh no.

Kids are truly blessed by the heavens. Trying to fight them physically was a hopeless endeavor: if you fought them and lost, you were the pathetic loser who got beat up by a kid. If you fought them and won, you were the piece of shit that'd beat up a kid. The math says there's no winning move there.

Worse than that, the world itself seemed like it gave them divine protection beyond mere social norms: the one time Speedster had tried it was a disaster. He kicked one brat, one time, and he spent months shitting blood into the toilet.

The eggheads at the lab published a thesis on the phenomenon called 'This Isn't That Kind of Anime.' He'd never read of course, but he still heard about it.

Speedster instinctively resorted to the one tool that he had, and zoomed away so fast the aftershock shattered windows. Nothing in the world was worth suffering through another bout of rot-ass. Nothing.

Once he was a couple dozen zones away, he felt like it was safe enough to stop and take a breather. But then his spine began to tingle again.

"Hey buster, you gotta pay your speeding ticket. You were going too fast!"