League of Do Gooders, Ne'er do wells, and those of Evil Intent

Villainy 203: Decoupling

Roads are long and boring, but I've learned to stick to walking alongside them. The alternative is way worse. You might wind up walking through a hill. It's dark and hard to see, and you come out the other end pretty messy and awful. Enough rocks can tear through your hair too. Worse, though, are cars and trucks. If you walk through one of those, it's super loud, and everything you're carrying, your hair, and your clothing, are going to be absolutely shredded. To the side of the road is the only safe place... Or that's what I was lead to believe. As I walked along the road, a new looking white pickup truck skidded onto the side and ran into me. Luckily, my costume was airtight, so I attempted to breathe for the second time in my life as I took a deep draw of the cigarette. It tasted gross and I felt nothing, but people did it, so I felt kind of cool.

A man jumped out of his truck to survey the damage, and since Clement gave me a "character" to follow, I sat on the hood of his car while he jumped out in a panic.

"The moon is beautiful, mon sure". I said, with another dramatic draw of the cigarette. I know it's hard to believe, but I was so talented that I could pull off that kind of character effortlessly.

"Uhh... you got a concussion?" The guy asked. He had a tank top, shorts, and a baseball hat reading "Dodgers" across the front.

"I am but a humble traveler from the great country of... fence, looking for true art." I said, laying my hands across my forehead.

"I don't know any art, ma'am... but if you're hurt, it's not my fault, I promise." The guy said, quite sweaty. "It was those villains at the Pitstop."

I perked up at the term "villains". These might be the better objective bad guys I could easily dispatch and start my rise to heroism. I immediately broke character. "Where is the Pitstop?" I asked.

"It's... the Pitstop repair shop. Up Interstate 40, in downtown Oklahoma city. It's this little crappy shop in Bricktown." He responded. "But I think we should call you an ambulance, considering..."

I was already walking away. "Thanks for the tip!" I yelled back. "You can call me Ambulance if you really want to!"

The man took his hat off his head and stared dumbfounded as I walked away. All I had to do was walk 40 miles and I could fight real villains! Not supervillains, just bad guys like murders, thieves, and televangelists! I didn't ever get tired, so I could walk all night and get there in the however long it took to arrive. There was a blue house in the distance, I couldn't miss it.

As it turned out upon further walking, just because a building is visible does not mean it is nearby. I grew up in northern Alaska, which was famous for a lot of mountains. If I could see something, I could walk to it in an hour or two, tops. Someone stepped on Oklahoma. All the mountains were gone, and what replaced them was an endless stretch of road with brown on both sides and an unusually gigantic sky. Who even uses this much sky? As I got closer, I realized I wasn't even looking at a nearby building. It was just big and made out of glass. I silently promised myself that I wouldn't go anywhere near that hulking fragile monstrosity.

I had never actually spent much time in cities. I walked through a few load bearing walls in my uncle's small town, was sent to juvie and then had my sentence extended every time I missed a door, so I didn't really get to see anything sizeable. Oklahoma City looked absolutely massive. I tried to make sure I was looking okay, but realized that my disguise was just an illusion and would therefore hold up just fine without my maintenance, so I trucked on into the big city. As the buildings got bigger and bigger, I was treated to such sights as "Toby Keith's Bar and Gril", some giant monstrosity that looked like a roll of glass toilet paper, and a bunch of statues of people riding horses to claim land. "Into Bricktown and to the left" was real vague, considering I'd never been to Oklahoma City before, but thanks to Juan in the prison, I spoke just enough Spanish to communicate with a very friendly immigrant family who pointed the way to the true villains... the Pitstop car repair shop. It was a pretty small building in a relatively insignificant part of an otherwise pretty active area. It had a garage door and a main door... but considering these people were villains, I picked the middle. My life's purpose was finally coming to fruition.