That little moment of hesitation didn’t go unnoticed—hell, Liang hadn’t made it this far in the business of villainy by being oblivious. He could see Jareth biting his tongue, holding something back, considering. For just a moment—a fleeting, panicked moment—Liang wondered if he’d overstepped some unseen boundary, if he’d made the mistake of seeing something that wasn’t there. He hadn’t meant to imply he wanted to spend more time with the guy, but hell, he did, and not just because the rest of Liang’s night otherwise consisted of a family-size bag of potato chips, his couch, and reruns of Sonnets for a Super. As far as Jareth was concerned, Liang was the bad guy, a threat so long as Jareth knew the secret that could be his undoing.
But—not for the first time—Jareth surprised him. Liang hardly had a chance to walk things back before Jareth spoke up. “I know about a festival going on this weekend, if you’re game,” he said. He cleared his throat—was he nervous about this, too? “There’s a spring festival that my university does. Nothing huge, mostly food booths, games, and a couple of rides. I thought about checking it out, but I never found a group to go with. It might be fun. Unless you’ve got somewhere to be. No pressure.”
Liang had to give himself credit where credit was due—he didn’t immediately give voice to his first thought, which was I can’t even begin to say how much I don’t have somewhere to be. He didn’t give voice to his second immediate thought, either, which was Oh thank God I didn’t weird him out or anything. Instead, after a second’s pause, he gave voice to his third immediate thought: “You know what? That sounds good.”
.
.
.
“Man, these people are total amateurs.”
Day had given way to evening, and the sun in its death throes had cast shades of red and orange across the deep, dark sky. The cool evening air had brought a new crowd out-- gone were the joggers and families out for lunch, the university friends tossing around a frisbee. Couples walking arm in arm and hand in hand thronged the streets, strolling between the festival stalls, stopping to play a game or grab a bite to eat. Many were headed for the ferris wheel at the end of Main Street, because, as Liang had become aware after years of rom-coms and TV shows, few activities were more romantic than being suspended two hundred feet above the ground on a hastily-erected contraption.
Not that Liang had any problem with heights-- you really didn’t have much reason to be afraid of falling when you were pretty much capable of flight-- but the moment he and Jareth had met back up near the start of Main Street and begun working their way through the festival, he’d had eyes for only the games. He’d always had a competitive streak. Most villains did. Hell, plenty of heroes did, too, even if they liked to pretend their motives for fighting crime were purely righteous. It was the thrill of the competition, of besting Metro City’s most wanted-- or its best and brightest.
The same competitive streak that had drawn him into nightly battle against the resident superhero had prompted him to drag Jareth off to the darts booth the moment he laid eyes on it. Had Liang ever thrown a dart in his life? No, he had not. Was he walking up to the booth with all the confidence of a professional darts player? Damn right he was. As he approached to take the place of the latest amateur, he even glanced over at Jareth, grinned, and said, “Lemme show you how it’s really done.” All the while, his right hand was stuffed in the pocket of his jeans, clenching the bunched up fabric of Phantasm’s mask, as if it were a totem through which he could summon strength and grit.
The woman working the booth had just finished pinning up balloons to replace those that had been popped by the last player. Above the board, three rows of prizes had been arranged-- your standard-issue carnival fare, stuffed animals, toys, paraphernalia and whatnot. The woman turned to him with a smile, holding out three darts with bright red tails. “We have three tiers of prizes,” she explained as he took them. “If you pop one balloon, you can choose anything from that first row--” She pointed, prompting Liang to briefly wonder if she thought he was brain-damaged and incapable of distinguishing what the first row was. “Two balloons for the second, and so on.”
He frowned. “I can hit any of them? That’s it?” he said dubiously. Hell, that almost seemed too easy. Feeling pretty confident as he stepped up to the chalk line in front of the booth, he tossed one of the darts up in the air, and then astonished himself by managing to catch it by the tail instead of impaling his hand with it. Hey, maybe I’ve got a knack for this darts business.
It was a pleasant thought that was promptly dispelled the moment he threw the first dart. He watched it sail through the air, missing the booth altogether and spinning off into the street. Wincing a little, he glanced at the woman running the booth. “Sorry,” he said tepidly. “That was, uh, a warmup.” She didn’t look particularly convinced as she went off to retrieve the wayward dart. As she returned, he looked back at Jareth, and then shoved his hand back in his pocket, grabbing hold of the mask. No way he was going to be zero for four in front of Jareth. Phantasm had a reputation to uphold, after all-- I mean, imagine if it somehow got back to Nisha that I missed every single dart. That’d be a disaster. I’d never hear the end of it. It’d be darts puns for the next year.
Resolved, he squared his shoulders back and stepped back up to the line. He reared back and cocked his arm as if he were about to throw a baseball rather than a dart, and then sent it flying. It veered off to the left for just a second before Liang reached for it psychically, latching onto it and guiding it right to the balloon at the center of the board. Smirking a little, he fired off the second-- it seemed about ready to soar above the board before it corrected itself midair and found its way to the balloon right next to the first dart.
“... wow,” the woman said as Liang turned away from the board, hands on hips and triumphant grin on face. She stared at the board, brow furrowed. “I can’t say I’ve ever seen a dart do that.”
Liang waved the words away modestly. “It's, uh, a special technique I learned a while back.” He looked back at the prizes over the board, and said, “So… what, I can pick anything off the second row?”
“That’s right. Anything you want.”
In the end, he walked away with an enormous stuffed dog whose shaggy black bulk damn near blocked Liang himself from sight. “It looked much smaller up on the wall,” his voice emerged from somewhere behind the dog as he approached Jareth.