![]() ![]() Richie himself can't believe it, as Virgil's own mother died from gang fire. Upstairs, he receives a call from Richie, who has already heard about his apparently joining Wade (he protests that he just gave a sort of noncommittal nod), as has most of the neighborhood. A while later, he comes home, writing off his injuries on the very flimsy excuse of "football injuries" before he goes to his room. Virgil, well aware of the dangers of joining a gang-and, indeed, his father's stance on the subject-is unsure. Wade tells him he won't always be around to save him from Francis, but that joining them will keep him safe. Thirty minutes later, still not too sure about it, Virgil meets Wade, alongside the rest of his "crew", and is stunned when they ask him to join them. Warned by their lookout, the bullies make a break for it while Wade finds his beaten friend, and orders him to meet him under the bridge in half an hour, not listening to his protests that that's when he has to meet his dad. There, he is held back as Francis pounds him mercilessly, only stopping when Wade happens by again. Coming home from school, though, Virgil runs into Francis again, flanked by his friends, and soon finds himself cornered in the back of an alley. As he works his way around to the subject, though, he runs afoul of Francis "F-Stop" Stone, and nearly receives a beating, but is saved thanks to the intervention of another of his friends, Wade. Virgil Hawkins, an ordinary kid living in a black neighborhood, heads from home, with his sister Sharon and father Robert, to high school, with one thing in mind: To ask Frieda Goren to homecoming, with some coaching from his best friend, Richie. Watching his handiwork, he thinks back to two days ago, when in his own words, he was the last person anyone would call "hero material". Magnetically removing their metal weapons, he subdues them in short order, sticks them to the ceiling by their coats, and finally creates a sign suspended in midair, directing the police-just arriving on the scene-to the building. In a warehouse situated somewhere in Dakota, a masked teenager thwarts an electronics robbery, wielding a variety of electrical powers and flying around on a manhole cover. ![]()
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