I was woken up early a few mornings later to loud knocking on the bedroom door. I popped my head up to the sound, and saw it was Ghoul doing it, with a smirk and laugh on his face. I gave him a sarcastic glare. "Why, Ghoul?"
          "Why not?" he sassed back. And I thought Poison was sassy.
          "Traffic's already bad enough now. So we gotta get up extra early today to fight it off."
          That's when I took a brief look out the window and saw, from afar, the high number of Dracs out there who were distracted by something. "Oh shit."
          "Oh yeah, we gotta go," said a tired Kobra Kid.
          Then Poison, Jet, and Kid burst into the room with energy. Poison's obviously already had his three cups. "We need to go out and get food! Who's gonna stay here and guard?"
          "Let the sleepyheads stay here and wake up enough to guard," Jet suggested.
          "Yeah... let them stay here... together," joked Poison with a smirk to the others.
          Both Kobra and I gave him a look. "Shut up," we both happened to say simultaneously.

We finally all made it to the main room, where there was coffee already made with the pot almost empty. Poison, Ghoul, and Kid were already out to raid the BLI HQ closets and hidden rooms for food, water, gear, and weapons. So it was now just me, Kobra, and Jet. "Well," I thought out loud, "what are we gonna do if we need to stay in the house the whole day?"
          "We don't have to," said Jet, "Let's barricade and get outta here."
          "How the fuck are we gonna barricade?" asked Kobra.
          "Come back to the garage and I'll show you guys what we got there," Jet replied excitedly, leading us to the garage. What he showed us was a thick bar of bulletproof glass that he suggested we put on the door. I went to look for more in the garage, and found a few pieces that we could use to barricade the other windows. "Anyone find more?" asked Jet.
          "Yes!" I exclaimed, holding up the heavy pieces the best I could.
          "Yeah!" Jet shouted. "Kobes, get the drill and nails to install this."
          "On it!"

And soon enough, the doors and windows were covered with the bulletproof glass after we had worked together to install it. "Alright now let's go," said Kobes, looking around the garage for a way to travel. "But how are we gonna get there? All I have is my bike with two seats."
          "I think there might be some abandoned BLI bikes around here somewhere? If we wanna steal," I suggested.
          "You're a genius, Fireball," replied Kobra. "Let's go look."

After an hour of searching the area for a potential abandoned bike we could steal, we got lucky. It was behind Dr. D's station. We took it back home, where Jet agreed to drive that one and I would ride with Kobra. Who knows where today would take us? We decided to make a stop at Rainbow's place and have her join us. I knocked on her door, and she opened the door. She looked flustered and tired, with a bleeding hand. "Rainbow, what happened with your hand?" I asked, running in with a first-aid kit.
          Breathing heavily and cringing at her hurting hand, she replied, "I was shooting a Drac from in here out my window, and it shot me in the hand just before I shot it down with my other hand."
          "Ooh goodness, let's get you fixed up, girl!" exclaimed Jet.
          All of us ran in to help treat her hand and then ask her to join us on whatever we would do. "You should join us way more often, Rainbow," I said with a smile. "It would be nice to have you, my childhood best friend, back on my team."
          "That would be nice. I do like living in my own place though."
          "Okayyyyy," I replied with a shrug and smile as if to change her mind. Laughs all around.
          "Alright then, where are we off to today?"
          "Not even I know," answered Kobra, "but wherever we wanna stop."
          With that, we headed off, Rainbow riding her motorcycle.

After a little while of driving and listening to the radio, we stopped in an area where there was a large group of Dracs seeming to communicate. "Get em!" shouted Rainbow. Then we ran to shoot them down.
          The whole fight lasted about half an hour, which involved a lot of jumping down and rolling to dodge shots, helping one another up, and screaming at the Dracs (and at one another just to motivate). And after the battle was done, we ended it with high-fives and a drive to the nearby convenience store and gas station to fuel up. "Can I go in the store and see if I can find us anything to drink?" I offered.
          "Oh you're the best," sighed a happy but tired Kobra. "You really didn't have to."
          "Oh but I did," I said as if to jokingly mock him.
          He laughed, continuing to play along. "Oh but you didn't."
          "Oh but you didn't," repeated Rainbow.
          Then Jet joined in. "Oh but you didn't."
          I laughed at them. "Alright alright." Then I headed in to look at the store. 

There were a lot of empty storage walls, but there was a cooler of water along the back wall. I grabbed four and took them to the counter. "Hello there," said the woman there, with braided blue-and-purple hair, matching-colored attire and makeup, and a smile. "Just these?"
          "Yes," I nodded. "I love the look!"
          "Thank you! Back at you. I've never seen you around before though. Are you new?"
          I gave an awkward smile and nod. "Yeah, kind of. Fireball Frenzy, now on the Fabulous Four's team."
          "Nice! I'm Galaxy Glassbeam, owner of this store and a doctor. I know the Fabulous Four, they're amazing."
          "Aren't they, though!? Like the night I met them, like a few weeks ago, I was running away from the city and they were the ones who saved my life and took me in."
          "Awww really? That's so nice. What made you run away? Good decision."
          "Long story, but I made it." I bragged about myself, feeling confident. "I made it in one piece and am so much happier."
          "You are one tough tumbleweed, Fireball," gushed Galaxy. "One tough tumbleweed." Then she rang up the waters and directed me to pay, which I did (with a few bucks I stole with me from the night I ran away).
          I gave her a smile and a nod. "Thank you." Then I headed out the door and gave the waters to the others.

"So, Fireball," said Rainbow out at the picnic table next to the store. "She called you a tough tumbleweed?"
          "Yeah," I replied, "Whatever that means."
          "It's a metaphor for a strong person," explained Jet, "just like all of us."
          "Just like Dr. D calls us here and there, and what he always calls Kid," added Kobra.
          "I miss that tough tumbleweed today," mentioned Jet. "My fro pal for our fro power."
          Rainbow and I looked at each other in awe, at just how cute everything was at the moment.
          We continued to talk and hang out with our waters at the table until sunset was about to approach. That's when we saw Poison driving Ghoul and Kid back home. They stopped by to pick us up (by that, they mean making us drive alongside them back home for the night). "Bad news from the zones, tumbleweeds," stated Dr. D on the radio, "it looks like Jet Star and the Kobra Kid had a clap with an exterminator that went all Costa Rica and, uh, got themselves ghosted, dusted out on Route Guano. So it's time to hit the red line and up-thrust the volume out there. Keep your boots tight, keep your gun close, and die with your mask on if you've got to. Here is the traffic." Poison immediately turned the radio down.
          "What the hell, Dr. D!?" Poison screamed, looking over at Kobra and back at Jet to confirm that they're alive.
          "Yeah, what the hell? Where'd he get that?" asked Jet.
          "Eh, who knows? Sometimes he sees things differently than they actually go. It's nothing new. But other than that he's doing okay," Ghoul explained.
          "But still, that was scary," I said. "But hey we're alive. What else matters?"
          "We are alive," said Kid, "and we're still tough tumbleweeds."