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Townsville Mall, a hip-happening hangout for tweens and teens of all ages!
Ever the center of activity on the weekend, it was exceptionally busy on that particular Saturday afternoon. Extremely, ridiculously, obnoxiously busy. Standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the food court, townies pushed and bumped and shoved their way through the crowd to claim their prize: a cheap hotdog and expensive slushy to reward the satisfaction that came free of charge with bags full of hot new items at reasonable prices.
Standing at either end of the crowd, a pair of exceptional individuals milled about the crowd, their eyes scanning the sea of bodies for each other. When at last they met — in the brief break in the crowd that only their superior vision could perceive — the excitement dwindled from their matching crimson gazes.
In unison, they muttered, “Ah shit.”
Brick Morningstar, the short-tempered, self-proclaimed baddest dude in town, grimaced as they met in the air above the crowd. His date — an unknown baddie he met online who assured him there was no way on Earth he could match her freak — towered half a head over him, with a face eerily like the one that had haunted his nightmares for a decade. But instead of an insufferable smirk, she regarded him with a scowl and a raised eyebrow that screamed, “That’s it?”
Her, tall and slender, dressed in reds and pinks that accentuated her body, fiery hair held together by a tangled mess of ribbons; him: short and wide, his matching unkempt mane buried beneath a red ball cap and his body stuffed into an oversized red hoodie.
He felt underdressed. She clearly thought he was underdressed.
Somehow, knowing that they were on the same wavelength pissed him off more than anything.
“Holy fuck,” Berserk Plutonium, leader of the Powerpunk Girls, said with a sharp laugh. Her voice was nearly identical to his counterpart’s, but with an edgy grit that goody-two-shoes could never fake. “You’re The-Only-Baron-of-Berserk? Wow, just…man, fuck me.”
The frustration brimming just below the surface rose to his pale face in a flash of color.
“The fuck is that supposed to mean? OriginalPerfectLittleMonster.” He laughed, saying her screen name out loud, and pushed his hair away from his face. “I should have known it’d be a Powerpuff who’d come up with some lame ass shit like that.”
“Lame is stealing the name of someone better than you, Bitch Boy.” Berserk sneered and floated closer. She made a point of leaning down to look him in the eye. “What’s wrong? Not an original thought in your dumb little puppy brain?”
His jaw and fists clenched. His forehead pushed back against hers, floating higher to force her to look up at him. “At least I came up with my own name. Didn’t need my Daddy to tell me who I am.”
“Nah, you just needed him to bring your ass back after a worse version of me fucking killed you.” She shot back without missing a beat, floating above him. “You looking for a free ride back to Heck? Cuz I blocked off an hour, I can take five minutes to send you home with your tail between your legs.”
“As if! You talk big shit for someone who didn’t even beat the puffs once!”
That struck a nerve. Berserk’s sneer of superiority melted into a flushed glare. “They didn’t even fight us! We beat their asses so hard they had to get help!”
Brick grinned. “Oh yeah? Well we killed ‘em once. That’s more wins than you bitches ever got.”
“Our record, you snide little shit goblin, is seventy billion-to-one. We conquered our world.”
“And you still lost to the Powerpuff Girls without them even throwing a punch!” Brick tossed his head back and laughed. “You ain’t a bit shit on our side of the mirror. Perfect Little Bitch!”
“Say that again, fucker!” Their heads bumped into the ceiling at the same moment her mitts snatched his collar. Despite the flames on her breath and the fire in her eyes, Brick’s grin was ice cold, meeting her glare head on.
Their faces inches apart, he could feel her breath searing his skin. Her steel grip on him brought their bodies together so tight he could feel the tremble of anger racing through her. This close, she couldn’t look down her nose at him. This close, all she could see was him.
It was a look he’d never once seen on Blossom’s face.
“But hey…” Brick shrugged. “Look, I’m just as disappointed as you are, Pinky. Still, might as well get something to eat while we’re here. I ain’t eaten yet and I’m starving.”
Black smoke sprayed from the corners of her mouth. His gaze held hers until, at last, she relented and let go of him with a fiery sigh.
“Yeah, whatever. I’ll grant your fucking Make-a-Wish before I put you in the ground again.” Her eyes flicked downward at the sea of bodies below. “Fuck it’s crowded.”
Hands still in his pockets, he glanced down. “Yeah, and it’s a bunch of dumbass normies.”
“Can’t stand those worthless little bottom feeders.”
“Wonder how long the wait is?” He turned to her with a sharp-toothed grin. “Think we should get in line?”
Berserk looked at him. Seeing his expression, her scowl softened, the corners of her lips tugging upward. “I’d rather listen to Jomo do a table read of his screen play while shoving nails in my eyes.”
“Word.” Brick chuckled. “Lines are for losers anyway.”
Finally, her grin broke through. “My thoughts exactly.”
“Man, I can’t believe someone would actually pay for this shit,” Brick mumbled through a mouthful of hotdog, chomping it down in two bites and washing it down with a cherry slush in a novelty 67-oz mug shaped like Mojo’s head.
“It’s so ass. Like, people in Viletown eat from actual dumpsters and I think I’d prefer that to this.” As she reached for her third, she glanced around. Lights were still falling from the ceiling, spraying sparks and metal debris through the stampeding crowd struggling to flee the food court. She spied a clown dressed in a garish mishmash of stripes and rainbows desperately trying to push a cart full of balloon animals away. “Hey, check this shit out.”
She waited for Brick to look, then unleashed a concentrated blast of heat at the cart. The strings attached to the already filled balloons ignited like fuses, burning until they reached the latex, where they all started popping like a series of fireworks.
The clown yelped, slipping on his oversized shoes and falling onto his back. When he fell, he knocked over the helium tank; the cap coming off and sending the cart rocketing into the crowd of people. A chorus of screams and yelps soon followed, along with several more popping balloons.
“Holy shit! That was awesome! Hang on! Hang on! Wait, wait, wait! Lemme—” Brick twisted around, eyes aglow as they scanned for an appropriate target. Then he saw it: a giant, muscled man with a tall blonde pompadour wearing a skin-tight superhero costume. Despite being on the other end of the mall, he was fleeing the carnage, shoving his way through the other normies with super strength.
Brick fired a quick heat blast, catching his cape — an overdramatic logo advertising “Major Deals” on the back — on fire. The sudden heat made him scream a high-pitched squeal and start flying away.
“Lame.” Berserk took a loud sip of her slushy.
“Shut up and watch a master work.” Brick snapped back, firing off three more heat rays.
The first hit a neon sign on the floor above, causing it to fall straight into the blonde man’s path, bringing his escape to an abrupt halt.
The second hit a nearby cotton candy machine, causing it to explode and spray him with melted sugar. He screamed, screeching to a halt and grabbing at his face.
And the last struck the floor beneath him, dropping him ass-first through the floor and into a display of As-Seen-on-TV pillows below. He landed with a thunderous crash, feathers spraying everywhere like an erupting volcano. When the debris cleared, the man was lying face down and ass up, sugared, feathered, and weeping.
“Well?” Brick didn’t need to ask, hearing the way the other redhead was wailing with full-bellied laughter. He turned to her, an electric surge shooting straight through his body at the sight of her.
Berserk floated in the air, chair toppled and discarded, arms wrapped around her middle. Her pale face was flushed red, tears of mirth welling in her eyes, feet kicking.
“Holy shit! Holy shit! I can’t breathe!” She gasped out between squeals. “That was so fucking funny! He looks so fucking stupid!” Just as she started to get control of her giggles, she looked at the fallen Major Deals Mann and started laughing again.
“Heh, told you.” Brick took a victorious bite of his hotdog. Somehow it tasted even better now — good, amazing even. He leaned his chair back, balancing on the back legs and propping his feet up on the table. “Top that, girly.” He said with a smug sneer and crossed arms.
The look on her face, pulled almost instantly from his laughing fit ,sent a shiver down his spine.
‘Holy fuck.’
“Oh, it’s on, Puppy.” Berserk flew from her seat, disappearing in a streak of red. Like a comet, she flew straight to the atrium.
That Saturday was a special one: a celebration of the mall’s fiftieth anniversary. Colored streamers hung from every rafter, the air was thick with a constant stream of colored confetti from cannons that fired every time a big enough sale was made, and too many banners to count stretched from one end of the mall to the other.
Floating above it all, Berserk had a wild, unhinged look in her eyes. The air around her turned to a thick heat haze as she sucked in a hissing lungful of air. Then, after glancing back in his direction to make sure he was watching, she belched out a torrent of pink flames, setting the decorations ablaze.
Bits of confetti turned to falling stars. Streamers became strips of flame that fell and whipped at the fleeing crowd. The banners formed a blazing web, smoke rising to the ceiling in a spiral.
And there, at the heart of the chaos, was Berserk. Her head tossed back and arms splayed, cackling at the top of her lungs.
Brick felt a lightness in his chest. No breath; no thoughts. Only her, glowing pink and wrapped in black, her manic laughter loud enough to drown out the symphony of destruction they’d wrought upon the once peaceful Townsville Mall. As the flames spread to a party store, setting off an explosion that sprayed glittering shards of glass and burning colored paper into the air, his slushy slipped from his mitt.
Police sirens and a hail of futile gunfire drew her attention back to the ground. She turned to them with a grin so wide it filled her face, streams of pink radiating from her blazing eyes. But rather than returning fire, she turned to look at him.
And held out her hand. Her lips moved, and although he was too star-struck to hear what she was saying, he could read her lips clear as day.
“You coming?”
Deep down in the back of his mind, he knew it was only a matter of time before the other one showed up to ruin their fun. Surely someone had made that call by now. Soon, their date would be over. But even knowing that, he shot from his seat like a bat out of hell, into the fire and flames to be with her.
It wasn’t the worst first date he’d been on.
A prison cell was waiting in his future, but hopefully so was a second date.