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The Way family had a nice, quiet Thanksgiving. For Gerard, it seemed to drag out forever. The promise of a fight when he got back was making him anxious. Late at night he started sneaking down to the basement to practice punches and blocks. He moved his feet. Uppercuts, fakes, ducks, he practiced them all.
By the time he got back to school, he was starting to look like Sidney, lean with eyes ringed by dark circles.
Frankie hadn’t had such a restful holiday. His entire family had gotten sick, and he was just getting over it.
“I think I lost five pounds! Isn’t that gross?” Frankie asked Gerard about ten minutes after reciting the tales of his weekend. “Absolutely!” Gerard agreed.
“You know what’s even grosser? The fact you’ve told it three times,” Ray said.

Motoring through his whole day on autopilot, Gerard handed in homework, drew, ate, and waited, agonizing over what would happen later. He wasn’t the only one. He spotted Leslie jittering a foot up and down during study hall, Apple chewing on her lip and checking the time on her cell phone, and Izzy looking at her watch every five minutes during evening mass.

By the time Gerard ran back to Dorm five, Sidney had stacked all his homework assignments on his desk and was changed into his fight clothes.
“Are you excited?” Sidney asked. Gerard nodded, trying to push the image of Sidney before break out of his head.
“Everyone’s seriously psyched up for this. It’s gonna get huge. Get crazy. Oh, baby, I need this!” Sidney said, running his fingers through his hair.
“How’s your concussion?” Gerard asked.
“What concussion? I’m going to the pits of hell to fight demons. Like a concussion’s keeping me home!” Sid laughed.

There was a knock on the door. Sidney glided over, pulling it open in one smooth motion. Les was leaning against the doorframe, decked out in a black shirt and black pants. It lit up his pale features, making him look like a vampire.
“I’m a B-A-N-D-I-T for life!” Les shouted.
“Whoo! Get party!” Sidney howled.
“Get violent!”
“Yeah baby!”

Laughing, Leslie lurched through the open door. Despite his last beating he looked fairly stable.
“The musical’s a disaster. Can’t believe I’m stupid enough to do this. No matter how much I need it for college transcripts, I’m gonna be binge-drinking by the third act,” Leslie moaned, sitting down on Mikey’s bed.
“I’ll join you. John’s totally getting killed in Biology. I’m doing okay, though. Got a hundred on my test,” Sidney explained.
Leslie looked puzzled. “Who?”

At that moment, Ray, Frank, and Mikey burst in through the door. The three of them fell silent, staring at the other three.
“You’re going out!” Ray accused.
“And?” Sid asked.
Mikey looked to Gerard. “I’m coming, right?”
“Of course!” Gerard reassured.
“Excuse me, angel face? What was that?” Sidney asked, voice dangerously soft.
“He’s coming with us.”
“And when exactly were you going to tell me?”

Gerard sighed. “Look, I’m old enough to make my own decisions.”
“Oh, please. You’re, what, ten? Eleven? You’re a baby.”
“Don’t you dare, Sid! I’m mature enough, ‘kay? So don’t you fucking dare talk down to me, because...cuz...I know what I’m doing! Not like you! You don’t think anything through!” Gerard screamed.
Everyone was quiet. Sidney broke it.

“Damn, kiddo. F-bomb, and chewing me out? I’m impressed. Very impressed. Tell you what, you can take your bro, but everyone else has to come with us,” Sidney said, smirking.
“Deal!” Mikey shouted.

“Perfect. Everybody get your gym clothes on. We’re going out,” Sidney said. All three of the others got changed at glacial pace. “Where’re we going?” Frankie asked.
“You’ll see,” Les replied, grinning.

See they definitely did. In real life, Ray Toro might have been a chubby kid who had his shoes on the wrong feet half the time, but he was a god for ten minutes after trouncing Liam Wong of chess club in the ring.
Frank Iero smoked half a cigarette and spent the rest of the night throwing up in the janitor’s closet down the hall.
Mikey Way fought blind, glasses off, and nearly got his teeth kicked in.
Gerard Way put three people to the concrete in a row, and in a fit of battle rage, started screaming, “I can get anyone!”
Leslie Wheeler nearly concussed the lead in Peter Pan. “Couldn’t sing on pitch anyway,” was all he said.
And Sidney Gumb, Sidney Gumb, the biggest outcast, the king of the losers, became canonized as the patron saint of anarchy and chaos after he nearly lost an eye to Apple Corleone in a fight that got serious after he called her a dyke.

That was the miracle of the Midnight Troupe. Nobody cared who you were, where you were from, what clothes you wore. All that mattered was the ability to hold your own, and even then it was subjective. You should’ve won that fight, they’ll say. She fights dirty, they’ll tell you. You were great in there, right up until you broke your finger, you should’ve had that.
Even when you lose, they’ll still love you. Every person will embrace you like a war hero when you step out, winner or not.
If that isn’t worth coming back for, few things are.

It snowed on the way back to the dorm. Mikey was the first to notice. Gerard took his shirt off. The snow felt nice on his scrapes. Les followed suit, and Sidney shrugged, what the hell, and stripped too.
He had scars that ran down the length of his back, old scars, raised like braille against the punctuation of bruises and cuts. Stretching his arms out wide, he walked ahead of the group, head lolling back to his shoulders. He said three words.
This is nice.

During an assembly, when Father Starnes said he’d heard about an “underground fighting ring”, everybody looked around in shock. How could such a thing be happening? Who could be responsible?
Who was in on it?
At that moment, a small boy lurched to the end of the hall and threw up into a vase by the door.
“I’m sorry! I was just...thinking about it, and I felt so horrible!” he blubbered.
“It’s okay, Mikey, I’ll walk you to the nurse,” another boy said.
Sidney, who volunteered, checked Mikey’s mouth. The gaping wound where his molar used to be was bleeding profusely.
“Thought I told you not to swallow!” he hissed.
“Sorry! It was bleeding all night!”
“God. Knew it’d make you sick. We’ll get some mouthwash, that’ll stop the blood. Tell the nurse you knocked it loose climbing trees and it fell out this morning.”
Mikey nodded, and the two of them walked towards the squat, rectangular building that housed the nurse’s office.

“Good call, by the way, saying that the idea made you sick,” Sidney commented.
“Thanks. Had to think fast,” Mikey responded, smiling a little.
“If we’re caught, we’ll be expelled.”
“Getting caught’ll break one of your rules.”
“Good answer,” Sidney commended.
“Everybody in there was lying anyway. They’ll never catch us,” Mikey said.
Sidney laughed.

John watched the two of them. He knew the Midnight Troupe was a bad thing. But it made Sidney so happy.
And him?
If Sidney was happy, couldn’t he be happy too?
Lighting up a cigarette, John kicked at the cold ground, cursing out his own damn bad luck.