“Come with me if you—“

“If I want to live? Okay, Arnie.” Lydia had heard some lame pickup lines before, but…

“Well, yeah, how did—“ Gunfire. Owen threw Lydia to the gound as hundreds of bullets exploded chunks of the concrete parking structure currently saving their lives.

“Who the hell are you?” Lydia asked.

“I’m Owen. Owen Acoin?” He waited for recognition, but nothing. “The Skipper sent me.”

“The Skipper? Why would he—“

More gunfire.

“We have to move.”

She sized him up: maybe a buck-fifty, delicate hands, good-at-math haircut. “You bring a gun?”

“No.” They’d both ducked as a round blew concrete dust above their heads. “Just be ready to move.”

Lydia looked at the pockmarked concrete. “Move where?”

The young man pulled something from his pocket and flicked it, like one would a bottle top. The lights above them went out. He quickly repeated the process again and again. Near darkness.

“Now.”

They crouch-ran until they were directly across from the chemical-green glow of an EXIT sign. Another flick of his fingers and the alarm on a truck thirty feet away started blaring, the echoed beeps deafening, made worse by another eruption of gunfire aimed at the innocent F150.

“Go.”

Through the exit door and up the stairs, they found a long hallway made up of back exits to various street-level business. Each one they tried was locked. Lydia was about to ask where they were going when she spotted two armed men running toward the door they needed. She grabbed Owen and pulled him into a small offshoot hallway.

Silence, save for the hum of a Pepsi machine.

She motioned to her new companion, holding up two fingers, then making a “finger gun,” just as they both heard the click of the door opening, the slow, deliberate plaps of rubber-soled combat boots.

Owen moved to the vending machine.

“What are you doing?” Lydia mouthed.

Owen reached into his pocket an pulled out exactly $1.50 in quarters, the price for two sodas. He knew once he started making noises he’d have to be quick; he needed a distraction. He fished out a penny. It would take a bank shot, but he could do it in his sleep at this point. He held the penny between thumb and forefinger, aimed with this elbow, then flicked the coin full speed. It careened off a Sunglass Hut sign, sending it diagonally into a fire extinguisher box, and then rocketed over the heads of the two gunmen. Once they turned to investigate he made his move. Owen dropped the coins into the machine, selected two Mountain Dews, handing the first to Lydia, holding the second himself. The gunmen turned back toward him but it was too late. Owen flung the first can like a modern day King David, nailing one bad guy in the forehead, knocking him out cold. He grabbed the second can from Lydia and started shaking it as he returned behind cover, the now-familiar sound of gunfire-bullets-concrete filling the small hallway.

Owen waited until the second gunner had to reload then sprinted full-speed and Springsteen-knee-slid between his legs, spraying him in the face with caffeinated yellow foam. The much larger man, disoriented, was at a momentary disadvantage as Owen engaged him in hand-to-hand combat. It didn’t last, and the bigger, better trained operative flipped Owen to the ground, pulled his side arm, aimed…

Owen opened his eyes to see Lydia standing above the crumpled gunman holding the fire extinguisher.

“Thanks.”

“I owed you that much,” she said with a wink.

The first group of operatives had found them. More gunfire.

“Gotta go!”

They ran together, through the exit door, and into the downtown streets.

“Which way?”

Black SUVs. Why did henchmen always use black SUVs? Two were heading toward them from the north, so, south?

Nope. Two more, fighting to get around traffic.

“That way!”

Owen led Lydia toward an indoor shopping area.

Once inside, they quickly scanned their options. The small center wasn’t busy, but there were a number of shoppers going about their business.

“We need to get away from these civilians. They could get killed.”

Lydia agreed. “We need to find someplace where no one… there!”

They quickly ran toward an independent bookstore. It was empty of customers.

“This is depressing.”

“Take it up with Jeff Bezos.”

“Can I help you?”

They both turned to see a teenage kid wearing headphones, Anime hoodie, and a name tag that had “Hi, I’m” printed on it, with a hand-scrawled “disappointed” underneath.

“Is there a back way out of here?” Lydia asked.

“What?”

“An emergency exit?! Do you have one?”

“Um, you could just go out that way.”

Owen went back to the entrance.

The latest crop of bad guys were wearing suits, not tac-gear. Athletic, all over six foot, well dressed, it was almost comical to see them trying to “blend in” with the shoppers in jeans and hoodies. He counted at least eight, but there were probably more.

“That’s a no-go. They’re here. We need to hide. Do you have a back room?” Owen asked.

“Yeah, but, like, I can’t let you—“

“You need to leave, you hear me. There are very bad men coming for us. They don’t want you. But you need to—“

“They’re coming!”

Owen grabbed the young retail worker and led him toward the back. “Open it, now.”

He resisted a little in protest, but finally relented with a, “Fine. Asshole.”

Inside the small back room, Owen made sure the door was locked, pulling a large shelf in front of it while Lydia looked for anything that might help: An exit, maintenance opening, weapon.

Nothing.

The three sat on stacked boxes, unsure of what to do next; Unsure of how long they had before they were discovered.

The kid broke the silence first.

“So, like, are you trying to rob this place? Because we don’t make a lot of money here. You’d probably get more if you robbed Wetzel’s Pretzels. They always have a line.”

Owen, annoyed, looked at the kid for a second before, “No, dude. We’re not trying to rob you. We’re just trying not to get killed.”

“Whoa! Someone is trying to kill you? Who? Wait, are you guys like having an affair or something?” Looking at Lydia, “are you married to a cop or a mobster or something?”

Lydia’s turn to look at the idiot kid for a moment before, “No. We just met. He saved my life. I don’t know who ‘they’ are.”

Owen stood up, not a fan of the trapped animal sensation he was feeling. “I know who they are. But if I tell you, well, I guess it doesn’t matter now.” He started to pace. “Do you know what an ‘origin story’ is?”

Lydia shook her head, but the kid sat up, a little life coming into his otherwise-catatonic countenance. “Hell, yeah. Like, for a superhero? He was putting it together. “You saved her. Are you a hero. Are you, like, an orphan? Did a bad guy kill your parents?”

“My parents are fine. And, no, I wasn’t bitten by a spider or found as a baby in a crashed space craft, and I’m not a demigod. I’m just a dude. But,” here he sat again, looking away from them, almost embarrassed, “I do have… powers.”

“No way!”

Lydia looked incredulous.

“See, my dad is a CPA, an accountant, and my mom, well, she’s what’s called a ‘naturopath.’ And, well, something she made to help me with allergies, it sort of… changed me.”

“How?” Lydia asked.

“Literally.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean…” he stood and walked toward them. “Ask me for some change.”

“What?”

“Any amount. Ask me.”

“Um. Okay. Do you have a quarter?”

“Come on, make it a challenge. Oh, and before you do that,” he bunny-eared his pockets to show that they were empty. “Now, go ahead.”

The kid chimed in, “One dollar and forty-five, no, forty-SEVEN cents.” Almost as quick as the kid could say it, Owen was handing him the money. Exactly.

“Whoa.”

“So you’re good at party tricks?” Lydia asked.

“No. It’s a thing that just happens now; Don’t know why. I always just have the correct amount of change. Always. The soda machine, what you just asked for, whatever.”

“Two thirty-three—no way! How are you doing that?”

“I have no idea. It just happens.”

Lydia thought back to what was only minutes before, but seemed an eternity. “And the flicking.”

In one swift, calculated motion, Owen flicked two dimes and a penny with enough force to knock two books off a shelf and pop a Mylar balloon that had “Happy Graduation” written in rainbow colors.

“Heyyyy.”

Lydia thought. “So, what are you doing here? And why did the Skipper send you. What does he want with me? I don’t know him.”

Owen paused. “I’m not supposed to—“

Someone was on the other side of the door.

“Shit!”

They could hear a man at the door calling for something, probably letting the other baddies know he found something. It was only a matter of time now.

“You, hide behind those boxes. They don’t want you.” The kid, ashen, did as he was told.

“What are you going to do?” Lydia asked.

Owen pulled his hand from his pocket and manipulated a stack of half dollars like a TV poker player. “I’m going to get you out of here.”

Just as Lydia was about to protest, the door slammed into the bookshelf with enough force to shake five or six copies of 50 Shades to the ground.

Owen motioned for Lydia to hide, then waited. One more push from the evildoers and they’d be on top of the trio.

It finally came, the shelf smashing to the ground, the first two gun men entering the room.

Owen raised both hands, dual-wielding JFKs. Both men dropped where they stood.

He ran through the open door, twirling acrobatically through the air, flinging coin-after-coin with the velocity of sub-sonic bullets. One-by-one, he took legs out from under them, knocked weapons from hands, and clacked noggins, rendering them unconscious. He could hear confused shoppers scream in the distance, gunfire erupting sporadically.

Eight, nine, ten. How many were there?

Eleven, twelve, no… one more shot, now twelve.

He stood, back in the middle of the shopping area.

Silence.

“Lydia?”

She was walking toward Owen, but wasn’t alone. The last bad guy was holing a gun to her head.

He could see the kid, too, creeping along behind them.

“I’m leaving. She’s coming with me,” the baddie said.

The light reflecting off Owen’s cocked-n-locked half-dollar bounced off the bad guys sunglasses.

“Give it your best shot, kid, if you want to see her brains splattered all over Perfume Barn.”

Owen paused, weighing his options. “Fine. Asshole.”

He lowered his coin.

The bad guys smiled. “Say your goodbyes, Change Boy.”

Lydia and the kid both mouthed “Change Boy?”

Owen shrugged.

The bad guy took his gun off of Lydia and pointed it at Owen.

For the second time that day, he closed his eyes, ready to get shot.

SPLAF!

The bad guy was down, the side of his head covered in something foul.

Lydia was running.

The gunmen shook his head, tried to right himself, found his gun, and raised it toward her.

Owen fired, killing the man with one well-placed shot to the eye socket.

Lydia ran toward Owen. The kid ran toward them both.

“You okays?” were shared.

Lydia looked around. “Wait, who…?”

They all turned to see a middle-aged man walking out of the shadows, refastening his belt.

“Well done, Change Boy.”

Owen looked at his mentor. “Thanks, Skipper.”

Lydia looked at the man as he came into the light.

“Dad?”