Victor
It was hard to say how long Dani had been standing in the street. Her fingernails had dug into the wood of the sawhorse blockade. Rain came down and people passed by her like she was invisible, as she stared at the remains of the theatre.
It had been razed almost to the ground. All that was left was a pile of twisted rubble in a lot. A crane stood over it, victorious, like some proud champion. Dani could see bits of the theatre's old color poking out from between the rubble. Here a tattered blanket. There a bit of second-floor-hallway carpeting. She could almost make out the heart-shaped stain from where Dante spilled Regan's soda. Maybe that was just rainwater. Or maybe her vision was just blurry…
"Gypsy! There you are!" a familiar voice called.
Thinking she was caught, Dani jumped, and almost bolted. She whirled around and saw who called her.
"Victor." she said.
The older boy walked up to the sawhorse beside her. God, he looked rough. The streets weren't kind—even in Metro City. He was wearing battered Salvation Army clothes and looked like he hadn't had a good meal since leaving the theatre. He looked as rough as she felt. Dani expected him to attack her or something. They didn't exactly part on good terms. But Victor just stood looking out at the debris. Street rules—when people looked as tired and worn as they both did, they weren't gonna be any trouble.
"…What happened here, Vic?" Dani asked after a long silence.
"Last I heard, cops followed your new chicks back to the hideout. Cleared everyone out just to tear it down. They thought it'd be safer for us, with the theatre gone."
Safer. Sleeping in alleyways, curled up behind sidewalk spikes, or in some stranger's crazy foster home would be safer…safer than the beautiful theatre they worked so hard to keep. Dani started to laugh, but caught herself. If she started, it would've turned into sobbing…and she wouldn't have been able to stop.
Victor gave her a second to digest it all. Then he dropped the bomb. "J's been arrested."
Those words hit Dani like a knife to the chest.
"They're pinning him with trespassing, bribery, and using kids to make money."
"Bet your Eddie's real happy about that." Dani said, bitter.
"Don't know—I haven't seen him in a few days."
Dani watched his face. He seemed sincere. That might explain why he was being so polite. He hadn't tried to get close to her, touch her, or even smell her hair. He wasn't so tough without Eddie backing him up. In her shocked state, Dani was just happy for the little miracles.
"He still in the city?" she asked.
"Don't think so. He said something about a job in New York."
"Then what are you doing out here, Vic?"
"Same as you—looking for other theatre kids. I found a safehouse past the wharf district. A bunch of kids ended up there. You should grab your troublemakers and come back with me…unless you got somewhere else to be."
Dani thought about this for just a second. She turned away from the old theatre and told Victor, "They aren't coming. They found a better place to live."
"Sorry 'bout that, Gypsy. Come on—I'll show you where it is."
"Don't call me Gypsy." The girl commanded. For the first time, Victor listened.
Perhaps it was the lack of sleep, the emotional turmoil, or just because Victor was a familiar face—when he asked what she'd been through…she told him. She told him about wandering into the Evil Lair—the Evil Lair—and finding a bunch of weird lights. (She didn't tell him about the powers—she only half believed in them herself.) Victor only interrupted the story once or twice. Her voice shook the slightest bit when she described how the other girls opted to stay with Megamind, and she left them.
"They weren't on these streets when he killed Metro Man." Victor offered.
"Yeah. I forgot…how long were you at the theatre, Vic?"
"Three years." Was his simple reply. Dani wasn't the only one that lost the theatre. She was silent for a while.
"Hey, now you're here, it can be just like the old days!"
"What old days?" Dani asked the boy. They weren't exactly BFFs back in the old days, Vic was too attached to Eddie. There was a rumor that Victor liked her. There was also a rumor that he kept hair samples under his bedroll. (He was the guy who gave people haircuts.) Dani could believe both those rumors—and she avoided him. If Roxanne Ritchi taught her anything, it was avoid straight guys.
"You remember, when a bunch of us got together to BnE some places? It was the most fun I ever had in that hellhole! We got more cash in one night than we got in three months of peddling street tricks. I swear, you had the best eye for places. You were like our navigator when you ran with us. We'll do that again…minus Eddie, of course."
Dani winced at the memory. "That was a long time ago, Vic. The theatre was in trouble. Kids were starving."
"We're in trouble now."
"…I guess we are."
Victor looked around. They were getting close. His job had been easy—Dani was in a daze—but maybe they could just…
"Wait, Gypsy. The day's still young, we can catch lunch at the soup kitchen."
"That's across town." She gave him a suspicious look, sighed, and kept walking. "We're close to the warehouses, let's go."
"Suit yourself." Victor said.
They were entering a sketchy part of town. Dani grew more wary with every step. It was rumored criminals were all over the area. Theatre kids wouldn't enter there unless they were truly desperate. Soon enough, Victor steered Dani to a warehouse away from prying eyes. He stayed behind her as they waked into the building. It was a huge, abandoned mausoleum of a place. The airplane-hangar doors sat just a few feet ajar. Inside was only darkness.
Dani turned around to ask, "You sure this place is safe?" but Victor had disappeared. Before her eyes, the doors slammed shut. The sound of a lock being engaged rang through the dark.
What was going on? Dani stumbled away from the doors. The floor was uneven—she steadied herself with some unseen power, some sixth sense. Her hearing sharpened before her eyes adjusted. Above her own heavy breathing she heard feet shuffling, voices snickering, and a lot of people in a big space.
"Oh, Dani-boy…" someone called.
That voice! It broke down all her mental walls, making her forget everything she knew about survival. It reduced her to a small child cowering in front of a nightmare monster.
Eddie had found her.
Some instinct in her new DNA made her cast out in front of her with her power. She sensed shifting bodies on a hill made of boxes. In fact, she was surrounded. Voices laughed at her stunned expression.
The abandoned warehouse was stacked high with crates—that was the hill everyone was standing around. Dani's eyes had adjusted. She recognized Eddie's crew from the theatre, but there were some lowlifes she didn't recognize. They had—oh God, some of them were armed with crowbars or bits of wood. And standing at the highest point, grinning down at her like a demented judge in a violent court, was Eddie, the Jag.
"Where ya been, Dani-boy? Where's your friends?" he asked casually, stepping down the hill towards her.
She was silent. Frozen. He looked as bad as Victor—probably worse. He'd been through some fights in the past week. Won some of them, judging by his skinned knuckles. Eddie was watching her like a dingo watches a human baby, honestly.
"Ah, I'll find them eventually. You'll do for now."
"You won't touch them." Dani said (not very bravely). Scattered laughter rang through the warehouse.
"Won't I? And what will you have to say about it?" Eddie was on the ground with Dani, reinforcements surrounding them. Dani's voice deserted her.
Eddie was circling her. She didn't dare move to watch him (that unexplainable 6th sense tracked him when he was out of visual range.)
"Nothing, you got nothing to say. Good. I got a few things to say to you."
Dani really didn't want to hear them.
"I should thank you, first of all—without you and your bratty new girls, I never would've found my new crew here! They're a lot more open-minded than you theatre lot. I would go on for weeks about what I've been through since you snitched on me, but…what you're about to go through is gonna be worse. I'm gonna enjoy this, Gypsy…" Someone handed Eddie a bat. "Boys? Hold her."
Teenagers closed in on her, Eddie raised the bat, and Dani decided she really, REALLY didn't want to be there anymore. A strange sort of fight-or-flight reflex rose up in her. She felt the closest boy approach her from behind. Dani turned, raised her hands, and pushed the boy twelve feet.
She never laid a finger on him. From outside, it looked like he just flew away. Dani's forcefields felt like a part of her—an extension of her consciousness in the outside world. When the next teen reached for her, she just turned and thrust her fist out at him. She hit him with a fist-sized burst of energy. He went own, gasping and clutching his chest.
The dark worked against them. The boys didn't know what was happening. In a brilliant moment of mob mentality, they all rushed their prey at once. Dani dropped to one knee and discovered how to make that nuclear explosion happen again.
That time it was deliberate. It was almost deafening, too. It threw thugs back dozens of feet, and decimated nearby stacks of crates. When Dani stood up, she had to look over the damage she'd done, exhilarated. She'd done that. That power was in her blood! Boys started to stir—she had to leave. The Rroma girl secured her backpack and turned to the padlocked doors.
The scream of metal filled the warehouse. Dani didn't bother with the lock. She made her own exit. Daylight (grey and wet but beautiful) streamed in. Dani ran for it.
She wove through the warehouse district, sure she was being followed. If only she could fly like Anne! As it was, she was confined to fleeing wildly, sneakers pounding on cracked cement.
Left, right, then left again. It looked like she was going to out run her pursuers, when she dodged into an alley and ran into a chain-link fence. It was eight feet high and jagged at the top.
She turned around to find Eddie standing at the alleyway's entrance. His huge frame blocked her escape. He raised his weapon and taunted, "Nowhere to run, Gypsy!"
Ohh, she wasn't going to stand for that.
Dani dropped back into a stance. She was standing her ground. She reached forward with her power, found the bat in 3-D space, grabbed it, and ripped it from his hands. Dani threw it far away.
"I told you, YOU DON'T GET TO CALL ME THAT!" she roared.
Confusion and fear crossed Eddie's face for a second—just a split second. He wasn't figuring out he was beaten. Instead he closed the gap between them in a few seconds. His fists met an invisible wall just a few inches from the girl's shocked face. He pulled back one fist to attack again and something hit him in the chest. She dodged his next punch and he tried to grab her black hair. Somehow, she shoved him back a whole five feet, and when he went for her next, he reached for her throat.
A wave of white-hot pain hit his chest.
Dani didn't mean to do it, really. She just reacted. Before she knew what she was doing, she'd drawn her hand in a diagonal line, like she was throwing a blade. The forcefield that resulted wasn't a blunt shape. It cut through his Salvation Army jacket and his shirt.
Eddie stumbled back a few steps with his hands pressed to the source of the pain. He saw the damage and focused Dani with a glare. He lunged again.
She did the same thing, catching him across the face that time. He reacted like he'd been slapped. It took him a second more to recover—then he lunged for Dani again.
She wanted the fight to be over. She wanted Eddie to just crawl back to his friends already. So her next move was to put all her remaining strength into one wall of forcefield that threw him 20 feet into the street behind him.
He didn't get up right away. Dani nodded at him—a 'that's right, stay down!' gesture—and turned her attention to the fence. If she could just get a forcefield around herself, and lift it—gently! Gently! She could lift herself over the barrier. Clumsily, she managed it. As soon as her sneakers hit the pavement, she was running again.
She didn't get very far. A white news van shrieked to a stop just outside the alley, blocking her way. A young woman threw open the passenger-side door and shouted for Dani to get in.
The Rroma girl recognized her—and figured going with her was better than being hunted by Eddie's gang. She jumped in, and the van sped off.
Minutes later, Eddie stumbled back to the warehouse, breathing hard and holding his wounds. His mind was spinning. That little Giptyan was half his size, and a girl. How did she do that? She must've had a weapon on her—
Eddie stopped across the lot from his hideout. Dazed boys were crawling 'round the place, looking at the damage. Those that could walk, that is. A 15-foot-tall hole had been ripped into the doors. The metal was crumpled around the edges, pushed outward. Eddie looked at the doors…and turned to gaze in the direction Gypsy disappeared.
