Connections

Disclaimer: I own no Intellectual Property claimed by Wildbow or Time Warner, nor am I writing this for profit.

Jimmy awoke slowly, he felt groggy and stiff. "Did I smoke something I shouldn't have?" he wondered aloud as he got to his feet. He brushed himself off, not that it did much good. His clothes were heavily worn and looked like they hadn't been washed in a while. His woolen gloves seemed to spread the dirt around more than remove any of it.

His stomach growled, letting him know that he had more important things to do than stand around worrying about how he'd ended up sleeping in an alley. It was early enough that he was pretty sure he could probably get away with going through the dumpster behind one of the grocery stores downtown. It'd be at least an hour until they opened, so whatever security they had would still be patrolling inside.

He pulled his cap over his ears and stumbled down the alley working the stiffness out of his joints as he went.

Peeking out at the street from the end of the alley he examined the graffiti. From the number of swastikas and interlocked eights he could tell he was in Empire territory. 'Neo Nazis', not the kind of people I want to hang around with even if I am of an 'acceptable' skin tone', he thought to himself. Hating people for something as arbitrary as race never made sense to Jimmy, not when there were so many more sensible reasons to hate people.

Jimmy crossed the street, taking care to keep his pace even and unhurried. Running attracted the eye and he really didn't need to run into any gang bangers regardless of shape. The streets were almost empty of people as most were still sensibly in bed.

Crescent had a few shops, mostly electronics and thrift shops, along with a few odds and ends. Jimmy slid into the alley between a cell phone store and a residential block. It was poorly lit and there was a fair amount of trash overflowing the cans in the alley.

Empire Eighty Eight liked to keep out undesirables and the trash men sometimes skipped their territory for a week to encourage them not to harass their employees, as a good number of them weren't of the gang's preferred racial type. It was a low risk strategy the city's sanitation department employed to make sure city workers weren't harassed by gang members and so far it seemed to be working.

Maple was more industrialized, mostly small businesses and a few restaurants. Jimmy considered checking the dumpsters in the area, but wrote it off as too risky. Some places were rumored to add a little something to the food they threw out to reduce the… pest problem. If there ever was a big enough bastard to poison homeless people Jimmy figured they'd live in Empire territory.

"Luck seems to be with me today," Jimmy muttered as he made it out of Empire territory unmolested. Of course it was still early enough that most people were still in bed, so it really wasn't that big a surprise, he simply expected things to go wrong because they so often did.

There was one of the new super saver mega marts just a few blocks away that was easy to find. He stuck to the darker parts of the parking lot as he circled around to the back of the store. Just because security was lazy didn't mean they wouldn't get up off their ass if they saw something they couldn't ignore.

The store was big enough to have several dumpsters, and not small ones either. Jimmy climbed up the ladder alongside a massive blue dumpster and looked inside. He was relieved to see it was over three quarters full, otherwise it'd be a bitch to climb out of.

He dropped onto a pile of flattened boxes, falling on his ass as they slid out from under him. Jimmy sighed and climbed up onto his knees before crawling further in to see what he could scrounge up. His nose wrinkled at the smell. He checked the top layer first, knowing that the further down he dug the older the food would be and the longer it had sat in the dumpster.

"Fresh or rather not so fresh produce," Jimmy muttered as he found where they'd dumped yesterday's fruit and vegetables. "I'm going to need a shower after this." The smell of overripe produce wasn't really noticeable drowned out by the stench of curdled milk and molding bread, so he mainly had to sort by sight to try and find what was salvageable.

In the end he decided to take his chances with some brown bananas and questionable looking oranges, as most of the rest was a mix of rotting and mangled. He set the fruit on a clear section of cardboard and moved to another area to dig through.

"Shirts," he noted, finding a small bundle of red and green shirts that had been thrown out. Holding one out he found that it was for some marathon that had been held the year before and looked like someone had slashed it with a knife. "Why… Because they didn't want anyone being able to wear them," Jimmy realized. "God forbid some homeless person get some use out of their trash. People are dicks."

Another five minutes of searching added a half-crushed box of saltines and an almost full bottle of coconut dream shampoo. Jimmy decided he'd spent as much time here as he dared and emptied a store bag filled with receipts to stuff everything in. He took one of the slashed shirts as well. He could use it for rags if nothing else, he just really felt the need to find a use for one to spite whoever had damaged them.

He peeked over the edge of the dumpster, making sure no one was waiting to ambush him when he climbed out. Security at some places liked to take out a little of their frustration at having a dead-end job on the homeless to discourage them coming around and upsetting the more upwardly mobile customers with their presence.

Jimmy pulled himself out of the dumpster and climbed down, keeping an eye out as he made his way back to the street and headed for the docks. There was a half-sunk tug in the ships graveyard where he could wash up and eat, provided no cape was lurking about testing some destructive power anyway.

If not for that potential danger he'd have made his home there, but a near miss from a tinker testing some type of energy blaster the week before had convinced him that it was actually safer to stick to sleeping in the streets.

His mind drifted back to an incident just last month...

Jimmy flinched back as a beam of bright blue light shot past barely missing him as it slammed into a rat.

"Baaa!" the former rat bleated, before it found its coat jarringly white and fluffy as it fled.

"Sorry, my bad!" the tinker called out as he and his friend worked on adjusting something on the cannon they were building, as if they hadn't just turned a wharf rat into a sheep.

Sure you could get stabbed or shot sleeping on the street, but at least you could be fairly sure no one could turn you into a sheep on accident.

"Fucking tinkers," he muttered grumpily as he continued on his way.

0o0o0o0o0o

Jimmy locked the door to the tug's interior behind himself and let out a relieved sigh. It may not have power or any form of temperature control, but it had thick walls and a door that he could lock, so it was the closest thing to home and safety he had.

He climbed down the stairs to the engine room. The room had been completely gutted leaving a large empty space that opened into the bay. The floor and lower sections of the walls near the back of the room were missing, probably torn off by whatever had taken the engine, letting in water and what sunlight leaked in from the bay itself. The water in the bay was not exactly a fresh mountain spring, but it was clean enough for Jimmy's purposes.

"Better wash my clothes while I have the chance," Jimmy decided rinsing the fruit off in the brackish water before scarfing them down, it was far from the best meal, but overall he was satisfied with it. He tossed the peels in the shopping back and took out the shampoo. "It's going to take forever for my clothes to dry," he realized with a sigh as he started getting undressed putting everything he didn't want to get wet on the one surviving bench that was welded to the bulkhead.

It took nearly half an hour before he was satisfied with the state of his clothes. It may have taken a bit of effort to rinse out the shampoo, but it made a surprisingly good laundry detergent.

Carrying his wet clothes, he made his way back up to the wheelhouse and spread them out to dry. Lacking anything else to wear he put on the slashed-up shirt and looked around for something to occupy himself while he waited.

Whoever had once owned the ship before it had been run aground had amassed a decent amount of fantasy novels and back issues of Playboy, so Jimmy relaxed in a chair and settled down to read for a few hours.

0o0o0o0o0o

Sophia slipped into the boat graveyard, the hood on her dark gray sweatshirt pulled up to hide her mask. She didn't have the funds for much of a costume, but a hockey mask and pair of sweats would do until she could afford better.

Shifting into her shadow form she passed through the hull of a ship to throw off any possible tails. She'd had an idea about a new use for her power and didn't want to take the chance of some scrub spotting her practicing with it and carrying word back to the gangs.

Spotting a tugboat that was half in the water she decided to practice inside it where no one could see. She phased through the hull and floated up through the floor into the bridge and froze, staring in surprise.

Jimmy stared at the girl in the hockey mask for a second before recovering. "I just read it for the articles."

Sophie tilted her head down to look at his waist before realizing what she'd done and blushing heavily behind her mask.

"He likes the pictures," Jimmy drawled out, refusing to be embarrassed, despite his state of dress and… condition.

Sophie quickly ghosted through the wall and vanished.

"Fucking capes," Jimmy said shaking his head before checking his clothes to see if they were dry yet.

"Another hour," he decided before retaking his seat and seeing what Miss April thought was a good first date.

That evening

Jimmy collected his wool cap and pocketed the small amount of money people had tossed in. It was getting late and he needed to find somewhere safe to bed down for the night. Spotting a few merchants on the edge of the park, plying their wares, he decided to chance some place on the edge of ABB territory.

Normally he'd avoid it, but he'd heard the rumors, The Merchants would grab homeless people and forcibly addict them to their stuff so they'd have no choice but to join them. There was never any hard evidence, but it seemed like something they'd do, so Jimmy wasn't taking any chances.

Keeping an eye out for anyone that was paying too much attention to him, he exited the park and kept to the main streets which were well lit and populated by people he was fairly sure weren't going to kidnap him. He was a little out of place and drew some looks, but most were too preoccupied with getting home to pay much attention to a homeless boy.

Living on the streets made you more and less visible to people at the same time. People would watch you out of the corner of their eye if you got too close, just in case you turned out to be dangerous since there was an almost universal assumption that something had to be wrong with you to end up this way, while at the same time not really seeing you as you weren't really a person to them just a potential problem.

Being homeless hadn't done Jimmy's view of humanity any favors, that was for sure.

"You holding?"

Jimmy froze and realized he'd lost track of what was going on around him, a mistake.

Two large men with shaved heads blocked his path, Empire goons, easily identified by the tats and piercings which displayed common symbols of their hateful ideology.

Jimmy held his hands out to show they were empty before taking off his battered leather jacket and extending his arms.

"What's that for?" one of the thugs asked confused.

"Show's he ain't using," the other said. "He ain't a Merchant bringing poison into our community."

"Good on you, kid. The Jews invented that shit to weaken our people."

Jimmy nodded and put back on his jacket.

"You a believer?" the first one asked.

"I prefer to hate people on an individual basis," Jimmy admitted. "Most people are assholes in my experience."

The two laughed.

"Can't say I disagree, kid. Have a nice night."

"You too," Jimmy said as they parted to let him through. He mentally breathed a sigh of relief, he hadn't meant to disagree with them, but his mouth tended to move faster than his brain when he was nervous. Thankfully those two had been a lot more personable than the gang bangers he normally ran into.

He paid a lot closer attention to his surroundings as he passed through Empire territory and a few blocks later he spotted fresh red and green tags that let him know he was in the clear… at least from the Neo Nazis. Of course now he was entering AZN Bad Boy territory where his skin color could get him jumped if he was lucky and stabbed if he wasn't.

Jimmy ducked down a side alley, carefully skirting the area until he found what he'd been looking for.

The dumpster behind Zag's electronics wasn't locked, as someone had busted the latch on it long ago. It was even odds whether it was a junkie looking for something to sell or a tinker looking for supplies, but either way it was exactly what he was looking for.

Jimmy looked around to make sure he was alone before climbing inside. The trash was mostly broken electronics and empty cardboard packaging, and with a little work he made himself a comfortable bed, out of the weather and the eyes of anyone who might take offense to his existence.

Covering himself with loose sheets of cardboard he relaxed. Sure the sun had just set a little over an hour ago, but he found it was a lot safer to be out and about in the early hours of the morning rather than at night when the gangs came out to play.

He yawned and let himself drift off to sleep… only to be awoken an indeterminate time later by the screech and rumble of someone moving the dumpster. Jimmy froze, his heart hammering against his chest as he tried to figure out what was going on.

"...block the alley," a voice continued as the noise of the dumpster being shoved across the ground stopped.

"They could just ram the dumpster," someone complained.

"Ain't happened yet and we've pulled it off plenty of times," the first voice assured him. "Now, let's get to our spots."

Jimmy sighed softly, it was just his luck to pick the only dumpster in the alley that some pricks were going to use to rob someone. He really wished he could say it surprised him, but if there were two things he was sure of it was that most people were assholes and his luck sucked balls.

After a few minutes of waiting Jimmy felt himself beginning to doze off once more and pulled some more trash over himself so no one would see him if they opened the dumpster. His last thought before he fell asleep was that at least he didn't snore.

He awoke with a start as he heard a shout from outside the dumpster, "Get out of the car!"

Apparently the ambush they'd set up had finally happened. Hopefully it'd end quickly so he could go back to sleep.

"You're a pretty little thing," one of the gang members said with a leer that Jimmy could actually hear.

Jimmy gritted his teeth and tried to tell himself that it wasn't his business, shit happened all the time in the bay.

"Why don't we fix that for you," someone said and the snick of a knife being flicked open echoed loudly in the alley.

'Fuck', Jimmy thought to himself as he heard the girl whimper while a male voice tried to plead with them to leave his daughter alone. He felt around in the dumpster for something he could use as a weapon and found a rubbery cylinder with some weight to it.

Jimmy took a deep breath and got his feet under himself. Hearing a scuffle he threw back the lid of the dumpster and leapt out. The girl was wrestling with an Asian teen who had a knife while a second one was holding a gun on a middle-aged man in a nice suit.

Jimmy cracked a third gang member in the head with his makeshift club sending him to the ground. He quickly followed it with a boot to the thugs head, knocking him out. The gang member with the gun turned toward Jimmy, but a hockey masked figure in dark sweats came out of nowhere and landed on him feet first, crushing him to the ground.

Jimmy rushed forward and cracked the final thug across the face, breaking his nose and causing him to drop his knife. The red haired teen took the chance to knee him in the groin making him stumble back where the figure in sweats slammed a right into his jaw, knocking him out.

There was silence for the moment before the man said, "Oh, thank god!" like an actual prayer, hugging his daughter tightly and the two teen girls turned to Jimmy and looked at him before finding their gazes drawn to the weapon in his hand.

Jimmy could practically feel their incredulous stare and looked down at what he was holding… a two-foot-long neon pink dildo as big around as his wrist. He flung it over his shoulder, it landed in the open dumpster with a heavy thunk. "It was the only thing nearby I could use as a weapon," Jimmy said. He looked at the masked girl. "You again?"

"At least you have pants on this time," she said with a snort.

"I was doing laundry," Jimmy said before one of the gangsters groaned and he kicked him in the head, knocking him unconscious once more.

"Sure you were," she said with a smirk he could feel. "What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping," Jimmy said honestly, "I just had the bad luck to pick the only dumpster in all of the bay that was going to be used in a crime." He knelt down by the first guy he'd knocked out and patted him down with an ease that spoke of long practice, retrieving two knives, a wallet and a couple of small plastic bags filled with brown powder. He pocketed one of the knives and all the cash from the wallet before moving onto the second thug and stripping him of his possessions as well.

The girl in the mask knelt down and searched the third one, mimicking Jimmy's actions. "You a cape?" she asked cautiously.

"Not unless bad luck and a general disdain for humanity is a superpower," Jimmy said, piling the weapons and drugs on the ground for the police to find. He tossed half the cash the second guy had on him to the masked girl.

She chuckled. "If they're not, they should be." She pulled out a handful of zip ties and restrained the criminals.

The redhead, who couldn't have been more than fourteen, wiggled out of her father's arms and stepped up to the pair. Jimmy absently noted the tear tracks on her face. "Thank you," she said, "I thought they were going to kill me."

"Maybe, but you'd have gotten some licks in," the masked girl said with approval, "you're a fighter."

"I've called the police, they'll collect these monsters shortly," the redhead's father said. "I don't know how I can ever repay you."

"Emma," the redhead said offering her hand to the masked girl.

"Shadow Stalker," the young cape replied almost crushing her hand as she shook it, before they turned to Jimmy.

"I'm… the fuck outta here," Jimmy said suddenly, quickly turning and leaving, the last thing he heard before he rounded the corner was Emma asking, "Why did he smell like Coconut Dream?"

AN: I had a crazy idea for a story I shared with Mist-of-Shadows and he pointed out that the main character would end up as a character-in-name-only if I did it as I'd planned. My response was 'Well, then why don't we take his name as well?' The next chapter will make it pretty clear who he is, just as this chapter made it pretty clear where he is. Hope you enjoyed it. Remember to review!

Typing by: fyrewolf5

TN: As soon as he grabbed the "weapon" in the dumpster I figured it would be something like that, the color was a touch unexpected, but in hindsight wasn't really surprising, because of course it would be neon pink.