Running From Himself 3-1 (Patreon)

Shit! The wheel shook under his palms, Rastro’s fingers halfway to fucking numb as the heavy leather fought him. Shit!  The suspension was bottoming out every half-minute and he knew it was a miracle they weren’t already trailing sparks out the ass already. Shitshitshit! The New Jersey Turnpike at midnight was a black smear under the tires as they did an eighty that was anything but easy, late night air rushing through the car and mixing with the sharp stink of plasma and wet bone.

"¡Pisa a fondo, cabrón!" Mazo’s stupid ass screamed from the backseat, bellowing over the wind roar like Rastro wasn’t in the same car. “¡Pisa a fondo!” He didn't wait for an answer, one heavy fist going right through the remaining shards of the rear window.

The air outside warped as the idiot punched out again, pressure walls thrown up dead-center in the lanes behind the speeding Caddy near-invisible this time of night. The cop car closest on their tail slammed head-on into the pocket of hard air, front axle grinding into asphalt in a shower of sparks as it fishtailed into another cruiser.

"I'm flooring it, I'm flooring it, just… shut up!" Rastro bit back, vision swimming as harmless blue static sparked from his eye sockets, his own power doing nothing but giving him faster eyes and a better body. It wasn’t much but it gave him a great getaway driver. So, when it came to a job like a jewelry store heist, these fools knew who to call. “Just shut the fuck up and keep throwing!”

“Haahahahahahahahahahaaaaa!” To his right, Abrojo was already halfway out the passenger window, heavy wind peeling his lips back and forcing tears from his eyes as he kept cackling like a madman. “I’m throoooowing!” Bone tore through the skin of his forearms with a sound that made Rastro shudder, the man’s bone quills rocketing out into the road behind them.

They hit the highway one-by-one, each of the white knives chewing up the pursuit tires. 

"¡Toma, putos!" Centella shouted, the small woman still hanging out of the sunroof, her hands strobing pink as she turned the dark highway into a stuttering nightmare worthy of one of those big-ass seizures. Baseball-sized bursts of hot-pink plasma formed in her palms, unstable and hissing as she sent them flying, each one detonating in mid-air. They weren’t hot-enough to melt the engine blocks of the cruisers on their ass, but the neon burst flash-baked ugly scorch marks on the chasing cars and did their part to blind the cops.

"Grasa, the slick, man!” Rastro yelled again, wondering when he became the brains instead of just the wheels. “Drop the slick!"

"I'm dropping it, coño, watch the road!" The greasy bastard hung both arms out the rear passenger window, thick orange liquid that looked too much like throw-up pouring from his hands and coating the asphalt behind their rear tires. The front-wheel-drive gripped the road fine, but the cruisers behind them hit the low-friction oil and spun out, sirens wailing as two million dollars of police budget smashed into dividers.

Rastro eyed the rearview mirror, blue static fizzing back at him.

Flashing red and blue lights shrank away, half of them spinning out as they faded into the dark curve of the turnpike. Sirens died away, swallowed entirely by the wind and the roaring V8.

"¡Ya coronamos, mi gente!" Rastro slammed a hand against the steering wheel, a laugh as manic as Abrojo’s tearing free from his chest. "We ghost! They ain't got shit! We fucking ghost!"

The car erupted, joining him in laughs and whoops. Mazo slapped the roof, as Abrojo pulled himself back inside while laughing hard enough to choke, and heavy canvas bags of jewelry rattled against the floor. “We fucking gh-!”Tap. Tap.

A sound cut through the wind, right next to Rastro's ear.

He flinched, the Cadillac drifting into the next lane before he wrestled the wheel straight at seventy miles an hour on a near-empty highway. Dragging his sparking eyes away from the high beams, Rastro looked out his driver's side window to see a black man jogging right outside the glass.

A black and blue costume stared back at him, the supe’s shades reflecting the dashboard lights as his sneakers ate up asphalt like he was taking a casual stroll.

He lifted two fingers in a slow, lazy salute.

"Hey."

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

“All the jewely recovered, officers.”Red and blue strobed cracked concrete, the smell of burnt rubber thick in the air as the Cadillac SUV sat crumpled against a toll booth. Hood pleated like an accordion, radiator fluid and oil trailed down and mixed in a pool around the front tires.

All five bangers lay face-down on the asphalt, hands zip-tied behind their backs as each one of them groaned in various states of concussion and general tenderizing. 

Reggie stood a few yards away, hands crossed over the bright blue ‘Z’ on his chest. 

"Hell of a catch.” The female state trooper nearest him nodded, Jersey accent as thick as one of the barriers by the road. “Wish half the supes in Jersey did work like you. They’ve been slacking with these Latin Kings psychos.”The other state trooper in front of him nodded, the man sweeping a flashlight beam over the beat-up supervillain crew before settling back somewhere near Reggie’s sneakers. "Yeah, you ain’t that bad, A-Train."

“Ay!” Before Reggie could say anything, the female partner standing next to him reached out, back of her hand slapping the male cop’s bicep. "Don't be fucking dumb, Mike. Name's Blushift now."

 "Right. Blushift.” The male cop clicked his tongue as he looked up, raising the flashlight as a sneer touched the corner of his mouth. “My bad. Yeah, I know how much you supes care about your branding."

Reggie nodded back at him, fighting the urge to roll his eyes. “Yeah, you said it.” He tapped his amber night-shades against his chest for a moment before sliding them back on his face. “That all, officers?”

They didn’t even bother to answer him, both of them turning back as they were already walking to their cars.

With a sigh, Reggie turned his shoulder to the flashing lights. "Yeah. Imma call it a night."

Blue lightning crackled around his sneakers, and the turnpike immediately vanished into a high-speed blur.

The sirens behind him, fire and EMT along with police reinforcements, vanished into the wind roaring in Reggie’s ears as he banked west, leaving the highway behind for the darker, tree-lined routes heading back. Latin Kings, huh? 

It kept coming back to these guys. 

Whether it was today, last week or the last month he’d been at it — crossing zip codes, putting out fires, and fighting whatever crime he could find — almost every single time there was a supe juiced up wih Rojo, they were Hispanic.

Hell, most of those times, they were related to the Kings somehow.

And it just didn’t make a single bit of sense, because why? Vought didn't do sloppy, and this was everything but neat. This kind of thing was a mess, bleeding out into the boroughs past gang borders, and the absolute worst part was that the Kings had pretty much declared Blushift a personal enemy for rounding up so many of their guys on his patrols.

Just add it to the tab, I guess. He couldn’t bother to care too much, not with his own bullshit already piled high. Like the A-Train memories still fragmenting through his head at the worst of times; useless static bursts of old PR meetings, cheating with whatever IG baddie that wasn’t gonna blast him on her story, and binges with V-lined lean from Deneeka — all of it buzzed under his skin. Reggie did like usual and ignored them, pushing the throttle a little bit higher — that little bit growing day by day — until the dense and manicured tree lines of the New Jersey estate rose up in the dark.

The spot was heavy and silent, the kind of absolute, suffocating quiet that only came with a ridiculous amount of money and a half-mile private driveway. A few minutes past three in the morning, it would have been insane if it was anything but quiet anyway. Reggie slowed, sparks dying out around his feet as he hit the front steps of his house, boots silent against the imported stone.

The door was silent as it swung shut, the automatic sensors doing their part to lock it for him, as Reggie walked through the massive foyer. The house was dark — which made sense — except for a thick line of cold kitchen light bleeding out from the archway.

A vent of cool fromthe central AC hit the sweat on his forehead as Reggie made his way down the hall, glasses pulled from his face to pocket them. He rounded the corner, bare feet silent against the cold ceramic tile, and came to a stop just inside the doorway.

Click. 

Fzzt.

Look who left his room. The newest guest to Casa de Reggie sat himself on a stool at the marble island, elbows planted on the stone as he hunched over with rounded shoulders.

Click. A worn Zippo lighter snapped open, the flint wheel grinding against the striker. Fzzt.

Sparks showered into the dark air, tiny orange pinpricks dying before they could catch the wick.

Over and over and over

Reggie stood there, a fresh bottle of room-temp water heavy in his hand as he watched the man work the lighter he always carried around like a security blanket. Kinda sad, man. He didn't really remember much — if anything — of Lamplighter from the fragmented A-Train files knocking around upstairs. Most of anything in his head involving the Seven was stuff best left uncovered, drug-fueled bender after drug-fueled bender blurring together with the sound of heavy bass but with absolutely nothing useful for understanding the actual people behind the capes.

“Ash, be real.” He took a step forward, the tile smooth under his bare feet. "Make like Elsa and let it go. Thing’s busted."

Ashton Aarons didn't look up, the man swimming in a worn-out flannel that looked three sizes too big on his thin body. "Figures…” The word was harsh, almost scraping its way out of Lamplighter’s throat; something between a hangover and an apology. "The one thing I'm supposed to be good at."

Click. Fzzt.

"Even my lighter's forgotten how to make a goddamn light."

Reggie walked around the island leaned against the marble opposite the broken man, tracking the twitch in Ash's jaw. This man’s too depressed.

Ashton had been living in Reggie's house for a solid week, because apparently Reggie needed a ghost haunting the guest wing. On Neuman’s and Mallory’s request thie man here to hide out and Reggie was doing the patriotic thing by not throwing the ex-Seven member out on his flame-flinging ass. 

Not doing that meant that Lamplighter couldn continue his daily tasks of clearing out Reggie’s pantry, staring at walls and watching an insane amount of porn. 

All sorts of porn.

Porn of his own old coworkers even.

But Reggie wasn't going to bring that up. "You know…” He already had other things to talk about. “For a guy they kept locked in a basement lab of mentally ill capes, you look less scared and a whole lot more… bored."

Ash let out a laugh that made Reggie almost pass him the water, the pyro shaking his head as his eyes rose from the metal casing of the Zippo to meet Reggie’s eyes. "What's to be scared of, Reg?" The man shook his head again, a laugh dead on arrival leaving in. "I was Edgar’s janitor in there. Just another Vought employee clocking in." 

Little bit more than that. Reggie raised an eyebrow. Weren’t you burning cape patients alive or something?

“Look, man…” A heavy sigh rattled out of Reggie’s lips. "They owned me. Still do. No way they just let me walk."

Reggie unscrewed the water bottle, taking a slow pull of lukewarm freshness before capping it again. "That's why you gotta testify, man. Blow the whistle, Ash. Get it all on the record."

"And then what?” Ash scoffed his way with a look that said everything he hadn’t yet. “Witness protection in fucking Idaho? No…" He looked down and clicked the Zippo again.. "You don't get a new life after what I did."

"Yeah," Reggie offered, the reality pullsing as he remembered some of what this body had already done. "I heard. But I made plenty of messes of my own. There ain’t no getting around that."

"You don’t get it, man." Ash pointed the silver lighter at him, the tremor in his hand as clear as the vodka on the man’s breath. "You’re like my brother. You can be something outside of Vought. All I do is burn shit."

Reggie studied the hollowed-out face of the man across the marble, a half-dozen different things to say rolling around in his head. The easy move would have been something like pity, but that was… 

That just wouldn’t work for a whole bunch of reasons. Not if he was right about exactly where Lamplighter’s head was. “You know, the others talk about you.” 

Ash clicked his tongue. “That supposed to surprise me?”

"Nah, man, just… just listen, aight..." Reggie tapped the bottom of the water bottle against the marble. "Frenchie, M.M. They talk about you like you're the absolute devil. Like you got horns hiding under that hair. But, let’s be real, you're not."

"Oh yeah?" Ash sneered, sarcasm as thick as it could be. "Thanks for the pep talk, Reg. We a real team again."

"Nah, man, you're not listening," Reggie pushed back, letting the water bottle sit. "The real monsters… real evil motherfuckers walking around out there, like Homelander… they don't feel a damn thing. They do what they do, they leave a body count, and they sleep like a baby on thousand-thread-count sheets. But you?"

Reggie picked up the bottle again, plastic cap aimed right at Ash's chest. “You sitting here three in the morning, bruh, feeling sorry about your life in a hand-me-down flannel. Like, I don’t even know where you got that shit from, ‘cus it’s definitely not mine.” He shook his head, scoffing at that. “But you’re down here like a depressed lesbian anyway, hating yourself for what you did, man. Homelander wouldn’t give a shit. Maeve would probably care, and Noir is… Noir.”

Reggie shook his head as he leaned further over on the counter, Ash’s eyes still on his. “That’s all it is, bro. You know the difference between right and wrong, and I get it, man. Believe me, I got my own shit to carry.” He looked down at the broken Zippo, flashes of a street curb and an explosive impact buzzing behind his teeth. "There’s a girl named Robin I can’t bring back. No matter how far I run, it’s not gonna change that. Just like you can't change what happened to those kids. It’s a scar you’re gonna wear forever, yeah. There's no such thing as a clean slate for guys like us."

“...this a pep talk, Reg?” Ashton blinked at him.

"Nah, dumbass. This ain’t no pep talk. I’m tellin’ you the past is the past but you still got a way ahead of you, man." Reggie clicked his tongue. "Not no forgiveness, no wipin’ the slate clean or nothing. That's kid shit. You do it because it's the absolute only other fucking option besides beating your shit to granny porn or whatever you got loaded up right now."

Ash looked away, eyes on the metal casing of the Zippo in his palm. His thumb brushed over the flint wheel as he pushed the metal cap down.

The click echoed sharp and loud in the suddenly-silent kitchen as Ash took a long stuttering breath. "They'll kill me, man.”

Reggie watched Ash’s face, sunken cheeks and dark circles telling him enough. "...Tell me I’m wrong," he tilted his head "but I’m thinkin’ you only feel some type of way about that 'cus you want to do it first?"

Ashton went still as he stared at the lighter, the silence in the kitchen stretching out thin and brittle as the clock on the microwave ticked over to 3:14 AM.

"...Okay.”