All-Star: Scared Starless
A sickening slap resounded through the night air as a young black youth hurtled to the ground, his mouth bleeding slightly as he crashed through a pile of beer cans, landing squarely on his backside.
"What's the matter, boy?" a mocking voice said above him, its source a silhouetted body with unkempt features. "I asked you a question, you little shit!"
The young boy wiped the blood from his mouth. He felt the tears welling up in the corners of his eyes as his eyes realigned themselves.
"You gonna cry, boy? Huh? That it?" the figure crowed, advancing as it undid its belt. "You think you've got it rough, huh? Think you've got it harder than me? Three square meals a day and a roof over your head and you think you've got it rough?"
The boy whimpered. The tears were coming. He couldn't let that happen. He couldn't let him win.
The figure gave a drunken smirk, wiping spittle from its lower lip. "Oh, I get it. You wanna call out to your whore mother, right? You think she's gonna save you, is that it? She don't want anything to do with you, you fucking waste of space! No one does! Should've gotten the damn abortion, but she had to go and bring fuckin' god into it..."
The boy crawled away from the approaching figure, desperate to get to safety as the first teardrops streamed from his eyes.The figure laughed.
"What're ya? Scared?" It said, bemusedly.
"N-No..." The boy stuttered, the fear flashing in his eyes. "I-I'm-"
"You're scared, aren't ya? You afraid of me? You afraid of your own pa?" The figure continued, moving with purpose now.
The boy stood on wobbly legs, looking at the figure with as much feigned defiance as he could muster. "I'm not afraid! I'm not! I-I'm not afraid of anything, sir!" The tears told a different story.
The figure frowned before clenching its fist and launching a punch at the sobbing boy. The fist impacted with his nose, eliciting a sickening crunch and sending the boy sliding along the messy floorboards. He didn't get back up, breaking into full-on crying as the doorbell rang. Grunting, the figure staggered over to the door.
"Everyone's afraid of something, ya little puke. Don't kid yourself."
Fear.
Some smart nerd once said that fear is the enemy of man, or something. I wouldn't know about that, since I was never one for philosophy.
But I know what fear means to me.
When I was a kid, fear meant the difference between bruises and come broken bones.
Now that I'm a grown-ass man, it's a little more complicated than that.
All-Star ducked behind a garbage can as gunfire rained down on him and the little girl in his arms screamed. They were at a mall and seven armed men were currently out to kill the screaming kid of a local politician to send some sort of message to someone about the importance of gun control or something.
All-Star didn't care. All he knew was what was happening in the present. What was happening right now.
A little girl no older than 13 was scared for her life, her heart pounding against his chest like a jackrabbit's.
Five innocent civilians were bleeding out around him, bullet wounds splitting their skin.
Two bodyguards lay dead, the bullets in their bodies a testament to their dedication to their jobs.
And the sound of gunfire and screaming people filled the air.
All-Star was living in the present, and the present was problematic.
"Gretchen, you still with me?" he said through gritted teeth, looking down at the scared girl.
She wasn't listening. She couldn't listen. It wasn't the noise; It was fear.
All-Star placed a hand on the girl's shoulder and squeezed firmly, causing her to look up at him with wet, strained eyes.
"Gretchen, I know that you're scared. I know. But I need you to work with me on this." All-Star shouted over the din of the gunshots.
"I-I-I-" the shaken girl said, fumbling with her own voice.
"Gretchen, listen. There's something you need to know about fear. Fear-" All-Star started before something caught his attention.
When you're on the battlefield, noise is everywhere. There's no such thing as silence. People like us aren't that lucky. That's why the good soldiers learn to distinguish and recognise certain sounds. Knowing the little niggling little differences between certain sounds can mean the difference between life and death. The telltale rustling of a sniper in the bushes. The jaunty beeping of an explosive planted just around the corner.
The clanging of a thrown grenade softly rolling towards you.
Tightening his grip on the surprised girl, All-Star flung himself away from the grenade as the explosion sounded behind him. In a brief moment, a sharp pain shot through his shoulder. Shrapnel. Problematic. The girl still firmly clasped in his arms, he plummetted down an escalator, the frozen stairs driving into his body as he rolled down it.
When his world finally stopped spinning, he opened his eyes with a flutter. The yells of the lead gunman leading his troop to the escalator could be heard in the unreachable distance as the girl stood to her feet, quickly rushing over to stir the downed man.
"Mister! Mister, please! Th-They're coming!" She shouted, shaking him vigorously.
"Ow. Ow. Ow. Shoulder. Ow. Ow." Nate grumbled, grabbing her arm as he pulled himself up. He was bleeding, but that didn't matter. He wasn't afraid of getting a little dirty. Scooping the girl up in his good arm, he turned and belted through the abandoned food court, bullets whizzing past him as he reached for the pistol strapped to his thigh.
Any soldier will tell you that, when it comes to innocent civilians whose lives depend on you, it's all about laying down your life so that they may have theirs, provided they're not the meat-headed Call-Of-Duty playing fucktards who think they can win wars by using akimbo shotguns. Especially stupid because everyone knows Akimbo pistols are way cooler.
"Grab my neck." All-Star said, firing behind him with his bad arm.
"W-What?" The girl cried, incredulously.
"Wrap your arms around my neck and don't let go. Like in one of your Twilights." All-Star repeated, prompting the confused girl to do exactly as he asked. Still firing with his injured arm, he reached for his other pistol and spun to face the pursuing gunmen.
Fear clouds the senses. It makes you stupid. Sometimes, though, a little stupid is good. Makes you braver.
His teeth gritting with concentration, All-Star fired in rapid succession. Kneecaps. Shoulders. Feet. Maybe a groin. He was feeling a little cheeky. The six gunmen went down in short order, crashing into tables and chairs and hurtling to the floor with cries of pain and shock. Breathing a sigh of relief, All-Star slowed down, grinning at the wide-eyed girl.
"See that, Gretch?" He chuckled. "Fear is-"
I thought I had downed all six gunmen. I never was good at math.
"Mister!" The girl screamed out as the last gunman charged him from his side, the butt of his rifle smashing into his jaw. His uninjured arm wrapped around the girl's waist as tightly as it could as his other arm reached out and grabbed his assailant's collar, pulling him down with him.
I kept telling myself that I couldn't let go. That girl was counting on me. She was scared and alone. I couldn't let her go. I wouldn't. Not without a fight.
As All-Star, the gunman and the screaming girl fell backwards, three very important things came to his attention.
One: The man he was grappling had horrible teeth. Ghastly, even.
Two: He was standing at the edge of a balcony when he fell backwards.
Three: This probably wasn't one of his best ideas.
The three fell from the fifth floor towards the hard ground below.
The girl screamed.
The man screamed.
All-Star did not scream.
Now, I could give you some cock and bull about how you should act in the face of fear. I could feed you a crock of lies about how its all about never, ever showing fear or about how you have to learn to conquer your fear like some rambling cape with his head up his ass.
But, to me at least, that ain't it.
It's not about beating or learning to master your fear...
A smile cracked All-Star's features as he kicked himself free of the gunman and reached for his grappling hook launcher, turning in mid-air to face the ceiling.
It's about learning to love the taste of it.
With the pull of a trigger, a metallic length of cord shot out of the launcher and wrapped around the railing of the second floor balcony. In an instant, the wire tensed and All-Star cried out as his injured arm struggled to keep hold of the device. The girl still firmly in his grasp, he swung away from the rapidly approaching ground and through a the window of a toy store, landing on a pile of soft toys. The gunman, on the other hand, gave one last cry as he hit the ground with a loud cracking sound. All-Star covered the girl's eyes as he sat up, finally letting loose a breath as the wailing sirens of approaching police cars sounded in the distance.
"Ta-da." He smilled, poking the girl's nose. She looked at him, still visibly distraught."Uh, okay. Want me to buy you a teddy or something? Wait, aren't you rich? You should probably buy me a teddy."
"I don't get it..." The girl said, looking down. "Heroes go through this sort of thing every day and it doesn't bother you. Don't you get scared?"
All-Star frowned, righting his shades and scratching his head as he thought of a response. "Well, first off, I'm not a hero. Heroes aren't this awesome and cool. Secondly, we're not all brave and we sure as hell ain't fearless."
"Then how did you-?" The girl started.
"Listen, kid." All-Star interjected, continuing his train of thought. "It's like I was trying to say earlier. Fear is crazy. It can control your life like nothing else in the world. That's why so many people try to see it as something to be beat, or as some sort of bad guy out to get them. Thing is, it's not like that at all. Fear's as much a part of you as love or happiness. It's not there to be beat or ignored. It's there to be accepted and understood like just about anything else."
"But, what if you get scared?" The girl asked, tilting her head a bit.
"We all get scared sometimes," All-Star said, hopping up. "But being scared only lets you know that you're still human. Rejecting fear? Acting like it's some sort of monster? That ain't normal. You've got to embrace fear, Gretch. When you do, you'll realise that it's not so bad after all."
The girl took All-Star's outstretched hand and hauled herself up, flashing a flirty smile at him. "Do you have a girlfriend, mister?"
All-Star stepped back, alarm flashing across his face as the girl approached him, playfully. "You know what? I've actually got a lot of work to do. Gotta go get this shoulder patched up. Yep. Bye."
Turning on his heel, he briskly walked out of the toy store, leaving the lovestruck little girl with a couple of police officers.
Still, some things are a little too scary.
The little boy sat on the front porch of his dilapidated house, the sounds of his mother and father arguing within its confines all too loud in the cold night air.
"What's the matter, Nate?" A voice called out.
Looking up, the boy saw a familiar face smiling at him from the street below.
"Wheeze," the boy said, biting his lip. "Do you ever get scared?"
The older boy frowned, climbing the porch stairs and falling to sit right beside his friend. "Sometimes. Your old man hit you again?"
The young boy said nothing, looking down. The older boy understood his response.
"Imma tell you what my old man told me, little man." He said, looking away. "Old guy was a deadbeat but one thing he told me always seemed to stick, know what I mean?"
"What was it?" The young boy asked, looking up again.
"Fear's as much of a part of you as love and happiness. You can't run or hide from it. You gotta learn to live with it. It makes us human, y'know?" The older boy said, rubbing the young boy's shoulder.
"But I don't know if I can live with it, Wheeze." The young boy said, frowning deeply.
The older boy looked up at the moon and frowned just as deeply before turning back to the younger boy.
"Yeah, Nate. Neither do I."
