I pulled up a chair and sat down. Kevin squinted up at me, and mumbled something I didn’t catch. I ripped the duct tape off his mouth, taking most of the ‘stach he was working on along with it. “What was that?”

“Please don’t kill me! I’ll give you anything you want!”

It was only then that I realized I was wearing my mask, and he had absolutely no idea who I was. It was almost like i really was just a cartoon superhero, and nothing else.

That was a good thing, actually, but it meant that I would have to choose my words carefully.

“What could you possibly give me?” I asked in a gruff voice, and now I was kind of praying that I could get out of this without him finding out who I was.

He looked desperate, maybe more desperate than the situation demanded. “You must want something!” he babbled. “My parents, they have money, power. They know people. Whatever it is you want…”

“Shut up.” Kevin’s unhinged babbling was starting to worry me. I hadn’t pictured him as such a pushover. “Why do you think I want money, or power? You think those are the only things in the world that have any value?”

“Oh my god, you’re gonna kill me. Oh my god,” he started repeating it over and over. It was ridiculous.

“I’m not going to kill you,” I snapped. “As long as you shut up. Quit being such a baby.”

That’s when he started crying. “You are going to kill me,” he insisted. “I know who you are.”
Woah, wait, what? “Is that so?” I said cautiously.

“You’re Suspect 7!” He blurted out. “You’re the reason we had to move again! They said you were coming to kill us!”

I made sure my voice would be calm and level before I spoke again. “They told you?” I repeated. “Who are they?”

“People that work for my parents! Security people! Oh my god, they told me not to come down but I had to see for myself oh my god no one knows where I am oh my god now you know that they don’t know oh my god…”

“Shut. The. Hell. Up.” This guy was unbelievable. How did Mr. Cool end up being such a wimp? He had his chin tucked into his chest now, and he was sobbing quietly.

“Snap out of it, Kevin. I’m not gonna kill you,” then I added, “if you answer my questions.”

“Anything…anything.”

“Good. You can start by telling me everything you know about Suspect 7.”

He sighed heavily, and then looked up at me. The venomous glare in his eyes was more along the lines of the Kevin Joy I knew. “I know that you’re an escaped mental patient,” he said. “I know that you hate my family for being rich. And I know that you tried to kill my girlfriend, and that’s why we had to move again, because you’re planning to kill us all.”

FYI - All images are pics I took, then made into cartoons with Toon-FX. They’ve got some cool free stuff on their website you should check out!

Recap: here’s everything I know about Kevin Joy, a.k.a. New Guy

He started at Ring City High at the beginning of the year, right around the time that JoyTech moved their corporate HQ to Ring City and opened the new plant.

He was rich, he had a nice car, he was instantly six million times more popular than I was. He threw huge parties, all the girls LOVED him, of course, but instead of going for some braindead cheerleader, he hooked up loudmouth activist extraordinaire, my best friend, Aurora Lively.

He then proceeded to argue with her about everything she believed in, tried to stop her from organizing action against JoyTech for their crooked environmental policies, and he made anyone who disagreed with him look like a crazy person.

I made the mistake of just assuming he was a rightwing douchbag. We got in a couple of fights. Whatever.

His ‘mom,’ who is young, and blonde, and suspicious as hell, came and talked to Jerry about our ‘scuffles.’ She said some threatening stuff, and actually implied that she knew things about Jerry’s past that could get him in trouble.

Then I discover that for some reason, his family is VERY interested in ME. Like, taking surveillance photos interested in me.

Then I get shook down by the giggling man, a JoyTech enforcer who tells me to stay away from New Guy, aka Kevin Joy – the guy is actually part of the royal JoyTech family!

So it now seems obvious that Kevin wasn’t just some right-wing-capitalism-is-great nutjob.
He was actually speaking for JoyTech, trying to make everybody at Ring High just as Joy-ful as he was!

And now that Aurora is in the hospital, he’s suddenly gone. Nowhere to be found, no traces left behind. Except I figured out exactly how to find him.

I got up this morning and realized I could walk pretty easily on my shot foot, so the plan of the day was to go see Aurora. She’s still in the hospital. Still in a coma. No change, which is getting to be worse and worse news.

Usually if someone doesn’t come out of a coma within the first couple of weeks, they stay that way.

I felt guilty for not visiting for so long. Aurora’s mom even called, if only to ask me if I knew why New Guy wasn’t coming around. I almost shouted at her, “He disappeared because Aurora found him out for the fraud he is!” But I restrained myself, and I promised her I’d be around soon.

I was heading out the door when Jerry reminded me that I was supposed to be going down to the cop shop to give a statement. About Aurora’s ‘accident.’ But what was I supposed to say? “Oh yeah, officer, it was someone I call the giggling man, who hit her to punish me for fucking with JoyTech, or maybe to punish me for messing with her boyfriend, who was secretly a JoyTech spy. You see, this all started because I’m in love with a girl who will never hook up with me…”

And then I didn’t want to go to the hospital anymore. I didn’t want to sit there with Aurora in a hospital bed while whoever had hit her was roaming around free. And I didn’t want to talk to the cops about something they would never understand.

Suddenly, I felt more than just guilty. I felt massively, unbearably guilty. I should have been doing more for Aurora. Focusing on protecting her instead of getting all caught up in this fight with a company that I couldn’t even make a dent in. Going there, thinking I would, what? Storm the ramparts, draw the giggling troll out of its lair, and destroy all evil?

Trying to somehow punish JoyTech for what happened was like hitting my head against a brick wall. What I really needed was a soft spot. Somewhere I could apply pressure, somewhere I could pour out all this fucking guilt, and frustration, and ANGER…

If I wanted revenge, if I wanted to draw the giggling man out, there was only one thing I could think of that fit the bill, and that was stupid Kevin Joy’s stupid face.

Look out, New Guy. You’re about to become un-disappeared.

A video from back in the good old days, when I was still training with the parkour guys:

Cool effects done using Toon-FX toon video.

I couldn’t get another word out of jerry after I mentioned my parents. He just sat there with his hands twined together on the Formica tabletop, and all he would say was, “Mmm-mmm, I told you, Nemo, I don’t know.”

That’s the same thing he’s told me my whole life. He has no idea who my parents were, or are. And honestly, I never cared. I didn’t have some kids-movie-injected false sense of a perfect mommy and daddy waiting for me somewhere. I’ve never felt like I lived the wrong life. Even though I don’t really have many friends, and Jerry is weird, and I guess I’m kind of weird, I’ve always felt like I was where I was supposed to be.

This is all to explain why I’d never pressed the issue of my real parents with Jerry. I just felt, suddenly, like they must have played a part in all this. Maybe they were even in prison for something they did to JoyTech!

But even now, I gave up on bugging Jerry pretty quick. I wasn’t sure I really wanted to know. Aurora did this whole thing last year where she trekked halfway across the world to meet her real mother. It was…really disappointing for her. Sometimes people have good reasons for giving up on their kids.

On the upside, she had a great time traveling and came back with all these politics and causes she wanted to crusade for.

Which is how I got involved in running around in a mask at night trying to save the world from evil corporations. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done to try to prove that I’m the one Aurora should be with. Not because I was coerced into it by Jerry and his gang of old farts.

Me. The ultimate weapon against JoyTech? I couldn’t get that line out of my head, it was so kookoo. I couldn’t go a week without getting shook down by the giggling man, injured at the plant, or burned by New Guy, who turns out to be the latest in the long, noble line that is the JoyTech dynasty.

I was definitely feeling attacked from all angles. What could I do? What did great superheroes do if they were being overwhelmed by the opposition? I guess it depends on if they’re traditional heroes, or antiheroes. Do I identify more with Superman or Batman?
Hmm. That’s a tough one. Yeah right.

If I was Batman, this is the part where I would go out and knock down all my enemies one by one until Gotham was safe again.

I think I’ve mentioned once or twice that me and Jerry don’t talk much. About important stuff, I mean. If it wasn’t for Aurora, I’d probably have spent my whole life thinking that people just didn’t talk about how they felt, what they dreamed, or the past.

But I couldn’t let things go on like that anymore. Guys that I’d known my whole life, who were like brothers to Jerry, had just treated me like I was their enemy. They’d clearly had some kind of plan for me. Something involving JoyTech. And at the last minute, Jerry had put a stop to it.

But Jack had acted like it almost wasn’t up to Jerry to decide what happened to me.

WTF?

I needed to know what these guys had to do with JoyTech, so the next morning, I confronted the man who, for all intents and purposes, is basically my father.

At first, he tried to act like it had been just the usual drunken blustering, but I wasn’t going to be deterred so easily.

“They wanted to know about JoyTech, Jerry! Why would they ask me about that?”

“Aw, well, y’know, kid. I couldn’t just tell them nothing when you started all your sneaking around…”

“So they know I’ve been trying to bring down JoyTech?” I shook my head. “But so what? They’ve been watching my every move? What did I do to piss them off?” I couldn’t believe how many people seemed to have their eyes on me these days.

Jerry slumped down onto a kitchen chair. The cracked vinyl protested under his weight. “I guess it doesn’t matter much now,” he said after a long pause. “But I want you to know, Nemo, that I never thought…I mean, I thought in the end, I hoped, that you’d never be touched by any of this. When JoyTech came to Ring City, I wanted to get out. I wanted to leave, with you! But Jack wasn’t having any of it. He was happy! He saw it as the next chapter in his Book of Destiny.”

I nodded. I’d heard Jack talk about his “Book of Destiny” before. “So back in the 60s, when you guys were into all that radical activism stuff, you were going up against JoyTech.” I’d suspected this, but this was the first time Jerry had confirmed anything. He was nodding. “But what does it have to do with me?”

“Back then, the JoyTech Global Improvement Company wasn’t the feel-good, makes-life-great brand it is today. In the 60s, JoyTech was primarily invested in weapons testing and research. We felt strongly at the time that it was these big corporations that were behind all the wars, and the government was kowtowing to them.

“Me and the guys, we first met at these meeting where people were talking about what could be done. Their ideas were extreme, but at the time, I thought they were the only ones really stepping up.

”What can I say Nemo? We were young. We did some bad stuff. There was this JoyTech HQ in Des Moines…people got hurt. Two people died.

“It wasn’t long before some of us wound up in jail. Others on the run. Jack was one of those that went to prison, and when he got out, he was crazier than ever, and full of new ideas. We listened. We were desperate. By then it was the 80s, and radicalism was a joke. We felt starved for a chance to shake things up again…” Jerry’s shoulder’s drooped, and his head fell into his hands. The next words he spoke were muffled. “When me and…your mom started taking care of you, Jack saw his chance. An opportunity to raise a soldier, Nemo. To create the ultimate weapon against JoyTech.”

I had to snort my derision. “The ultimate weapon? Me, Jerry, seriously? I mean, you guys taught me parkour, but there’s absolutely nothing that makes me so special…”

Suddenly a thought struck me, a thought as absurd as it was obvious.
“Jerry,” I spoke carefully, keeping my voice level. “Jerry, who were my real parents?”

The craziest, worst incident went down last night. And since I’m lying here with a busted foot, I had plenty of time to toon it for you guys. Big thanks to Mrs. Brisby for all the pics!

I had to call Jerry for a ride home from the trailer park because I couldn’t walk. My foot had swelled up roughly to the size of child’s party balloon.

Me and Meegan made a plan to meet up once my foot got better and investigate what JoyTech was doing experimenting with geothermal energy. Then she made me go wait at the top of the road because she doesn’t agree with using gas-powered vehicles for transportation. I told her it was bio-diesel, but she didn’t care.

Anyway, I made it home. It wasn’t hard to convince Jerry that the hospital was not the answer. And I even made it up to my room without having to answer too many questions. Then I did a bit of research on geothermal energy.

The big environmental conspiracy theory when it comes to geothermal power is that using it too much will cause the core temperature of the earth to go down, eventually causing our planet to spin off its axis or stop spinning, or something else equally science fictional and dubious.

More realistic problems related to the environment are things like:

- The destruction of ecologically important areas, like the Coal Mouth Hot Springs.

- The use of toxic chemicals, and the release of dangerous and toxic emissions during the process of extraction.

- The potential for depleting a source of geothermal energy to the point where it is destroyed.

It’s not a perfectly renewable resource, especially when it’s being used heavily - for example, by a plant, as a opposed to a private home.

And I’m not just after JoyTech for doing this, or for taking Meegan’s ancestral land. The reason I found out about the geothermal thing in the first place is because I knew JoyTech was keeping a secret about something.

If geothermal is part of positive future, why would a company that loves to brag about their ecological stewardship cover up the existence of a geothermal site with smokestacks that do nothing but emit smoke from burning garbage???

It makes no sense. I’ve got to get back on my feet and get more information.

Here’s my idea of pretty, in toon form, of course. It’s always been my idea of pretty, since we were eight years old.

Meegan looks nothing like Aurora. She dresses in combat gear, for one thing. And her face beneath her mask was smeared with dirt.

She has crazy hair. Dyed reddish-pink, half dreadlocked, and cut at all different lengths, some going almost to her waist. Her face is covered in piercings that look like wounds and make her hard to look at directly.

She has thin lips that look made for screaming, although I didn’t know why I thought it at the time, and I don’t know what color her eyes are, because she has in colored contacts, one blue and one red, that make her look fiercer than she already is.

I wouldn’t call her ugly, but the Throttler is definitely no Aurora.

I had this thought, then regretted it, because the way she was examining me made me realize that I was no prize, either. And why would it matter anyway? It wasn’t like this was a blind date.

My foot throbbed unpleasantly.

“Hmm, you’re younger than I thought you would be,” she said.

“Sorry.”

“You’re still in high school, aren’t you? At least we don’t go to the same school. That would be, just, embarrassing.”

“Sorry,” I said again. Why was I being such an idiot?

“Do you recognize me?” she demanded.

I shrugged. “I dunno. Why?”

Meegan made an annoyed sound, and her grandma came to my side and whispered, “She’s in a band! She’s very proud about it.”

Suddenly I remembered posters I’d seen plastered all over town all summer. Posters of a girl with pink hair. Screaming.

So that’s where the screaming mouth came from.

“Oh. Yeah. Um,” and then I pulled the name out of nowhere, “Kill All Humans, right?”
Meegan actually looked surprised. “Wow. Did you see any of our shows?”

“Nah. I just remember the name because it’s ripped from Futurama.”

“Hmph. Well, you’d probably hate us, anyway.”

We glared at each other.

And that’s how I became friends, or maybe a better word would be “allies,” with the Throttler.