The lights of Thundarr City glared like hollow eyes as Faro, Rita, Sulari, and their newborn son Pifo trudged through the streets of Southbank. What once was a city of promise now felt like a maze of shadows and concrete hunger. Every corner seemed to whisper their names—names once associated with heroism, now tainted by scandal, betrayal, and exile.
With the children sick and the forest rains behind them, desperation drove Faro to the sidewalk each morning, holding a cardboard sign carved with trembling hands: “Former Hero. Hungry Family. Please Help.”
But Rita… Rita was proud. She never begged. Instead, she slipped out in the mornings with Sulari wrapped against her chest, searching for work. Most places turned her away—too much history, too much mystery. Her face was still known.
Then came the visit from one of Clown’s agents.
“You can work,” the agent said. “You still have that fire. You’ll be safe. Paid. Fed. Your children, too.”
The offer wasn’t outright indecent. It wasn’t clean either. It was a PR stunt for Clown Inc.—a public tale of “redemption” under their thumb. Rita wouldn’t be stripping. Not yet. But she’d be used as an emblem, a manipulated symbol of their control over the fallen icons of Thundarr.
Rita returned home that evening, her face a storm cloud.
Faro noticed. “What happened?” he asked, wiping dirt from his hands after a day of silence and rejection.
She hesitated, looked at the children sleeping beneath tattered cloth. “I might have found something. But we’d be playing their game.”
Faro clenched his fists. “We don’t need their pity.”
“We need survival,” she whispered. “For them.”
They stared at each other, torn between dignity and desperation.
And far above them, inside a sleek tower, Mr. Clown chuckled as he watched their world through a silent drone.
In the Back Alleys of Thundarr City…
The once-great heroes Falcon and Shecon now walked anonymously through the rain-slick streets of Southbank. With little Sulari clinging to Rita’s hand and baby Pifo bundled in rags against Faro’s chest, they blended into the city’s forgotten corners — nameless, powerless, and watched.
Clown’s cameras still followed them from above, silent drones hidden in neon signs and fake birds. Though Faro resisted returning to him, hunger and illness crept into their small family. The children coughed through the nights. The Pigmen illness had followed them.
Rita, desperate, took a janitorial job at one of Clown’s lesser clubs, hiding her identity, cleaning up broken dreams. Faro, stubborn in pride, refused direct aid from Clown, but took food left by mysterious donors each night — always wrapped in cloth bearing the Clown Cola symbol.
They weren’t free. They were being tested, toyed with.
But Rita had a plan. She hadn’t given up hope.
Under the shadow of towering city lights in Thundarr City, Faro sat on the cracked curb of Southbank Avenue, his palms resting open on his knees, his head bowed. His once-proud figure—Falcon the Third, protector of the Forest—was now ragged and worn, wrapped in patched coats and muddy boots. The sounds of the city passed him by: sirens, vendors, laughter, and the ever-constant hum of life he no longer felt part of.
Every night, Rita came home later, her eyes tired, her lips painted in a smile that wasn’t hers. She never spoke of what happened inside Clown’s strip club, and Faro never asked. They both pretended for the sake of their two children, Sulari and Pifo, who slept huddled together on the mattress they dragged from an alley.
But one night, as rain poured down harder than usual and a cold wind bit through the cracks in their shelter, Faro returned from begging with nothing but a bruised cheek from a passerby who didn’t want to be bothered. He found Rita crying quietly, Sulari burning with fever, and Pifo whimpering in hunger.
Something broke.
Faro stormed back outside, screaming up at the smog-filled sky, fists clenched in defiance.
“IS THIS WHAT YOU WANTED?!” he shouted to no one. To Sol. To Tiwa. To Clown. To himself.
He ran through the streets, soaked and shivering, past mocking neon signs and digital billboards showing Clown Cola ads. Everything once sacred felt perverted. He collapsed beneath a stone archway near the railway yard and let himself cry, not as a hero or even a man—but as a father who had failed.
And in the silence of that breakdown, a single voice reached him.
“You still have your heart, Faro Faros,” said a voice from the shadows.
It was Tiwa, the fairy of Falcon. Dimmed and faded, but still glowing faintly. “You broke, yes. But you can still build something new.”
Faro didn’t reply. But he listened.
Faro sat in silence as Tiwa’s gentle glow hovered beside him, dim but unwavering. The chill in his bones was sharp, but her presence kindled something warmer—familiar. Not power. Not glory. But a flicker of dignity.
Tiwa landed on his shoulder, whispering, “You have nothing left to lose. But your daughter still calls you ‘Papa.’ Your son still reaches for you in the dark. That means you still have purpose.”
The next morning, before the sun rose over Thundarr’s polluted skyline, Faro returned to the alley shelter. Rita was awake, holding Pifo to her chest, tears staining her cheeks. Sulari’s fever had eased slightly, but her breathing was still weak.
“We can’t stay here,” Faro said quietly, kneeling beside Rita. “And we can’t depend on Clown anymore. We’ll die if we do.”
“But where do we go?” she whispered, her voice hollow. “They took everything.”
Faro looked her in the eyes. “Then we start from nothing. But together.”
They began the day quietly gathering scraps—food, old supplies, anything they could carry. Faro made a promise to his children that he would never beg again. Not for food. Not for mercy. And especially not from men like Clown.
By dusk, Faro had located an abandoned tram depot on the outskirts of Southbank—a forgotten place of rusted rails and broken machines. It became their home. With old crates, fabrics, and whatever tools Faro could scavenge, he began to build something—a new shelter, and maybe something more.
Rita, freed from the club, used her remaining tips to barter for medicine and thread. She stitched warm clothes for Sulari and Pifo, while Faro secured the perimeter and fashioned traps from scrap to catch wild alley-birds.
Each day, their resolve grew. The fire returned to Rita’s eyes. Faro’s hands grew calloused and strong again. They were no longer Falcon and Shecon. But they were something harder. Something humbler. Something real.
And deep within the depot, beneath a broken engine car, Faro discovered a strange glowing vine—green, pulsing faintly. A new power. Unknown. Not from Falcon’s legacy, but something else. Something waiting.
Back to Reality.
Rita jolted awake to the sound of Faro groaning, his body curled on the thin mattress inside their cramped room in the Southbank shelter. His skin had taken on a pale, sickly hue, and before she could even speak, Faro doubled over, vomiting a strange green fluid onto the floor.
“Faro!” she cried, rushing to his side, cradling his head as his breath came in ragged gasps. “Stay with me—please, just stay with me.”
With trembling hands, she flagged down an emergency aid worker outside. Within the hour, they had Faro rushed to the Southbank Community Hospital—a run-down facility known as a last resort for the poor and desperate.
There, after a battery of tests, the grim-faced doctor broke the news: Faro was suffering from advanced liver failure. Whether from malnutrition, toxic water in the outer forest, or accumulated trauma, it had reached a critical point. He would need artificial liver treatment—two hours at a time, three times a week—just to survive.
As Faro lay weakly on the hospital bed, hooked to humming machines, Rita clutched his hand.
“We were heroes once,” she whispered, tears streaming silently. “We can be again. Not with power rings or boomerangs—but with our love, our choices, our fight to stay standing.”
Faro’s eyes fluttered open. Even in pain, they held the ember of something old and strong.
“I want to fight for you. For Sulari. For Pifo,” he said, voice thin. “Even if all I have left is this broken body… I won’t give up.”
Outside, the skies above Thundarr City cracked with the coming storm.
