"Cato, let's go!" Clove whispered, pulling up her black mask to just under her eyes.
"Hold on," he mumbled, fiddling with the zipper on his sweater.
"I will not hold on," she snapped. "If you want to be stuck back here when this place is blown to pieces, that's your choice, but I'm getting the hell out of here."
"You're so impatient."
"Because you're so slow," she replied waspishly. "If you'd work at a normal pace once in a while we wouldn't have this problem!"
"I don't know if you noticed or not, but I don't work."
"Huh, there's a shock," Clove muttered, rolling her eyes.
"There's no need to be mean," Cato smirked.
"Alright, you idiot, let me put it to you this way." She spoke slowly, as if speaking to a child, which irritated Cato to the point that he leaned against the wall with his arms folded, just to piss her off. "We have about one minute to get out of here before this whole place goes kaboom, and I would like to be out of here, so as to not explode with the rest of this shit."
"Oh, you would, would you?"
"Oh, man, here we go," she said under her breath, and then, louder, "I don't have time for this. Unlike you, standing in the middle of a building that's about to blow up, I don't have a death wish."
"Then leave," Cato grinned, watching her pull her hood up in the blue-green lighting of the screen on her arm band. "Save yourself, and leave me here if I'm not cooperating at a speed that is comfortable for you."
"We'll see who's more comfortable when you're being blown to bits and I'm across the street laughing at you."
Cato stood still, teasing her.
"Let's go! I'm not leaving you here!" she hissed, powering off her arm band, leaving the two of them in near-pitch-black.
"Well, fine, if you wanna be difficult," Cato laughed.
Clove grabbed his arm and pulled him down a few flights of stairs.
They had just closed the door softly behind them when the explosions started going off, carefully placed and timed so that no matter where you were in the building, when you started running away from the first explosion you were caught in, you'd run into the next. Cato had assured Clove it was foolproof: there was no getting out of that trap.
Of course, thanks to the very same mastermind behind their plan, they had been late getting out, and the blasts had knocked them to their feet. Cato reached for Clove's hand but couldn't find her. He scrambled to his feet as the explosions continued to wrack the ground and scanned the area. He saw her some twenty feet away and rushed over. She was curled up, hands covering her head as the debris from the blasts fell around her. Cato dodged some falling chunks of stucco and brick and knelt down beside her on the rubble.
"Are you okay?" he asked under his breath.
"I'm fine," she said, straightening out and sitting up. He helped her to her feet and noticed the five-inch gash on her shin that was revealed by a massive tear in the fabric of her black leggings. He couldn't tell exactly how deep the wound was, but he knew it would get infected quickly if he didn't do something about it.
"Knife?" he asked, and Clove dug one out of her leather boots and handed it to him. In a quick motion, he slashed a length of fabric from the black t-shirt under his sweater. He poured some water from his water bottle onto the center of the strip of fabric and pressed it against her wound, wrapping it around as tightly as he could, to stop the bleeding.
"Thanks," she muttered, and he had to laugh at her hesitation. Clove's pride was half of what kept her alive, but it was certainly an obstacle that he had trouble navigating (though he did enjoy making fun of her for it).
"No problem," he grinned.
A strong figure stumbling out of the wrecked building caught their attention, and the two saw their arch-nemesis prowling the grounds searching for the culprit.
Cato made accidental eye contact with Douglas Field as he scanned the area.
"You two," growled Sir Douglas.
"Us," Clove snarled.
"I should've known," he sighed, clucking his tongue.
"You should've," she sneered. "And yet you didn't. Some superhero you are, letting two kids run around the city and blow shit up."
"Yes, yes," Sir Douglas said quickly. "WHY MY CITY?" he yelled.
"Because."
"WHY NEW YORK? WHY IS IT ALWAYS NEW YORK? ALWAYS!" Sir Douglas pulled on his hair.
"BECAUSE YOU WOULDN'T GET ME HAMILTON TICKETS!" Clove hollered.
"BECAUSE IT WAS SOLD OUT!" Sir Douglas shouted back.
"YOU'RE A SUPERHERO! YOU COULD'VE GOTTEN TICKETS FOR AN ENTIRE VILLAGE IF YOU ASKED NICELY ENOUGH!"
"Clove, Dougie, please," Cato sighed.
"IT'S SIR DOUGLAS! SIR! DOUGLAS!" he screamed, red in the face.
"This is a childish argument. Have some maturity."
"Says you," Sir Douglas scoffed, straightening himself up.
"Yeah, Cato, stop trying to be cool."
"Yeah, Cato," Sir Douglas sneered, exchanging a grin and a high-five with Clove. (Then, realizing what they'd just done, they wiped their hands on their sweaters and snarled at each other.)
"Anyways, to what do I owe the pleasure?" asked Sir Douglas politely.
"What?"
"Well, I'm sure that even you delinquents must have come to blow up my office for some reason."
"I think the real question here," Clove began, "is HOW THE HELL ARE YOU NOT DEAD YET?"
"I'm resilient," Sir Douglas boasted.
"You're remarkably lucky," Cato snorted.
"Well, now, if you don't mind, I have some business stopping your friends from blowing up all of Brooklyn, so we'll have to resume this some other time. I presume I still have one rain check?"
"Yes," Clove grumped, folding her arms over her chest. "But after this time you can't stop it!"
"I don't intend to do so," Sir Douglas said. He walked away with his head held high.
"Don't worry, Princess," Cato said with a wink as he put his arm around her shoulders. "We'll get him next time."
