Runaways:

Southern Comforts

Chapter 1

Two Story Town

by Ri-kun

I always imagined that being a preacher's son would be horrible.

Not that I can speak from personal experience. My friend Gabriel is the one who has to live with that particular burden. I, on the other hand, was always told by everyone I knew that my parents were cool. They were always around when I was growing up, volunteering for things, and offering to be chaperones for youth trips. No one minded, since that meant they didn't have to do it. My parents always let us stay up later than anyone else would have, so long as we managed to get a decent amount of sleep. They almost never grounded me, and I really can't remember the last time I got punished for doing something wrong.

My dad used to be a Marine when he was younger. He never signed up for it; the judge offered him a plea bargain. He got into trouble for stealing some old lady's car when he was in high school, and the police busted him. I think, by that point, he'd already run away from home and was living with some friends of his. So anyway, the judge gave him a choice: Ten years in a federal prison, or service to his country. Since he was over eighteen, the choice must've been pretty damn obvious.

Dad never talks about what Vietnam was like. I'm guessing it was as bad as people let on, but he never once took it out on any of us. He married my mom while he was stationed over in Japan a few years after the President ordered everyone out. After they got married, he came home and started his own business. We manufacture engine heads for big trucks; the company was worth over two million before I could walk. Mom stays home so she can take care of my older brother and me in case something goes wrong. At least, that was the excuse she used, up until my brother headed off for college.

I guess you could call that the one grey cloud in my sky. My brother Joseph and I have never gotten along very well. He liked to treat me as though he could do everything better than I could; I hated him for it! To this day, I don't miss him much.

Since he's gone off to college, life has gotten a lot better. I spend my days at school just like any teenager, go to church because my mom insists on it, and spend every Thursday night at our youth group leader's house watching anime.

That last part sounds pretty strange, even to me. We're not really sure how it got started, these get-togethers that have become collectively known as Anime Night. I've been into anime since junior high, and when Gabriel's father became the new pastor, I found out he liked it to. So, we started hanging out a lot between classes and a lunchtimes. I don't think Gabriel had many friends before me; he always acts kind of withdrawn and quiet. His parents keep him on a really short leash, and fly off on a limb at the slightest thing! I keep inviting him over to my place, but my hunch says he turns me down because of them.

Anyway, shortly after that, this girl named O-Ren started coming to church. Her friend Nicole had invited her, on account that she was an atheist. In a town like Meridian, which is lurched right in the middle of the Bible Belt, being an atheist is akin to being on the endangered species list. People seem to think you need religion the same way fish need to breath water! I've never understood it, and didn't plan on trying to convert her to anything, but O-Ren soon became a main staple in our growing circle. One of the best things about having her around is that she annoys the hell out of this guy I know named Miguel Wright.

Miguel wouldn't have been my first choice for a friend; he picks on Gabriel something fierce, like not doing so would be un-American or something. Miguel and O-Ren are both good with computers, but Miguel leans more towards hacking and software. O-Ren, on the other hand, should be working for the Avengers, the way she builds them! O-Ren is also a black belt, and can kick Miguel's butt everytime. I don't think I'll ever get tired of watching that; it's hilarious!

O-Ren's parents run a pharmacy downtown. They're pretty strict with her, too, but she at least can leave her house without them having her followed. As far as we can tell, anyways! Miguel lives with his family above a garage. His dad repairs cars, and he spends a lot of time either working with them, or lifting weights. I really don't understand his obsession with body sculpting, since he doesn't play football. As it turns out, O-Ren loves Dragonball Z and martial arts movies. Miguel, on the other hand, doesn't really know much about any anime, but he found it interesting, and wanted to come along. Nicole was the one who told him he could, so I kept my mouth shut.

She's the other reason I'm so grateful O-Ren joined our group. You'd never find a more unlikely pair; O-Ren Wong loves to pick fights with bigger guys just to prove she can kick their asses. Nicole Sultler is on the varsity squad, and has been an honor student since she was four. I've been in love with her for two straight years, and never once had the balls to go up and say hi.

Pathetic, I know. But, there are just some things that you can't do when you're fifteen, and talking to girls without stammering just so happens to be one of them. I didn't make the rules, so don't blame me!

My name is Daniel Whittaker, by the way. As mentioned above, I live in a place called Meridian, which is a small town in central Mississippi located near the Alabama border. Just about the only exciting thing that happens here is the occasional Hollywood movie director trying to slip in unannounced for a couple of days to shoot footage for a movie. That, and the rumor that one of the X-Men grew up here. I think it was one of the girl members, but don't ask which one. I forget!

We moved here when I was young, so I guess you could say that I've lived here all my life. I used to think my existence was pretty boring; I had a couple of good friends, my grades weren't too bad if you don't count the math, and my collection of anime DVDs was steadily growing by the month. Our youth director even let us hang out at his place so we could have somewhere to go and watch without people bothering us. Some of the older people at church complained about what we were watching, but by far everyone thought it was better for us to be there than somewhere else. As long as there were no drugs or alcohol involved, I think they assumed it wasn't so bad.

Actually, that was where all this started.

The week had started off pretty much the same it always did. Gabriel sat at the same table I did during lunch. Miguel Wright ignored us both and pretended he couldn't see us; he ran with his own circle of friends during school. O-Ren said hi to me a couple of times, and asked if we'd be able to finish Saber Marionette J anytime soon. And, I was secretly practicing a conversation I was planning to start with Nicole on Thursday night at some point. Everyone was showing up for our youth group meeting; we had those while the adults met in the sanctuary and...

Well, I was never really curious enough to find out. Praying for our ruination so they could save us from a life of sin, perhaps! Truthfully, I might have stopped coming to this if Anime Night didn't follow immediately after. Jeff, our youth director, has this big SUV we all ride over to his house in. It might not be very economic in this day and age, but at least everyone could sit together without bumping elbows or sitting in one another's laps.

Gabriel had shown up with his parents, which makes sense since his stepfather is required to. I could overhear his mother going through the same routine she did every week, trying to convince him that he should come sit with the adults instead. She sounds so polite on the surface, but I honestly get creeped out listening to her. There's something about the way she talks to him that gives me cold chills. I've often wondered just what goes on at his house, but have never had the guts to ask. I had just began to wonder if I shouldn't that night, interestingly enough.

Then Nicole came through the gym doors, and I sort of lost track of things for a while. O-Ren might've been with her, but I couldn't have told you! I only had eyes for her, and ears for the rapid pounding in my chest when she walked close by. Gabriel gave me a knowing look, but didn't say anything. I'd been reluctant for a while to start over in a new relationship with a girl. My last one had ended quite disasterously, and the scars ran quite deep. It was a testament to our friendship that Gabriel hadn't laughed when I told him what happened. He was the one who suggested I try to at least be friends with Nicole, since I was so obsessed with her. I'd have liked to argue that I was merely infatuated, but when a duck is a duck, you call it one!

Then Jeff showed up, and we all tried to settle down and behave like good little kids. It was a fairly exciting lesson overall; twice someone jumped up out of their seats before the closing prayer was finished. I think Jeff kept going to punish them, but he was dragging us all along for the ride! Oh, and at one point, a certain someone who shall remain nameless lost their grip on the basketball they were holding, and sent it bouncing right into Gabriel's head. He managed to duck just in time, but it was a narrow miss. I gave Miguel a really hard glare, which did absolutely no good whatsoever. O-Ren chunked a really sharp pencil at his forehead when Jeff's back was turned, though. The look on his face was priceless, and so was the scar she left!

I was hoping he'd wind up with lead poisoning!

When the youth meeting was finally dismissed, Gabriel and I headed immediately for the SUV. We weren't the only ones, even though Jeff wouldn't be along for several minutes more. He always liked to take his time waiting for the adults to come out. Most of our parents would stand around and talk with one another for a few minutes, so we killed time by doing the same.

I was actually a little proud of the Anime Nights club. Even though most of the adults at our church hated it, we weren't doing anything illegal or wrong, so there wasn't anything they could do to shut it down. So long as Jeff was the chaperone, we could get together once a week and watch our favorite japanese television shows. Miguel was a sore spot I had to deal with, but until Jeff decided he wasn't welcome anymore, I was willing to wait. There was no chance in hell he could go for too long without screwing something up.

Finally, Jeff broke away from Gabriel's parents and headed our way. We all cheered when he opened the doors from a distance and let us climb in. It was a noisy ride to his house, as always. Nothing seemed the least bit out of order. I thought the only strange thing that might occur that night was if Nicole might actually say something positive in response to...

Well, truthfully, I had yet to come up with anything really brilliant. For all my imagined conversations, I still couldn't come up with something to say that might make her fall into my arms with lustful abandon. Hey, I might have been your typical good small town boy with a nice Christian upbringing at that point, but that didn't mean I planned on staying a virgin forever! I wasn't even planning on staying a virgin until marriage. I'd only signed that card they gave us because my mom was watching!

Gabriel was oddly subdued. That should've been a warning for me, but I was honestly too nervous to notice much at that point. My eyes kept drifting over to the seat in front of me where she sat. The scent of shampoo that she used was steadily drifting past my nostrils, making them flare outward like a bull ready to charge. I felt as if I were one, only smaller and nowhere near as confident. I really did believe at that point that I was turning into a sick man.

I was about to find out just how sick a man could be!

We all poured into Jeff's living room and took our usual places. O-Ren liked to sit on the couch, and so did Miguel. They usually spent at least ten minutes arguing over who got which side, before Nicole stepped in and settled the matter by sitting in the middle between them. If I didn't loath Miguel so much, and wasn't quite as afraid that O-Ren would laugh at me, I might have gotten up and asked to trade seats with one of them. Gabriel and I almost always sat in the love seat together across from the trio, giving me the maximum view of Nicole's face, while Jeff would lay back in his recliner and fall asleep before the first episode was over. He hated subtitles.

That night, Gabriel climbed into the only other recliner available, leaving me to sit on the couch with Nicole, while O-Ren and Miguel sat next to each other on the love seat. The only one who stayed true to the usual arrangement was Jeff, and he managed to pass out before the opening credits were done. All this should have been an obvious omen of things to come, but again, I was distracted. This was the first time Nicole and I had sat together on Anime Night.

Of course, we were sitting on opposite ends of the couch. That minor detail couldn't be overlooked, but it was still only a glitch as far as I was concerned. O-Ren had sat down on one end of the love seat without a word, and Miguel had joined her. Granted, they were keeping as far away from each other as they could, but for once, things were quiet. I found myself glancing Nicole's way every other second, wondering if there wasn't some way for me to get her attention. Everything I came up with either fell short of my expectations, would have been impossible to pull off properly, or could only have ended with me humiliating myself.

I decided to sit back and enjoy the show. We were getting close to the end of the series, and I always loved watching it. The main character reminded me of myself somehow, and the three girls chasing after him were always funny somehow, even as the entire planet was being threatened. As we neared the last two episodes, a cold iron lump began to form in my stomach, however. I'd completely forgotten how this series ended, and the all-important fact that it never failed to make me burst into tears. I firmly believed that it wasn't wrong to cry while watching anime if the situation called for it. Though, to be fair, I also believed firmly that it was wrong to bawl one's eyes out in an unmanly fashion before the girl one had been lusting after for so long.

Two of my strongest beliefs were coming into conflict with each other while the climax onscreen rapidly approached. Sure enough, as Otaru was tricked into entering the escape pod while the three marionettes said their goodbyes, a tear escaped down my right cheek. I quickly wiped it away, and hoped for all I was worth that that would be it. Unfortunately, it wasn't!

A few seconds later, the water works really started rolling. It was a good thing the lights had been turned off when we started, or else everyone would have noticed by now. I thought I saw Miguel run a finger across his left eye, but one tear wasn't nearly as bad as fifty or so! I had to get out of the room to clean my face off before anyone saw me.

Clearing my throat, I stood up as calmly as possible and headed off towards the bathroom. Having been over at Jeff's house numerous times before, I knew the place well. Running cold water over my face in the sink, I observed myself in the mirror with a mixture of shame and comedic self-abuse. My face hadn't looked this messed up since our cat Bo Bo died when I was in sixth grade! There was no way I could go out and face everyone looking like this. The only sensible thing to do was keep running water and wait until my skin wasn't the bright shade of vermillion it was currently turning.

I don't know how long I was in there, but it must have been a good while, because there was a knock at the door. I opened it without thinking, and there was Nicole standing right in front of me. She looked surprised, like she hadn't been expecting to find me in there, but I think that could have been because of how red my eyes were. I surely looked like a hay fever victim on crack! On the list of ways I'd always hoped to have a conversation with Nicole, this was ranked somewhere off the very bottom of the page, and I'd used a very long roll of parchment in my imagination to write them.

By the look on her face, Nicole guessed what I was doing, but asked anyway.

"Are you okay?"

I tried to smile sheepishly, but only succeeded in making her look even more alarmed. No excuse for my appearance came to me, so I opted to just shrug and act as if everything was perfectly normal. "Yeah, I'm fine. How long was I gone?"

"The last episode is over," she told me, smiling in a kind way. "You've been in here for over a half hour."

I'd just spent the last half hour bawling my eyes out over a foreign cartoon show, but this woman in front of me wasn't laughing. She hadn't so much as snickered in my general direction the whole time. She actually got up off the couch to come and see about me. I couldn't have loved her more in that moment if I tried!

But, I wasn't about to tell her that. "Oh, okay!" I said instead. "I guess that's it for tonight."

"That's not fair," she insisted. "We could put the DVD back in and see the last episode over, since you missed out on it."

"I've watched the whole series before," I told her, very quickly. "It's a rerun for me!"

I don't believe she offered to do that for the pleasure of seeing me squall all over again, but nothing in the universe at that moment could have gotten me back in the living room again to see that episode over. I probably sound like a wimp, but it is one major tearjerker for me. The idea that three distinct women could love one guy enough to give up their lives in exchange for his safety...

That kind of love just didn't exist in the world, and it always broke my heart to watch it play out in front of me.

"You can come back in the living room," she assured me after a moment. "If anyone tries to laugh at you, I'll chuck Jeff's first edition copy of the 'Four Virtues of Love' he made us all read last year at their heads!"

"Ouch!" I winced. "The hardback edition?"

"You got it!" she told me, smiling. Her smile was like... a lot of extremely poetic things I cared not to go into detail about! Our eyes met for a second, and I suddenly didn't want to move. She was smiling at me as she looked in my eyes, hers shining like a field of blue flowers in the summertime. The moment that thought went through me, I knew I had to do something. It was one thing to remain obsessed with a beautiful cheerleader from a distance for two straight years. When bad 18th century poetry started cropping up from my subconscious comparing her anatomical parts to nature, something had to give. I had to at least give her some idea of how I felt before my brain began working it's way down the list, and fast!

I'm not so sure I wanted to know what my fanfiction-addled mind would come up with once we passed below the belt!

"Nicole..." I muttered, clearing my throat. That was way too weak, so I tried again. "Nicole!"

"Hmmm?" she asked, her eyebrows raising slightly.

"I... er, that is... I was just wondering..."

And it was exactly at that moment that Miguel Wright chose to come bounding down the hallway exuberantly, sending a number of pictures flying off the wall as he came. If looks could kill, he would have exploded on the spot into a million different messy pieces like those people in the End of Evangelion movie.

"Hey, guys! What are you two doing?"

Plotting your untimely demise, I thought to myself, but kept from saying by looking the other way.

"Dan had to use the bathroom," Nicole replied, covering for me. I wanted to thank her, but Miguel was giving me a very sly look.

"Starting crying your eyes out?" he asked coyly. "That's cool, man!"

"Yes, it is!" Nicole said in a firm voice. "Because of your sobbing, and O-Ren making jokes at your expense, I couldn't hear half of what was said just the last episode! I guess it's a good thing the subtitles were clear enough this time around. I could at least read what the people were staying to each other!"

Miguel turned a very bright shade of red, which made my evening complete. Seeing O-Ren come up behind him would have been icing on the cake, but she acted like Miguel wasn't even there. Gabriel was behind her, and he looked even paler than before. Something finally clicked in my brain then, and I searched from one face to the next, hoping there might be some secret message spelled out in pimples that would give me a clue to follow. When that came up empty, I tried the secondary plan.

I asked.

Nicole beat me to it, though. "Is everybody okay?"

O-Ren shrugged, which told me something was indeed wrong. She never shrugged that way unless she was trying to pretend that nothing was bothering her. We might not have been very close friends, but I had spent enough time around her in the last year to figure that much out.

"Nothing, really!" O-Ren said in a low voice. "It's just that... I might not be able to come back for a while. My parents were pitching a fit about my English Lit grade last night, and told me I couldn't come over anymore until it goes back up."

"My mom was pretty pissed," she added, when no one said anything. "She threatened to hit me if I argued with her."

"My mom hits me all the time," Gabriel said. He spoke in such a matter-of-fact voice that I don't think we knew if he were joking or not.

O-Ren looked at him hard as she spoke. "My mom knows better than to lay a hand on me. The last time one of my dad's old friends visited us from Hong Kong, he tried to make a pass at me. The bastard wound up being air-lifted to the hospital so they could operate on both his kneecaps!"

"Why didn't you ever tell us..." Nicole said, looking alarmed. I could understand her shock; in all the time I'd known him, Gabriel never mentioned being abused.

Gabriel stuffed his hands in his pocket and shrugged quite similar to the way O-Ren had. "No one ever believes me when I tell them what it's like at home. My stepfather is the preacher, so of course he can't do anything wrong. I gave up on anyone believing me a while back!"

No one seemed to know what to say to that. I wanted to reassure him that we could do something if we worked together. Problems like this are so much better in shojo anime, where the characters can resolve things in twenty minutes or less. The only exception is when the problem is part of an ongoing plot thread.

"My mom never hits me," Miguel spoke up, looking sheepish. "But both my parents are pretty strict. They're always calling the school to make sure I've taken my medications, and to make sure I haven't skipped any classes. It's like I'm always guilty of things before I've had a chance to think about doing them."

For all his faults, Miguel tried to stay out of trouble. I found myself empathizing with him somewhat for a moment.

"I didn't know you took medications," O-Ren said, looking at him curiously.

"They come from your parents' pharmacy!" he replied, as if that solved everything.

"I spend as little time with my parents as possible," she responded. "We don't exactly get along, if you haven't been following what I was saying. I know keeping up in a conversation isn't really a strong point of yours!"

"At ease, both of you!" Nicole ordered, sensing an argument in the works.

Silence fell over the five of us, the kind where you know everyone is thinking of the exact same thing, and hoping someone else will speak first. We'd just heard Gabriel admit that his mom hit him, and by the tone of his voice, frequently. That wasn't the sort of thing that generally came up in the conversations I had, so I was pretty much at a loss as to what we should all do. It was Nicole who came up with a solution.

"Let's just go back to the living room and wake Jeff up so he can take us all home. We'll... talk about getting together next week. In the meantime, if anyone here needs a place to stay because of... certain circumstances, let me know. I can probably swing something with my parents."

As everyone else turned around, I saw Nicole take Gabriel gently by the arm. A flash of jealousy went through me hard enough that I blinked in surprise. Luckily, they were still close enough for me to hear, proving that my irrational fears were unfounded.

"Do you want me to talk to my mom for you?" she whispered near his ear.

Nicole's father was the principle of the school, and her mother worked for the district as the student councelor. If Gabriel wanted her to, she would surely ask about what could be done. Nicole was just that sort of person. Unfortunately, I also knew what sort of person Gabriel was. When he shook his head, it didn't surprise me.

What did take catch me off-guard a second later was Miguel's voice. Apparently, I'd gotten so distracted watching Nicole and Gabriel's exchange that I didn't see Miguel. He hadn't left the hallway either, and was still standing more or less in the same spot. His face was pressed up against the wall, staring hard at something I couldn't see.

"There's something behind this wall!" he told us, excitedly. "I can see it from here!"

I noticed the spot where he was standing had been covered by a picture. Miguel had undoubtedly knocked it off when he came running up at us earlier.

"What are you staring at?" O-Ren called out irritably, walking back towards us.

"I'm serious," he told us, and sounded like it for once. "There's something behind this wall, like a secret passageway!"

Miguel's eyes shown like a little kid's. "Why would there be a secret passageway in Jeff Woltz's house? That doesn't make any sense."

"Actually," he paused, rather dramatically. "It does. I've suspected this for a while now, but there wasn't any proof! At least, not until this..."

"What?" O-Ren taunted. "You think Jeff is some kind of spy?"

"No," he said hurriedly, looking behind her. "I think Jeff... is a superhero!"

There was about a half-second pause, then several of us snorted. "No! Listen to me..." Miguel insisted, but O-Ren cut him off.

"If Jeff is a superhero, then I'm... The Invisible Woman! Honestly, Miguel, I think you've been keeping track of costumed freaks for way too long. There is no way in hell Jeff could possibly be a superhero!"

"Really?" he challenged. Clearly, he'd been planning this argument for months. "How much do any of us really know about Jeff, huh? Do any of you know where he came from before moving here to Meridian? What church did he teach at before coming here?"

"What brand of shoelace did he use?" O-Ren added, mockingly. "You can always judge whether somebody is a superhero in disguise by what sort of shoelace brand they use! Before you say another word, Miguel, let me be the first to point out that, were Jeff a superhero, there would be some nutcase just like you claiming to have been saved by a... flying blob of liquid, or a bouncing kangaroo man!"

"The Kangaroo is a villian," he corrected smugly.

"Thank you. My life is so much more enriched knowing that."

"Look!" Miguel turned to face the rest of us, ignoring his only critic so far. "It was all over the news last year, so I know some of you had to have seen it. The government passed a whole bunch of new laws saying that superheroes had to register their secret identities, and allow themselves to be relocated to a new area. Jeff could have been sent to us incognito, waiting for the right time to reveal himself!"

"And why," O-Ren started up again. "Would Meridian need a superhero. Nothing exciting ever goes on in this two-story town, unless you count the occasional Kree sighting."

Miguel looked at her in shock. "I didn't know people said there were Kree around here! Where did you learn about it?"

"The world is full of freaks like you who see conspiracies and costumed crimefighters everywhere," she said, dismissively. "And for your information, just because I don't spend all my time glued to websites that keep track of every Tom, Dick, and Daredevil in the world, that doesn't mean I don't hear things. And besides, wasn't your choice in internet browsing the reason they banned you from the computer lab."

"No," Gabriel spoke up, abruptly. "That was because of the porn."

Miguel turned red again, and tried to change the subject. "Look," he insisted. "There's a secret passageway behind this wall, and I'm gonna figure out how to open it!"

And with that, in typical Miguel fashion, he began twisting and turning every picture still hanging on the wall. When that didn't work, he tried knocking at the wall, apparently searching for a section that could give way. Everyone else was watching him like he'd lost his mind.

"Miguel, assuming there is a secret passageway, what makes you think a way to open it is here in the hallway?"

Miguel gave Nicole a look like the answer was obvious, which nearly earned him a smack across the head from me. "What movies do you watch?!" he asked, incredulously. "Secret passages always have a switch nearby. It's like a law, or something!"

I was close to adding a retort of my own, when his hand fumbled across the plastic crucifix, turning it upside down. Instantly, the wall in front of him pulled itself inward, exposing a staircase that led off to the side downward. Miguel looked back at all of us with a grin that doubled my need to break his nose.

"Any of you coming with me?" he asked, before heading down.

Gabriel was the first to step forward. He surprised me by doing it, hesitating at the entrance long enough to look back at me. I didn't like the idea of him going down there alone, with only Miguel for backup. The dumbass was likely to do something stupid, then try to pin it on him. Nicole followed, but didn't try to stop me. O-Ren was the only voice of reason, proved to be the strangest part of the night up to that point. The irony was not lost on me, or her I think, either.

"Guys," she whispered nervously. Almost nothing frightened that girl! "Jeff is still asleep in the living room. Superhero or not, I'm fairly certain he won't be happy to wake up and find out we went exploring in his house!"

O-Ren eyed the passage suspiciously for a second. "Especially in a place he clearly didn't want anyone going into!"

"We don't know he built the passageway," I pointed out, then kept on going. "For all we know, this has been here since the house was built, and Jeff didn't know about it."

O-Ren waited at the mouth of the passage for almost a full minute. By the time she came down after us, Nicole and I had reached the landing where the stairs opened up into what looked like a multi-roomed basement. In retrospect, I would have liked to believe that Jeff really hadn't know what was down there. The house was very old, after all. Different people had been living here since it was built decades ago. Jeff was our friend, and a pretty cool guy! He let us hang out at his place free of charge while he slept on the couch. He didn't treat us like we belonged in Hell just for the crime of being young. He acted like a big kid himself half the time, and resorted to adulthood only when necessary.

The bodies were too fresh to have been there for years, though. There were things in that basement I would have nightmares about for the rest of my life. I still wake up screaming, covered in a cold sweat because of what we all saw that night. There were so many... parts!

And that was just the beginning!

For all of us...