Chapter Text
Your name is John Egbert and you are COMPLETELY NORMAL in every way. You are currently heading to your next class at NEW PROSPIT UNIVERSITY, your college for the past three years. You are a BIOLOGY MAJOR and you are presently repeating sophomore year, due to your tendency to MISS CLASS.
You are a normal guy with normal-guy interests. You like BAD MOVIES, you dabble in AMATEUR MAGIC and COMPUTER PROGRAMMING, and all of your attempts to grow a BADASS MOUSTACHE have failed miserably.
There is a STRANGE BOY in your film class.
You're not sure quite why, but there’s something about him that really interests you! Maybe it’s the shabby-chic clothes he wears, plaid shirts and ripped jeans and t-shirts with esoteric sayings on them, only from the highest-end thrift stores. Maybe it’s those ludicrous overlarge HIPSTER SHADES he's got on that he says are IRONIC but are probably just there 'cause he likes them, or 'cause he doesn't like making eye contact. Maybe it’s the fact that he wrote his dissertation on the history of MUPPETS, and part of his presentation was done in FREESTYLE RAP. Maybe it's because he's so quiet, but whenever he says something, it's some insightful quip that makes you double over in silent laughter. Maybe it’s one of those things.
He always sits in the back of class, earbuds in and tapping incessantly on his iPhone. You’d think he’d fail, but he always manages to pull through, with high marks no less. He’s neat. You want to hang out with him.
You catch up to him as you both leave class.
“Hey, um, Dave, right?” You fall in step beside him. He gives you a sidelong glance, then pushes his shades higher on the bridge of his nose and looks away.
“Maybe,” he says, shoulders raised.
“Woah! Sound the alarm, we’ve got an asshole on deck!” you say, raising your hands in mock surprise. “Kidding! I wanted to ask you about the Streetcar paper, ‘cause I missed that lesson. You seem to have your shit together and I, well, don’t.”
“What're you suggesting?”
“I was thinking we could maybe do coffee sometime.”
“Subtle, dude,” he says, and you swear you see a smile tugging at the corner of his lips. It's gone in an instant.
“...What?”
“I’m pretty much always busy,” he continues.
“Well, yeah, I mean so am I, aren’t we all, but I manage somehow.”
“Oh, huh, would you look at that,” he says, glancing at the watch on his wrist. “My allotted time for dealing with buck-toothed dorks today just ran out.”
“Hey!” you protest. It’s not your fault you never managed to get braces to fix your overbite! “Just... hang on juuuust a sec, okay?" Tearing open your backpack, you dig through the detritus to find a pad of paper and a pen. Balancing it precariously between your knee and chest as you stumble to keep pace with him, you scrawl a message in your messy handwriting. “In case you change your mind, here’s my cell and chumhandle. You can, uh, text me if— oh!”
Your phone goes off. It’s not your usual ringtone.
“...Shit!” You thrust the paper at his chest. “I’ve extra-super-gotta-go, bye!!” Slinging your open backpack over your shoulder, you dash towards the nearest building. Dave watches you through his hipster shades.
Ducking inside the nearest empty classroom, you pull out your phone and read the message there. You pocket it again with a sigh. Guess you won’t be getting to your next class any time soon.
You open the door and scan the hallway for the nearest janitor’s closet. This isn’t one of the buildings you’re assigned to clean, but you’re pretty sure you’ve got something here. It pays to work as a janitor sometimes. Unlocking the door, you use your phone as a flashlight and nudge the trolley and mops out of the way. You shut the closet behind you and poke around in the corners until you find what you’re looking for: a nondescript cloth bundle hidden in the back corner. Making sure the door behind you is locked, you empty it on the floor.
Clothes spill out, a colorful (but coordinated!) mess of blue, yellow, and white. You waste no time. Stripping down to your underwear, you pull on the tights and the shorts (skintight, unfortunately, but serviceable and also kind of necessary). Yellow boots follow, then the top and matching yellow gloves. You’re getting pretty good at this changing thing by now.
Second-to-last is the scarf, which drags on the floor but is otherwise basically the coolest. The last thing you do is remove your glasses, tying on a blue mask with polarized lenses in its place.
You crack open the door, make sure no one is in the hallway, then burst through. The breeze gathers under your fingertips as you run towards the door, which blows open in front of you. Wind beneath your feet, you soar up into the open sky. Your scarf whips dramatically behind you in a way that you think is totally awesome.
Your name is BLUE STREAK, and you are New Prospit City’s resident SUPERHERO.
~~~
Kicking your legs, you sail up over the buildings of your campus, towards the looming skyscrapers downtown. The trees whip and toss underneath you. You turn backwards and wave at the tiny specks of people down below. Some are pointing and waving (you’re kind of a thing!!), others hold onto their hats in the stiff breeze. God, you love showing off. But there’s no time to waste! Your phone, strapped to your utility belt, beeps impatiently. There are civilians to be rescued!
Locating the intersection of 3rd and Hill street, where your phone said to go, you land on an overhanging building and survey the scene. A crowd has already gathered, and so too have some cop cars. You always find that a little disappointing; you like to get there first! Oh well.
You decide not to make your dramatic entrance just yet. Peeking around an air conditioning unit, you squint at the people gathered below, trying to figure out who the baddies are. You’re also brainstorming one-liners, because if it’s one of your regular villains, you damn well better have some witty banter prepared. You don’t know if you’ll be able to top last week’s “thwarting your plans is a breeze,” but you’ll try. Rapport is half the battle!
Unfortunately, a lack of colorful costumes and evil cackling indicates that this is just a common criminal, which is decidedly less fun and a lot more dangerous. But as a hero of justice, you are sworn to protect the people! Evildoers will get their comeuppance, no matter what! Good will always triumph, and all that. You’re ready to fight somebody.
The crowd seems to be centered around a short, stocky man in a black suit with a sinister air about him. He’s gripping a minigun in one hand, and the other hovers near the plunger of some sort of fuse. He’s yelling something at the police and threatening the crowd of innocents with the gun. You can’t hear what he’s saying, but with a twitch of a finger, the breeze carries his words to you:
“...And if you don’t let him go, I’ll shoot everyone in this here crowd! Don’t think I won’t!”
“Sir, if you would please put the gun down and comply, the police have you surrounded.”
“Ah, but all I have to do is push this little thingamabob down, and... boom!” He gestures to the office building behind him. “Explodey time! So what’ll it be! I just want my buddy-ol’-pal outta prison, is that too much to ask?”
“Mr. Clubs Deuce, you are under arrest for—” But you don’t hear the rest, because you spring into action. The wind whips around Deuce like a giant arm, wrenching the gun from his grasp and sending him tumbling head-over-heels into a brick wall. The crowd cheers as you soar down. For good measure, you give the gun a good kick with your heel, sending it skidding towards the nearest policeman, who promptly picks it up and disarms it.
“You chose the wrong day to try and take New Prospit Citizens hostage, Deuce,” you say in your most victorious voice, “for wherever the wind blows, Blue Streak will—”
A scream from the crowd cuts you short, and you spin around to see Deuce, who you thought was out cold, lunging for the fusebox. You watch in horrified slow motion as he reaches for the lever. Then you realize that what you’re watching is in real time and that he's actually falling in slow motion, his hand inching towards the plunger bit by bit.
The air shimmers beside him and a figure appears, grabs the box, and moves it aside out of his reach. Police surround the time-trapped criminal and handcuff him as soon as he hits the ground and snaps back into real time. The crowd cheers again, but you’re not so happy. You’d know that damn domed futuristic helmet anywhere.
Timeslicer. That guy is seriously starting to cramp your style.
“Hey, I had this under control!”
“Really, Bluey?” he says in that robotic-sounding disguised voice of his. “Because it looked like he was about to blow this popsicle stand to splinters.”
“That’s just how it looked,” you whine. He’s right, though, loath as you are to admit it if he hadn’t shown up just then, you’d have been royally fucked.
“Thank you very much, boys,” the chief of police says, appearing behind you and clapping you both on the shoulder. Well, really just you on the shoulder, because Timeslicer flashstepped out of the way at the last second, jumpy asshole. “All of these people owe their lives to you. New Prospit is again in your debt. Is there anything, anything at all, we can do to repay—”
“Nope!” You say. “Fighting crime is its own rewa—”
“Information,” says Timeslicer. “I need information on a certain man, if you’ve got it.”
“Well, I, I don’t know if that’s under my jurisdiction to say, but for what it’s worth, I can give you a ride back to the station, and we’ll see what we can do. We owe that much to you, anyway.”
“Make it quick,” he says. “I’m on a tight schedule.”
“Hey, I thought you had all the time in the world?” you say with a laugh. He glares at you. Maybe. You can’t see his face at all through the helmet, just the weird triangular logo thing that looks like dumb sunglasses from an anime you saw once. But you’re pretty sure he’s glaring.
After ensuring Clubs Deuce is safely handcuffed, stuffed in the back of a secure police car, and shipped off to New Prospit Jail (population: growing!), you kick up a whirlwind and flew back up into the sky again. Since you’ve already missed your next class, and there’s no use showing up halfway through because you know the professor will just yell at you, you instead take the chance to fly over the city, dodging between spires and skyscrapers and telephone lines. This never gets old. Sometimes, you like to pretend that all the honking horns and flashing lights are personal beacons to you. Everybody saying, hi there, Blue Streak! You’re my hero!
Which of course you are. You are pretty much the best hero, plus you were here first.
Timeslicer can go suck it.