There were a few more incidents with Adriana. She would sneak out, follow him around, take videos of his fights, ask him about his methodology. He would lecture her, send her back home, or when he was really frustrated, carry her back and dump her on her balcony. She was persistent if nothing else.
There were a few times where he had gotten in a bit over his head, and she had tried to help him out. Those were the times that he actually got angry and physically hauled her to her apartment, but nothing really serious had come out of them. A few cuts and bruises, some could-have-died moments.
It was on a hot summer night in July that things came to a head. Adriana had taken to going ahead of him on his route and waiting for him to show up to take a video or some pictures. She was sitting on a roof, killing time by playing a game on her phone until Red X showed, when she heard a scream from the alley below her.
A little boy, crying, being dragged around by a large man. His sobs pierced her ears, and she placed her phone on the roof, watching to see if he was in real trouble.
"Be quiet, kid, I'm a friend of your Mom's, okay?" the man said.
The kid just kept crying and saying, "You're not my Dad, you're not my Dad!"
The guy sighed and grabbed a handkerchief from his pocket, then stuffed it in the kids mouth before grabbing his hands and holding them behind his back so he couldn't pull out the gag. He pounded a few times on a door in the alleyway and another man opened the door.
"I got the kid, let me in," the first man said, and Adriana knew this was bad. Really bad.
She looked out over the rooftops and knew that Red X wasn't due to be here for another five minutes. He wouldn't be here in time to even know something happened to the kid.
She looked down at the wailing child's face and knew she couldn't just sit there and do nothing. She reached into her hoodie pocket and pulled out he pepper spray she carried with her everywhere, slid down the fire escape as quietly as she could, then walked up behind the man, using as much of Red X's sneaking techniques as she had observed.
"Hey!" she yelled when she was close enough.
The guy turned around and looked at her, and she pressed the nozzle down, sending the burning mixture right into the thug's eyes. He cried out and reached up to cover his face, letting the kid go.
Adriana reached out and yanked his arm, pulling the child toward her before pushing him to the entrance of the alley and yelling, "Go! Run!"
The kid took off, thankfully, sobbing all the way.
The guy behind the door stepped out, snarling, and made a break for the kid, but Adriana tackled his knees before he could get too far. She pulled out the pepper spray again and shot it at his eyes, but the other guy kicked her wrist before she could do much damage, and then she was at their mercies.
They kicked, they punched, they elbowed, they grabbed her by her head and threw her against the wall of the alley. They kneed her in the stomach, driving the air out of her lungs. When she tried to crawl away they grabbed her by the jacket and shot the rest of the pepper spray into her eyes, making her scream and hold her hands over her eyes.
"Don't like it when it happens to you, eh?"
Sometime early on in the beating, she could hear one of the goons talking to someone over the phone, asking a contact about the kid. He cursed and hung up, informing his partner that the boy had gotten to a police officer. Adriana felt her chest swell with triumph, even as the other man snarled and kicked her in the abdomen, saying, "You just cost us a lot of money, puta."
At some point they kicked her in the head, and she blacked out. When she woke up, Red X had finally gotten there and the two guys were beaten to a pulp. She looked up blearily as he crouched down and said her name, cupping her face in his hands and checking over her injuries.
"Was a kid," she mumbled, "had to save 'im."
"Of course you did," he answered before lifting her up and swinging her over his shoulder, "Do you know if he's okay?"
"Mm-hm," she said, already falling back asleep despite the fact that they were swinging through the city now.
"Stay awake for me Adriana, okay? Just stay awake."
"Mmm... 'kay."
Adriana didn't quite manage to stay awake. She drifted off sometime in the middle of the flight, her head lolling agianst Red X's back. When she came to, it was slowly, as if her body was a wrecked car that needed a few tries to get the engine going. Her eyes blinked open blearily, barely managing to focus, and flicked around.
She was lying in a cot, something that looked like it came straight out of a hospital. There was a light hanging from the ceiling to her left, and it burned her eyes. Glancing away from it, she took in the rest of the room, which seemed to be a makeshift sickbay. Medical equipment, most of which she knew the names of since her mom was a nurse, was placed neatly around the room. A table was positioned near her bed with gauze, disinfectant, tape, a needle, and some thread placed on it. There were no windows in the room, but the door was left open a crack, and there was light flooding in from the connecting room.
She spared a look down at herself and saw that she had been stripped out of her hoodie, shirt, and jeans and was now covered in gauze and bandages. There was a spot on her head that throbbed, and she reached up to touch it, the ache the movement caused in her shoulder nothing compared to the harsh sting when her fingers touched the split in her scalp, which had been stitched.
She attempted to sit up, grunting when that made her whole head feel like it was going to explode, then laid back down. It hadn't hurt this bad when she was actually getting beaten up, but she supposed that could be explained away with the adrenaline. Panting, she made a smaller but just as valient attempt to move, turning her body so that she was lying on her side, but that hurt just as much, so she elected to just stay still.
She realized that Red X must have taken her here. Did that mean this was his lair? Or hideout? Or whatever vigilante's called their base of operations? Was she in Red X's headquarters right now?
She felt herself starting to freak out and forced herself to take a deep breath and calm down. Now was not the time to let her inner rabid fan come out. Red X may be her idol but she was in something of a serious situation.
Speaking of Red X, where was he? She looked around the room again, as if expecting him to materialise out of the wall. Which, actually, wouldn't be all that surprising. He was pretty good at making himself unseen.
She didn't have to wonder too long, however, because the door was pushed open and he walked in. He paused a moment upon seeing her eyes open, and she heard him let out a breath beneath the mask.
"You're awake. Good," he said.
"Yeah," she responded, "Um, thanks. For patching me up and everything."
"Sure. It was the least I could do." He stood beside her bed and crossed his arms, looking down at her through the lenses in his helmet. She noticed he had unclasped his cape, and the gauntlets that usually covered his hands were gone. She wondered if this was his version of letting his hair down. "That was pretty stupid, what you did."
She frowned and looked away from him, down at her feet. She remembered then that she was only wearing her sports bra and boys shorts underwear, and felt a blush rise to her cheeks. Red X seemed perfectly comfortable with her state of undress, however, so she tried not to make a big deal out of it, wondering if seeing other people in their underwear was just an everyday thing for superheroes. It probably was, what with how often they got hurt.
"Yeah, I know," was all she said in response. She didn't feel guilty, but she knew that what she had done definitely fell under the reckless category.
"You got pretty seriously beat up."
She just nodded, then winced when it made her head throb angrily.
"And you know what that kind of pain feels like. Adriana," he didn't lean forward, but he voice got lower, and she knew what he was about to say was important, "what you went through was nothing compared to some of the things I've been through."
She stared at him, wondering what his eyes must look like through the mask. Intense, probably. Angry, maybe.
"You got hurt tonight, and you could get hurt even worse tomorrow night. You could die. I told you I couldn't guarantee your safety."
She felt like crying. He definitely sounded angry. Even worse, he sounded disappointed. She had messed up, she knew. She shouldn't have made him waste his time with her, he had an entire city to protect. She shouldn't have even been out there.
...But if she hadn't done what she did then that kid might never have gotten away. She looked away from him again, down at her feet.
"Adriana, look at me," he said in a commanding tone that compelled her to do what he said, and she flicked her eyes back to him. "Now that you know what could happen, are you still going to follow me around?"
The way he said it made it seem like the correct answer was 'No.' Like he expected her to never leave her apartment again. Like if she did anything but that she was definitely doing something wrong. But she didn't feel like she had. She had saved that kid. And sure, she had gotten beaten up, but hadn't she done something good? Hadn't she done exactly what he did every night? And hell, he just said he had gotten himself beaten up even worse than her.
She didn't care, she realized, if it was dangerous. Or that she had been reckless. She had done something good, and that was nothing to be ashamed of. It felt wrong, in a way, to think so strongly in contradiction with Red X, the man she idolized. But she just knew she was right about this. It was the reason she looked up to him in the first place, because he placed the safety of others before his own.
Setting her jaw, she looked him in the eyes - or lenses - and said, "Yes."
He paused for a bit, not even letting a muscle in his fingers twitch, and asked in a perfect monotone, "Why?"
"Because I saved that boy. I don't care if I got hurt, and I don't care if I get hurt again. You weren't there to do it, so I did. And I did something good," she forced herself to say. If he got pissed, if he told her off, then that would hurt, but she genuinely believed in what she had done, and she would stand by that.
"Even after getting this hurt, and knowing you could die, you're still going to go out and keep doing this?" He sounded exasperated.
She nodded, determined to ignore the pain it caused her, and held his gaze.
He was silent for a long time, just looking down at her, and then he said, "If that's the case, then you've sort of backed me into a corner."
She knit her eyebrows at the lightness in his tone. "What?"
"If you're going to just keep coming out and throwing yourself into danger, then I might as well make sure you can do it without getting yourself killed off."
She laid there for a while, not allowing herself to believe what she thought she was hearing. "Are you saying that you'll...?"
"I'll train you. You'll learn how to take on people far beyond those two thugs. And after you get good enough, who knows?" He shrugged. "You could patrol with me."
She knew her eyes must have been popping out of her skull, and all she could manage was a whispered, "Really?"
He nodded. "But only if you want to."
"Yes!" she said immediately, then took a breath, "I mean, yes, yes I want to do that. I- thank you! Yes!"
She heard him chuckle a little, then he reached up and her breath caught as he dug his fingers underneath the helmet. There was a small click and then a hiss, like the release of air, and he pulled the helmet off.
He had black hair, short and boyish, pale skin, and sharp features that seemed too delicate for his line of work. He had another mask under the helmet, a domino that she thought was rather unecessary, and his smile was sharp as he reached up to remove it, revealing piercing blue eyes that made her feel pinned when he looked at her with them.
"My name is Gabriel Soria," he said.
"Oh my god!" she cried and sat up, immediately grabbing her head and abdomen in pain and laying back down with a groan.
"Don't try to sit up!" he said in alarm, reaching out to her with open palms, "You got beat up, remember?"
"Sorry, I just got really excited. I mean, you just... you know."
"I revealed my secret identity."
"Yeah. It's a big deal. I never thought I would get to know who you were."
He chuckled again and placed a hand on her shoulder. "If we're going to be working together, we're going to need to trust each other. This is my way of showing you I trust you."
She felt pride swell in her chest at his words, at his actions. She laughed a bit, giddily, and nodded her acknowledgement.
