The fight starts out like this:
“What are you looking at?” the stranger spits, slurred words laced with an unmistakable desire to start a fight. Lightning is the stranger’s chosen victim, and Lightning — well, is stupid and headstrong enough to refuse to be pushed around, even when he knows he’s outmatched. The stranger is large and bulky and angry, and Lightning’s preferred mode of violence is of the emotional sort. Still, he counters, all rage and grandiose fire: “Fuck you, what the fuck are you looking at?” The stranger makes the first move, and as much as he overestimates his own ability to fight, to cut the story short, this is how Lightning ends up punched in the face.
Lightning staggers back and someone catches him, and though he wants to lunge at the stranger again, he feels the grip of the interruptor holding him back. Besides, when he looks at the drunken stranger, a presumed friend of the jackass has already steered him away, raising a hand in pathetic apology to Lightning. Lightning looks again to the person that caught him, removing himself from their grasp. “Please tell me you have a fucking cigarette,” Lightning says to his fateful interruptor, slumping down to sit on the sidewalk as he rubs his newly bruised cheek.












