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He hit the street. Traffic backed up, the stench of exhaust thick and noxious. The precinct was at least ten blocks away, and Nick didn’t think he could get there in time if he stuck to running. Regardless of how much he’d trained as of late, running was still the bane of his existence.

“Nick!”

He looked through the crowd on his left, seeing Gibby already half a block away, jumping up and down and waving her hands. “Here!”

He caught up with her, and she grabbed his hand, pulling him farther down the block. She skidded to a stop in front of a slim alley, blocked by a gate with a heavy lock. “You can change in here.”

“On it,” he growled. “I’ll knock it down. Stand back.”

“Why? Just use your—”

He threw himself at the gate, and immediately bounced off it, hitting the ground hard. He blinked as Gibby appeared above him, head silhouetted by the sun. “So,” Nick grunted, grimacing at the jolt to his funny bone. “That didn’t go like I thought it would. It must be made of the strongest steel ever created.”

“Right,” Gibby said, looking like she was trying to keep from laughing. “Let’s go with that. Sucks you don’t have powers. Oh, wait.” She helped him up, turning him around to brush off his backpack.

“Yeah, yeah,” Nick muttered. He raised his hand toward the gate and the pulse in his head flashed brightly. The gate shuddered as Nick jerked his arm back. The padlock squealedas it split right down the middle, falling and bouncing on the ground.

And because it was completely necessary (and because he didn’t get to finish it back in the bodega), he growled, “It’s time to take out the trash.” He raised his leg to kick the gate open, putting all his force behind it, wishing he’d told Gibby to film it so he could replay it later to see how badass he looked.

In the end, though, it was a good thing she wasn’t filming him, because the gate didn’t open, the impact vibrating up his leg, causing him to almost fall down again.

Nick bounced around, hopping on one foot as he clutched his leg. “Why won’t youopen? I’m trying to save the damn city from my sort-of ex-boyfriend! Whoever invented gates is now my worst enemy, and I will—”

Gibby pulled the gate open with ease, staring at him as she did so.

“Yeah,” Nick said. “That just happened.”

“It did,” Gibby said. “Good thing I’m with you. You’d probably have spent ten minutes pushing the gate before realizing you needed to pull it. And now I have some concerns.”

“No time,” Nick said. “Let’s go. Thank you, Gibby. You might have just saved the day.”

She rolled her eyes. “Glad to be of service.”

He rushed through the gate into the alley, Gibby close at his heels. Jumping over wooden crates and overturned trash cans, he stopped halfway through, sliding his backpack off and setting it on the ground. He crouched next to it, pulling on the zipper.

It was stuck.

“Why is nothing working?” he roared. He gripped his backpack on either side of the zipper track and tore it open.

“You’re such a disaster,” Gibby said with a sigh as his helmet fell out, landing on the ground and bouncing a few feet away.

He ignored it for the moment, focusing on his costume. It was wrinkled. Jazz was going to kill him if he ended up on the newsin a disheveled costume, but there was little he could do about that now.

He stood upright, beginning to pull his shirt up and over his head. He paused with it raised near his nipples, looking at Gibby. “Uh. Can you just… turn around?”

“Why?”

“Because I’m shy about nudity and don’t want you to see my everything!”

She squinted at him. “Is this where I’m supposed to tell you that many people our age have body issues and it’s important to—”

“Gibby!”

She sighed, but turned around, facing the opposite direction.

He waited a moment to make sure she wasn’t going to peek before pulling his shirt the rest of the way off, letting it fall to the ground. Because his life was a farce, it landed in a dirty green puddle with bits of blacksomethingfloating in it. Where the water had come from, Nick didn’t want to know, especially since it hadn’t rained in almost two weeks. He grumbled under his breath as he kicked off his Chucks and immediately stepped in a discarded container of what looked like days-old meatloaf, or at least that’s what he told himself, because it could also be evidence of someone who’deatendays-old meatloaf, only to have it evacuate their bodies into said container.