Chapter 3

Wild Card

Sophomore Year - September

Butch focused his vision on a glass bottle, his target. He wanted to make it harder for himself this time so he turned his head to another bottle he had set up further down range, and another positioned all the way behind him.

His eyes returned to the first one in preparation. Butch shot a quick eyebolt at it causing it to shatter. His head turned, his eyes focused, and he shattered the other. His head whipped around and he shot the last. "Pretty good, huh."

Boomer studied a concrete slab, then he backed away from it a few steps. A quick squint, and the blue beam came out of his eyes, exploding when it made contact with the slab. "Yeah."

Butch huffed while bits of concrete rained down on the empty lot. Boomer's eyebeams exploded when they hit something solid, Butch's didn't do that. But it wasn't like he was jealous. Training was stupid anyway. He understood why Brick told Boomer to train, the kid couldn't throw a punch for shit. But Butch had already weight-trained for two hours that day with his powers off. The strain multiplied his gains when he used his super strength again.

Butch snorted. "I could'a have done worse with a single punch. But it's good to know you can keep up, even if you have to cheat."

Boomer grumbled, but Butch didn't care. "Let's go watch the game."

Butch and Boomer went back into the abandoned warehouse where they lived. They sat on their places on the couch they had found in the warehouse break room and Butch set his phone on the industrial spool they used as a coffee table and leaned it up against a broken piece of concrete. He put the football game on and settled in.

A reverberating thud and a series of loud bangs meant Brick was back. He made a quick jab at the wall. It crumbled, leaving a hole, there were a lot of those from fighting, celebrating too hard, and one big one in the back from that time Butch tackled Boomer through the wall.

Brick dumped a bag of snacks on the table and plopped down in his seat, a broken recliner they had picked up on the side of the road. Something had him in a bad mood.

Butch searched through the bags of chips, candy and sodas. "No beer?" It wasn't a celebration unless they had at least a six pack.

"No, I didn't steal you a fucking beer," Brick snapped.

"Dude, what got up your ass?"

Brick grit his teeth. "Some bullshit."

Butch munched on a bag of chips, Boomer played with his phone, and Brick stopped being so pissed off once Townsville scored a touchdown. The guys had always had a fondness for football, there was something about a game that involved slamming other guys to the ground that appealed to them.

"Pimentel is looking good now that the season's started," Brick said.

Butch snorted. "He only looks good 'cuz Vargas can catch garbage."

"You're both wrong." Boomer piped up even though he didn't know anything about football. "Our only touchdown is 'cuz of that guy, number 73."

"Who?" Butch asked.

"Number 73."

"What's his name?"

"I don't know any of their fucking names."

"You don't know any of their names?" Brick snickered.

"And I don't give a shit," Boomer said. "What's more important, their name or their number? Look at the fucking jersey, what's bigger? Which piece of information is on both the back and the front?"

Butch snorted. If Boomer didn't know who the players were, then he didn't care about the team. He was a fair-weather fan. At least he rooted for the Townsville X-ers. They were named that because the players didn't want to be called the Townsville Powerpuffs. The cheerleaders didn't mind though, and wore skimpy versions of the Powerpuff Girls' uniforms. Butch loved it when the cameras panned over them when they did their high kicks.

"That guy! Rankin! Fuck!" Boomer pointed to the screen.

"Rankin gets one touchdown and you think that means anything?" Butch said. "Vargas was a first-round draft pick."

"So the fuck what if he can't get himself out of coverage," Boomer said. "He can't do anything if the defense doesn't let him do anything."

"He does have a target on his back," Brick admitted.

Pimentel hiked the ball and lobbed it at Vargas early because his blockers were shit. Some asshole on the other team picked the ball right out of the air and ran toward the end zone.

"Fuck," Butch said. His brothers hung their heads.

Just before the player got to the end zone, he tripped and rolled past the line.

"Down at the one," Boomer said.

"Nah, that was a touchdown," Butch said, throwing a chip on the ground.

"No it wasn't. His elbow clearly touched the ground, then he literally rolled to the end zone. That means he was down."

"Nobody touched him," Butch explained. "That means he's not down."

"Oh yeah? Then how does a quarterback take a knee?"

"What?"

"Take a knee, dumbass. A quarterback wants to run out the clock. So he hikes the ball and touches his knee to the ground and he's down. So what, he's not down until someone touches him? Then why doesn't the defense spear him? Guy'd be a sitting duck."

No, Boomer was wrong. He had to be touched before he was down... But that was Boomer's point.

Butch remembered the week before, during the Townsville University game, when Bruin tripped 10-yards from the end zone. The other team hadn't touched him, but he didn't get to roll it in. He was down when he hit the ground.

Wait. Boomer was right? Boomer couldn't be right, not about football. That was impossible, he didn't even know any of the players' names. Butch's brain stopped working. The green of the turf and the blue of the jerseys swirled together and reality broke. The world was going to end. Rivers and seas boiling, forty years of darkness, volcanoes, the dead rising from the grave, human sacrifice, dogs and cats living together, mass hysteria! He closed his eyes trying to block it all out, his head quaked.

"That's called 'intentional grounding'," Brick explained. "You're confusing college rules with pro rules. In the pro league, they have to make contact, but the quarterback has the option to intentionally ground himself."

Butch let out a breath. The world made sense again. Boomer was wrong. Brick always made the world make sense.

"That's stupid." Boomer shot back. "The defense should spear him anyway."

"That would be a penalty, Boomer."

"Oh no, 15-yards for being able to knock out the quarterback for the rest of the season," Boomer said sarcastically. "I'm so scared."

"He'd definitely get suspended and fined."

"Then they should play the game instead of pulling bullshit like taking a knee." Boomer crossed his arms in a huff. "No guts, no glory, bitch."

Butch watched Pimentel set up for the next play. Boomer had a point, even Butch was fast enough to turn the guy to jelly before he could get his knee to the grass. Sometimes he wondered how he and Boomer could possibly be brothers, but there it was: the Rowdyruff killer instinct.

The game went to some old-man boner-pill commercial. Brick took their paycheck out of his pocket and a fancy pen he must have stolen from the mayor's office. He took out his phone and started doing his Brick stuff.

"Give me my cut, Brick." Butch said.

He took a picture of the check with his phone. "You don't get a cut yet."

"Why the fuck not!?"

He flipped the check over and signed the back. "Expenses."

"Expenses, like what?"

"We need a new apartment."

"What's wrong with this place?"

"It's a fucking toilet." Brick got up and flipped a light switch. Nothing happened. "No power." They had never had power before, and it didn't matter anyway. It's not like they couldn't see in the dark.

"No water either." He turned the faucet over a makeshift sink. Water came out.

Butch snorted. "There's water right there."

"I dare you to drink it, then." It was brownish, and probably had chunks of shit in it. Butch wasn't about to drink it.

"Even the bathrooms are shit holes."

"Bathrooms are supposed to be shit holes, Brick."

"There's no fucking shower."

"That's why we have the gym memberships." All three of them actually paid to use a gym. They worked out and showered there every day. And while they were working out, they charged their phones. Butch didn't see why that had to change, no matter what happened he was going to live at the gym.

"Shit Butch. I want to brush my fucking teeth without having to go to the gym. I don't want to wait at a laundromat all day to wash my fucking clothes."

Like guys had to wash their clothes. Butch had never washed his jeans and he was proud of it. "Come on, man. Where else can you put your own art on the walls?" He gestured to a concrete wall that said 'Butch' in spraypaint. He had worked really hard on it. He even got the green to fade into the black.

"Fuck that shit. Brick's right," Boomer said. "This place sucks."

"Ugh, fine," Butch said, clearly outnumbered.

"Do we want a two bedroom or three?" Brick asked, doing something on his phone.

"I don't want to have to share a room with Butch," Boomer said.

"Oh, we were never going to share a room. I'm gonna punch you and make you take the couch."

"And I'm not sharing the master," Brick said.

"Three then. Fuck."

"Alright, that's not going to be cheap. What else do you guys want."

"Downtown," Butch said. "Where the action is."

"It's probably a good idea to be close in case a monster attacks."

"I was thinking nightclubs, but yeah."

"Like they'd let you into a nightclub," Brick said.

"I don't want anyone complaining when I practice," Boomer added.

"Yeah, and no complaining when we have parties."

"No parties," Brick said.

Butch raised up into the air, aghast at the very suggestion. "No parties!?"

"No parties at the new place. I don't need the cops busting our door down. So we do like we do now and bring 'em here. Nobody's gonna take it when we leave. This place is a shithole, but it's our shithole. We can do whatever we want with it."

The next day, Brick let some realtor lady show them a bunch of apartments. They settled on a 3-bedroom on the 54th floor of a skyscraper. It was two stories, with two bedrooms downstairs and a loft upstairs with a master bedroom. It looked too expensive for Butch, but Brick said they could afford it.

"Here are the keys, Mr. Jojo." The realtor held out three keys on a ring for Brick to take.

"My name is not 'Brick Jojo'." Brick spoke through his teeth. Here we go with the same speech for the thousandth time. "My name is 'Brick'. No 'Jojo'. It is one word, a mononym."

He didn't address their relation to the ape, even though the volcano observatory was visible right through the window. Everybody in Townsville knew who Mojo Jojo was, and everyone knew he created the Rowdyruff Boys. But as Brick saw it, they didn't have a father. He resented being referred to as the son of a monkey, he thought it was beneath him. Butch and Boomer didn't care as much, but followed Brick's lead.

They had had to get birth certificates at city hall one time when they were ten. Brick had them leave the parents' sections and last names blank, they weren't supposed to have any parents.

It all happened because Brick wanted to make a point to Blossom. The girls had to stand there while a bunch of dorks in suits did what Brick wanted. He had called it irony at the time, then he denied he ever said it when Boomer asked what irony was later.

"My apologies, Mr. Brick," the realtor said.

Brick's rage subsided and he took the keys. "Thank you."

The realtor left and Butch thought about how he would do his room. "What if I painted the walls black?"

Brick glared. "You can paint the walls black and I can punch you until you die."

"We're going to need furniture," Boomer said.

"I'll go get our stuff from the warehouse," Butch offered looking for an easy exit.

"No." Brick demanded. "No trash. We're leaving the shitty furniture, the cinder-block bookshelf, and all our other crap. You can bring your clothes, that's it. And I want them in the wash the second they get here."

"Dude-"

"I'm serious, Butch. It's only good shit from now on." Before Butch could protest, their phone alarms rang. "Monster attack outside." Brick smoothed his hair under his cap. "Time to go to work."

Butch looked forward to taking out his frustration on something, but first he had to get outside. Usually, there was a hole in the ceiling or something Butch could fly out of. But the apartment didn't even have a balcony and the front door led to a bunch of elevators. So he did the only thing he could do, he broke through the wall in the living room.

There was a giant flaming squirrel running through the streets. It was breaking stuff and screaming some gibberish Butch didn't understand. Butch punched it in the throat so it would shut up.

"That's coming out of your cut!" Brick yelled. He grabbed the back of the squirrel's neck through the flames and brought it to the ground.

Butch stopped. "What?"

"That hole you left in the side of the building, idiot! The cost of repairing it is coming out of your cut!"

Butch looked back to their building, there was a hole in the side. He groaned. Now they had to fix stuff? In the warehouse it didn't matter if stuff broke. "Come on, bro. How the fuck else was I supposed to get outside?"

"There's a fucking window!"

Boomer slammed the squirrel's chin with an uppercut.

"But it has a screen on it."

"Guess what costs more to replace, dumbass. In fact, you're the one who's calling contractors and setting up the repairs."

"I don't even know how to do that!"

The squirrel stopped fighting and tried talking to Butch directly using that gibberish again. It was probably begging for mercy. But Butch was getting mad. He broke its neck with a sharp kick.

"Figure it out, Butch." Brick tossed the giant dead squirrel into the ocean. "It's not that hard."

Brick made Butch go to the hardware store right after they were done. He had to buy a four-pack of temporary wall kits with his cut. He didn't even know they made those. The store only sold them in packs of four or sixteen. He only needed one, Butch had no idea what he was going to do with the other three. Keep them for the next time he needed to charge through the wall? He was never going to make money doing that.

The temporary wall installed in only 10-minutes. All Butch had to do was put it over the hole and connect a few wires that got torn out when he broke it. The kit even had parts for pipes, but Butch hadn't broken any.

"We should install, like, slingshots or something," Boomer said, looking at the patched wall and drinking a soda.

"What the fuck are you talking about?" Butch asked, not really meaning for Boomer to answer.

"Like catapults... To shoot us into the action faster." He made a weird finger motion, pointing at the wall. Butch stared at him while he did the finger motion again and again.

Butch took a swing at him. "Quit being a spaz." Boomer scrambled away.

The catapult idea was stupid, but it gave Butch an idea of his own. The contractor said it would be a pretty easy build. They worked surprisingly fast, in only three hours they had replaced the entire wall with a single pane of glass. The guys had a pretty good view of the Townsville skyline.

When Brick came back from his Brick-stuff he noticed it immediately and looked equal parts pissed and intrigued.

Butch pulled a fob out of his pocket and pressed the button. The window folded up and out of the way on a track. An entire wall of their living room opened to the outside. "It's like a garage door, but in our apartment." He spit a loogie out the open space and into the wind.

Brick inhaled in preparation to rail at him, but Butch decided to put him out of his misery. "I cleared it with the building owner. It's cool."

Brick's eyes stopped drilling into him and he let out his breath.

"It's so we don't keep destroying the wall when we leave."

Boomer came out of his room. "Huh," he said in his usual disaffected tone. He grabbed a bag of chips and sat on the edge with his legs dangling over the side. The guy did weird stuff sometimes.

"You got any more of those fobs?" Brick asked.

Butch tossed one to Brick and one to Boomer. Boomer caught it behind his back. The kid always acted like he wasn't paying attention, but he was.

Butch huffed, looking at the empty apartment. They had been there all day and he missed the old sofa he used to sleep on. "We need a fucking couch."

Brick looked over the side straight down to the street. "I got a couch, they're moving it up here."

Butch and Boomer looked at each other, then down to the street. Two guys were yelling at each other about how to carry a couch up 50 flights of stairs.

Butch dropped to the street. The fall took forever, so he juiced his way down and hit the concrete hard enough to shatter it. He picked up the couch with the guys watching and flew it into the apartment. It was gray suede, the perfect material for banging some chick.

Boomer flew into the window behind him carrying three boxes. "You got us mattresses?" He tore one apart and unfolded the foam mattress.

"You gotta let them air out for a while," Brick said.

Butch unboxed his and threw it onto the floor of his room. It unfolded itself slowly, growing out like a mushroom. He had to try it out. The mattress was a lot more comfortable than the old couch, it wasn't itchy at all. Butch didn't think he could get used to it. At least Brick didn't get him a pillow or anything.

Butch went back out into the living room to make himself a protein shake. Brick and Boomer we're sitting on the couch.

There was a knock at the door. Brick answered. The two guys from the street dropped off more fucking boxes.

"That's yer bed frame, yer TV stand, and yer nightstand. Gotta build 'em yourself, there." He held out a clipboard and a pen. "Sign here."

Brick signed. "Thanks guys." He took the bed frame and nightstand into his room.

Boomer built the tv stand and positioned it across from the couch, looked at it, and flew out the open window. He came back a few minutes later with a 60-inch flatscreen tv and a bunch of other boxes.

"You didn't steal that, did you?" Brick asked.

Boomer slammed a receipt down on the kitchen island and Brick started helping him put the stuff together.

"Wireless internet, Playbox Gamestation X, three controllers. Butch, Boomer got the good stuff. Get over here and help us."

It really was nice stuff, too nice.

Butch sped into their old warehouse and grabbed one piece of furniture.

"We're keeping the spool." He put it in the center of the living room and glared at Brick, daring him to stop him.

"It's a piece of shit, Butch," Brick said. "I'll get you one with a fucking yin-yang or whatever the fuck."

"No." Butch shook his head, not backing down. "This reminds us of where we came from."

Brick looked hard into his eyes. Butch glared right back. It was part of who they were and had nothing to do with the monkey or the lobster.

"Fine. The spool stays, nothing else."

Fifth Grade

Butch couldn't believe what he was seeing. "What the fuck are you doing?"

"Reading," Brick said.

"Reading? What, like a girl?"

Brick glared at him. "This book is by Sun Tzu. Its the best book on war there is, but I wouldn't expect you to understand."

"War, huh. That gives me an idea. Lets go blow stuff up!"

"That's boring. We did that yesterday."

"So what, are you gonna read your dumb books all day?"

"If I want to, yeah."

"Fine! Whatever." Butch stomped away, kicking a piece of concrete through the wall on his way outside.

Boomer was on a skateboard, going back and forth across the street. Every once in a while he'd try a trick, but he kept getting stuck hovering a few feet off the ground while his skateboard rolled away. Then he'd have to go get it and start again.

"Hey, Boomer. Let's go blow some stuff up."

"I don't want to."

"Don't want to? You love blowing stuff up."

Boomer jumped into the air. His skateboard fell back to the ground, but Boomer hung there in midair, looking at it.

"First Brick, now you. What the fuck is wrong with you guys?"

Boomer grabbed his skateboard and went up and down the street. Suddenly he looked up and put his hand to his mouth. "I wonder if I could skateboard on the clouds..."

Butch growled and took off. If his brothers didn't want to do anything fun, he would go by himself. He wanted to break some cars on the freeway.