Who did we help tonight other than you?” Reacto butted in. Sil’s eyes narrowed.
“Excuse me?” she snapped. Reacto held her gaze.
“Sil, we've beaten him a bunch of times now. But this town hasn’t gotten any better from our efforts. It's only gotten quieter, and we both know that's due to some cloak and dagger shit we aren’t a part of. Tonight we had Crooked Eye, in person. Not some robot in a trench coat pretending to be him, or a crappy hologram. For the first time, we had him clean...then we told him to skip town. How the fuck am I supposed to feel?” Slapping his leg again, though in a quieter fashion this time. He turned away from her in an exasperated huff. “I don’t even know what you saw in him.”
Sil said nothing, she turned away quietly. It was her way of acknowledging he was right without having to go over the many ways he was also wrong. Over nine years of fighting crime with nothing to put down. Many heroes quit, died, or grew in wealth or status after only three.
Stiletto and Reacto were the first of the youngest generation of heroes, the teens with powers looking to change the world. They came in bright-eyed and special. Now they were three generations behind, stagnant.
She couldn’t argue that the constant battles with Carlo Reyes in the slums of New York weren’t partially to blame for their lack of mainstream recognition or acceptance. They weren’t saving the world. They were either stopping poor people who were stealing from other poor people or fighting a phantom from their past. Tonight, they’d caught him, for real this time, only to let him go.
Reacto started to shift in his seat, quietness lingering so long he began to feel a sense of unease. “Hey, I didn’t mean to bring that part up. I was just trying-”
“-He saved me again.” Stiletto interrupted. Reacto looked over at her, his mouth dropped open. He then buried his face in his hands.
“God..dammit,” he said. Stiletto continued.
“When you both had your contest to see who could blow each other up the fastest and the ceiling collapsed-when you found him standing over me-”
“He was protecting you from being crushed. Sil I...fuck, I’m sorry,” Reacto said not knowing what else to say.
Stiletto continued, “It’s how he hurt his hand. The suit malfunctioned when he tried to save me. He couldn’t get his arm out so he ended up crushing his fingers...I...” She paused. “I know how you feel about him and I know what it looks like when I defend him. But things like this aren’t new, Wally.”
“Son of a bitch. Every.Time.” Reacto said, leaning back in his seat. Like most of the battles he’d had with his former classmate, tonight had also ended with sportsmanship, rather than accountability or the threat of serious danger.
“He keeps saving us,” Stiletto asserted. Reacto let out a heavy sigh before he spoke.
“You remember last October in Fordham Manner when we tried to tail him, but he got the jump on us?” Steam began to rise from Ractos'skin.
“Yeah. He had his androids hold us at gunpoint for an hour before they just turned off,” Stiletto answered.
“He could have just shot us,” Reacto said in a trembling voice. “Heroes don’t last in the trenches as long as we have unscathed. But I think my most painful injury is my sciatica,” he said. The sound of the other passengers of the bus quickly shuffling to the front exit caused him to take a deep breath letting the steam dissipate. “I think that's why I hate his guts so much. It’s like a fucking game to him.” He slowly ran his fingers through his hair.
Carlo Reyes, or Crooked Eye as the streets had grown to call him, was a brilliant young man dealt a bad hand by unknown forces that twisted him into a devilish bringer of chaos. Flooding gang-ridden neighborhoods with superweapons, Carlo turned the act of drive-by shootings into aerial drone battles ending in someone being vaporized. Death without a trace, nothing for your family to even bury. You were no longer murdered, you were dusted. Since his time of being active, The Bronx’s police gang territory map had been altered a record four thousand times all correlating with Crooked Eye’s debut.
Today was the first time Reacto had seen Carlo in person since their time in school. After years of anticipating what he was or who he’d find, a strange sense of disappointment filled his heart. The monster he thought he’d find was not there. Instead, he found a very hurt, very normal man.
“I don’t think it’s a game.” Stiletto replied.
“Hmm?” Reacto said.
“Or if it is, we’re not even players. I’ve been thinking about this for a while, Wally. But I feel like you and I are just distractions for him. I mean he called us a hindrance, not a threat. You don’t think of arch enemies like that.” she responded calmer than before. Reacto tilted his head.
“You’re saying we thought more of him than he did of us?”
“Wouldn’t be the first time,” Stiletto replied, a little too bitterly for his liking.
“I-uh...um-well, anyway who's he playing against?” Reacto stammered back to the topic.
“I’m working on it.” she calmly declared.
“Wait what?”
“You heard me.” Reacto paused again, his brain starting to catch up to hers. This was the usual order of their conversations.
“That's why you did all this? You used all the data you collected to finally find him, not just to let him go. But to see what he’d do,” Reacto let out a tiny gasp. “Ohh shit. You inserted us into the game.” Stiletto said nothing. Only giving him a small shrug, but it confirmed his accusation. He buried his face in his hands again.
“Ugh, What the fuck, Sil? It’s bad enough you’re rule-breaking by going against The League’s orders, but if this escalates. Oh man-”
“-We’re not doing anything wrong. If Reyes isn’t playing some secret game, then he skips town and you never have to see him again. If this game does exist, we’ll find the players and clear the board ourselves.”
“That's...you thought that far in advance?”
“It's me, Wally. Besides, you should be happy, you win either way. Carlo’s gone if it’s the former. Your career’s made if it's the latter. You can move on with your life.” she stated very matter of factly before turning away from him again.
“You said I could move on with my life...not we.” he remarked, but Stiletto stayed quiet, and after that, so did he. The sound of the rocking bus in the rain grew louder in their silence.
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