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19. Old Town
🕑 Added 2024-02-29 02:17:25 +0000 UTCA bustling town center unfolded before them. Tantalizing scents rose from market stalls, where vendors grilled strange meats and deep-fried unidentifiable vegetables in batter. Over in the corner, three supers surrounded a twenty-foot-long wolflike monster with green fur and black bone spurs, busily hacking it to pieces. Blood drained into the street, and bits of white bone chipped into the air. A burly female super in charred armor dragged a black-and-neon-orange python by its tail, the python’s crushed head bouncing over the cracked asphalt.
A lizard-like creature dangled from a mostly-intact skyscraper’s antenna, so massive that it hung down almost a third of the skyscraper. It swung gently in the wind, slowly blinking its big green eyes. Its tail flexed slightly, adjusting its hold on the antenna. The skyscraper groaned as the steel struggled to hold the lizard’s weight.
Fira blinked. “Er, isn’t that a monster? A massive, dangerous monster?”
Lost, Levi looked around. Fira pointed, and his eyes finally landed on the lizard. Levi stared for a second, searching, then laughed. “Tony? Nah, he’s cool. He’s been hanging there for over a decade.”
“And they just… let him?” Fira asked.
Levi shrugged. “He doesn’t hurt anyone. Just hangs out and chills. He’s the hunters’ mascot.”
“Oh,” Fira muttered.
“You know, there’s an urban myth that when Tony hides, it’s—” Levi’s head snapped around.
Fira immediately dropped into a crouch, ready to fight. “What?”
“Pizza,” Levi muttered, in a low voice. He turned back toward Fira. “You have a mask, right?”
“A-a mask?” Fira stuttered.
“That’s a no, isn’t it.” Levi shook his head at her.
“Who wears masks? They’re so passe,” Fira grumbled.
“Maybe for hunters. They’re essential for supers. In fact, you could say they’re what draws the line between a player or hunter, and a proper super. A super’s identity is his mask! A mask is a super’s romance! You can’t discount the mask, or else discount the entire super!” Levi declared passionately.
“Don’t a lot of supers go barefaced nowadays? Like that ice girl that chased you, or Jet Engine,” Fira pointed out.
“How dare you speak to me of those…false claimants to the name of super. Ability hunting, fighting maskless, showing up to battle without any excitement or fanfare—how far supers have fallen!” Levi soliloquized.
Fira gave him a look. “Says the guy who jumped a super and beat him in the forehead in with a lead pipe.”
Levi crossed his arms. He nodded at her. “That’s exactly my point. It’s so much harder to jump supers nowadays. There’s no more monologues, no more posing! Bring back the good old days, when it was easy to get the drop on supers, even in actual combat. Nowadays, it’s so boring. They just fight back. So lame.”
“Did you ever consider that all the ones who monologued died?” Fira suggested.
“What? Bullshit. Couldn’t be.”
“You just admitted you used to take advantage of it. You actively culled those who monologued, according to you.”
“I went dark for so long. Nature should have restored itself,” Levi asserted.
Fira shook her head at him. A moment later, she squinted. “You’re eighteen. Maybe twenty. What do you mean, you ‘went dark for so long?’ At best, you took a year or two off!”
Rather than reply, Levi nudged her toward a blown-out storefront, where a peddler laid skeins of fabric and leather out where the mannequins would have stood. Pieces of leather armor and other accessories mixed in with the raw materials. “Go get yourself a mask. Something that actually covers your face. I’ll wait for you here.”
Fira sighed. Shaking her head at him, she walked over to the shop, pulling her wallet out of her back pocket.
As she bought a mask, Levi casually scanned the crowd. A few other people in streetclothes wandered amid the hunters in their armor. Some shopped at the stalls or clung to their significant other, giggling gleefully at the strange sights of Old Town. Dressed in all gold, a girl posed in front of Tony while her boyfriend snapped a picture. On the other side of the road, a hunter lounged in the shade of the massive multicolored mushrooms that had colonized an old apartment block. Tucked in under the mushrooms, a red, white, and green sign advertised, PIZZA.
“By the end of this, I’m not going to be able to visit any pizza shops anywhere,” Levi muttered to himself. His nose wrinkled, and he shook his head. “Should’ve slipped that stupid receptionist a burger joint’s phone number. But nooo, I had to be nice and send her the number of a good pizza place…”
Fira jogged over, stuffing a mess of fabric into her bag. “What next?”
“Next, put it on!” Levi said.
She froze. “Right now?”
Levi squinted at her. He thumbed over his shoulder. “Yeah, right now. What? Did you think we were going to a ball or something? Going to wear it to a costume party? It’s for the pizza shop.”
Fira startled. “I-I’m not helping you rob the pizza parlor!”
Levi’s squint grew deeper. “No?”
“No…?”
“What the hell, man? Are you crazy or something? Rob the pizza shop? What do you have against pizza?” Levi tutted at her, walking into a nearby abandoned storefront. A woman rushed up to them, showing them an assortment of bracelets, but Levi ignored her, and, cussing his name, she backed off.
“I—you—why are we wearing masks to get pizza, if we—you—aren’t committing robbery?” Fira asked, flinching away from the bracelet woman.
“If we put masks on, you assume we’re robbing the place? That’s what’s going on? Have you never heard of supers, or something?” Levi shook his head.
“So why?” Fira demanded, beyond confused and into exasperated.
“Because I said so. Put your mask on and get ready. I’ll meet you out back in fifteen.”
Fira stared after him for a beat, then shook her head and took off into a dark corner to get changed.
Levi hurried into the opposite direction, already pulling his gear out of his backpack. It’s time. Time…to eat some pizza!
