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Confrontation

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A missed bus, a bowl of liqueur chocolates, and a dead-end alley add up to the most dangerous night of Mike and Lucy's young lives — and, once the dust settles, to a moment neither of them will forget.

Confrontation
Chapter14 of 127 (list of chapters)
PublishedJanuary 15, 2010 (2010-01-15)
Page count30
Major charactersMike, Lucy, Paulo, Daisy, Sue, Alejandro, Toby
Minor charactersSue's mom, David, Katie
LocationsCinder Station area, Park
Collected inVolume One, Omnibus 1
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Synopsis

Mike's bright idea to take the train after a missed bus has left the group thoroughly lost, and he and Lucy scream at each other the whole ride.[1] Sue marches everyone off at the next stop, a filthy, vandalized platform called Cinder Station.[2] On the walk through the boarded-up streets, Mike shoves Daisy away for needling him about his "stupid feelings" for Lucy,[3] and she and Paulo fall to mocking Lucy behind her back. "You don't know all of her," Mike tells them when he catches them cackling. The last panel reveals Lucy has been in earshot the whole time.[4]

The only place still open is a seedy bar. Sue borrows the bartender's phone and gets her mom to agree to drive out, which really should have been the end of it.[5] Meanwhile, a scarred stranger bets Mike twenty dollars that he can't finish a whole bowl of chocolates in a minute.[6] The chocolates are liqueur-filled, and Mike wins his money hopelessly drunk.[5] Outside, he chases phantom ice-cream-truck music into a dead-end alley, where the source turns out to be a planted radio. Annoyed by the noise, he smashes it.[7]

The stranger from the bar, Alejandro, strolls in after them with a grinning dog named Toby at his side.[7] He claims Mike went over time, calls the smashed radio expensive, and demands two hundred dollars.[8] Toby's furious barking triggers a paralyzing phobia in Paulo, who collapses in tears and takes a knee to the chest.[9] Sue is punched in the nose for talking back,[10] then choked and hurled into the garbage when she runs to help.[11] Mike lands one drunken elbow in the name of not hitting girls before Alejandro stomps him unconscious.[11][12]

 
Lucy takes over negotiations.

Lucy handles what's left of the situation herself. She walks up calmly, taps Toby on the shoulder, and kicks him in the crotch, ending his night.[13] Alejandro starts leering at her, so she plays along just long enough to give him the same treatment, then beats him down. When he brings up the scar an old girlfriend gave him, Lucy dedicates a knee to the chin "for your ex".[14]

But Lucy is half-deaf, and she never hears Alejandro get back up. He drags her down by the tail, claws her shoulders bloody, and beats her.[14] She plants herself over the unconscious Mike anyway, telling Alejandro to do whatever he wants with her as long as he leaves Mike alone.[15] Instead, he kicks her aside and pins her down. He rakes his claws across her face, gropes her, and strangles her while her friends look on, frozen.[16][17] Her vision goes dark on a single thought: "Michael.."[17]

Mike comes to just in time. Still very drunk, he flying-kicks Alejandro face-first into the pavement and reminds him, loudly, that he was told not to hurt any girls.[18] He batters the thug, and Lucy joins in to declare that hurting her best friend is the meanest of all.[19] Alejandro finally flees, with Mike bellowing "COME BACK!! WE JUSH WANNA KILL YOU!!" after him. Then the adrenaline runs out, and Lucy cries into Mike's chest, admitting how scared she was.[20]

The ride home in Sue's mom's minivan is an exercise in damage control, with a still-drunk Mike passing everyone's bruises off as tae-kwon-do practice.[21] Daisy, though, tearfully admits she was wrong about Lucy, who "stepped up while I just cowered".[21] The next day the group aces its class presentation, and Paulo assures an awestruck David that he totally beat up some thugs.[22]

On the walk home through the park, Mike works up the nerve to ask whether he's really Lucy's best friend. She wants to know why she'd be best friends with such a jerkface, but she's blushing when she says it.[23] Mike thanks her anyway. He saw what she did for him in that alley, and he doesn't think he'll ever forget it.[24] Lucy answers by standing on her toes and kissing him on the lips.[24] She pulls away and insists it's strictly repayment: "That's for what you did last night. Now we're even." Then she warns him not to go having any weird thoughts, and runs. Alone, she touches her lip and smiles to herself.[25]

Critical moments

  • Alejandro, a scarred stranger who tricked Mike into getting drunk on liqueur chocolates at the bar, and his dog partner Toby corner the group in a dead-end alley and demand two hundred dollars.[5][8] They put Paulo, Sue and Mike on the ground one by one.[9][12]
  • Lucy takes both thugs on alone, and very nearly wins. Being half-deaf, she never hears Alejandro get back up behind her.[13][14]
  • Beaten and bleeding, Lucy shields the unconscious Mike with her own body. Alejandro claws her face, gropes her, and strangles her to the edge of consciousness.[15][16][17]
  • Mike comes to and flying-kicks Alejandro into the pavement mid-strangling. Together, he and Lucy drive the thug off for good.[18][20]
  • In the park the next day, Mike thanks Lucy for what she did, and she kisses him on the lips, insisting they're simply "even" now.[24][25]

Character dynamics

 
Strictly repayment, she insists.
  • Mike and Lucy: Until now they've been inseparable friends who show it mostly through insults, and the chapter opens on exactly that note.[1] Then Lucy takes a savage beating shielding an unconscious Mike, and he saves her life in return. After that the walls come down. She calls him her best friend out loud, cries in his arms, and finally kisses him.[19][24] She frames the kiss as strictly repayment, though her private smile afterward suggests otherwise.[25] Veronica calls this "the chapter that changes the dynamic of everything".[1]
  • Daisy and Lucy: Daisy spends the early pages insisting Lucy doesn't care about anyone, some of it within Lucy's earshot.[4] After watching Lucy fight for everyone while she froze, Daisy tearfully takes it all back in the van.[21] Her on-panel apology the next day, though, goes to Mike rather than to Lucy.[22]
  • Paulo and Daisy: They start the night bonding over shared mockery of Lucy and end it bonding for real.[4] Paulo, freshly humiliated by his own phobia, comforts a guilt-stricken Daisy with a gentle "We're all strong in different ways, right?"[21]

Trivia & observations

  • This chapter is a full remake of an earlier, grid-format "Confrontation" about half the length, swapped in before Volume One went to print.[7] Among the changes, the opening argument became Mike's fault rather than Daisy's, "to make their fight more fair".[1]
  • Alejandro and Toby were originally going to be the bullies from Paulo's childhood, an idea Veronica scrapped as "absolutely ridiculous". In the finished chapter, Toby hits Paulo's genuine phobia without ever having met him.[9]
  • Veronica has said on Tumblr that she planned a literal "Confrontation 2" back in 2006, with hints seeded through the story, and that she may one day revive the idea as a branching-path BCI story.[26]
  • Lucy genuinely can't hear Alejandro rise behind her because she's half-deaf,[27] a trait on the books since the comic's very first chapter, Simple Pleasures.[28]
  • The park kiss is Mike and Lucy's first, though not Mike's first ever. As a much later sleepover conversation reveals, Sandy claimed that one back in third grade.[24][29]

Related chapters

  • Aftermath: Picks up the instant this chapter ends, replaying Lucy's kiss line word for word on its first page. Mike can't stop thinking about the kiss, and punches David for offering him chocolate "Kisses" — a jab at both sore spots at once.
  • Off to the Movies: Paulo's fear of barking first surfaces in this earlier chapter, when David lets loose a volley of barks and nearly sends him out of his fur. What plays as a gag there becomes a weapon in Toby's hands.
  • Moving On: Alejandro and Toby resurface in a Cinder-area alley, taking the friends' class schedules from Augustus. Alejandro makes it plain he hasn't forgotten "green eyes" or his "little girlfriend".
  • Trapped: Alejandro's scar story is settled years later in this chapter's flashbacks, which show him young and unscarred and reveal that the ex who wounded him was a girl named Melanie.

References

  1. ↑ 1.0 1.1 1.2 1.3 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 1
  2. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 2
  3. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 3
  4. ↑ 4.0 4.1 4.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 4
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 6
  6. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 5
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 8
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 9
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 10
  10. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 11
  11. ↑ 11.0 11.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 12
  12. ↑ 12.0 12.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 13
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 14
  14. ↑ 14.0 14.1 14.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 18
  15. ↑ 15.0 15.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 19
  16. ↑ 16.0 16.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 20
  17. ↑ 17.0 17.1 17.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 21
  18. ↑ 18.0 18.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 22
  19. ↑ 19.0 19.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 24
  20. ↑ 20.0 20.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 25
  21. ↑ 21.0 21.1 21.2 21.3 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 26
  22. ↑ 22.0 22.1 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 27
  23. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 28
  24. ↑ 24.0 24.1 24.2 24.3 24.4 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 29
  25. ↑ 25.0 25.1 25.2 Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 30
  26. ↑ . 2026-06-02 https://bittersweetcandybowl.tumblr.com/post/818346950343688192/will-we-see-alejandro-againwill-there-be-a. {{cite web}}: Missing or empty |title= (help)
  27. ↑ Chapter 14: Confrontation, page 16
  28. ↑ Chapter 1: Simple Pleasures, page 3
  29. ↑ Chapter 61: Pillow Talk, page 38
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