Vigilante

   A skin tight suit might have been her best choice for the work she had ahead of her, but it wasn’t the kind of clothing she would use in her daily life. God knows that Clementine Avery would never wear such a scandalous piece of clothing and that’s not even considering the fabric! It was a kind of leather that molded itself to her body, which made her very self conscious but, again, it came in handy for situations that involved a lot of physical activity and the like. It was just what she needed, even if it wasn’t really her.

 Walking around in alleys and rooftops, Clementine eventually grew accustomed to her new skin and also to her newfound sexuality. She would hide her body before, but the suit had granted her an unexpected weapon and that was her own body and what she could do with it. Men would look at her ass and boobs for a bit too long, and she would take that time to tackle them, put them on a headlock and submit them, to ask a few questions or maybe to make them see who was in charge at that moment.

 However, and mostly during the day, she would still be Clemmy for her grandma and grandpa, the people who had helped raised her. Her parents had died in a plane crash years ago, and Clementine had been the only survivor. She was still called a “miracle baby” by some and she hated it. From a very early age, she understood that it was best to go unnoticed, and that’s why her sexuality was not something she explored until she was an adult and realized that she needed to do something to help people.

 When she first donned her uniform, Clementine was investigating the lawyer firm that wanted to take her grandparents house from them. True, they weren’t as liquid with money as they were in the past, but her grandfather had always paid the mortgage. She knew about this because she helped pay every single month, with the various jobs she head during her teenage years and then when she went to college. Her parents had saved for her education and wellbeing but her grandparents refused to use that money to pay anything for them.

 There were always long discussions about that subject with them and would always end up in hugs and kisses and possibly some ice cream, without them really acknowledging how much they actually needed that help. So Clementine worked hard, in part for them but also to have some money for herself and start saving for the unforeseeable future. She had no idea what to do in the future but she was aware that her parent’s money would not last forever. And problems always arose for people like her, so it was a good idea to work. And after that, it was a good idea to do more.

 Of course, the whole suit thing didn’t happen overnight. It was an idea she ultimately had after watching one of those vigilantes save some people from a fire on the news. Some people were not really into them but their grandparents were absolutely thrilled that some people had taken it upon themselves to help others, even if it was when wearing a mask and some other ridiculous attire. All of that gave her the idea that she could sneak in places and talk to people in order to really know what was happening with her grandparent’s house.

 At first, she only used clothes that hid her identity, but after a while it felt a little bit too silly to wear a hoodie and sunglasses. Eventually, people would find out who she was, if they had a brain. So she decided to wear a mask she had personalized herself and then came the first uniform and eventually she got to put on the skintight suit, which wasn’t her idea. Actually, it wasn’t her idea either when one her best friends discovered what she was doing.

 Adele worked with her and they had always been closed, or as close as you can be when you’re working and doing things at all times. Nevertheless, it wasn’t too hard for her to decipher Clementine’s secret identity. Clem was scared of her reaction but her friend just wanted in an all of the “nighttime fun”. She explained that it wasn’t something funny or enjoyable, but her friend was too over the moon to listen to anything she said. So Clementine told her everything about her first, and so far, only mission.

 It was Adele’s idea to change the outfit, to make Clementine more agile when encountering foes and also much more effective when avoiding people. The costume was completely designed by her friend, who had realized what Clem was doing precisely because she saw the same clothes her friend wore one day on the news the following night. She could be a little bit distracted and dense, but Adele understood the position her friend was in and swore to help her in whatever way she could. She felt very excited.

 Clementine had gotten a lot of paperwork that revealed something was wrong but she didn’t understand all of the terminology. Adele tried to help, but neither of them was a lawyer or anything close to it. It was Adele’s father, a retired public official, that checked the papers without them knowing and just asked his daughter about them. He explained that those papers basically gave properties away to that law firm by bypassing several laws with a special close that had not been revealed to the mortgage payers in the first place, as the law firm had bought the contracts illegally. It was surprising for the girls to hear it all in such a simple way.

 Eventually, Clementine got more evidence and she was able to put the law firm in very big legal troubles. They were forced by a court to give up all the contracts they had acquired illegally and an investigation was started to clarify how it all had happened. Her grandparents were beside themselves with happiness, and so were so many others of their neighbors. Of course, none of them ever knew what had really happened behind the scenes or how the evidence had really appeared in the judge’s private office.

 Some people did associate the vigilante they had seen in the news a couple of times with the case of the law firm, but that was it. Clementine felt really stupid for that because her other persona was not supposed to be known at all, but she had felt, at times, the need to help others and that’s why she had gotten to the news. It was kind of fun for her when, at the start, only drawings from the witnesses could be done and she looked like a very sexualized superhero. She thought it was fun and also good they were way off.

 In time, someone actually came up with a recording of her saving some people from getting mugged and there were even some pictures from security cameras of her entering the law firm’s building, and that’s how everything got tied up. After her grandparents’ problem ended, she decided not to wear the mantle ever again, which Adele thought was a mistake. She didn’t understand that it was something dangerous and potentially deadly. Clementine could get killed or someone could get killed because of her.

 For Adele, it was all just fun and interesting. She explained to her friend that she was now someone important in the community, someone that looked after the ones that no one cares about and that’s way she was such a key part of what was going on in the city. But Clementine decided not to pay attention because she knew that not much was required for her to become addicted to what she had done before. She had felt the rush going through her body and just knew that it could be something too attractive.

 Trying to get away form all of it, she went back to her studies and her work but something always bothered her. It was as if she had a fly or a bee inside her skull and it wouldn’t stop annoying her unless she thought about how exhilarating it all felt when she uncovered the truth and she fought injustice.

 When you’re hooked, you just are. So when a young woman was about to get raped near Clementine’s house, she put on her costume and kicked that man’s ass like there was no tomorrow. She saved the girl, who asked who or what she was. Clem then realized she had never decided on a name for her other self.

Humble beginnings

   It started only a few years ago. I was about to turn seventeen years old but my body and my mind were years beyond that. From the moment puberty hit me, I had a very pronounced urge to explore every part of my body and my sexuality. Of course, I was too young at first so I did all of that exploring by myself. It was a great moment for me, because I discovered that I could learn who I was and what I liked in the privacy of my own room. Masturbation became something that made or broke my day.

 I wouldn’t say I got obsessed with it, I just thought it was fun to do it and try different things, with oils and stuff like that. From that young age, around twelve years old, I started watching porn on my parent’s laptop. It was our first computer and not even my parents knew a lot about the Internet or how to use it, so it took them a while to discover what I did with it. But when they did, they sent me straight to a shrink. That’s the type of parents my parents are, very nervous and prone to freaking out for nothing.

 The expert told them it was normal for a boy my age to explore his sexuality, but as most adults and people in general; they refused to believe I had any idea of what I liked at that age. They thought I was basically going insane because of bad influences around me. They forbid me to play more videogames, as well as watching any TV. I also was forced to interact more with people in school, only because I had few friends and none of them really ever had any kind of relationship outside of school.

 Weirdly enough, it was not long after that, between the shrink and my paranoid parents, that I met this new kid at school. We were a little bit older and hit it off right away. I had been forced to enter a sports team, so I was playing football with other guys, but I never really played. They all knew I hated being there so they left me be. But this new kid really loved to play but he also like talking to me when he was waiting for his turn to chase after the ball. He was very kind and funny and I liked that he didn’t pretended to be an adult.

 That year and the next one, we spent them together. I stopped that football nonsense but we stayed great friends. So much so that we went out for ice cream together, we would go to the movies and he would even come home and talk to my parents for very brief periods of time. And they loved him, even if I had left the team and I didn’t really have any other friends. They thought everything with me had gone back to normal and they were very eager to see the next step in my growth, the moment were I would decide my profession and go on to college to meet the woman of my life.

 Well, as I knew it would happen, I disappointed my parent’s big time. First of all, I kept masturbating and watching porn. I just got smarter than them, so they couldn’t catch me. Second, my friend Caleb (the new kid at school) had been one of the main influences in how to channel all of that that I had in my head and just all over my soul. Because I really thought it was part of me. We would steal porno magazines and we would always check out the ones with men first, because he knew very well that’s what I liked.

He got a girlfriend when we turned sixteen, a girl named Debra who was cool and all but I just didn’t find interesting. He told me he had sex with her several times but I never truly believed that. Not only because she looked too much like a prude, but because everything he said had a bit of exaggeration to it and it was very easy to notice. Anyway, I didn’t care at all because Caleb was a good friend to me, he didn’t judge or anything and we would have long and stimulating conversations about things we actually liked.

 It was just a couple of years before graduating that he came to me all excited. He had come home with his laptop and showed me a page where they announced the search for new actors in the area. It was not precisely for a period drama, but for porn involving younger actors and older actors. I was confused at first, but Caleb was very much excited, telling me it would be a great and fun thing to do, to just try out for a porn film and be able to tell that experience later, even if I didn’t get chosen.

 I wasn’t as excited as him when I saw it. Yeah, I spoke a lot about sex and bodies and all of that but that didn’t mean I actually knew how to do any of that. Caleb knew very well I was a virgin, but he seemed to have forgotten all about that. The other thing was that I had no self-esteem, at all. At that was something we didn’t really discuss because it’s not something very easy to talk to with friends. He was the guy I liked to hang out with to have fun, not to speak about things that made me feel like shit.

 But there was one detail that actually made him stop smiling at once and the webpage was clear about it: the actors had to be at least eighteen years old. They even stated that they would ask for ID before anyone would be able to do an audition. So Caleb’s enthusiasm fell to the floor because we were not even seventeen. He could have passed for older, because he already had some facial hair and he was very tall, but I still looked like a kid and had nothing going on for me to make people think that I eighteen years old. There was no way I could pass for someone older.

 But then, Caleb smiled again, grabbed his laptop and ran out of my room, only yelling he would see me in school after the weekend. There were some weekends we would hang out, but he knew I had to visit my grandparents and that always took way longer that it should, so we just hoped to see each other again the next Monday. During those two days, I did wonder about what idea had passed through his head after I had pointed out the age thing, but it was sometimes better not to dwell too much on things like that.

 I really liked how impulsive he was and how much of a good friend he was. He really didn’t care at all about me being gay and we even did that promise that if we hadn’t married anyone by the time we would be forty, we would marry each other.  It was a silly thing to do but nice anyway. We mocked my shrink and my parents together and how he would always do whatever he wanted whenever he wanted because his parents were hippie vegans or something like that. It was just a very entertaining relationship.

 On Monday, he arrived at school with two fake ID’s. He told me he had grabbed my picture from Facebook, because he thought I looked a bit older in one of them. He had done the same with his and then he had gone to a cousin of his that knew very well how to make fake ID’s. I didn’t even ask anything else because the cards did look authentic, with the proper seals and everything. I asked if he needed any money and he just assured me that his cousin owed him too much to be asking for any money.

 That Saturday, we went out late and told our parents we were going to see a movie. Instead, we went to this gay neighborhood were the auditions would take place. Funny enough, the guy didn’t say a word when he gave him the ID’s. He just gave us a number and told us to wait. That night, we only got checked out by three guys. I was one of the few men there that got selected to actually have an audition.  It would take place right then and there, only a few hours later. I was excited but really nervous.

 Anyway, that’s how it all got started. I have been working in this industry for six years now and, although it was very difficult at the start, I was able to pull through even after people in my first productions learned that I wasn’t as old as I had said I was at first. I was fired and hired in a matter of days.

 As for Caleb, he was just there to support me. He and his girlfriend stayed together even after our prom. Then, he realized that he wasn’t really into her and moved on to guys. He says he’s pansexual or something but the only thing I care about is that a very good friend has my back.

Endurance

   The moment he reached the top, Finn sat down next to the yellow flag and removed his shoes. He knew that to be a stupid thing to do, because he had to go back down at some point, but his feet were hurting so much that he needed them to breathe for a while. However, he did grab the flagpole and removed it from the soil. He then opened up his backpack and put the flag there, leaving the pole outside in order to use it as a cane, in the case his feet hurt him even more as he climbed down.

 He then sat down still and enjoyed the beautiful view. The mountain was the tallest one in the vicinity and it overlooked a very deep valley filled with trees and a stream that could be heard from that summit. Birds and other animals could also be heard and seen. It was an idyllic place to be in and it wasn’t a surprise they had chosen it to be part of that year’s race. They always chose beautiful places and the flag was always in the most remote place of the area chosen for the contest. Good choices anyhow.

 Finn wiggled his toes to make blood flow through them. As he did that, he closed his eyes and raised his head at the sun. For some reason, the clouds that had been covering the area all morning had mostly dissipated and now the sun could shine and bring joy to everyone, including the race’s contestants. It was nice to feel warmth on the skin, just as it was nice to participate in such an event that made people use their physical skills but also their wit and intelligence to solve puzzles and riddles.

 The race consisted in every contestant receiving a backpack with various things. They chose the backpacks randomly and each one had different things inside. However, they all received some sort of clue in order to begin the event. It was fun to do it with friends or if you liked to compete with other people. Finn, however, loved to do it because he had fun by himself. He had no friends to invite to such a thing and he wasn’t the type to enjoy competitions. He actually thought they were only for brutes.

 But he did love to enjoy himself in the woods, by a stream or just walking up and down a mountain. The problem was that he had made too much of an effort this time and his feet were too sore to continue. The game did consist in people finding the flag but they had to come back to the area’s entrance in order to win whatever prize the organizers had. Sometimes it was some money, some other times it was something like a gift card or sunglasses or things like that. The point was that with his feet hurting so much, Finn wasn’t going to get anywhere near the entrance point. He would have to forfeit from the whole thing.

 He expected someone to at least solve the hints fast and come help him go back down from the mountain. He would give that person the flag and just say he had been just behind them. The pain was increasing slowly and he was also beginning to have these pinches on his legs. It felt as if a scorpion had walked into his pants or something. For a moment he did think that was the case but then he remembered he was in a cold climate and there were no scorpions around, for thousands of kilometers.

 The young man waited up there for an hour and then another hour. By the third one, and after finishing one of the power bars that were inside his backpack, he decided to go back down by himself. He would probably get to the entrance by night, but it was really necessary for him to just go back and rest properly or even ask if they had a nurse or a doctor in place. It wasn’t normal that his feet were hurting so much. He was used to doing these sorts of things and didn’t make any sense that he was feeling so awful.

 Putting his shoes back was not an option. He did try but it made no sense to do it, as his feet seemed to have swollen up as he waited seating down. So the trek had to be done barefoot. As the mountain was covered with small stones, it hurt like hell but he then realized there were small patches of grass on it, so he tried to walk only on top of those. There were still some stones there and his feet were making him cry and yell silently, but he continued. Finn knew very well it was always easier to go down than to go up.

 He had walked up the mountain in less than thirty minutes but it took him three times that to make it to the bottom, to the tree line. There, it was almost impossible to walk barefoot. There were too many things on the ground including leaves, branches, roots and rotten fruit that had fallen from the trees. After stepping on something that looked like blueberries, he decided it was time to be a little smarter about the whole thing. So he sat back down and looked for something to use in his backpack.

 Having found nothing that could work, he did think about ripping the flag in two and using a piece on each foot in order to walk easier or at least with much less pain. However, he decided against it because the organizers could see that as something else, as him not wanting for others to find the flag, for example. So he left it alone and decided to do what he was going to do with the flag but with his own t-shirt. He took it off, ripped it in two pieces and carefully wrapped each one around each foot, trying to make something similar to the early shoes used by cavemen.

 After this short stop, he decided to continue through the forest, walking by the river that he knew he had to cross at some point. The bad thing was he had to do it by walking on top of a gigantic tree trunk but he would only worry about it once he saw the crossing. His feet were still in deep pain but at least he wasn’t carrying any more dirt or little stones between his toes. He had to make many five second stops along the way. Not only he was in pain but he was also getting very tired of the whole day.

 He heard wolves and birds and even something that seemed to be a board in the distance. That’s what made him fall in love with the whole thing: he loved nature and how free one could feel in it. The forest always felt alive and thriving, it always seemed there were many possibilities for it to move on and keep being that awesome place were everything felt so far away and where everyone seemed to be on the same level. It was almost an utopic place to be in, even if it was only for a couple of hours.

 But, by the time Finn got to the tree trunk, the sun had almost completely disappeared from the sky. He tried to move faster, climbing the trunk as fast as he could in order to cross over the river. After all, the entrance was not that far from that place and he could easily push himself to the limit in order to get there and finish the whole thing for the day. He was even thinking that he might miss the next one, just to have a bit of a rest.

 Climbing the trunk wasn’t easy and it took him various attempts to finally make it on top. Once there, he tried to modulate his breathing in order to cross in one go, not stopping at all. One, then two deep breaths and then he went. He was more than halfway through when one of his feet got a cramp and he lost his stability. In moments, Finn slipped from the tree trunk and fell straight into the water. The backpack’s weight pulled Finn down, who was in shock for the first few moments of the incident.

 However, he then tried to pull himself out but the only thing he was doing was fight a force he wasn’t able to submit. His feet were useless so his legs couldn’t propel him properly to the top. He started panicking, knowing he could not hold a long time underwater. He had never been good at that.

 Then, he felt something pull him out. He was dragged off the water and then over the grass on the other side. The sensation went away but he couldn’t see anything, as he felt he could not properly move. Then, the face of a young man such as himself appeared in front of him, all drenched in water. He smiled.