Lucy stopped and looked at him, her eyes wide and unfocused. "Being with you was the best thing in my life! Really! Thanks for saving me! But if I was with the Villain Hunters, I'd be clean right now. I'd be having tea and a report. Instead, I'm... I'm..." She gestured to her ruined clothes and began to laugh hysterically.
Thomas watched her, a deep frown creasing his mud-caked forehead. She was losing it. The trauma of the "Pouncer" using her as a human shield—and Thomas using her as a projectile—had finally snapped her tether to reality.
Thomas leaned against the weeping stone of the sewer wall, the stench of the tunnels fading into the background of his consciousness. Lucy's voice continued to drone on, a frantic loop of gratitude and comparison.
One moment, he was the saviour of her life, a tactical genius who had outplayed five monsters; the next, he was just a shadow of what a "real" Villain Hunter would have been.
