'Welcome to Chamomile' read the sign as the two drove past. They had been driving through prairies for what felt like an hour, but it wasn't long before Zed and Dave were deep in the town proper, middling the road between countless storefronts and eating establishments.

"Keep an eye out for a clinic," Zed said, dividing his attention between the road ahead and the buildings to his side. "Or a hospital. We should get a doctor to look at us."

Having upgraded from the backseat to the passenger seat, Dave waved his hand as he looked out the window for something. "No doctors" he quickly said. "And no hospitals either. They'd just tell me to swing by a pharmacy and pick up some antibiotics. Trust me, I just need to sleep it off and I'll be right as rain."

Seeing as Dave was able to both sit upright, move from the backseat to the front without assistance, and hold a coherent conversation, Zed guessed that he knew what he was talking about. The bandages were holding up, and whatever injuries he had no longer seemed to bother him. "Aren't we a tough guy?" he teasingly asked.

Dave smiled at Zed but soon quickly his attention back to the search. "There!" he suddenly said, pointing to a tall, brown building with numerous wide slots on each level. "We'll leave the car in that parkade and walk to the motel."

"But we'll be out in the open" Zed argued, yet still turning into the parkade as instructed. "Isn't that a bad move?"

"Thing is, if they attack me in public, bystanders may try and call the police to stop them. That's why they tried to get me in the dark alley before. The last thing they want is police sniffing around them." Dave reached into his pocket and paid the cashier the entry fee.

"But what about that lady at the motel before? Hard to cover that from the police."

"Thing with her was that she wasn't wearing the uniform. She's likely just a patsy they're using to make themselves look good on TV." Dave put up both hands with his palms facing away, mimicking a TV News headline. "'Wild Slasher apprehended by Scarlett Saviors' the headlines'll say. They do that trick all the time."

"This Scarlett Saviors group was looking worse all the time," Zed thought, white-knuckling the steering wheel at their practices.

Zed parked the car and the two groaned as they got out of their seats and into an upright position. "Are you okay to walk?" Dave asked, pointing to Zed's pants. The red stain had turned a dark brown and had grown bigger. "Your leg got cut pretty badly before."

Looking down at his pant leg, Zed waved him off. "This is nothing. I can still go" he said, walking around to the car's trunk with a slight hobble. "Besides, nothing compared to what you've got under the hood." Dave looked at Zed and bit his lower lip at the messages he was passing along.

The two opened the car's trunk and gathered their bags for the night. They took the elevator down to the ground floor and emerged on the town's busy streets. It was late in the afternoon now, and both men were just now starting to feel the wave of exhaustion hit them. Neither had had a full night's sleep since they met and the two encounters they had, as well as the long and boring drive, faced since had left them drained.

While waiting for a light to turn at a street corner, Zed spotted a TV displaying the time and stared at it longingly. "If I had never left Earl, I would be coming back from my lunch break by now," he said, pointing to the TV.

Dave looked at the TV's clock but soon turned back to Zed. "I hope you called somebody, and let them know."

Zed nodded solemnly. "I left a voicemail to a friend. They'll get my message across… Probably get the message back to me if I get fired"

"What exactly was your job, if you don't mind me asking?"

"I worked in an office as an Administrative Assistant. My main tasks involved-"

"Oh, good grief. I'm sorry but hearing about office work makes my head hurt."

Zed smiled and shrugged. "You know, that's what my family is like when I tell them too." The light turned and the two marched down the street with the locals, almost blending in completely. Had it not been for Dave's shiny leather pants and bandaged head, the two wouldn't have gotten a second glance. "Hey, Dave. What did you do before all of this started, if you don't mind ME asking?"

"I was in the business of ah… Distribution of Materials both informative and entertaining to ah… numerous…" Zed stared intently as Dave struggled to come up with the right words. "Other distribution… centers."

"What kind of materials?" Zed quickly asked.

"Oh… you know."

"No. I don't." Zed nudged Dave's shoulder. "Come on, what kind? It's not adult stuff, is it?"

Dave scratched the side of his head and sighed in defeat. "Alright, I delivered magazines to newsstands and convenience stores."

"That's…" Zed's mouth became a thin line and he nodded his head in a circular shape. "Great! I think that's great."

"I didn't do it because I wanted to. I did it because I wanted to get my foot in the door to achieve my dream of becoming a model. The owner of a local studio said she'd would give me a look if I helped deliver their magazines."

"Wow!" Zed said, clapping his hands together. "That's incredible! Good on you for going for your dreams, dude!"

"Yeah well, I won't know how far I'dda gotten. Scarlatto had to go and ruin everything."

"Oh, right. Sorry."

"Don't be" Dave said, smiling. "Once he's out of the picture, I'm gonna go right to the top. You name it, magazines, calendars, TV shows. I'll be famous!"

"Comic books!" Zed threw his hands in the air in excitement. "You could be adapted into a superhero!"

"What, like a Model Man?"

"No no no, man. You'd be called The Super Model!"

"Ooooh, that's good," Dave said, smiling at the idea. "That's really good! And I could fight sleazy paparazzo!"

After what seemed like a half-hour of walking and talking about potential villains for a model-based superhero, Dave finally found a good looking motel. And gestured Zed to follow him in. The state of this place was far nicer than the last. People were around, looking alive, and healthy. The two silently approached the front desk, and as Dave was securing a room for the day, Zed kept an eye out for anyone who may have been looking at them funnily. If enemies were waiting for them to get some sleep, now would be the best time to attack.

But no one would attack. Dave would get the room key and within minutes, they were in a nice looking room with a pair of beds and an old TV in the corner. Zed threw his bag on one of the beds, but Dave instead made for the bathroom.

As soon as he shut the door behind him, Zed sat on the bed and looked down at his blood-stained pants. Reaching into his bag for a replacement pair, he spotted something in the corner of the room. A standing mirror. He looked to the bathroom door and heard Dave start up the shower, suspecting that he'd be occupied for a few good minutes.

Zed had some time. Now was a good time to get a proper look at this uniform Dave had been talking about.

Standing in front of the full-length mirror, Zed nervously patted his sides and tried to remember how exactly he summonsed the uniform both times before. Looking down at his hand, Zed made a fist and triumphantly threw it into the air. "Star… powers?" he whispered. But nothing happened.

Quickly and suddenly, Zed threw his arms aside and spread his legs wide to form a five-point star with his whole body. "Starman, Green!" He quietly called. But nothing happened.

Squatting down into a ball, he made himself as small as he could, before suddenly jumping into the air with his arms extended into the five-point star pose again. "Go-Go, Star Powers. Green Star, energize!" he said. But nothing happened.

"How the heck does this thing work?" He thought, looking over his head for the bright green star that had appeared before. Granted, the last two times involved him facing down a frightening enemy, and not just standing in front of a full-length mirror. Zed tried to recall the feelings he'd had during those encounters with the ghostly hand projector and the hotel slasher.

His mind filled with images of them hurting innocent people and hiding behind the guise of heroism. The suited slasher barging from room to room, attacking anyone in sight for the sake of causing havoc. The projector using her ghostly hands to strangle people because her boss deemed them as a threat. The anger at these thoughts got Zed's heart beating, and suddenly, there it was.

Above his head was a bright, green, five-point star spinning along its vertical axis. Even though this was what he wanted, the appearance of a star over his head caught him off guard and all he could do was stare at it. Carefully, he reached up and grabbed it, noting how solid it felt in his hand. Without even thinking, his grip around the star tightened harder, and harder until the star that hung over his head like a mistletoe at Christmas broke in his hand, and from it, a bright light enveloped his entire body.

Zed let the light cover him, but shut his eyes to keep the mirrors reflections from blinding him. When he opened his eyes again, he was amazed at what he saw looking back at him.

The blue jeans and grey hoodie he had been wearing were gone and replaced with the star uniform Dave had told him about. Looking at his reflection in the mirror, Zed still could not believe what he was seeing. Slowly, a smile crept over his face as his hands pressed against the hard helmet, his vision not remotely obstructed by the star-shaped visor. "I'm… I'm a superhero" he quietly told himself in disbelief, raising his gauntleted hands and pointing a finger at the mirror. His hands grabbed at the white vest over his torso, and the green zipper holding it shut, but they soon slid down to his belt with the star-shaped buckle, and his pristine boots. All of the drawings he had come up with over the years paled in comparison to the reality that faced him in that very mirror.

"Halt, evildoers!" Zed said in an authoritative tone. "The Green Star demands that you halt, in the name of justice!" By now, he had given up on the idea of being quiet. Raising an arm, Zed flexed his bicep in front of the mirror. He followed this pose by throwing both arms in the air with index fingers extended outwards. "Aw man, I look so cool!"

"I could've told you that," said a voice from behind.

Zed jumped and turned around to see Dave, with a fresh change of bandages and now dressed in a baggy pair of sweatpants and a black sweater. The Starman stammered for a moment, point to himself and the mirror, before coughing into his fist. "Bathroom's free?" He quickly asked.

"Yeah, it's free" Dave answered, pointing with his thumb. Embarrassed, Zed grabbed his bag and bolted for the bathroom, still in his Green Star uniform.

Dave smiled at how excited Zed sounded in the mirror. After everything he'd been through lately, he deserved a chance to be excited. His attention turned to the mirror, and he gave himself a wink and a subtle hand-under-the-chin pose. But raising his arm in effect raised his sweater, and he got a look at his bruised torso. He'd tried not to look at himself in the fogged-up bathroom mirror, but it was only a matter of time before his reflection caught his eye.

Sighing, Dave raised his sweater over his head and took it off. There in the mirror was his body, damaged in a myriad of ways through the numerous encounters he's been forced to have with Scarlatto and his nefarious agents. Every bruise, every cut, every broken bone on his once pristine white body told a story, but Dave's eyes were drawn to a dark blue spiral-shaped wound over his left breast. The story behind that one was one he was forced to relive most nights, leading to a short night's sleep and an inadvertent early start to the day.

Shutting his eyes now, Dave could hear the whirring of the drill and the pattering of rain of that night that has forever burned itself into his memory.