A loud knock on the door came at seven in the morning a few mornings after saving Kid from the dangerous BLI leaders. It woke all six of us at one time; that's how loud it was. But it was... suspicious at best, deathly scary at worst. "Did you hear that?" I asked the team as we met outside of our bedrooms.
          "I sure did," answered Kid, blinking her eyes to wake up.
          "Who or what the hell could it be?" whispered Poison, leading us to the door.
          We arrived at the door after quickly fixing ourselves up through more knocking (and perhaps even kicking). Poison opened it, and I quietly gasped in horror as I hid behind the others.

All of us gave them a look of confusion and anger. "What the hell are you doing here?" asked Ghoul. "Mind your business."
          "Our kid's business is our business. Where do you have her held captive?" asked Mom.
          "Captive?" asked Jet. "Have you ever even thought about the way you treated her when she was with you?"
          "We're just doing what's right," argued Dad.
          That's when I got enraged enough to walk over to face them and reveal myself. "You know what? I'm here. And I'm choosing to stay."
          "After everything we taught you, Lucy?" asked Mom. "Or should I say, Fireball Frenzy? You're most wanted on our list."
          She knows now. She knows my Killjoy identity, and now I'm absolutely fucked. "What do you really want from me?"
         "To have you back in our lives," Dad lied. "Why don't you talk to us anymore? You don't want to be with us or trust us," he cried.
          I could see right through him. I know he doesn't want me back in his and Mom's life. Just the aspect of control because they have no one to control anymore now that I'm gone from their lives. "Gee, I wonder why," Kobra stepped in, sarcastically.
          "Stay outta this," bellowed Mom.

Here come the arguing voices in my head: do I hide in the bedroom and curl up in my bed to cry, or do I stand up and fight back? Or do the latter then the former? I took a few seconds to decide then chose the latter. As scary as I knew it would be, I did it anyway. It would have been the bravest thing I've ever done in my entire life so far.
          "You know, mom and dad? It would be nice if you left me alone," I started out. I was slightly shaking and breathing heavily, more out of anger. "It's no wonder why I don't talk to you anymore. Because all that torturing you did to me, all those pills you forced into my body way back, and all those hurtful labels you put on me to make me believe I was those things when I'm not? It didn't work. It messed me up terribly. So it's no wonder I ran away from you and found a new family."
          Mom and Dad stood there in shock at my speech, as the Killjoys silently cheered me on as if to say they're proud of me. "Oh we'll find a way," blurted out Dad. "And if we can't do anything to you, we'll do it to your little friends here."
          That's when I fumed, doing an even braver thing: threatening my parents with my gun as I gritted my teeth to say, "Don't you do anything to my friends."
          Kobra stepped in to defend me: "Be careful about underestimating Fireball. She's much more powerful than you've seen."

The chase was on, all of a sudden. It was seven in the morning, but there's no such thing as "too early" out here. I am at the point where I owe my mother and father nothing. I'm the one that they loathe now, I became what they warned me about. And I have no regrets. The sharpest, most ambitious and fierce lives are the deadliest to lead. But I'm leading it anyway.
          Part of it was us Killjoys chasing my parents to fight them, part of it was them chasing us, and the last of it was the firefight. The day I thought would never come: I was fighting against my own parents. Not just fighting against them, potentially on the road to shooting or even killing them when I thought they would do it to me first.
          I embraced every moment of the fight. I loved every second of letting out the contained rage they caused. All while defending my best friends.

Each of us on the team except me, at the end of the firefight, had suffered minor gunshot injuries: Kobra in the hand, Ghoul in the shoulder, Poison in the upper arm, Jet in the lower arm, and Kid in the wrist. They'd all taken time to treat one another's wounds quickly, but I hadn't been shot at all. Hmm...
          The firefight stopped and turned into a verbal fight, a screaming match. I was used to my parents talking shit about me, ah the classic lines I've heard again and again... but do it to my friends? God knows the things I will do to you.
          Dad was aiming a shot at Kobra's stomach at one moment, but I couldn't let them do it, I couldn't let that happen to my best friend.

So I took the bullet instead. "I just want you to suffer the consequences of your actions, Lucy," my mother talked down to me just before.