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“I got a nice Joe Jusko piece over there if you wanna walk on that,” she said, her tone getting cheerier. “Sixty-five hundred.”

“Sold!” I called back, leaping across to the Slave Labor, independent comics booth and out again into the aisle on the other side.

The crowd was thinner here as we neared the exit, and I was able to reach Wisper and the others without further difficulty. I nodded to Wendy, indicating Thug #1, and Wendy—understanding me completely—shoved him over a trashcan and into a group of fans sitting on the floor just beyond, excitedly going through their day’s haul. They were not the least bit happy about his thoughtlessly deminting their purchases and began wailing on him as if they were children beating on an inflatable party game that gave candy if you popped it.

I took the other thug and clocked him on the back of the head. But given that I haven’t exercised since the president required me to in grade school, my fist simply rebounded off the man’s head and into my own mouth. Instead of ‘defending my woman’ all I’d really accomplished was to make a very large, and very hostile professional pain-giver very, very angry.

He leaped on me in a way I’d only seen spiders do in Animal Planet specials about creatures that eat things that don’t want to be eaten, and my lack of physical prowess put itself embarrassingly on display. I flailed and screamed as we tumbled backward over fascinated onlookers, annoyed sellers, and tables full of carefully graded comic books about happy animals that don’t wear pants.

As the owner of the particular booth we were desecrating shrieked and howled, punching and kicking us both and trying to shove us into the next guy’s booth, I tried to remove my throat from the death grip Thug #2 had on it. But no amount of my thrashing, begging, or pleading would make the guy stop.

Imagine.

In desperation, the lack of vital air slowly fogging my vital brain matter, I reached into several plastic containers that had spilled around me and found some Jetsons Happy Meal toys in plastic-bags for sale at ten dollars apiece. I snagged one of the pointier, shurikenshaped ones and raised it over my head.

“Meet George Jetson!” I yelled.

And jammed the ‘determined safe-for-children’ item into the temple of my attacker. Blood spurted from somewhere inside him, and I couldn’t help but say, “Eeewww!”

The mountain of a man squealed in apparent, actual pain, and rolled off me to thrash about in a pile of autographed, Lord of the Rings action figures.

“HEY! Who’s gonna pay for this?” The booth owner demanded in high-pitched squeals. Apparently, a bleeding, fellow human being came somewhat farther down his list of ‘important things to be concerned with’, than the perceived value of the items said loser was bleeding on.

“Talk to him,” I said, pointing to the thug. And the booth owner did.

“Who’s gonna PAY for this?” he demanded of the thug, who seemed not to hear him through his shrieks of agony, coupled with the sounds of crinkling cardboard and popping plastic. He just continued rolling around, crushing things and begging for an ambulance.

Yeah, I’ll get right on that.

I raced from the booth back in the direction of the Boones and Wisper. But they were gone.

Instead I found Waboombas trapped against a wall where she struggled with her thug—like Lazarus against his antimatter self in that episode of Star Trek—both evenly matched, refusing to give an inch, throwing off flares of radiation and energy so intense they threatened to destroy our universe.

I started to leap in and help, but was still relatively physically unfit, so instead I held back and scanned urgently about for more Jetsons toys. Suddenly, a flesh-colored blur shot past me, its jet stream so intense it knocked me into a five-foot Darth Vader, who apologized to me through a James Earl Jones voice modifier.

The flesh blur was River, flying to Waboombas’ aide—I kid you not, flying—and he’d somehow lost his loincloth during takeoff. Several women ‘ooooohhhed’ appreciatively.

Fortunately for Waboombas,