Ted tells Louisa that Joar did not seek trouble but always finished fights others started. Bullies learned to fear Joar’s darkening eyes, though repeated punishments at home made Joar’s friends beg him to stop defending them. Forced to be creative, Joar found nonviolent ways to retaliate.

Ted describes a spring incident when older girls humiliated Ali in the cafeteria. Instead of attacking the ringleader, Joar branded her with the nickname “Red,” triggering a self-fulfilling blush that ended her taunts against Ali. Ted frames this as a key coincidence that would shape the eventual painting.

One evening, Joar, Ali, and the artist were in Ted’s basement discussing superpowers while Ted read superhero quotes. Joar asked for a favorite line from Beta Ray Bill about making good in the world. The talk turned to antiheroes, and Joar rejected the notion that good deeds could offset evil, insisting villains remain villains. Ted reassured him, “You’re nothing like your old man,” but Joar confessed he felt nothing when he hit people and hurried home.

Back on the train, Ted reflects that Joar rushed to protect those he loved because of his abusive father. He explains that police interventions had failed, and real life was not like comic books. Ted withholds that Joar intended to kill his father during an August vacation, to either end the tyranny or die trying, and that Joar’s urgency to make the artist famous came from knowing his time was limited.

Ted admits he lied at fourteen about wanting super speed; his true wish was to stop time so no one he loved would be lost. He tears up, and Louisa comforts him with talk of superhero quotes. A brief exchange over Louisa’s sketch pad reveals she is drawing cockroaches and unfinished butterflies; Ted notes the artist once loved drawing wings.

Ted recounts how a bully called Bulldog stuffed him in a locker. At Ted’s urging, Joar avoided direct violence and tricked Bulldog into trapping himself in a locker, humiliating him. Later, Ted begged Joar not to protect him anymore, fearing reprisals and the father’s beatings. On a walk home with Ali and the artist, Joar insisted the artist would one day need Ted because “loyalty is a superpower.”

Louisa asks about Bulldog’s revenge; Ted says Bulldog fought Joar the next day and both bled, after which Joar’s father beat him severely. During the locker incident, Joar noticed the janitor’s tattooed skulls—an image that would indelibly influence the artist’s signature and the painting’s path. Ted ends with, “Art is coincidence, love is chaos,” which Louisa believes Fish would have liked.