Rangeman went around, doing what he did, mostly telling people to be nice and rescuing cats from trees.
At first the firemen regarded him as a nuisance, a crazy person would just get in the way, possibly injure himself or the cat or one of them. But soon he won them over, above all with his absolute dedication to get the job done, his nothing-is-impossible attitude, and his rapidly-increasing climbing skills. Do anything strenuous all day long every day, and work out when you're not doing it, and chances are you might get very good at it.
Now the firemen would see him from down the block as they rolled in, and they'd yell, "Rangeman, my man!" Sometimes now they'd just watch, confident he'd get the job done. If he was up very high they would stretch out those stretchy round bouncy things that fireman stretch out, just in case he or the cat fell. But he didn't fall, the cats didn't fall. He was getting very good at this. He hadn't been in bad physical shape before he became Rangeman, but he was definitely more cut now.
One beautiful crisp afternoon he was just walking around, guarding his city, when someone called, "Hey, Rangeman!" He turned around to see half a dozen very bad-looking guys walking up on him, with lots of denim and shiny black leather and sneering faces, and three of them had handguns leveled at him.
The first group of thugs Rangeman had dealt with, the ones who were there during his transformation, playing keep-away with a lady purse -- those guys might have been intimidated by a hypothetical second group of bad guys who were clearly tougher and meaner. And the second group might have been afraid of a third group of bad man. But that hypothetical third group would still have nightmares about these guys who were pulling guns on Rangeman. Murder and intimidation just oozed from the pores of this fourth, non-hypothetical group.
Even before he spoke, it was clear that one of the three with the guns was the leader of the whole bunch. Rangeman wagged a finger at this one and said, "Hey now ! Be nice!"
The leader and a couple of the others laughed. Rangeman saw that one of them who wasn't pointing a gun at him had a gun in a holster at his waist, clearly visible over his knit shirt and under his black leather jacket.
"I'm not a nice guy," the leader told Rangeman, and some of his gang laughed some more.
"And how's that working out for you?" Rangeman asked.
"We're doing okay."
"It looks like you all spend a lot on clothes."
"Oh, we got plenty to spend on clothes. We see something we want to wear, we buy it, we don't need to ask the price first."
"Uh-huh. But you don't look happy. You're laughing at me, but it sounds like hollow laughter."
The head gangster stopped smiling and said, "You're giving me mental-health advice?! The guy who choked Tony Stark?!"
"I only choked Tony for a moment. Just to establish some boundaries. He was being a real dick, and I knew he knew better. I didn't choke him out, nothing like that. Any bad feelings about it were over with the same day."
"Uh-huh. TONY STARK DOESN'T EXIST," the lead bad guy yelled in Rangeman's face. "He's a fictional character, played by Robert Downey, Jr in movies, and drawn in comic-books."
"Yes, yes," Rangeman spluttered, "there are movies and comics about Tony and the other Avengers, but they're real. Stark Tower is right over there."
"Where?"
"Umm... You can't see it from here, the buildings on this block are blocking the view, and --"
"Wanna walk to where there's a view of it? It's imaginary! It's CGI in those movies! And your 'superpowers' amount to telling people to be nice, and saving cats, and getting your picture in the news every now and then, because --"
"The Rangeman has an altimeter in it! And a barometer! And an ambient-air thermometer! And solar panels that re-charge the batteries, and every 24 hours it synchs its time with an atomic clock in Colorado, and it's especially durable, even compared to other G-Shocks, and --"
"Wait a minute, an atomic clock in Colorado? What's up with that?"
"Yes, even if you turn off the synch, it's still spec'ed at plus-minus 15 seconds a month, so if the synch is on it's always within a split-second, AND it springs forward and falls back by itself!"
"Hey, now, that last thing," the main bad guy, "that I like. That's a real pain in the ass with watches." By now all of their guns were holstered. "Give me your Rangeman, Rangeman."
"No."
"No. huh? Just like that."
"You want it, you're going to have to take it."
All of the bad guys laughed at that, and now the laughter sounded more relaxed, less hollow.
"How much does one of those cost?" the boss of the bad guys asked.
A second bad guy spoke up: "That's a GW9400-1, right?" he asked, and Rangeman nodded. The second thug told the first, "Retail's $330. You can find them for less. Down to about $100 off of retail." The boss looked nauseous on hearing such a low price, but the second one went on, insisting, "it's not always all about the price. Maybe 99.9% of the time in life, but with G-Shocks..."
"So they're a couple hundred bucks, these things?"
"That particular model. There's thousands of models."
"THOUsands?"
"Thousands, boss. From $30 up to several thousand."
"Huh," the boss said, and turned back to Rangeman: "So you're risking your life over a couple hundred dollars."
"Like your guy just said -- not everything is even about money."
"Well, you're a brave guy."
"I don't know if am brave. But I have to act that way, because I'm a superhero. I have an important job to do."
"Superhero! There's no such thing as superheros! You're a great, big, huge, nice, somewhat charismatic crazy person!"
"Agree to disagree?"
The boss crook raised both his hands and was about to start shouting again. But then he lowered his hands again and said, "Sure." He turned to the second guy and asked, "You know where we can shop for G-Shocks?"
"Sure, Boss."
"For the fancy expensive ones?"
"Yeah, I know that too."
The boss turned back to Rangeman: "You want to come with us? We'll buy you a watch."
"Oh! Oh. Thank you very much," Rangeman said, "but --"
"But what?"
"It's this time of day. I don't know why, maybe it's because the firehouse nearby is changing shifts, but this time of day I'm usually pretty busy."
"Okay. Some other time."
"Thanks, that would be nice."
"And, you know -- I like cats."
Hey, you know what?" Rangeman said.
"What?"
"YOU'RE BEING NICE!"
The other 5 crooks laughed at the boss. The boss looked confused for a moment. Then he smiled, shook Rangeman's hand and said, "You're okay."
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