Chapter Text
There's a thin, fine line between right and wrong, and you think the kid's just crossed it.
Twenty meters between you and them, the longest twenty meters in your life since you first met the kid fourteen years ago. You are, for lack of a better way of putting it, trapped in a tight corner behind a line of boxes that tower over you like...like something that towers. Maybe a tower. You scratch that metaphor out and thank your lucky stars that you kept it to yourself. Only so many times a man can utterly humiliate himself with his inability to chain a coherent string of words together into a sentence before people start to think he's an idiot in a detective's outfit.
You know the boxes are full of busts because that's all this factory makes: busts, busts, and more busts, day in, day out. You've done business here before, mostly dirty business but business nonetheless. It's comforting that you have all that marble to fall back on if you run out of cover elsewhere, though whether it'll do you any good in the thick of a firefight is a different story entirely. It's the only line of defense between you and those kids past the conveyor belts that are slowly but surely edging towards him, unfortunately, closing the gap that's keeping you alive, and you put your faith in the god of sculpture and all that, praying he'll see fit to lend his protection to you and let you live to see another day.
You're glad neither Ace Dick nor Pickle Inspector are around to see everything come crashing down around you. They're up to their necks in bullshit elsewhere, most likely, trying to fend off more of English's thugs, hopefully in time (and that little pun makes you smile) to save you later. The Midnight Crew, on the other hand, are “done with the fucking infighting”, apparently. Slick's thrown his lot in with the punks at SCorp, on the promise that when all's said and done, he'll have the city. Not SCorp, they'll have the profits instead – not English, not Trollian Solutions, not even the fucking private detectives, your lot that's claimed so much ground, shed so much blood, fought tooth and nail for the Crew, out of foolish belief that they'd be the least of many evils. No, for that bastard's lot, the truth turned out to be that it's what they can get away with after the city's been painted with blood, likely carapace-person blood, that matters. Not integrity, pride, morals, honour, or any of those sweetly-sung stories that'd roped you all in. It'd all been lies, pretty, eloquent, but meaningless in the end. Meretricious, PI had always said. Too bad you hadn't listened when you'd had the chance.
Another gunshot rings clearly in the late evening quiet, shattering the relative peace of your thoughts like fine china thrown at a solid steel wall. Shouting, indistinct but loud, more voices than you can put names to, sounds from outside the factory and you curse under his breath. You've taken too long. Too many fucking variables. It's game over if you don't get out now and god damn it, you are not letting it all end now, not when you know how to fix the problem, how to repair the tenuous armistice between the city's criminals that'd danced so elegantly on the tripwire of gang warfare before things had started to go wrong.
There's a match in you hand before you can count to two, and by three it's already soaring through the air towards a gas leak on the other side of the room. You hope your throwing arm's put enough power into it to get the damn flame there, but you're not certain; the match crests too early, arcing down towards the ground just a couple of meters short. That pisses you off, more than he can bear, but when you throw the second it works out a lot better, gently curving through the empty air before lightly tapping the open pipe.
Something so small shouldn't explode so monstrously, you think, slamming your hands over your ears to protect them from the sound. You feel the world shift around you, quivering and shaking the same way the many hysterical dames you've assisted through the years often tended to, but the force of the blast isn't enough to tear the factory down, though shrapnel does shred the hardened crates like a hot knife through particularly thick butter, a flying splinter of wood slicing through the sleeve of your last good suit and cutting a gash right across your arm. It's bleeding, but it's not too deep, so you shoulder through the pain, turning and glancing over to the place you'd been aiming for before.
A fire's started raging, thankfully contained by the warehouse's thick metal walls. It's not going to be pretty when the shit hits the fan with that one. This factory is expensive to run, but it churns out a tidy profit at the end of the day, and you've just destroyed it in the name of your own revenge. Hopefully you haven't left any evidence...if you survives, he correct yourself, eyes still scanning the room for your targets.
There they are. A girder's been toppled and the roof has caved in without its support, and they're both trapped by the encroaching flames. It's a strange sight, eerily satisfying but more than a little worrying – the blond boy, the one with the pointy tinted glasses, looks like one of his arms has been broken, but he's still cradling the other one in his arms. He's covered in blood, skin black and blue (bruises like a peach, you note, for future reference), and you're fairly certain he's been burned pretty badly, but he still only has eyes for the other kid, practically in tears as he desperately tries to push them both from the wreckage. You know he won't cry, he's too stoic, too self-absorbed for that, but seeing some emotion on his face is gratifying. Lets you know he's human. Maybe you could have come to an understanding some day, if you'd given each other a fair chance.
The other boy is the one you care about, though, the one that matters. You can't quite tell how badly he's injured, and your heart threatens to stop when you hear a stifled sob from his direction, but the noise of the flames is too much for you to make anything out, regardless of whether they're talking or not. He's got a gun in his hand, but his fingers are loose around the grip, twitching a little bit every now and then.
You spring from your position, hoping you can make it to them before things get worse. This wasn't what you wanted, never what you wanted, but now it's here, here to stay, and you've got to do something to make this whole fucking fiasco a little bit better. He's the only thing that matters, the only thing that's ever really mattered, and fuck, you're not going to give up on him just yet, even if he's fired shots at you.
People call you Problem Sleuth, so you suppose it's your name. His name is John Egbert, and him being the most important thing in your life is the only thing you are certain about.
*...But it's a bit too early for all that. Why don't we take a step back, start at the very beginning, and really come to an understanding?
After all, we've got all the time in the world.