Gentleman Jack and The Professor watched the seven identically-dressed strangers from the alleys which fed into the slum’s bazaar. As the strangers ogled the goods at various stalls, Jack and The Professor flitted along shaded, twisted veins of tiny streets which encircled the bazaar’s heart, walking the occasional wall and roofline like cats as they kept the recruiters in sight.
“Where do you think they’re heading?” asked Jack, who never could stand silence for very long. Twelve-year-olds aren’t known for patience. As they leaped from one rooftop to another over a deep alley, their cloaks flared out like wings. Landing in a crouch, Jack deftly caught his top hat as it tumbled forward from his curly head. It was way too big for him, of course, because no haberdasher makes top hats for little boys unless they are rich, and Gentleman Jack is the exact opposite of rich. He rolled and flipped it back on to his head with a flick of the wrist. It was a neat little trick he had picked up from a street performer. Gentleman Jack loved his flourishes, he did.
“Who knows, Jack?” said The Professor, as he used his middle finger to push up his handmade spectacles (he had ground the lenses and fit them into wire frames of his own design). Then he brushed his long hair out of his eyes.
But of course, he thought he knew, but what he didn’t know for sure was how he felt about it.
“Jack, my fine companion, if I were you, I’d start preparing to leave Oppia.”
“You can’t be serious?” said Jack, “But we’ve never… For how long?” They had followed the strangers another quarter of a mile, and were each peeking around the corners of a dank alley with a little rivulet of sewage coursing through it. At its opposite end, light and color shone into the dark alley, glaring off the damp and crooked brick walls. The strangers were trying to keep it low-key, but their cloaks were too big for the weather, collars too high, faces wrapped like masks, hats low, and the extremely weathered look of their gear all added up for Leon.
Known as The Professor, Leon was the fourteen-year-old pair of brains behind the Misfits, one of the strangest gangs ever to roam the above-ground slums of Oppia.
Leon pushed his homemade glasses up the bridge of his blade of a nose and said “If I’m right, I’d say, ‘forever.’”
