Yinyue can kick a door clean open with a prosthetic leg. I was not aware of that particular ability of hers until her and Flare had a fight. The front door of the little auto repair shop slammed open and the first thing I saw was her hook shaped leg prosthetic jutting out. It made me wonder how legal it was to hit someone with one of those in a sanctioned martial arts match. That's way harder than a normal foot, and she wouldn't feel a thing when she hit someone with it. It wasn't a usual time for her to head off to a martial arts practice, but she would sometimes go at unusual times anyways. The direction was wrong though. I'd know. The vast majority of my life was spent either doing crappy odd jobs to make enough money to eat, or watching like a hawk to make sure two people in particular lived peaceful lives. That's why I was surprised with the direction Yinyue went. Reasonably, she'd go to wherever the heck her martial arts studio was and beat the crap out of her fellow students, but this time she took a different turn. Flare was probably inside obsessively tinkering like he always did when he was upset, so I decided to follow Yinyue and make sure she was okay.
Yinyue's coping mechanism was pretty unique. While maintaining a loud and clear scream, she broke the lock off of a shed on the property with one bare hand, ran in, grabbed a sealed paint bucket, left, threw the paint bucket at a wall so hard that the top popped off and paint spilled everywhere, then grabbed the bucket and thrust her face deep into the red paint. She came out with the entire top portion of her head dripping with red paint. The screaming did not cease until she wiped the paint out of her eyes, threw the paint a great distance, and marched off. That was the moment I learned to truly fear Yinyue.
I had never actually seen the place where Yinyue went to study martial arts before, but it didn't really seem to matter. She checked her phone, then dashed off in a direction. Nothing out of the ordinary. Then a fire truck followed, five police cars, an actual swat van, four trucks full of hicks with guns, and an ambulance. The traditional Oklahoma "Y'all screwed up" package that I'd become so familiar with. This meant trouble. I shimmied down from the rooftop I was using to watch over everyone, absolutely destroying their rain gutter in the process, shoved a kid off an electric scooter, realized the scooter was too slow, threw it into a bush, and started running in the direction of the crime. Vigilantism is utilitarian. I might have screwed up that kid's day, but it was to save lives.
I started to make some headway on catching up with the various emergency vehicles, at which point, they exited the little residential area I was in, shot up to 70 miles an hour, and left me panting and wheezing. Okay. Bad. Bad idea. All the training I did ten years ago and definitely had not kept up with in no way prepared me to run the speed of an actual car. Leaning on a pole for moral and physical support, I saw a tacked on paper advertising some sort of taxi service. Cool. Good enough. I had a flip phone from several decades ago, and I was very prepared to use it.
"Crazy Carlo's Taxi Extravaganza, how can I help you?" said a male voice on the other end.
"Pick me up at... umm... I think I'm in Bricktown? There's a German deli right near me." I replied.
"Cool. I know the place. I'll be there in 5 minutes." Said the voice.
6 or 7 minutes later, the "taxi" arrived, and revealed itself to be a yellow VW bug with an aggressively large spoiler. I stepped into the taxi, said a polite "hi" to the driver without really looking, then stared out the window.
"Holy crap." Said the driver.
"What?" I asked.
"Are you October? October from Alaska?" Asked the voice.
"Who's asking OHMYNOIT'SYOU" I stammered, realizing that my driver was Flare. I tried and failed to push the hair out of my face. "Oh hey there. Just on a quick trip to OKC, no big deal, I've been touring the world, meeting tons of interesting singles in my area with all the copious amounts of money that I make on a daily basis with my incredibly successful career and all and I just thought I might take a taxi somewhere no big deal why do you ask?"
"I was really worried about you. You went off the grid ten years ago! I wasn't sure if you were dead, or arrested, or like... In space or something." Flare replied.
"Nope. Just chillin'. Making the big bucks. Turtlebacks for days." I said.
"Congratulations!" Flare said. "I didn't think normal life would fit you so well, but I'm really happy for you. Where do you want to go?"
I was pretty sure my façade was going to crumble after I answered that question, but whatever. I didn't owe Flare anything. He chose to save my life, I didn't ask for it.
"Somewhere in town, there's a big emergency. I watched the whole procession of fire trucks, police, heavily armed rednecks, the works head in one direction. I want to go there."
"Why on earth would you want to go there?" Flare asked.
"Situ ran that way first but I couldn't keep up." I said. "I don't think she's good enough to handle a real villain. I'm going to go save the day."
"I thought you were living a normal life." Flare said, his expression changing. He looked a lot less heroic than he did 10 years ago. He hadn't maintained his appearance, his eyes had dark bags underneath, and his eyes lost that annoying glint of excitement. How on earth did Flare become normal? Suddenly, he switched from being an ally to an obstacle.
"I have a lead pipe in my shoe." I replied, with absolute calm. "You will drive, or I will keep hitting you with it until I fix your dumb brain. We are saving Situ."
"They don't make lead pipes anymore." Flare said.
"I went antiquing." I stated.
Flare, without another word, creeped out from his parallel park and merged into traffic.
STAI LEGGENDO
League of Do Gooders, Ne'er do wells, and those of Evil Intent
UmorismoThe sequel to the previous book, but starring all the ugly people from the original! Such an interesting twist! Join June Why as she learns the difference between doors and walls.
