#deafinition

Monstro circled around her, he can smell her chinese food but she's not in the mood for sharing. Eating one of her egg rolls Doxy’s heart almost melts when he looks up at her with his soft, curious eyes that can only belong to cats. She would have given in to his emotional blackmail of cuteness when the phone rang. The tone is loud and sharp, this isn't her normal phone, it's the emergency line, it must be important. Doxy picks up, before she can even speak it's Sinow, his mild Glaswegian accent is instantly recognisable. "Have you seen the news?" She hasn't, Isaac isn't going to play himself. "No, what's wrong?" "There is something in Iowa, or someone. People are acting strange, really fucking weird. There have been reports of someone passing through Davenport, everyone around him are just stopping everything they’re doing and not doing anything else. The people need you, they need the Doxmonster!"

He gave her the small amount details he knows from his contacts. Male, five foot ten, black clothes, black hair. Not very specific but by the sounds of it he won't be hard to pick out. She's not feeling up to dealing with this but she's the closest member of Robot College with Deaf out of state seeing family. Doxy looks longingly at the last of her chinese, destined to go in the trash. Downing the rest of her coffee she goes to the game room.

The light flicks on, this of course isn’t the game room she streams in. This is the room from where she saves the world. Thousands of hours of YouTube and Twitch went into making this cavernous room a reality. It got her the training room, the lab, the garage where she keeps Jet-Stream, her high-speed jet. Taking her armoured suit from the wrack, it's all black, and reinforced enough to be bullet proof but allows for manoeuvrability and also the only clothes she has right now without coffee on it, damn Chihuahua.  Getting into the pilot seat she looks at her pictures of Monstro, Kika and Sparta, they are so cute! No, she can’t get distracted, people are counting on her, she needs to be a normal, not cat obsessed, hero for a little while.

She turns on the ignition and the jet shudders to life, she wished could just teleport anywhere she wants, a private jet is expensive to run, at least Deaf now lives with her and that helps with the bills. The jet’s cloaking system activates, and a good thing to, having a plane come out of nowhere in Iowa City might draw attention. It won’t take long it to her to Davenport, but it’ll take enough time for her to have a think. She hopes she doesn’t have to fight. Doxy is against violence as a rule and her lip still hurts from the Chihuahua incident but if people are being hurt by some dick she needs to do something.

Closing in on Davenport she can see the traffic slowing down to nothing and the streets are empty, Sinow was right, it’s really fucking weird. She lands in near the NorthPark mall if signs are anything to go by. According to her newsfeed that was the latest place to go quiet, that’ll be where she needs to start looking. A blink, doxy rematerialises outside the jet, another blink, she’s on the other side of the road. A flashy use of her super powers but certainly quicker than walking. Doxy takes a moment to inspect the café she teleported to next, everyone is just sitting there, rather upright or head on the table, all their eyes are open and they appear to be breathing.

A man sits, staring out into nothingness, the remnants of his cigarette smokes weakly on the table in front of him, judging by the line of ash he hasn’t touched it since it’s lighting. “Dude, are you alright?” Nothing moves but his eyes, they slowly roll in his head to look at her. A grunt comes from his mouth but nothing more. The effort of looking at her defeats him and his attention goes back to the nothingness that Doxy cannot see. She’d only been out the jet a few moments and after talking to the man she fully assesses her surroundings, people are lying down in the street, just lying there and staring. The cars that she thought were parked had people in them, seatbelts still on, hands still on the steering wheel but the engine is turned off and their eyes are dull and unengaged. Like this was just a normal boring day. That’s the way to describe the look in everyone’s eyes, bored, bored and dissatisfied.

She continues to blink down the street, checking people’s pulses and asking them question, all the same as the first man, sometimes not even a grunt. The city is silent and it’s creeping her out. No traffic, no noise of footsteps or talking, she can’t even hear any pigeons roosting in the eaves of buildings, really, really fucking weird.

A figure ahead! Standing straight up in the middle of the road, right now she doesn’t care who it is, she just wants to hear someone’s voice other than her own, she should have brought music with her. Two more blinks and she’s near the figure, it’s a man in a long black overcoat and dark black hair, he’s kind of a hottie. Focus Doxy, she can check Tinder later. “Hello Zer0Doxy.” His voice his clear and accent generic but familiar somehow. “Errr, Hi! Do I know you?” A feeling starts tugging at the back of her mind, a feeling she’s had before but can’t remember, it was a heavy sensation, like fear but somehow more lethargic. Something is telling her that this man is the cause of it. “Of course I know you, do you not remember me? We have met on so many occasions, I have to say you are one of my favourite people to be around.” Hot to creepy in less than a minute. “It’s you doing all this, isn’t it?” Even from how far away she can see his smug smile, the kind of smile that exists on slimy people who thinks everyone else only exists for their amusement.  “Of course, not enough people like me. I would go as far as to say no one likes me, it makes life very hard. So, I took it upon myself to show everyone why I am so great.” Doxy is really starting to dislike this guy, “Why do you have to make everyone weird to like you?  Dude, you’re being a douche, I mean I'm not angry just please. stop being a douche." He lifts his arm towards her, a faint black smoke darts from his sleeve, she blinks a moment too slow and the smoke envelopes her in cloud. She’s away from the smoke but her head is swimming, she can feel the black on her skin and in her lungs, her eyes are tearing up. “What the fuck is this?”

The feeling in the back of her head grows and throbs and her legs feel weak. All of her energy as left her body, making her want to lie down and stare at the sky. She wants to try and sleep, just to end the day but for some reason she has a feeling she’ll never sleep. “Remember me yet?” Doxy refuses to give him the satisfaction.   "Hey douche! Stop being a douche!" She cries out, feebly. Her legs give way; she’s kneeling on the floor and he approaches her with an arrogant swagger. “Is it too much to want to be loved? You’re mine now Doxy, but we’ve both known you’ve been mine for a long time.”

He’s standing over her, his shadow casts over her and all she can do is weep in the darkness he created. When did she start crying? She was angry, angry at this creep for doing this to everyone, but right now she just feels defeated and weak. She can’t win, she doesn’t want to win, it can’t be helped anymore. She won’t be able to do another coffee chat, or play the Binding of Isaac on twitch. She can’t chat with her awesome followers and Fartslide with them. She steadies herself with her left arm. She can’t clean up her chinese food for Deaf getting back, or pet her cats. Doxy wipes away her tears and she plants one of her feet on the ground. She can’t watch Dunce or any of her other Robot College friends. Her right hand becomes a fist. “What are you doing my dear Doxy?” And she certainly can never marry Sinow! Her whole body moves instinctively; her fist rises up. “Wha….”   Fist touches chin and he explodes in a cloud of black smoke. Not the thick blackness that was before but a weak mist that disperses with the light breeze that rolls down the street.