Hero tip number 397: when out doing heroic things at night, don’t pack your wallet. It’s sloppy. It had ID. If it falls out, your identity falls with it. Better to avoid carrying a wallet or identification altogether. Yes, even if you’re driving. Although sometimes, one winds up with a wallet, all the same.

Despite his best intentions, Elliott stumbled onto the mugging in-progress. Honestly, he’d been trying to cut down on his responses to these. For real! He hadn’t been out patrolling the rooftops, looking for trouble or anything! As far as his new roommate knew, he was simply out clubbing. He’d driven his motorcycle out to a nearby bar, parked it... and then gone for a little walk. And the guy had shouted “Give me your wallet! I want your money, not your life” not one block away from the bar. Sometimes, life is not fair. He’d stepped into an alley, slipped on his motorcycle helmet, then gone to work.

Barefooted, he’d slipped into the shadows. Shoes, he’d stashed in his backpack. With them, he could calmly step in any old alley slime and not get it between his toes. Without them, he could walk on walls. He crouched for a second, then sprung onto the alley wall. Pounced to another wall, and stealthily came up on the mugger from above and behind.

“Nice night for it,” Elliott had said cheerfully.

The mugger spun around wildly. In his confusion and his haste, he nearly lost his grip on the knife. The woman behind him cowered, drunk and clearly a wreck. That was usually how it happened. Criminals prey on the weak. What’s weaker than a drunk woman on her way home from a bar? The muggers eyes darted from one corner of the alley to the other, desperately searching for the source of the voice.

“Not in the corner,” Elliott sang. “Or that one.” The mugger waved his knife at the shadows. He was getting scared. Elliott sighed. “Alright. I’ll just save you the trouble. Up. Here.” He snapped.

The mugger looked up. And he nearly wet himself. Elliott, Alias Cheshire, had a gimmick. It was a silly bit, but it was his bit, just as it had been the bit of the Cheshire before him (and also concurrently, at that time). He wore a motorcycle helmet with a smile. The smile often changed, rotating through patterns and different styles. He’d painted some of them for fun. Tonight’s helmet was one he sort of held dear. It had been a posthumous gift from his roommate, Benji. The Real Cheshire, as far as he considered things. And it. Was. Scary.

Cheshire hung there, upside down on the alley wall about twenty feet up. The helmet was black, with a jagged V of a smile full of sharp-looking white teeth, and a lolling pink tongue. The painted eyes on the helmet were shaped like almonds, and they were red. Foreign eyes. Alien eyes. His black leather jacket would have hung awkwardly, had he not buttoned it up. Black jeans and visible green skin on his hands and feet finished the ensemble, though those were hardly accessories.

“Hi!” Cheshire’s black helmet smiled. He waved one hand. The tongue defied gravity by lolling towards the sky. Before the mugger could do much more than take a step back from shock, he launched himself off the wall and turned the descent into a tumbling flip. He landed a few feet away from the mugger, kicked his left leg out in a snappy side kick, and caught the guy in the chest. The knife didn’t matter. Tumbled right from his grip. Cheshire surged forward to pummel the man into a state of unconsciousness, before he could recover and reclaim his knife. While Elliott was beating the man up, the drunk woman ran from the alley. She didn’t even scream, just ran. Smart of her.

Elliott had said he wouldn’t do it. He’d promised. But what good is a promise from a liar and a thief? He took the mugger’s wallet. What a good way to teach a mugger a lesson. Mug him first. Leave the man with bruises and a story to deter future violent thieves. Maybe some day, the karma from the whole thing would balance things out. He was trying not to focus on karma as much, now. But he’d still promised Lee... eh. Into a pocket, the wallet went. The guy should not have shouted so loud. Getting caught is bad for business.

—

Elliott reclaimed the backpack from the hiding place behind the dumpster, and strapped shoes back into his feet. It hadn’t been a long walk back to the bar. But in the brief time between his walk and his return, a crowd had formed. They must have been gearing up for a party at a nearby night club or something.

The nice thing about a costume like his costume was that, for the most part, you could blend in. If the cops weren’t looking for you, a motorcycle helmet was just a motorcycle helmet and a leather jacket, just a jacket. He could swap out elements of the costume over time, so long as the smile remained. But a motorcycle helmet wasn’t an uncommon sight around bars. He didn’t stand out that much. Into the crowd, Elliott went, stolen wallet heavy in the back pouch of his low-slung black backpack.

Eisley was on the hunt. Her dark clothes helped her blend in, and hardly anybody paid attention to poor homeless boys, so it was easy to simply trail along and let her feet guide her to her next mark. As it were, tonight various pubs and bars were the hot scene. Lines formed, groups gathered. She found herself watching one such crowd from afar, tucked down against the side of a building.

Bars typically ended up being a pretty good haul if you could catch someone before they went in. People tended to bring a lot of cash for booze and tips. It was flashier. The problem was that bars also tended to be a tad bit more dangerous than the usual haul. Alcohol loosened people up in ways she wasn't usually comfortable with. Tonight she was a little desperate, though.

After evaluating things for a bit, she stood and headed toward the group. Best case scenario people would just ignore her. Worst case someone would choose to be a jerk and cause a scene. She pulled her cap down a little more and headed in, eyes moving from person to person.

One wallet came easily. It was only stuffed halfway inside back pocket. She pilfered it and moved along. Another caught her eye swiftly after that. Tucked in the back pocket of a backpack. She eyeballed the back of the owner for a moment, before deftly swiping that wallet too.

Slipping the last wallet into her coat pocket, she kept on going. Head down, eyes on the path ahead. She'd find somewhere quiet to settle down and see how much she'd gotten, and then decide on whether or not she could be done for the night.

As she headed away from the bulk of the group, her curiosity got the better of her. Pulling the last wallet back out, she flipped it open to peer inside. A dour face stared back at her from an ID. Blank eyes, no smile. There were a few cards inside, but mostly refillable visa cards instead of credit. The middle of the wallet held a handful of cash, but nothing big. The guy was ill prepared for the bar scene in her opinion.

Still, the visas, if they had money on them, would work for her. She didn't need ID for them. She'd chuck the rest of the wallet later. She ducked off the beaten path in order to check the other wallet, which she withdrew from her other pocket.

Thieves often have a sense for other thieves, but it wasn’t Elliott who noticed his wallet getting pinched. It was the first man. He had a face like a fox, sharp and pointed with green eyes that followed the little thief’s progress as she went on from him to the next guy, some loser in a creepy goth motorcycle helmet. Her form was good. If he hadn’t noted the sudden lack of weight in his back pocket, she’d have gotten away. No such luck for her. He wiggled his wet fox nose.

As the little thief in the ball cap slipped away to assess her findings, the man with the auburn hair and the fox face stalked after her.

The stalking was what got Elliott’s attention. Contrary to popular belief, if you follow after someone like a predator, shoulders hunched and eyes focused forward on your prey, you don’t look discrete. You look like a pervert. The person in the ball cap could of been a child. They could have been a high schooler with a bad fake id getting turned away from the club. Man, woman, child. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. If a creep was creeping in his part of the city, he wasn’t going to be creeping on anyone for very much longer. Brooklyn was his.

Fox face crept along behind the person, who crept along down the street, and Elliott crept along behind them both, from above. He’d had to scale a fire escape, and for a moment he’d risked losing sight of Foxy. But he’d gotten used to chasing people over rooftops, now. His stalking skills were far superior to Foxy’s. He recovered the trail.

From his height, he didn’t see the girl flip through a wallet while she walked. Fox face did. A surge of animalistic rage went through him. He thought it was his wallet! He was going to take her out and take ALL the wallets! Including his! The wet black fox nose wiggled again. Yes, yes.

The girl slipped off the sidewalk and into an alley. Fox face followed. Elliott sprang across the gap between buildings, and sneaked down a fire escape to watch them from above. He waited to see what fox man would do.

Fox man directly threatened the girl, and loudly. He came up on her from behind in the darkened alley, shouted something, waved a knife long enough to be deemed a knife by some Australian, then told her to give him all of her money.

Elliott sighed. That was pretty much the shortest lived period of opportunity he’d ever given to a shifty subject. He’d given the guy his chance to not be a violent ass. Now, came the pain.

He was about twenty feet up when he jumped off the fire escape. He landed directly behind fox face, got a running start, reached him, hauled back a leg, and kicked him. He kicked him squarely in the ass. He kicked him hard, the man flew far. He landed in an open dumpster with a heavy thud. The thud was followed by a metallic clang, as the dumpster lid smashed down over him, closing the trash container. Elliott didn’t say a single word of banter until after it was all done.

“Ass.” He said. He turned towards the person the man had been threatening. “He was an ass, right? I didn’t just kick a man ten feet into a dumpster because it was fun for me, right? Are you okay?”

He was still wearing the scary helmet with the sharp teeth and the red alien eyes amid the field of ‘too much black.’ The helmet smiled a Cheshire smile. He was not using the scary deep Cheshire voice. His black backpack still dangled from one shoulder.

She didn't hear the man behind her at all. It was a troublesome symptom of her ruined ear. The noise from everything else blended together to cover up the footsteps she should have been listening for.

The first loud shout grabbed her attention, but she struggled to figure out where it came from at first. Front? No. Side? No. Other side? No. She turned to check behind her, good ear angled that way, and froze like a deer in headlights. Big blue eyes focused on the point of a blade, a big one at that, before following it up to his face.

... he was fuzzy. Somehow the cute foxy face of his didn't help alleviate the sudden stress she was feeling at him pulling a knife on her.

Her hands went up halfway in immediate surrender, eyes focused on her assailant before something moved in the darkness behind him. Her eyes squinted shut and she curled in on herself protectively as someone else jumped in to attack. There was a muted thud a crash, a clang.. and then a voice. She wasn't quite sure what it said, but she had a suspicion. She peeked through her fingers to see who may have just saved her--

"AAAIIEEEEEE!"

Her shrill shriek bounced off the walls surrounding them, and she chucked the wallet at the figure with the long lolling tongue, sharp pointed teeth, and red demon eyes.

"Don't eat me I taste terrible!"

Her first instinct was to run, which she tried and failed. Tripping over her own feet she ended up on the ground, curled up in on herself like a backpack-wearing armadillo.

Usually, when you save someone they say ‘thanks.’ Or they flee sensibly. As a rule, they generally don’t try to assault the person who just took out the person they couldn’t take out. On the one hand, he respected her for her fire. On the other hand, ow!

Okay. It didn’t actually hurt. When she’d thrown the object, he hadn’t responded very quickly. If it had been a knife, or an explosive, or something else dangerous, he’d have been hosed. As it was, he turned his head away from it and the leather wallet slapped him in the side of his helmeted face. The scream had been far more painful.

She screamed. She tried to run. She failed. Don’t eat her? There didn’t look to be enough meat to feed a hobo, let alone a mighty imposing helmet-wearing super her—Oh. Yeah. The helmet with the sharp teeth and the mean eyes was pretty terrifying in the dark.

She was curled up in on herself, like a ball. And... now he felt like the ass.

“Uh...” he started. It was a bad start. Dead in the water before it could get moving. He stood there for a moment, unsure what to do with the whole situation.

Did he just leave? The girl... he was mentally referring to her as a girl now. And not due to any outside information. More, due to the girly scream high pitched enough to most likely NOT be a boy’s. Unless he were a castrato. Anyway, the girl was scared. In this situation, one probably tried to do something to put a person at ease.

Taking off the scary helmet wasn’t an option, and for a couple of reasons. One, it revealed his secret identity, which was a close-kept secret of importance, because... well, just because. And two, him taking off the helmet with the big scary red eyes to reveal his face down below, with the big red eyes that were only slightly less scary, was kind of like in a cartoon, when they finally catch the bad guy and pull off his mask, only to reveal yet another mask underneath that. Not. Helpful. And if the second mask was as scary as the first (Gee, Thanks for that), he went back to square one, and at a disadvantage. Secret identity, revealed! Armored helmet, off! Face... just as scary. You’re ugly, dude. Deal. So what the hell did he do?

Elliott... knocked his knuckles against his helmeted head. Hard. A somewhat hollow rapping echoed off the alley walls.

“It’s fake.” Elliott said. “Just a motorcycle helmet. I couldn’t eat you if I tried.” Which was true, but man if that didn’t help with the confidence and trust he wanted to gain by telling her he couldn’t eat her. Because he didn’t wanna.

His leather backpack hit him in the side as Elliott bent, and grabbed whatever it was she had thrown at him.

“My name is... Thomas.” He said, as he rose from his crouch. His voice croaked slightly from trying to speak while rising.

He could give her at least that. It was probably worse than taking off his helmet to reveal a face she’d probably never even seen before, but... nope. Never mind. He was just dumb. And now he had to roll with it.

“I think you dropped your—“ Morbid curiosity struck him as he held the wallet, and he flipped through it. Because he was a terrible person. Behind the dark visor, his eyes bulged. “There’s jack s#it in this wallet.” Elliott said. “Are you homeless?”

Then, sneering towards the man in the dumpster, Elliott added under his breath. “That idiot REALLY picked a bad person to mug. And in MY part of the city. Crazy... mugging a homeless person. They don’t have money, dude.”

flinching at first, it took a moment for her to realize she hadn't been eaten or otherwise dispatched, and that the guy was talking to her. He was wearing a helmet apparently, so he didn't actually look like a boogeyman. She turned to peek at him slightly from under an arm, warily watching as he bent to retrieve the wallet she'd socked him with and then introduced himself. Thomas? Huh... well.

"I'm Tom." She replied back, slowly getting back to her own feet. If he wasn't gonna eat her and didn't appear to be robbing her like fox dude had been... what the heck was he doing? Having a pleasant chat in a dingey ally?

On reflex, her arm lifted to take the wallet and froze there mid-air when he casually flipped through it. Okay, maybe he was gonna rob her after all? She blinked in quick succession, aiming her good ear slightly at him so she could hear better in time to catch his question about her being homeless.

Oh... oh shucks!

It got even worse as he started going on about that jerk, aka Foxface, robbing a homeless kid in his part of town.

Eisley was starting to sweat. Was she gonna have to play along like that was her wallet? What if he noticed the picture ID?! The teen stood there, uncertain of what to do, watching Thomas with wide eyes.

Wait.... hadn't one of her marks been wearing a helmet? And... a backpack?

Cornnuts! Had she just thieved from another superhero for the second time in a month!? Eisley's shifted around like a Kit Kat CLock while she tried to keep the panic from creeping into her face. She was in suuuch deep doodoo.

Elliott didn’t ogle Toms ID. The fact that she seemed young enough not to have a legitimate one, now that he could see her better standing where she was in the dank, dark alley, aided the decision. Any ID she had would have been fake, or for school. No, he just sighed and rubbed at his neck.

“I’ve been there, Tom.” He said. “Homeless. And I’m crap at speeches, so I’m just gonna flat out say it. Sh*t sucks. People trying to move you or use you. Makes it hard to trust. You don’t have to trust me,” and he sure as hell wasn’t goin to be her big brother and help her get off the streets.

Elliott turned and reached into the back pocket of his leather pack for the wallet he’d grabbed earlier. Maybe there’d be enough there to help her, at least enough for a candy bar. ... except the wallet wasn’t going to be helping anyone. It was gone.

Elliott cursed under his breath. “It must have fallen out...” He said. Well. There was no avoiding it. Without another word, he stalked over to the trash can and hauled the unconscious fox man halfway out of the dumpster. He dug in the dangling man’s pockets, and came up empty.

“Really?!” Elliott exclaimed. “Effing really?!” He let go, and foxy slumped onto the ground by the dumpster with a sloppy squish and a muted thump.

Elliott blinked several times, then calmed himself down. Even if his features weren’t visible behind the visor of the helmet, it didn’t do to be irate. Made one careless. Bad for business. He turned back towards the girl, if... she was even still there.

“I was going to give you some money,” he said sadly. He held out her empty wallet for the girl. “But it seems my wallet and his are gone. Sorry.” The helmet was smiling, but he was not.

Fiddlesticks! Fannywrinkles! Ahh, she didn't know enough not-swear-words for this! She nodded along nervously, tense and relaxed all at once. He'd been homeless before too? That was good... another example of someone who had gotten out. Why he loaded all his money on gift cards she didn't care to know, though.

Would she trust him? No... He was right about that. Even if her heart sang that it wanted to because he'd beaten up the bad guy, her brain always told her no. Firmly, resolutely, no.

... Also she stolen from him, so that kinda made her a bad guy too.

Thomas reached for his wallet and she was 99% sure the earth was gonna open up and swallow her whole. Could it? That would be great right about now. She paled considerably but lucked out when he blamed it on the fox.

... until he tried to rob the fox too. Was she feeling a little green right about now? Not nearly as green as he was, but yes. She was going to throw up if this went on any longer.

The moment he held out the empty wallet to her, she made a soft strangled sound in the back of her throat and jerked her hand up to take it back. Was he giving her the gift cards? Did.. did he not realize that it was his own wallet?

She shifted guiltily on her feet for a moment, before lifting her other hand from her side and showing the other wallet sitting on her palm. With the other, she flipped open the wallet he had given back. The guy inside's name was definitely not Thomas, not was he green in any way shape or form. So... unless Thomas only has green hands, maybe he wasn't as heroic as she had first pegged him? Maybe he was more like her?

A timid, nervous smile broke across her face. "...I.. uh... may have already taken it from him?"

Now she just hoped her inkling was right and he wouldn't beat her up or drag her off to the cops. Just because he had been homeless didn't automatically also make him a thief.

Maybe she was expecting him to get angry. Get violent? Get revenge? If she had been, his reaction certainly wouldn’t have been one she would have expected. Elliott Thomas laughed. He doubled over laughing. This was too much.

Now that he’d looked at it and put two and two together, he’d realized the wallet looked familiar. Because he’d stolen it not twenty minutes before. She had robbed him? And the other guy? Wow.

“Kid, I like you.” Elliott said, once he’d gotten his laughter under control. “You got fire. If that other wallet is my wallet... I certainly didn’t deserve to keep it, now did I?”

Leaving a wallet sitting there in the backpack, easy access for any old pickpocket. Not paying attention. Clearly, it hadn’t been important to him. And even more clearly, she’d had the skill to take it. He could respect that. He believed in honor among thieves. You steal something from someone better than them, you deserve it. If they steal it back... well, thieves have to protect their credibility.

“Please tell me one of those wallets was mine,” Elliott said easily. “Or else that crazy laughter was just sad.”

Dude started laughing at her. Full belly, bent over. It looked funny with his helmet still on, but she started laughing along nervously anyway. When he was done it made more sense, and apparently, she'd made an impression on him? Cool! Some of her nervousness abated as she fiddled with both of the wallets still in her hands.

"It was!" Okay, maybe that was a little too excited for an admission of guilt. "But you don't look like the picture in it. It's not really yours, is it?" She hadn't even checked Fox's wallet yet. She busied herself with investigating in it while it'owner groaned painfully from his spot on the ground. He wasn't loaded, that was for sure... but he definitely had a bit of cash on him, as well as some cards and a few small, weird little metal picks. She tossed those over her shoulder, pocketing the cash, before hucking the wallet back at the mean fox. It hit him square in the nose, and she was mighty proud of her throw.

She turned back to the selected vigilante. "So... you really ain't mad at me for taking the wallet?" She blinked at him with eyes that always seemed a little too large for her small face. It was strange that two heroes hadn't gotten mad at her for stealing when it seemed like all the cops she had ever met always did. Musta had something to do with where they had come from.

“Nah,” Elliott said. “I stole it from a mean mugger!”

The wallet was not his. He didn’t care so much about someone else taking it. And the person he’d taken it from had deserved it. His conscience was clear as could be.

He watched her as she pocketed the money and discarded the wallet, alongside what she didn’t need. His head bobbed in a slight nod of approval. That was the way to do it. Keeping a wallet on you is a great way to get caught red handed.

She turned back and double checked. He really wasn’t mad?

“I’m really not mad,” Elliott said lightly. “Now, if you’d had a knife and tried to gut me for the wallet, we would be having a different conversation. Thieves, I can handle. Violent muggers who threaten to kill you if you don’t give them your cash?” Elliott looked at her, as if his stance on the whole thing should be obvious.

“I can’t really stomach getting stabbed in the gut,” Elliott finished. “And I make it a point to try and keep other people from having to deal with the same. A stolen wallet here or there, whatever. A stolen life... that can’t be replaced.”

He wasn’t a good guy. But he had his rules.

Her eyes widened slightly and she nodded her head vigorously in agreement. "I don't like weapons...or hurting people." She toe kicked the ground for a minute with a guilty look on her face. "S'not being a good neighbor if you hurt people." She ignored the fact that Mr. Rogers would have probably also frowned upon taking things from other people. She could justify it with being needy and knew that he would totally accept an apology and forgive her when she found herself in a better place.

"Bad people like him don't get to be neighbors." She pointed accusingly at the unconscious fox man, before turning her attention back to Thomas. The child eyed him quietly for a moment, eyes slightly squinted and mouth pursed.

"... Are you a hero? You act like one of them heroes I always see running around." Her cheeks reddened a little. "I keep accidentally taking things from you guys... sorry." She wasn't sure if they all like... hung out together or something, like a club. Maybe they all went to gyro places after fighting big battles and ate together. That would be cool!

"Do all heroes swear a lot?"

It wasn't very neighborly, but she'd forgive him. That's what you were supposed to do.

Not being a good neighbor. Yeah, that was one phrase for it. Not being a good neighbor, not being an upstanding human being, not being a raging jackass pile of obscenities... like Foxy. He followed her train of logic with a dip of his helmet. “Mhm.” He interjected into the monologue.

The monologue stopped as she looked at him, considering. Was he a hero? That was a good question.

He smiled slightly under the helmet, at her embarrassed admission, and matched it with a small chuckle (since she wouldn’t be able to see the smile).

Tom took things from heroes? Bad habit to have. She apologized for it, and Elliott shrugged a shoulder.

“S’cool.” He said. “Some of them probably deserved losing a wallet here or there. If they were carrying one while hiding their secret identities. Which is stupid.” He said the last sentence in a conspiratorial whisper to her.

Carrying identification while trying to hide who you were. Casuals.

He hadn’t answered her question about him being a hero or not, because she’d gotten caught up in a million other questions, like “do heroes swear a lot?” And “will you forgive me? Pretty please!” Maybe He’d stretched that last one, but that had basically been the intent. And intent mattered. As for answering her question... and the one from earlier.

Did heroes swear a lot?

“I dunno,” Elliott said. He glanced towards the mouth of the alley. “I knew a hero once. He didn’t swear all that much. But he had his own bad habits. Being too neighborly, wanting to be friends with all the cute girls.”

Ahem. He realized what he was saying (to a minor, no less), and quickly changed gears. “Probably best not to talk ill of the dead. He was the first Cheshire. (That’s the hero name. Cuz of the smile). Taught me a lot...

“I’m not sure I’ll ever be a real hero, like him. But I guess—“ He turned back towards her, and finished simply. “I guess all I can do is try and be the best damn friendly neighborhood vigilante I can be.”

And, there he went swearing again. He supposed that answered her question about HIM swearing pretty effing well.

The teen blushed. "I... uh... accidentally stole a wedding ring. His wallet was too hard to get." It was still embarrassing, even if it hadn't ended as badly as it could have. She hadn't known he was a hero at the time!

"I gave it back though. I mean, because he caught me, but also because I felt bad. Mostly because he caught me, though." Shoot, she was rambling!

She cocked her head slightly as Thomas started talking about another hero he knew once, who apparently liked girls. Cool, she guessed? Everyone liked something she supposed. She liked unicorns, personally.

Her expression shifted slightly when he hinted at his hero friend being dead, and she thought back to Papa and how he had died. It made her sad, both for Papa and for the first Cheshire. "...Why did he die?" She questioned, straight to the point in only a way that children seemed to be able to get away with. Heroes weren't supposed to die, or at least it would be nice if they wouldn't. They were supposed to live and defeat bad guys and live happily ever after and all that.

Her confusion tripled at him doubting his hero-ness and dropping a big word on her directly after. What was a vi... vijill...anty? Some other kinda hero? Ooh! was that what you called a sidekick?!

She pondered on what he had said for a moment, brows furrowed and little mouth set in a firm line.

" 'Anyone who does anything to help a child is a hero to me' " She quoted, words falling off of her tongue as easily as watching a thousand re-runs of that particular episode enabled her to do. "I'm a child, and you helped me, and Mr. Rogers says you would be a hero to him, so that means you are a hero!"

And then she beamed at him with a wide, gap-toothed smile because she was missing one of her few remaining baby teeth. Her logic sounded perfect to her, even if it was based on TV show.

Kids that ask a million questions back to back don’t always get all the answers they’d like, so when Tom asked about Benji, it was only fair that Elliott was already changing the subject. Away from the nasty question, away! That was a loaded baked potato question, if ever he had heard one. Full of cheese, and with plenty of meat. The kind of gargantuan greasy baked potato that would be sure to give you indigestion if you thought you could handle it all at once, AND your dinner. The question was so big, it was a meal by itself. He was going for lighter fare with the conversation, a lighthearted soup and wistful salad sort of deal. There was a soul searching steak coming, and here she was, asking him to fill up on a colossal Idaho spud with cheese and bits of bacon! If he gnashes his teeth on that question, they’d never even get to dessert. So he pointedly ignored it, with food metaphors. Cold. Like ice cream.

‘I’m hungry,’ Elliott thought. And then he talked at length about him not being a hero, just your friendly neighborhood criminal! Because he didn’t want to talk about that other thing. The baked potato. And she completely missed the point! Maybe she didn’t know the word vigilante? She seemed young enough not to have learned that word.

Tom rattled off some sappy stuff about heroes and Mr. Rogers and children, and despite all the effort he’d gone through to bury the jaded side of himself under downy comforters and a redhead’s smile, he still felt the inexplicable urge to be rude.

She was a kid, for chrissikes! She thought he was a hero? It was too much. He was a nice enough guy and all, but he’d gotten into helping people for the wrong reasons. And if she trusted a guy enough after he’d appeared and beat the crap out of another guy in a dark alley, just cuz he wanted to, then this girl might wind up getting herself hurt.

He ought to talk to her, reprimand her. Was that a protective streak? She wasn’t his problem.

He’d thought Tom was street-smart, then she’d buried him under the babble about wallets and wedding rings and whoopsie! And Mr. Rogers neighborhood. Part of him wanted to be like “who is mr Rogers? He your dad?” That part of him was the same jaded ass who’d lived on the street, and avoided weaknesses like friends such as her like the plague. The silly part, the part that judged people, read people, told him she’d probably just reply to that with an excited “I wish!”

Wistful, light. Not bitter, dark. He schooled his whirling emotions and told himself the urge to be an ass was the direct result of buried anger over the death of a friend. Misplaced anger. And maybe a side of soggy French fries that were annoyed she was so innocent and willing to lower her guard. Because learning how to do that had taken him too damn long and cost far too much. To him, and to those around him.

The helmet continued to smile. He did not. He wasn’t going to let brooding angst flavor the conversation. It was bitter and chalky. Elliott put all the friendliness and sincerity he could into Cheshire’s voice, for her sake. For the Cheshire persona, tone of voice was also a mask.

“You can think whatever you want, kiddo~” Elliott said. “Personally, I think the real heroes are the ones who make sacrifices for the greater good, without thinking about themselves. Like firemen, or people who throw themselves on bombs to protect others, in spite of the cost. Even if nobody realizes they’ve done anything at all.”

He wasn’t brave enough or foolish enough to think he was the heroic sacrifice type. But he could honor it as the mark of a true hero. Him? He was just a guy who liked to fight things, in a scary helmet in the dark.