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  The smell of rust filled my nostrils and sweat covered my body. My boss was in a stack of tires behind me, yelling commands at the top of his lungs. Before me, there were all sorts of scrap metal, rusted cars, and broken appliances piled high enough to give a decent amount of shade. Anything with holes, cracks, bugs, you name it seemed to be laying around haphazardly. The place was a dump. Come to think of it, I'm pretty sure it was the city dump. The real center of my attention was dodging between my peripherals. It was a scrawny, coffee-colored man bouncing back and forth on lithe feet. He was not a bad-looking guy, but at the moment he was an eye-sore. He had a motorcycle helmet on with rearview mirrors attached to either side. Two sawed-off halves of a car hood (yes - the actual hood to a car's engine block) were placed on his front and back like some makeshift armor. There were other sorts of busted up scrap that made arm and leg bracers. He looked the way I pictured a metal hermit crab to look like if he lucked out on the worst possible home.

  A crab I had to catch.

  I braced myself and took in another large gasp of air before leaping at the man with my arms outstretched. At the last moment, he slipped by to the left of me and began to dance around, taunting me. "Left, Hourglass, left! No! My left! No no no! C'mon! I can't believe you missed that time! Quit bouncing around! You're being too predictable! Ugh!" Between the leaps, misses, and my boss backseat driving when "Mr. Perfect" had been captured at the very start of the fight, I wanted to scream. "You want to be a hero, don't you? Then catch the bad guy!"

  "I am a hero!" I screamed and leaped one final time before I finally heard the metal clank and fleshy thud that I had been waiting for. This was no time to revel in my success though. I quickly grasped around for the man's wrists which I found were actually armed with soup cans. I pulled them behind his back and pulled a cheap pair of handcuffs off of my waist.

  "Ow! Ow ow owwww! Where is your humanity?! Oh, the pain!" The man sounded like a howling alley cat. I bit back the urge to yank harder and opted to roll my eyes instead.

  "Oh, come on, I'm barely touching you, you baby." I stood and clapped the dirt out of the palms of my hands before turning to my boss. "You need any help getting out of there?"

  "If you managed to catch the baddie earlier, Chief, then I greatly would have accepted the assistance. But don't you worry your pretty, little head. I'll handle it." With that, his eyes rolled to the back of his head and his head fell face first onto the top tire. His body looked lifeless and limp.

  I scoffed. 'What a drama queen.'  I turned back to the man sitting at my feet. "So, Joseph, what happened this time?"

  "Motordrive! I told you to call me Motordrive!" The man pursed his bottom lip into a put the way a child might.

  "Wasn't it Deathmetal just last week?" Despite my best efforts, some laughter escaped me.

  "Well," Joseph's eyes slide to the side as his face reddened, "I'm not really into the whole death thing. It's too messy. So it's Motordrive now."

  "Ok, Motordrive." I patted him gently on the head and seated myself in front of him. "You still should answer my question. What had 'ticked' you off this time?" I moved my finger in a similar manner to a metronome.

  Behind me, the tires seemed to all simultaneously disappear and reappear in a new spot as if they had been there all along. Boss was standing and the dark grey had returned to his eyes. He walked over to join us and sat beside me. "That joke was so lame, Hourglass."

  I pushed him playfully as he situated himself. "And oh? I Went There and Came Back: A Vigilante's Story, isn't?"

  Boss pushed back, knocking me to the ground and jumped to his feet. "SHUT UP! THAT SERIES IS BRILLIANT AND THERE'S ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG WITH IT!" He continued to ramble on about how the 'fictional universe was crafted to utmost perfection and how it's all a giant metaphor to not be a dick etc. etc' while I lay on the ground, stifling laughter. Eventually, Joseph coughed to remind us that he was still there.

  I propped myself back into a sitting position to compose myself while Boss turned away, red-faced from all of the comical yelling, to pout. Joseph continued, "Isn't this where you ask me about my tragic backstory as to why I've enacted such a villainous scheme?"

  "Well, Mr. Martinez-"

  "Motordrive."

  "Motordrive." I continued. "We didn't even know there was a scheme. We're here because you attacked us when we were passing by. So what in Malfakor are you doing in this... this... are we in the garbage dump?"

  Joseph's jaw went slack. "Dump!? For your information, this is where my secret base is! Which, by the way, the likes of you could never find anyway!"

  Boss pointed at a pile of scrap metal, corroded cars, and a massive collection of other odds and ends that seemed to be in the shape of a small shack. "Is that it?"

  "N-no! I mean yes, but... You'll never find my SUPER secret base!"

  I pointed at a similar, smaller pile of shack-shaped garbage. "Is that it?"

  Joseph sat flabbergasted. "You two are incredible! Now I need a new base..."

  Boss heaved a sigh, realizing that this was going nowhere. "So Motordrive," he spoke like a child would in a school play, "what was your devious plan?"

  Joseph seemed to beam with anticipation. "It was ingenious! You see, my tire depot went under. So I went all around Malfakor City collecting everyone's tires! Then, I would run the monopoly and everyone would have to come to me to buy their tires back! But you guys stopped me before my plan could be fully executed. I blame the postal service!" 

  Joseph stopped there with a smug face, waiting for someone to prompt him again. Boss and I exchanged looks with one another to see which one of us would have to ask. Boss glared at me sternly and mouthed, 'I asked last time.' I sighed. "Why do you blame the postal service?"

  "Well!" he began with more enthusiasm. "As you know, my power allows me to connect myself to a car battery and gain godlike muscles! However, as you also know, I have to stay connected to the battery. I ordered extension cables in the mail to try to combat this issue, but they never came!"

  Boss opened his mouth and closed it. He opened and closed it again. He began laughing before he finally managed to work out, "Are you, um, waiting... on the mail truck?..." Upon figuring out where he was headed with this, I started laughing again as well. 

  Joseph looked terribly confused. "Y-yeah?"

  Boss started laughing harder. "It's kind of hard to deliver without any wheels."

  It took a few moments, but realization dawned on Joseph's face. "I knew I shouldn't have hit the slower vehicles first! They were just so easy!" Boss and I began sniffling back our laughter and soon, even Joseph's good nature got the best of him and he joined in. When the mood had settled, I removed the handcuffs and placed them back on my side.

  "You know," I began, "your plan wouldn't have worked anyway, right? You just would have been charged with petty theft."

  "Well, I know that now." Joseph rubbed at his wrists and gave a dismayed sigh. "Crime is hard."

  Boss clapped him on the back and nodded. "Yeah, it really is. So how about you give all those tires back and stay out of trouble, okay, dumbass?" He then cuffed the younger man in the back of the head in the same manner that a mother with a 'problem child' would. As we left, Joseph was gathering the few tires he had managed to steal and rolling them down the street, likely back to where they belonged.

  Boss stared at his feet. The normally cheerful grey in his eyes looked more like a storm. "Arabelle, still want to be a hero?"

  The sound almost made me jump. It was so sudden and oddly harsh. Nonetheless, he didn't call me by my hero name as he had been. "Y-yes..."

  His gaze looked upward. He was watching the sky, but not truly seeing it or at least, seeing anything that I could see anyway. "Look at Joseph. Or as a hero would call him, 'the Villain Motordrive,'" he spat out the words. "As a hero, I would have had to arrest him, lock him behind bars, because of how dangerous he could be instead of recognizing how scared, dimwitted, and soft-hearted he is." He turned to me with eyes as dark as coal. "Do you remember the day we met, Arabelle? Do you remember what I asked of you?"

  He asked me, but we both knew the answer. After all, how could I ever forget?