Disclaimer: Neon Genesis Evangelion is the creation of Anno and Gainax. I don't own it, make no claims to it, and am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Disclaimer: I do not own DC comics or anything associated with it, and am making no profit from this fan fiction. No infringement of copyright is intended. In other words, please don't sue.
Chapter Six: Homecoming
Keystone City
Steven Cunningham was having a good day.
First it had been finding that ten dollar bill on the way to work, which had been enough for him to buy himself a hot breakfast, for once. Then it had been the bus actually showing up on time, another rarity. When he'd reached his job, work had proceeded unusually smoothly, and Peggy, that cute blond secretary, had given him a smile and a wink this morning.
So when one of his coworkers had informed him that his supervisor wanted to see him, Steve had dared to hope that more good fortune was coming his way.
Maybe I'm getting a promotion, he thought as he headed to his boss's small office. Or maybe I'm actually getting a transfer to the station. I could finally get out of this boring place.
Steven was employed by the Keystone City Police Department, but he wasn't a cop himself. He'd wanted to become one, but he'd washed out of the academy. Instead, he had ended up working at one of their warehouses.
One of their incredibly dull warehouses, where old evidence was stored. Most of it was from cold cases, though there was also quite a bit of stuff from cases which had long since been closed that the KCPD didn't want to get rid of for one reason or another.
Arriving at the door to his boss's office, Steven knocked.
"Come in," a gruff voice answered from the other side of the door.
"You wanted to see me, Mr. Petersen?" he asked as he entered.
"Yes, I did," his supervisor said to him. "Have a seat, Cunningham." He gestured to an empty chair.
Steven felt his hopes for a promotion or transfer to a more exciting location wither; Petersen's demeanor was far too solemn for a man delivering good news. Steven slowly sat in the chair.
The supervisor was silent for a few seconds, then heaved a sigh. "There's no easy way to say this, Cunningham, so I'll just spit it out," he said. "We're going to have to let you go. This is your ninety days' notice."
"I'm being laid off?" Steven asked in dismay. "But, why? I mean, what did I do wrong?"
"Nothing, nothing," Petersen reassured him. "Unfortunately, our budget is being cut. Government's giving all the damn money to NERV these days. We just don't have the funds to keep you on anymore."
"I…I see," Steven said, his shoulders slumping. "Um, can I use you for a reference when I go looking for a new job, Mr. Petersen?" he asked gloomily.
"Actually…" Petersen glanced around nervously, as though afraid there might be someone hiding somewhere inside his tiny office, eavesdropping on them. "I might have a…job for you."
"Really?" Steven asked, his eyes lighting up. "What? What is it?"
"It's probably best not to talk about this while we're on the clock here," Petersen said. "Do you know where Ralph's Tavern is?"
"Uh, yes," Steven said, blinking at the seeming non sequitur.
Ralph's Tavern was a seedy little bar and grill in the city's industrial area. Though it was too out of his way for him to regularly patronize the place, Steven had nothing against it. However, he suspected that Petersen would have felt the establishment was too low class for him. He was surprised his supervisor would even bring it up.
"Meet me there tomorrow night at 8:30, all right?" Petersen asked. "We'll discuss this job then."
"Sure, Mr. Petersen, and thanks for the opportunity," Steven said.
The supervision just nodded. "Now, back to work Cunningham," he said. "You still have three months left here, after all."
"Right, of course," Steven agreed, then quickly left, still feeling confused.
That was weird, he mused. Why would Petersen want to meet at Ralph's Tavern of all places to talk to me about a job opportunity?
Then he shrugged. If there was any chance of finding new employment right after being laid off from his current position, Steven Cunningham certainly wasn't about to turn his nose up at it.
If someone had asked most of the students in Tokyo-3 Municipal Junior High School to name one word that described Kensuke Aida, the overwhelming response would have been "okaku."
"Geek" would've been a close second.
However, if one had posed that same question to Kensuke himself, the bespectacled boy's immediate response would've been "entrepreneur."
"Thank you, come again," Kensuke said, handing a small envelope filled with photos to one of his classmates.
The guy walked off, glancing around nervously as he departed from the shadowy corner of the school yard where Kensuke and Toji sat. To his relief, no one paid him any attention, and he was able to cram his acquisition into his backpack without anyone seeing.
The otaku was too busy counting his money to take any notice of his latest customer's antics.
"Man, I can't believe how well we're doing here," Toji commented as he held a strip of film negatives up to the sun, appraising the images on them.
"What did I tell you, man? I knew Makinami would be a gold mine for us," Kensuke said smugly.
So far, the two boys had been making quite a tidy profit by selling the photos they'd taken of the newly arrived EVA pilot, though the pictures weren't quite as lucrative as photos of Asuka had been, when she had first arrived in Tokyo-3. Yet even so, Toji's fears that their fellow students would be largely uninterested in the brunette, who was so much less exotic looking than the redhead, were proving unfounded.
"Man, if only we could get some racier shots of her we could practically afford to buy our own cars!" Kensuke remarked.
Toji snorted, knowing that that was a serious exaggeration. "Yeah, right," he said. "Besides, we're already taking a huge risk here. Do you know how screwed we'll be if we manage to get something risqué and get caught selling it?"
Kensuke shook his head. "We sold pictures of Asuka in the girl's locker room, and you didn't complain," he said. "Since when did you become such a coward about this?"
"Since I realized how damn lucky we were not to get caught with any of those shots," Toji retorted.
The freckled boy rolled his eyes. "Man, you've gotten paranoid," he proclaimed. "There's absolutely no chance that we're gonna get—"
"Hey, you know, these aren't bad."
The new voice abruptly entering into the conversation threw the otaku for a loop, especially since the voice was feminine, and all their previous customers had been male. For a split second, his mind reached the conclusion that they had their first female patron, an idea that he honestly found pretty exciting, for more than one reason.
Then he looked up from the task of counting the yen notes in his hand, and his heart stopped. Makinami stood before them, looking over the sample photos that they had on display.
"Of course," Mari continued, "they're even more impressive when you consider that every last one of them was taken with one of those really long zoom lenses."
Kensuke didn't reply. Instead, he turned a panicked gaze toward Toji, and even though he didn't say a word, the jock somehow knew exactly what he wanted to convey.
It was something like "You're supposed to be the lookout! I thought you were watching for anybody we didn't want to see all this!"
Toji, who was breaking out into a cold sweat, responded with an equally silent response that roughly translated into "I was! I looked away for one second, and she just freaking appeared here!"
Apparently oblivious to the mute communication between the two boys, Mari picked up another of the pictures. "Wow, you guys really managed to catch my good side in this one!"
"Oh, god! Please don't kill us!" Kensuke exclaimed, abruptly regaining the ability to speak. "I promise we'll never do it again! We're so sorry!"
Mari looked down at them over the top of the Polaroid she was holding. "Sorry? What for?" she asked mildly.
She wore an expression that looked genuinely puzzled to Kensuke, but that didn't mean the otaku was going to let his guard down yet.
There's no way she's clueless enough to not realize we aren't supposed to be doing this, he thought. Maybe Ayanami would be, but not her.
"You're not mad?" he asked cautiously.
"Mad? Not at all!" the American EVA pilot reassured him cheerfully. "In fact, I want in on this action!"
"In?" Toji echoed stupidly. He didn't quite seem to have gotten over the awful shock of being discovered yet.
"That's right," Mari confirmed with a nod. "Here's what I was thinking: I model for your pictures, you guys stay in charge of the production and distribution part, and I get 50 percent of the gross. What do you say?"
The two boys blinked, barely daring to believe the way this situation was unfolding.
"I don't know," Kensuke said slowly. "I'm already splitting the net profit with Toji. If we gave you half the gross, there wouldn't be a whole lot left for the two of us, even if sales picked up a bit."
Of course, all Mari had to do was threaten to tell the teacher or the class rep, and they'd have to hand over all of the gross profits to her. Kensuke knew it, and he was pretty sure Mari knew it, too, despite the way she was acting. The otaku braced himself for the inevitable blackmailing.
"Okay, how about this, then? Fifty percent of the gross, and I model for your pictures in a bikini," Mari said.
Toji and Kensuke both did a double take. Then, in a display too perfect to have been rehearsed, they simultaneously looked the new girl up and down, traded a stunned glance, then turned back to Mari.
"Deal," they said as one.
"Cool!" the brunette said. "Well, I'll get in touch with you guys later so we can set up a time for the photo shoot. See ya!"
She walked off, leaving a pair of stunned teenage boys in her wake. For a long time, the otaku and the jock just sat there, speechless.
Then Kensuke broke out into a broad grin. "And you were so afraid that we were going to get in trouble over this…"
Toji groaned and palmed his forehead.
Seated in his car, which itself was parked in the lot belonging to Ralph's Tavern, Steven Cunningham checked his wristwatch for what felt like the ten-thousandth time. Eager to discuss any potential for new employment, he'd arrived barely a minute past 7:30, an hour early for his informal meeting with his boss. However, he'd been hesitating ever since then. Something just didn't feel right about this to him.
His crappy little watch said it was 8:25 PM.
"Well, now or never," he muttered.
Seeing as how his current job would only last for another three months, while his bills were sure to keep on coming, "never" didn't seem to be an option. Steven got out of his car with some wordless grumblings and headed toward the bar.
The interior of Ralph's Tavern was a typical bar. It was dimly lit, with cigarette smoke and the smell of stale beer hanging in the air. A few flat screen TVs had been mounted on the walls in strategic locations, and every last one was displaying a hockey game. A quick glance at the score was enough to tell Steven that the Keystone Combines were getting their asses kicked.
Typical, he thought, scanning the room for his boss.
He almost managed to miss Mr. Peterson; the man was sitting in a booth at the back of the room, almost hidden by the shadows. Steven realized he'd never seen the man in casual clothes before; Peterson looked strange wearing denim jeans and no tie. Taking a deep breath, Steven went over to him.
"Ah, Cunningham, you're right on time," Peterson remarked as he saw the younger man approach. "Punctual as always."
"Thank you, sir," Steven replied in a carefully neutral tone as he sat down across from his boss.
"Would you like a beer, Cunningham?" Peterson asked him. "On me."
"I…try not to drink during job interviews, Mr. Peterson," Steven replied slowly. This was getting stranger by the second, he decided.
"Well, this isn't exactly a regular job interview, or a regular job, for that matter," Peterson said gruffly, then he raised a hand to get the attention of one of the waitresses. "Hey, a cold one for my friend here!"
"Right," she said in quick acknowledgement before going back to what she was doing.
"Thanks," Steven said awkwardly, even though he didn't really want a beer at the moment.
The waitress brought him an open bottle of Budweiser a minute later, and Steven took a drink just to be polite. However, her quick departure sent the smoke hanging in the room swirling about, and Steven couldn't help but cough as he inhaled some of it.
"All the smoke bothering you?" Peterson asked. He might have come off as genuinely concerned if he wasn't taking out a cigarette of his own.
"No, it doesn't bother me at all," Steven lied.
"Uh-huh," Peterson grunted skeptically, but he withdrew a Zippo from a pocket and lit up his smoke all the same.
There was a moment of awkward silence. Steven wished that his boss would just cut to chase, but he thought it would be unwise to say so.
Peterson took a long drag from his cigarette, then let it out slowly. "You know, it's been illegal in Kansas to smoke inside businesses like this for several years now," he remarked.
"Is that so?" Steven asked.
The older man nodded. "Oh, yes," he said. "The thing is, a lot of cops smoke, too, and most of the ones who don't are open to bribes, or just don't want the trouble, so the law doesn't really get enforced."
"I see," Steven said, wondering where the heck his boss was going with this.
"Time was, Keystone City had one of the most honest police forces in the country," Peterson continued. "Of course, things here are nowhere near as bad as they are in Chicago or Gotham, but still, times have definitely changed."
"There's no scarlet speedster around to inspire people anymore," Steven finally ventured a remark.
"Ah, the Flash," Peterson grinned crookedly. "Amazing how everybody still knows somebody who got saved by the man, even though he's been dead for so many years. Though I guess it won't be too long before that's not the case anymore. These days, anybody who got the chance to meet him has gray hair."
"I heard there's a new speedster, a girl, calling herself the Flash," Steven said. He was aware that the conversation was getting increasingly far away from the topic he wanted to discuss, but he had no idea how to rectify that. "She's in Japan, though."
Peterson took another puff from his cigarette and grinned bitterly. "Seems like Japan has everything these days, both good and bad," he commented. "In fact, Japan is where this…job is coming from."
More perplexed than ever, but unwilling to lose this opportunity, Steven pounced. "What's this job about, anyway?" he asked.
Peterson looked about, as if to make sure no one was watching them, then he leaned forward. "I recently received…an offer," he said. "Someone in Japan is willing to pay a very large sum for a few items inside the warehouse."
Steven's eyebrows went up as he quickly began to assemble a few of the pieces inside his mind. He knew, of course, that things often went "missing" from the warehouse, once it was clear that the justice system was done with them. Narcotics and the like were kept under lock and key, but cell phones and other small items vanished on a fairly regular basis.
However, this person that Peterson was talking about, the mystery man on the other side of the Pacific willing to pay through the nose…he obviously wanted something a bit more unique and valuable than a lightly used Nokia product.
"What are we talking about here?" Steven asked. "What's this guy want?"
"Things from some old cases, closed cases," Peterson said. "Things that were used by some of the more…colorful bad guys from Keystone's past."
Steven's eyes widened. "Are you serious?" he breathed.
"As a heart attack," Peterson nodded. "Look, if you're not interested, you can walk away now, and we can pretend this meeting never happened. But I can't go riffling through the shelves myself to get this stuff. Someone will see me and wonder what's up. I need someone in your position to actually get it out of the warehouse, and I can promise you 50 grand for the job."
Steven inhaled sharply. That was more money than he made in a year. "In cash?" he asked.
"In cash," Peterson confirmed with a nod. "So, are you in?"
Steven hesitated for a long moment, considering. He didn't like the idea of doing what Peterson was proposing, especially considering that he had a pretty good idea what that stuff would be used for. The Flash had once saved his Uncle Willie from getting mowed down by a drunk driver.
Still…he was about to be out of a job. He pretty much lived from paycheck to paycheck, so he didn't have a whole lot of money saved up. The economy was pretty damn crummy at the moment, so he didn't have much hope of finding a new job quickly. And he had nothing to fall back on, not even any relatives he could hope to maybe mooch off of until he got back on his feet.
Fifty-thousand dollars would lessen the odds of him ending up on the street substantially, to say the least.
Screw it, he thought. The new girl's not Barry Allen.
"I'm in," he said.
It was the middle of the night, and Mari Illustrious Makinami couldn't sleep.
Of course, most people wouldn't have found it surprising to discover that someone in her position was suffering from insomnia. After all, she was a fourteen-year-old who was charged with piloting a giant mecha into combat against potentially world ending monsters. On top of that, she had also secretly taken on the role of being a super heroine.
Yet her inability to sleep that night had nothing to do with those concerns, or even the photo shoot she had recently agreed to do with Suzuhara and Aida.
Nope, she was tossing and turning because she was simply a very energetic teenager, and sometimes she didn't always manage to tire herself out in the course of the day.
Ugh, what time it is? She wondered, turning to look at the clock on her bedside table.
The luminous blue numbers told her what she already knew, namely that it was the middle of the night. Or very early morning, if you wanted to get technical about it.
"Oh, screw this," she finally decided, kicking off her blankets and getting out of bed.
She got dressed, as quickly and as quietly as she could, then crept out of her room, wincing every time the floorboards creaked beneath her weight. However, she didn't hear so much as a peep coming from Jessie's room; her guardian was apparently fast asleep.
Finally, Mari made it to the door and slipped out of the apartment. She quickly zipped down the darkened stairwell to the ground floor of the building, then carefully poked her head through the front door.
A black sedan sat out front, in a pool of light created by a street lamp. Mari could easily hear the Section Two guys inside snoring away.
She rolled her eyes. Back in Keystone, giving her bodyguards the slip had required actual effort on her part, at least before she'd gained superhuman speed. But in Tokyo-3…
These guys couldn't catch a cold, she thought, before moving a short distance away, making sure she was well out of sight.
Then she pressed the tiny stud on the side of her ring. Immediately, it popped open, ejecting the miniature suit hidden inside. Mari kicked into speed mode, donning the crimson garment in the blink of an eye as it rapidly expanded. In less than a heartbeat, the Fourth Child had switched places with the Flash.
"Up, over, and gone!" she exclaimed, taking off into a run, leaving a trail of golden lightning crackling behind her.
Within seconds, the scarlet speedster had left the city of Tokyo-3 behind her. It didn't take her much longer to reach the eastern shore of Nippon.
Here goes nothing! She thought with a manic grin on her face.
Denise had told her that the Flash was capable of running on water, but Mari had always had trouble believing that. However, she'd been wanting to try it for some time now.
Of course, it would've been wiser to make her first attempt on Lake Ashi or some smaller body of water, but that just wasn't the way Mari rolled.
The Flash's yellow boots hit the water and kept going. She didn't sink. Instead, she just continued running. She was kicking up a massive spray behind and on either side of herself, but she was having no difficulty staying above the surface of the sea.
"Awesome!" she exclaimed, and put on even more speed, soon breaking the sound barrier and leaving a colossal boom that shook the sea in her wake. Then, she began to sing. "Rolling around at the speed of sound, I got places to go, gotta follow my rainbow…"
For several minutes, she continued to run eastward, covering hundreds of miles, and quickly leaving the nation of Japan behind herself. It wasn't long before the sky began to get brighter.
Faster than the speed of night, she thought to herself with a chuckle.
It wasn't too long before the western shore of the United States began to come into view, and the Flash's omnipresent grin widened. It was time to visit home.
"O-M-G, have you heard what's going on with Kevin and Ana?" Katie Anderson muttered quietly to herself as she typed the words into her smart phone. "Send."
It had been an exciting day at school, the twelve-year-old girl decided as she waited for a reply. Rumors that the hottest boy and the most popular girl in their class had snuck off during lunch to make out were bouncing all over the school, and Katie hadn't been able to wait until getting home to start gossiping about it. She'd whipped out her cell phone almost the instant she'd gotten off school grounds.
Said cell phone beeped as a new text message came in from her friend. Katie eagerly displayed it.
It read, "I heard that Ana just said that to make everyone THINK she made it to first base with Kevin."
Katie laughed aloud at this idea, getting several people who were walking down the same street as she was to look at her curiously. The preteen girl didn't even notice this, however, and quickly began to key in her response.
"Please. Ana's not that smart," she mumbled to herself as she typed the message out. "Maybe they didn't really kiss, but there's no way she made the whole thing up."
A reply came a moment later, and Katie quickly brought it up. She was just reading it when the deafening roar of a car horn caused her to look up.
Katie felt her blood turn to ice in her veins. She had been so preoccupied with her texting that she she'd stepped out into the street without even realizing it, and now a freaking gigantic truck was bearing down on her.
The girl froze with terror, unable to close her eyes, unable to even breathe, in the face of her oncoming death.
Then, for just a split second, the entire world seemed to blur around her. She felt like the air was getting sucked straight out of body, and she assumed that the truck had hit her. Surely, she must be either dead or dying.
Then the world abruptly returned to clarity. On instinct, she inhaled sharply, feeling the aching in her chest immediately subside as new air was brought into her lungs. Badly dazed, she looked around, blinking stupidly.
She appeared to have ended up back on the sidewalk. How had that happened?
"You okay, kid?" a voice asked her, and she turned.
Katie's jaw dropped. Standing next to her was another girl, more than a head taller than she was. Her rescuer was clad in a tight red costume with yellow boots. An emblem that everybody in Keystone City (and Central City, too, for that matter) knew well was emblazoned upon her chest.
"The Flash," she breathed.
"That's my name, don't wear it out," the new scarlet speedster said and posed heroically, placing her hands on her hips and throwing her chest out. Several people nearby began to snap pictures with cell phone cameras, but the superwoman appeared oblivious to them.
Katie's eyes widened.
Then the preteen girl released a shriek of excitement, causing the Flash to wince.
"Ow, kid, is that any way to thank me for saving your life?" the Flash asked. She tried to rub her ears, but found herself unable to do so because of the wing fins on her cowl.
"S-Sorry," Katie stammered, embarrassed. "And thanks."
"Ah, don't worry about it. It's all in a day's work," the Flash said, grinning toothily. Then she looked down the long road they were standing on, and her smile widened further. "Arriba! Arriba! Andale! Andale!"
With that, the crimson comet took off, leaving a powerful gust of wind in her wake.
Once she was gone, Katie whipped out her phone again. This time making very sure that she was in a safe spot and not moving, the girl quickly logged onto Twitter.
"O-M-G," she muttered as she typed. "Just got saved by the new Flash, exclamation point…caps lock…she's in Keystone, exclamation point, exclamation point… exclamation point. Send."
The building was ablaze.
Jon Ryan had been a member of the Central City Fire Department for the last 15 years, and he had never seen a fire this bad before. The entire apartment building was an inferno, with fire and smoke pouring out of every window. Mother nature wasn't helping anything, with especially hot, dry air and high winds threatening to spread the fire to the neighboring buildings.
"We're barely making a dent in this!" one of his fellow firefighters said. He and Ryan were struggling to keep the stream of water from their powerful hose on target.
"Just keep it up!" Ryan retorted, even though he secretly agreed with that assessment. "Reinforcements from Keystone should be here any minute now!"
"Yeah, and what good will that—?"
The firefighters' conversation was interrupted as a slightly overweight blonde woman came running up, a terrified expression on her face. "Oh my god!" she shrieked. "My baby's in there!"
Ryan's eyes widened. He had thought that they'd managed to get everybody out of the building.
"Which floor is you child on, ma'am?" Ryan asked.
"The seventh," the terrified woman asked, turning her gaze up to the floor in question.
The two men exchanged a glance, then looked upwards themselves. They both knew that venturing to the seventh floor was practically a suicide mission, but if there was really a baby up there…
Ryan swallowed, preparing to volunteer for the task.
Yet before he could make a sound, a powerful gust of wind passed them by, strong enough to send even his heavy coat flapping in the air. The firefighter thought that he spied just a hint of crimson by the entrance to the burning building. He had only seen it from of the corner of his eye, yet he was still quite certain that something had been there.
"No," he whispered, his tone almost reverent. "No way…"
His father, who'd been a fireman himself for over thirty years, had once described almost exactly what Ryan had just seen. The old man had always said that when he saw the scarlet blur and felt the blast of wind, he knew that he didn't have to worry anymore, that the day was as good as saved.
Still, things like that didn't happen anymore. It had been a long time since things like that had happened in the twin cities.
Then there was another gust of wind, and suddenly a girl who couldn't have been a day older than sixteen was standing in front of the burning building, holding a toddler in her arms. Tongues of golden energy crackled around her red-clad form as she came to a stop.
I don't believe it, Ryan thought. It's the Flash.
"Robby!" the boy's mother exclaimed, looking nearly overwhelmed with relief.
"Here you go, lady," the Flash said with a smile, handing the soot streaked kid over.
For a moment, all was quiet aside from the crackling of the blaze nearby. The fire had attracted quite a crowd of onlookers, in addition to the fire department, and now a hush fell over the crowd. The people couldn't believe what they were seeing. They had all been told, again and again, that they could no longer hope for a scarlet speedster to rescue them in their darkest hour. Yet here was one, standing right before them.
It was the Flash who broke the silence. "Okay, everybody!" she called out. "I'm going to need you to back away from the building!"
The crowd immediately obeyed, as did the firefighters. Ryan hadn't ever expected to take orders from a teenage girl, especially not at the scene of a roaring fire, but that day he shut off the hose and retreated from the burning apartment building without a moment's hesitation.
Once satisfied that everybody was far enough away, the Flash faced the building and rubbed her gloved hands together.
"Don't worry, everybody!" she said. "I have it on very good authority that Barry Allen made this work all the time!"
These were perhaps not the most encouraging words she could have spoken, but if anybody felt the urge to stop her, they kept it to themselves.
The Flash held her arms straight and rigid, pointing directly toward the building. Then she began to spin them at a furious pace, until her arms were nothing more than blurs. Twin cones of air sprang into existence.
She's not gonna try and blow that fire out, is she? Ryan wondered, suddenly very concerned about what the speedster was doing.
Yet he realized a moment later that he need not have been worried. The flames actually looked like they were being sucked toward the Flash rather than blown away from her, though the fire always sputtered out before reaching her.
She's sucking up all the air to starve the fire, he thought, grabbing hold of his heavy fireman's helmet so it wasn't blown away.
For several seconds, it was like a small tornado had touched down in the street. Even though the crowd wasn't the focus of the Flash's efforts, they all felt the effects. Many of them closed their eyes in the face of nearly hurricane-force winds.
Then the Flash stopped, and the gusts almost immediately died down. The members of the crowd gasped in awe at what they saw.
The fire was out. Where before the apartment building had been a raging inferno, now it was smoldering embers.
For several seconds, stunned silence reigned.
Then someone in the crowd managed to find his voice.
"Flash! Flash, you rule!"
Other enthusiastic cheers immediately followed, along with a great outburst of applause. The Flash grinned brilliantly, taking a bow, which only caused the people to cheer more loudly.
Then her grin transformed into a smirk. "Meep-meep!" she exclaimed, taking off, and then she was gone.
Ryan watched as the trail of crackling lightning she left in her wake flickered out. He was aware that he was grinning like a kid, but he couldn't help himself.
Man, my brother is never going to believe this, he thought.
For over an hour, the Flash raced around the twin cities of Keystone and Central, addressing any issues she happened to come across.
The first act of nearly every single person she rescued was to tell someone else of what they had seen and experienced. News of the Flash's exploits spread by word of mouth. People announced over the internet what they had witnessed. Within thirty minutes of the Flash's arrival, a popular radio station based in Central City was accepting calls from listeners who claimed to have seen the Flash. Cell phone usage spiked to a level that nearly crashed the area's grid. It wasn't long before individuals who felt left out of the excitement started weaving false accounts of seeing the Flash, which only served to magnify the excitement further.
In short, it wasn't long until news of the Flash was moving even faster than she was.
Yet for all the different people talking about the Flash, everyone's response to her presence in the twin cities was largely the same.
Raw, unbridled excitement.
The Flash was in town, they told each other.
The third coming of the scarlet speedster was among them, they said.
For the first time in years and years, a superhero raced through their streets, helping anyone who needed it, without expectation or need of reward.
So, though she might live in Japan, so far as the residents of Keystone and Central were concerned, the Fastest Girl Alive became one of theirs that day.
"Mari?" Denise said, tapping her headset anxiously. "C'mon, Mari, I know you're around."
The lone resident of Keystone City who knew who the new Flash was beneath her cowl felt like she was the only one who hadn't seen her yet. The instant she had heard of the Flash being in town, Denise Myles had immediately rushed home and donned the headset. Unfortunately, its connection to the radio concealed in one of the Flash's wing fins didn't appear to be working.
"Mari, you're scaring me here," Denise said. "Please, answer me already."
"HI DENISE!"
The words, which the Flash had shouted at nearly the top of her lungs, came not from the headset Denise was wearing, but from right behind her. The rather mousey girl jumped a foot in the air, then spun around to look at the scarlet speedster, her face pale.
"Geeze, Mari!" she exclaimed, clutching a hand to her chest. "I told you to stop doing that! You're gonna give me a heart attack eventually if you keep it up!"
"Sorry," the Flash said, though the grin on her face didn't make her look very repentant. "I couldn't resist."
"I hope you'll tell everyone that when you speak at my funeral," Denise grumped.
"Please, you're young and strong. I'm not gonna kill you just by spooking you every now and again," the Flash said. "Anyway, can I borrow five bucks?" she added, abruptly shifting gears.
"Um, okay, I guess," Denise said, digging into her pocket and pulling out a slightly crumpled picture of Lincoln.
"Thanks," the Flash said, snatching the bill.
"What are you—?" Denise began, only to have her friend seemingly vanish before her very eyes.
Before she could even fully register the scarlet speedster's disappearance, however, the Flash returned just as abruptly as she'd left. A large, soft pretzel with mustard was clutched in her hand. It was already half eaten.
"You just can't stop thinking about your stomach these days, can you?" Denise asked, reaching up to adjust her glasses.
"Hey, I would've eaten before I came here, but somebody told me I'm not supposed to accept freebies, and I had all my money converted to yen already," the Flash retorted. "Besides, I just ran across the Pacific Ocean and then did about 30 laps around the twin cities! I think I deserve a snack!"
"Okay, okay, chill out," Denise said, raising her hands in a placating gesture. "Wait…you ran across the Pacific Ocean?"
"Uh-huh," the Flash grunted, her mouth full. She swallowed the last bite of her pretzel before continuing. "How do you think I got here? Took a plane?"
"Sorry, it's just…how long did it take you to get across the ocean?" Denise asked, looking flustered.
"About 20 minutes," the Flash replied.
"Twenty minutes…" Denise echoed, amazed.
She knew that Jay Garrick or Barry Allen could've done that, of course, but Mari's super speed was still fairly new to her.
"Yeah, I know, it felt like forever," the Flash said, completely misinterpreting her friend's surprise. "But I was afraid that I'd create a tidal wave or something if I went any faster."
"Oh," was all Denise said in response to that. It was all she could think to say in response to that.
"Oh, yeah!" the Flash said, snapping her fingers in recollection. "I have something for you! I thought your Uncle Dexter might be able to use it in his museum or something."
She reached into her boot and withdrew a Polaroid, handing it to Denise. The other girl smiled when she saw it. The photo depicted the Flash and Mari standing side by side, both grinning toothily at the camera.
"So, did you do this with some camera trick, or did you master that technique to appear as if you're in two places at once?" Denise asked.
"I did it with pure speed, buddy," the Flash bragged.
"Cool," Denise said. "Hey, who took this picture?"
"I did," the Flash answered with a smirk.
Denise's eyes widened and she looked down at the picture again. Neither person it looked remotely transparent; there was nothing to suggest that it was just one individual moving back and forth (and changing clothes), at mind boggling speeds.
"Okay, I'm officially impressed now," she declared.
"Oh, it's only official now?" the Flash asked, looking exceedingly pleased with herself.
"Yeah, yeah, don't get too full of yourself," Denise warned, narrowing her eyes. However, she couldn't keep up the annoyed expression for more than a moment, and she soon smiled. "So, how have you been? And what brought you here today?"
The Flash shrugged. "I decided to come here because I couldn't sleep," she answered. "And it's been cool in Tokyo-3 so far. I got to stab an Angel in the eyeball! Of course, it was pretty much all eyeball, but still…"
Denise immediately found herself envisioning a giant eye floating around the city of Tokyo-3, shooting laser beams at people and buildings.
"But it's not all good," the Flash continued, her usual grin morphing into a scowl. "NERV Central tricked me into taking a big pay cut!"
"Huh? How'd they do that?" Denise asked, scratching her head.
The Flash looked sheepish. "Well, when they told me how much they'd be paying me there, I was still thinking in American dollars, not in yen," she confessed. "So it sounded like they were giving me a big raise…"
Denise couldn't help it. She snickered.
"Yeah, yeah, laugh it up," the Flash scowled, placing her fists on her hips. "I don't even have enough cash to keep up with my appetite lately. I've already lost a few pounds."
That statement immediate caused Denise to turn serious. She cast a worried glance at her friend and was relieved to see that the new scarlet speedster was not visibly skinnier than she remembered her. Yet even so…
"You can't just let yourself waste away," she said firmly. "If it comes down to it, you'll just have to let Jessie know how much you put away these days and hope she doesn't get too suspicious about it."
"Nah, I don't have to do that. I already have things all set up for a new income stream," the Flash said.
"…do I want to know?" Denise asked reluctantly.
"Probably not," the Flash answered without skipping a beat. "But if it makes you feel better, it's something I'm doing as me, not as…" she gestured to the crimson outfit she currently wore.
"Well, I guess that's some comfort," Denise said, still not too keen on the idea of her often impulsive friend embarking on a get-rich-quick scheme of any kind.
She was actually thinking about trying to force Mari to explain what she planned to do, but Denise ultimately decided against it. Even if she go the EVA pilot to cough up her little secret, it wouldn't do any good. When Mari Illustrious Makinami was set on doing something, nothing would stop her, and that most definitely included Denise Myles.
"Anyway," the Flash spoke, "I was thinking that since—"
The speedster abruptly stopped talking, causing Denise to frown with confusion. However, realization quickly followed; the Flash was pressing one of her wing fins more closely to her ear. It was the one with the police scanner inside it, Denise knew.
"What's up?" she asked.
"Robbery from some police warehouse," the Flash answered, just before an excited grin made its way onto her face. "Gotta run!"
She took off, leaving a gust of wind in her wake that blew Denise's long hair everywhere, leaving it a complete mess. Yet the girl didn't scowl as she attempted to get it back into some semblance of order, without any result. She felt that she still needed to be the "rational one" around Mari, but now that she was alone, a broad grin split her face.
"So cool," she said, still barely able to believe that the third Flash was racing through Keystone at that very moment. "So cool."
Minutes earlier…
On one level, Steven Cunningham could not believe what he was doing.
Oh, he understood all the logic of it in his head. He was going to be unemployed soon, he had no safety net of any kind to catch him, and he needed the money. He didn't feel like he owed the city anything, with the way they were planning on rewarding his years of loyal service by laying him off.
Yet all that didn't change the fact that he was stealing from the police. In fact, he was stealing weapons from the police.
Okay, just calm the hell down and act natural, he ordered himself sternly, walking through the warehouse, holding a white cardboard box containing his ill-gotten loot. He was sweating profusely, even though the temperature was quite comfortable. This stuff used to disappear from this place all the time, and nobody was ever caught taking it.
That much, at least, he knew was true. Weapons like the ones he carried were too unique, too powerful, and thus too valuable to remain moldering in storage for very long. Or at least, they had been. Back in the day, there was always some criminal willing to plunk down a serious chunk of change for such arms, along with individuals in positions similar to Steven's willing to sneak the stuff out for that money.
Then Barry Allen had vanished off the face of the Earth, and suddenly, the police in Keystone City had started shooting to kill whenever they encountered anyone wielding the weapons Steven currently held. Demand for them had declined sharply once the bad guys started realizing that.
Okay, new plan, he told himself. Just don't think—at all—until you freaking reach your car.
This actually seemed to work fairly well. Steven approached one of the side doors to the warehouse without incident, and he even started to calm down somewhat. Sweat stopped pouring down his brow.
"Hey, Steve. Whatcha got there?" a woman's voice shattered any good feelings he might have been experiencing at the moment.
His head snapped to the side, taking in Peggy, the cute secretary he'd been flirting with before his life had taken such an unexpected turned.
It was here that Steven proved himself to be anything but a master thief. Peggy didn't exactly seem suspicious. Indeed, her demeanor was quite pleasant, and she was probably more interested in saying hello than satisfying her curiosity about the box he was carrying. Even if she had pressed the issue, Steven knew enough about the business of the warehouse to spin a believable lie about it.
Unfortunately for Steven, he was far too high strung to realize any of that. So instead of making small talk for two minutes, he took off toward the door in a sprint.
"Steve?" Peggy called, confused but obviously realizing that something was very wrong. "Where are you going?"
He ignored her, opening the door with one swift kick and bursting out into the sunshine outside. From there, he ran as quickly as his legs would take him to his car. He fumbled with his keys for several moments, his panic making him clumsy, but he was eventually able to get inside his vehicle. Throwing his box into the passenger seat, Steven quickly got behind the wheel, cursing under his breath the whole time.
Security emerged from the warehouse just as he was getting the engine started. Steven threw his car into reverse and stomped on the accelerator. There was a screeching of tires, and he nearly backed up right into a concrete wall. However, he was able to stop his car at the last moment, shifting from reverse to drive.
He pounded on the accelerator again and peeled off, leaving long tire tracks and the smell of burnt rubber in his wake. Pulling out onto the street, he left the warehouse security guards in the dust.
He had gotten away, but he hadn't gotten away clean.
"This is not going as well as I'd hoped," Steven groaned as he headed for the location where he was supposed to drop the stolen goods off.
Meanwhile, the Flash was zipping through the streets, having kicked just deeply enough into "speed mode" so that the cars all around her appeared to be moving in very slow motion. She knew from the police scanner what kind of vehicle she was looking for, and what its license plate number was, but she didn't really know where it was.
Great, she thought, annoyed. She'd have to head back pretty soon if she didn't want to run the risk of Jessie discovering that she'd gone out in the middle of the night, but she really wanted to catch this guy. Okay, have to search the city, street by street.
For anyone else, this would've been a fool's task, and the stupidest possible way to look for her target.
Not for the Fastest Girl Alive.
The Flashed had half of the roads in Keystone searched in under twenty seconds of "real time", although it felt like several minutes to her. She was just about to get started on the other half of the city when she spotted it. A beaten up blue Ford, and unlike all the other cars that fit that description, this one had the right plate number.
Bingo, she thought.
The Flash loosened her hold on the Speed Force enough so that the world resumed moving at normal speed to her eyes, making sure not to lose track of that car. Then, she carefully ran until she was jogging next to it. The guy driving the Ford was going recklessly fast, and he was gripping the steering wheel so tightly that his knuckles were white.
Definitely my thief, then, the Flash thought.
"Yo! Buddy! Pull over!" she demanded.
The driver started violently, and his face paled as he turned to look at her with an expression of disbelief. "You can't be here!" he exclaimed, though it sounded more like a plea than a genuine denial. "You're in Japan!"
"I'm the Flash," she said, as though that explained away his objection entirely. Which, of course, it did. "I thought that the getup and the way that I'm keeping pace with your car would've made that obvious. You feeling okay, pal?"
The man didn't respond, at least not with words. Instead, he turned the wheel sharply, causing his Ford to take a left turn. Which, considering he was in the far right lane, was both highly illegal and extremely dangerous.
Horns blared, reminding the Flash of the night she had first exercised her abilities, and the scarlet speedster went into action, kicking back into speed mode instants before the cars that her thief had so recklessly cut off began to collide with one another.
The cars were far too big and heavy for her to do anything about, and the Flash wrote them off without a second thought.
The people inside them were another story entirely. Now in control of her link to the Speed Force, she had all the time she needed to get everyone out of their cars and carry or drag them to a safer location.
Once she was done, she allowed time to restart, and the now empty vehicles collided in a spectacular crash, glass shattering and metal twisting everywhere.
Yet none of the out-of-control wrecks careened into any of the nearby buildings, as the Flash had suspected they might. No hapless pedestrian on the sidewalk was endangered, either.
Finally, the driverless cars all came to a stop. They'd jam up traffic for hours, at least, but there wasn't much the Flash could do about that.
She took off after her thief again, easily skirting the edge of the multi-car pileup. The guy in the blue Ford had managed to put an impressive amount of distance between himself and the crash he'd caused, but it wasn't enough to lose the Flash. Not even close.
"All right, jerk, no more Miss Nice Speedster!" she shouted as she drew close to him. "Stop right now, or—"
The guy stuck an arm out the window, and the Flash noted with confusion that he was holding some kind of luminous baton in his hand now. He waved it around, and, to her amazement, a bolt of lightning erupted from the tip of the glow stick. It crackled through the air, leaving the odor of burnt ozone in its wake, and crashed into the wall of one of Keystone's high rise buildings.
"No!" the Flash exclaimed in horror as she watched the wall break, sending great chunks of concrete falling toward the street.
Great chunks of concrete and a young woman who had apparently been just a little too close to her apartment's window.
The crimson comet sprang into action immediately, cranking up her speed so much that the world appeared to come to a dead stop around her. She quickly cleared the street of people, making sure no one would be hit by the falling debris.
Which meant all she had to worry about was the lady who was falling to her doom.
You know, it's times like this that I wish I could fly, too, the Flash thought, then smirked. A flying girl. As if!
"Gotta do this just right," she said to herself as she quickly formulated a plan.
Slowing down enough so that the time appeared to start once more, the Flash began to run in a circle around the young woman who was falling to her doom. Almost immediately, a funnel of air formed beneath her, stirring up dust and small bits of gravel.
"Careful, careful," the scarlet speedster said to herself. If she went too slowly, her efforts would be for nothing, but if she went too quickly, then she'd likely send the poor woman catapulting to Kansas City. "Gotta find the sweet spot…"
At first, nothing happened; the woman remained firmly trapped in gravity's thrall. The Flash cautiously sped up, increasing the power of the winds she was creating.
The woman's fall began to slow, but it wasn't enough. The scarlet speedster stepped on the gas, and the miniature tornado she'd spawned gained in strength once more. The woman's descent slowed until it looked like she was falling at an almost gentle speed. The Flash could see her looking around, an expression of confused wonderment replacing the terror that had been on her face a moment ago.
Finally, after what felt like at least a half an hour to the Flash, the woman landed on the asphalt of the street, not receiving so much as a bruise from the whole experience. She had fallen from the eighth floor of her apartment building.
The Flash didn't bother to fire out one of her usual witticisms. Instead, she gave the woman a jaunty little salute and took off, once again in hot pursuit of her thief.
Now, where is he? She wondered, as she raced through the streets. Her gaze quickly fell upon a certain blue Ford, and she grinned. There you are.
She ran toward the car, but she realized something was wrong before she was within reach of the vehicle. For one thing, it wasn't moving. It wasn't that it didn't appear to be moving because she was going so quickly. It was parked. Not a good sign.
A moment later she was next to the car, and her fears were confirmed. The driver had gotten out of the vehicle and taken off on foot, and he'd taken his box of stolen goods with him. She could still search for him, of course, but where before she'd merely needed to scour the roads, now she needed to check every place in the area where a man could hide. It was a significantly larger task, and it would take even her a while.
"Damn, and I should really be getting back to Tokyo-3 by now, too," the Flash groaned.
Much as she hated the thought of departing from Keystone on such a low note, she didn't have much of a choice, not if she wanted to be certain that she could get back before Jessie noticed her absence. That woman sometimes woke up too damn early.
"Next time," she said to the whole city, "perfect game."
With that, the Flash was gone.
Steven Cunningham didn't know what he found more unbelievable: that he had apparently managed to escape from the Flash, or that he was almost certainly a fugitive from justice by now.
A lot of good fifty grand will do for me in jail, he thought, wondering just what he'd been thinking when he'd agreed to this job. Probably he'd assumed that everything would go smoothly, and that he wouldn't run into the Flash.
Well, there wasn't much he could do about it now. He didn't think there was any real chance of him evading the police for very long, but if he was lucky, he might be able to make the drop off, find somewhere to stash his pay, and then retrieve it when he got out of prison.
Dear god, please, let me end up anywhere but in Iron Heights, he silently prayed, shuddering at the thought of becoming a resident of the infamous penitentiary.
Fortunately, he caught sight of his contact then, and thus he had no more time to ponder his grim fate. The man Steven was supposed to give the package dressed in a black suit, wearing sunglasses, and was leaning against a black sedan. Steven almost would've thought that the guy was a member of the Secret Service or something, if he hadn't known better.
"You Cunningham?" the man asked, looking up.
"Yeah, I'm him," Steven confirmed gloomily. "Here's your stuff. I don't ever want to see it again."
"You won't," the man in black assured him, accepting the cardboard and taking a quick look inside to confirm its contents. Then he dug into his pocket and pulled out a large wad of bills. "Your cut."
"Thanks," Steven said glumly, taking the cash.
Without another word, the black suit took the box and got into his car. A moment later, he was driving off, leaving Steven alone.
"I wonder if they'll give me time off for ratting out Petersen," he mused to himself.
The next morning found Shinji Ikari walking to school along with Toji and Kensuke, as usual. His two friends seemed to believe for some reason that a great deal of money would be coming their way very soon, and they were talking about how they were going to spend it.
"I definitely need some new sports equipment," Toji said. "You know, pads, shoes with cleats, a new soccer ball. New basketball would be nice, too."
"Hmm, well, I'd really like to buy some new models and stuff, but what I should get is a new camera," Kensuke said. "It would be a good investment."
As usual, Shinji kept silent, but he listened to the conversation more attentively than normal, his curiosity warring with his better judgment. He wanted to know where exactly his friends thought all this money would come from, but, on the other hand, it seemed like it might be wiser to remain ignorant of whatever plan the two other boys were hatching.
He held his tongue until he reached the schoolyard, where they encountered Mari, causing Shinji to instantly forget about his friends' apparent scheming. The American EVA pilot, who was usually bursting with energy, looked exhausted that morning; there were dark blotches beneath her eyes, and her head dropped forward. She seemed ready to fall asleep standing up.
"Mari?" he said.
She looked up, and despite how weary she obviously was, she smiled at him. "Hey! G'morning, puppy-kun!"
He heard Toji and Kensuke snickering behind him, but he ignored it. He was going to get teased about it later, but he'd already resigned himself to that much; once Asuka had learned about Mari's little nickname for him, Shinji knew it was just a matter of time before everyone found out about it, one way or another.
"Are you okay?" he asked. "You look exhausted."
Mari's grin didn't waver. "Aw, you're worried about me. You're so sweet, puppy-kun," she said. "But I'm fine. I just didn't sleep well last night. I'll grab a few Z's during that stupid Impact lecture and be back to my usual self by lunch. You'll see."
Shinji frowned skeptically. "Are you sure you're not getting sick or something?"
"Yeah, if you're coming down with something, you should take it easy!" Kensuke piped up, and Shinji was surprised by how emphatic his bespectacled friend sounded. "If you got really sick, it could really impact your appea—um, I mean, your health." He finished lamely.
Of course, the Third Child had no idea that Kensuke was imagining his potential profits vanishing if the newly arrived pilot became seriously ill.
Mari laughed. "Me, sick? No way! I'm as strong as an ox and as healthy as a horse," she boasted, making a fist and gently thumping herself in the chest, just above her breasts. "I'm telling you, a little nap and I'll be good to go!"
She certainly sounded earnest, but she looked so dead on her feet that Shinji wasn't quite willing to believe her so easily.
"You're positive?" he pressed. "Because you know we have that test for the Dummy System coming up in just a couple of days, and Dr. Akagi said there can't be any germs or anything present."
Mari's grin widened into a smirk, and Shinji immediately realized that he'd blundered, big time, even if he didn't understand how yet.
"Oh, so that's what this is about," the newly minted Fourth Child said, as though she had just figured out the solution to some great riddle. "You're worried that you won't get a chance to get naked with me."
To his left, Kensuke made an audible noise of surprise. Toji didn't make a sound, but Shinji could easily feel the jock's eyes boring into him.
"N-No!" he sputtered. "That's not what I was talking about! I just…I just meant that…"
"So you don't want to get naked with me?" Mari pouted, looking almost, but not quite, innocent.
Shinji's mouth moved, but not a single sound came out. To either side of him, Toji and Kensuke observed the whole thing in mute shock.
After a few seconds passed without a response from the Third Child, Mari leaned forward and spoke to him in a faux whisper. "Too bad," she said, and he could feel her hot breath on his ear. The sensation made him shiver. "I was looking forward to it."
Then she abruptly pulled back, gave him a sly smile, and headed off to class.
For several seconds, the trio of boys just stood there, not knowing what to say.
Finally, Toji piped up. "So…is there something you're not telling us, Shinji?" he asked, smirking.
"N-No!" the Third Child exclaimed, more loudly than he'd really intended. "It's just…Mari likes to tease. She's a lot like Misato, that way."
"Man, what do you and Misato get up to, when the devil's not home?" Kensuke asked with a wicked grin.
Shinji's already red face darkened, becoming almost purple. "Guys, it…it's not…bah!" he exclaimed, his frustration and mortification conspiring to completely rob him of the ability to speak.
And here I thought all I'd have to put up with was them calling me "puppy-kun" for a while, he thought, groaning as the otaku and the jock laughed.
Meanwhile, a box full of exotic weaponry was being ferried over the Pacific Ocean on one of the fastest possible planes, and the in the bowels of Central Dogma, the still dormant, microscopic form of the Eleventh Angel stirred, just a little bit.
Author's Notes: I realize that it probably would've been better if Mari had been in Tokyo-3 a bit longer before she made a trip back home, but certain events had to take place at this point in the timeline.
Fans of the Flash will know what Steve took from the police warehouse, along with what he used to help him lose Mari. Fans of speedsters in general will probably pick out the numerous references and shout outs in this chapter.
Anyway, thanks as always to my readers and reviewers, and thanks to my beta reader as well.
Omake
Too Far
"Okay, how about this, then? Fifty percent of the gross, and I model for your pictures in a bikini," Mari said.
Toji and Kensuke both did a double take. Then, in a display too perfect to have been rehearsed, they simultaneously looked the new girl up and down, traded a stunned glance, then turned back to Mari.
"D—"
Before Toji could agree, Kensuke quickly held up a hand to stop him.
"You can have fifty percent of the gross," the otaku said, "if you pose for our pictures in the nude."
Mari's sunny expression suddenly turned dark, and Kensuke knew he'd gotten too greedy.
Later…
"You had to push it, didn't you?" Toji asked.
"Yeah, I went too far there," Kensuke admitted grumblingly. He was tired of being chastised by his friend for this. The jock had been doing little else since he'd decided to up the ante with Makinami.
"All we had to do was say 'yes' and we would've gotten to see her in a bikini, not to mention make a truckload of cash," the jock continued as though he hadn't heard the otaku. "But nooooo, you just had to get greedy."
"Okay, yes, it was stupid!" Kensuke exclaimed, finally snapping. "She didn't even seem to realize that most people would consider us taking pictures of her like that and selling them a bad thing! I thought she might not think anything of posing nude!"
"You're an idiot," Toji proclaimed.
Kensuke sighed. "Yeah, well, this idiot would like to know something," he said. "How do we get out of this, and how did Makinami do this to us to begin with?"
Toji didn't respond immediately, taking a second to look over the expanse of Tokyo-3. He had an excellent view of the city, seeing as how he and Kensuke were tied to a flagpole, which itself was situated at the top of one of the tallest buildings in Tokyo-3.
"I don't know, Ken," Toji said. "I just don't know."