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.”

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.

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.

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.

Visited Aurora in the hospital for the first time today. I tried to go before. I couldn’t make myself walk down that long hallway into her room. She’s in a coma, the docs say, which means her brain is hurt.

But it’s weird. I thought that she would be all cold and still. Instead her lips are almost always moving, at least on the ‘level’ she was in when I saw her. And every once in a while she lifts up her right hand a bit, like she’s about to reach for something.

Her mom told me that the doctors say its good she’s exhibiting signs of awareness. It means she could come out of it in weeks or even days. They say it’s actually pretty rare for people to stay in a coma forever.

Still.

It’s like Aurora’s trapped in some tiny dark space at the back of her mind, and I’m the one who put her there. What was she going to tell me? What if I never hear her voice again.

I have no interest in being one of those superheroes that lives out his days tortured by loss, and motivated by a desire for revenge. Batman, The Punisher, Constantine, Spawn, Elecktra, Swamp Thing, the list goes on and on and it sucks.

I should have listened to New Guy when he said I’d get her hurt.

He hasn’t been to the hospital. He hasn’t been to school this week. Aurora’s mom keeps asking me where her ‘boyfriend’ is.

But now I know that New Guy was right. Maybe he was never anything but a spy for his parents’ company, but he was right. I got Aurora hurt.

And maybe I know I need to back off, but all I can think about is going and doing the one thing the giggling man told me not to do.

I’m gonna find New Guy/Kevin Joy, and he’s going to answer some questions: About JoyTech, about Aurora, about everything.

I came up out of blackness that wasn’t sleep into a nightmare, so I couldn’t tell at first if I was awake or dreaming.

Again I opened my eyes to the bare bulb swinging above my head. The cell-like basement room equipped with moldering hulks that might have been racks and stocks or relics of a bygone industrial era.

And the mocking voice filled the room.

“A warning, only, Suspect 7. Not my idea. My employers only want you to know that they bite back. How many deaths will you be responsible for on this crusade? How many friends are you willing to lose? A warning only, Suspect 7. Not my idea…”

My eyes finally settled on the speaker in the corner of the room, and confirmed that I was alone.

I began to struggle, but this time I was not tied down. The voice droned on. How many deaths…How many friends.

It couldn’t be. It wasn’t possible. Aurora was hurt. She was not gone. Not possible.

I reached for my shirt pocket and Mrs. Brisby bit me very hard on the hand. She was scared, but she wasn’t hurt.

Slowly, I crawled to my feet. My head throbbed. Felt like I had been hit by a truck. But I don’t think it was a truck. Maybe a van, like the one they used to bring me here the first time.

Aurora hitting the big window, painted with the day’s sashimi specials.

I threw up on my shoes.

Then I thought, could she (I wouldn’t think ‘body’ but all I could think was ‘body’) be here, somewhere in this building? I didn’t know how much of it was this labyrinth of dugout tunnels and cells, but I’d search the place top to bottom.

And if I found the giggling man, I would throttle him.

The desire to hurt someone was very strong in me, with the image of Aurora shattering through the glass superimposed across my eyelids.

Then my phone rang. It was Jerry.

“Nemo! Where in Christ are you? Aurora’s in the hospital. Everybody’s looking for you. They’re telling me you were in some kind of accident? You hit Aurora with a car or something? Nemo, I know you’re off doing your own thing right now, boy, but I’ve got to draw a line some…”

The phone dropped out of my hand. I don’t know how I ended up back on the ground, on my knees, but I felt like praying. Aurora was in the hospital. That meant she was alive.

FYI: This was all done using Toon-FX.

Since I decided I was getting over-obsessed with JoyTech, and since Aurora and I are friends again, I’ve been walking around like a bit of a slap-happy idiot, toonifying kittens and flowers and shit.

Yesterday, we finally made it to see The Dark Knight. Wow. Definitely the second-best Batman movie ever. Maybe the best.

Even if I couldn’t figure out why (spoiler!) Gordon faked his own death.

And when they revealed Harvey Dent’s face, Aurora screamed and hid her face against my shoulder. Thank you, film industry.

Not surprisingly, my favorite part was at the end when Batman realizes that to protect Gotham, sometimes he’s going to have to play the villain.

Speaking of which, we’re leaving the theater, and Aurora’s going on and on about Heath Ledger being dead, and she’s just sad enough that I’m practically obligated to put my arm around her, and she says, “Oh Nemo,” and kind of leans into me, and then who’s standing right in front of us?

New Guy.

Oh yeah.

“What’s up, buddy?” I grin at him, my arm still around his girlfriend.

“Screw you, Green,” he snarls at me, and I remember that the last time we were face to face, I dumped popcorn all over him and started a giant food fight. I looked at the bag of leftover movie popcorn in my hand thoughtfully, but before I could react, Aurora was stepping between me and him. And she’s mad.

Bwahahahaha.

New Guy just stands there while she lays into him: “What are you doing here? Did you follow me? I’m not going to be monitored, Kevin. We talked about this.”

“Yeah, well, I didn’t know we were talking about giving you ‘space’ to mess around with this bozo.”

“Mess around? You jerk! Nemo’s like my brother, okay? How many times…”

The conversation went something like that, anyway. At that point, I decided to slip off into the night, as it were. Mostly to avoid hearing about how I was Aurora’s brother.

If only she could see that New Guy is stupid Harvey Dent, and I’m Batman.

Or maybe she does see that, and she chooses Harvey.

So, last time I posted, the sun was coming up behind me, and I was flinging myself through my bedroom window.

I land, as planned, on my bed, but not as planned, right on top of Aurora. Luckily it’s dark, so I have time to whip off my mask and throw it into a corner piled with laundry, while she’s flailing to get out from under me.

“Nemo, get off!”

Again, I’m glad it’s dark, because I know her eyes are looking murder at me, and for one second, with the adrenaline of the chase still pumping through me, I have a crazy urge to keep her pinned under me for a second. Just to see what would happen.

But I know what would happen. Never mess with a girl that just missed her Batman fix because of you.

To appease her, I rolled to the side, hooking her legs so that she ended up on top of me. I could see her glare now as my eyes adjusted to the darkness of the room, and for a second, I thought she was going to sock me.

Let her.

I rested my arms behind my head. “Sorry about Batman.”

“Sorry?!” Furious, she pummeled my chest with both her fists. “You have no idea what I went through to do this with you!”

Me and Aurora always used to go see the new comic book movies together, but now that she’s practically married to New Guy, she has to sneak around to do stuff with me. And I knew that.

After we worked together on the animal thing, she sort of apologized for saying we couldn’t hang out anymore. She admitted that she just didn’t want New Guy to feel ‘betrayed’ by our friendship.

There were a lot of things I didn’t like about that, but I did like that Aurora could potentially be ‘betraying’ New Guy with me. It made me sound like…competition.

So this movie was supposed to be our big reconciliation hang out, and I had forgotten about it completely.

“I’m really sorry.” I moved my hands to her hips, because I wanted her to get it, that I felt bad.

“You’re a jerk.” She jumped off the bed and wandered over to my desk.

Toon-Photo was open on my computer, and she started fooling around with it disconsolately.

That’s when I knew she was going to forgive me, so I went and sat beside her and we played with the Toon-FX stuff for a bit, taking pics and tooning, just like old times.

It’s nice to have Aurora back around.

When is it time to admit that your behavior is getting pointless and obsessive?

Me and Mrs. Brisby have gone back to the JoyTech plant every night this week. And every night it’s the same thing. I jump the fence. I climb across the roofs of outbuildings. At the main building, sometimes I sneak around the outside. Sometimes I hit the air ducts and clatter around in there for a while.

Some nights I find a new room, but it’s always the same thing: computer labs, science labs, offices. Last night, I came across a big room with no lights on, but all the computers were humming, and at every station an employee sat, doing data entry.

What kind of data entry needs to be done at four in the morning?
I know there’s something going on here that’s way bigger than the recycling thing, and even the animal thing. I’ve just got to figure out what it is…

Except, I can tell that I’m losing focus, for two reasons.

First: when I was leaving the plant last night, I heard a couple of security guards coming around a corner towards me. But instead of ducking out of sight, I kept walking towards them. Mrs. Brisby tried to make me stop by tugging on my ear with her little teeth, but I just paused long enough to make sure the meeting would be surprising.

As soon as they were almost on top of me, I rounded the corner and walked smack into the guards.

“Oh, sorry guys. I didn’t see you there.”

In a split second my hands were behind my back and cuffs were going around my wrists. The guard that didn’t have a hold on me was on his radio, talking rapidly.

“Damn, you guys are good! But I can’t stay. Hang on, Mrs. Brisby!”

Using the guard’s hold on me for leverage, I managed a couple of bouncing steps and then I ran up the wall of the plant, flipping back and over my captor. We both fell down in a heap long enough for me to wrestle away from him and jump up, running.

My recently dislocated shoulder burned from the rotation of the flip, but I had to keep running. As I ran, Mrs. Brisby scurried down my arms and somehow got the cuffs off my wrists. I could hear the guards pounding the pavement behind me. I prayed these guys weren’t part of the gun-toting JoyTech thug squad.

And then I was up, and over the fence. I heard the guards’ radios crackling as they shouted into them, but I didn’t look back. I ran all the way home with Mrs. Brisby chittering angrily in my ear.

Into my backyard. Home free. I grabbed my bedroom windowsill and launched myself up, pulling myself through the window to the safety of my bed, which happened to have a warm body in it.

“Mmmmphhh….Nemo!”

Second reason I can tell I’m losing it: I forgot I had plans with Aurora to go see a midnight showing of the Dark Knight. She had been waiting, for hours, in my bedroom, in a pissed-off state, for my return.