Valentine's Day

Emeric Kron/Ubermensch

May 12th, 2012

The explosion was loud and the scope and distance of it would put even hardened soldiers into disarray. If my ears could still ring, I imagine that is all I would hear, the dull and piercing sting of the volume. By every right, a non Brute should be too disoriented to stand let alone control himself and two others.

But Regent proves himself to be made of something sterner than most Americans, he approaches the roof of the building with an unwavering crawl, stature hidden behind the lip of concrete.

And like the links of a chain, I and the wretch beside me are forced to crawl along with him.

Like every other moment since I awoke, I have not stopped in trying to break free, trying to crush the Undersider before me. I push and I strain and I can feel drops of sweat slide down the side of my face as I try with all my might to move even a finger against the black crown I’m controlled under.

And like every moment, my muscles don’t even twitch under my own power. From the outside, I doubt anyone could see my struggle, my fight, my rage. But I know he feels it, the dead eyed boy, the bastard prince of Brockton.

Grue, Skitter, Bitch… all of them are beneath your notice She had told me, sitting in her chair as our boat finally touched land in Boston harbor. The Norn was one of three, the leaders of our intelligence, the Thinkers of Die Gesselschaft. 

Her wisdom had guided our regime for thirty years, led us out of the dark and into the forefront of the German psyche. It was her and her sister's mind that put our glorious mission back on the world stage, with power our old leaders could only dream of. I was a fool to scorn her advice, her prediction.

I was not the first to ignore her. In truth, since our organization began to rectify the mistakes of the powers surrounding us, Hilda Schäfer was constantly undermined. Though her eyes were noble and her skin fair, her legs were useless, feeble, many demanded that she be killed for it, to be put out of her misery.

I was one such fool who thought the same.

The gravel presses into my unyielding skin as Regent lays himself flat against the rooftop, my own eyes serving well enough as his own. The closeness of his throat taunts me, it wouldn’t take me more than a moment to reach out and rip the muscle away, leaving his head to hang limply by his spine.

But again, my hand doesn’t move, doesn’t even shiver as my eyes are forced to look ahead, forced to take in the scene in front of me.

Seven figures stand in the rubble, the dust behind them starts to settle as the centermost figure steps forward and stretches his arms wide.

“People of Brockton Bay,” he shouts, an odd knightly tone echoes through the streets as his hands slowly reach up to his hood. “You have no need to fear, this farce, this charade, all of it means nothing! For we, for The Adepts, are here.”

His costume is strange to me. Opulent white robes fall off his frame in glittering silver, nonsensical designs weave their way in and out of the fabric in a pale gold. I mistake his forearms and forelegs with the same material but when I am forced to squint, I can tell that they are bare, that his costume stops just short of his elbows and knees.

His skin is almost bleach white and for a moment I am reminded of the former Empire cape, Ivory I think his name was. But then the man below me’s hood falls to his shoulders, revealing a face that no mask could hide.

Like his arms and legs, the skin of his neck and face is a gray silver, with a sheen to it that almost looks metallic at this distance. His hair is as white as limestone and his eyes bear no pupil within, instead they are a constant and twinkling blue, like a sapphire. The ear I can make out from this angle is pointed and flared from his head, pointing more to his left than behind him.

Upon his head is a thick band of sculpted metal, a crown or circlet of polished silver, the front of it cut into the crest of a shield.

His angular face has high and pronounced cheekbones with a narrow chin and firm brow, I imagine many would find him appealing save for the obvious deformities. He has to be one of the monsters, one of the poor souls who awoke with no memory and powers they do not understand.

He starts to speak and with the opening of his lips, I can see that his teeth are sharp and viscous.

“Again, I tell all of you poor souls, locked in fear, that you’ve no need of it. I am Epoch, and as the head of my guild I come to this lowly place with a harsh burden. I am… so very sorry for the actions that must be undertaken but I cannot stand idly by and let more naive and afraid acolytes flock to this underworld.”

His word choice is odd, ill fitting for New England America, but he says them without hesitancy and clear dictation. The words aren’t being read nor are they fed into his ears, he speaks them from himself and I cannot help but wonder what they mean. Not his speech of course, that is obvious.

What I am pondering over has nothing to do with his message, it is with his manner, with the way he holds his head high and his spine ready. He speaks like a long dead knight, like the plays Hilda would sometimes read aloud during a long voyage.

I remember the rabble asking me of these monster men, thinking that as one of the hands of Die Gesselschaft that I’d be more privileged to that information than some. And though my colleagues had theories and ideas, that was all they were.

The man before me, Epoch, with his white robes and white crown and white skin is no more clear to me than anyone else.

“This idea… the idea of a gentleman villainy, the idea and banner that this city fell under months ago, it is not the path we chosen few were meant to walk along. It is a poisonous thought, that our gifts give us any right to rule, no matter how gently we might undertake that kingship. Parahumans were not given these abilities to harm, to subjugate, and quarrel, we were not baptized in death so that we might brandish our gifts like swords!”

His voice rises, anger falling off it like ice off a glacier and if I could roll my eyes, I would. I am unfamiliar with this group but it is not a hard assessment to see that they are outmatched. Even discounting that with Blasto our numbers exceed theirs by one, the powers The Adepts wish to face have beaten far worse. They’ve beaten me.

“These powers and gifts, these thanks and spoils, they are to be meditated upon, to be expanded with practice and study. They are tools for discovery, understanding, perhaps even enlightenment! I know these gifts can bring peace and if I must prove it today through—”

Whatever else he is about to say is cut short by the cloud of bugs that swarm in front of me, the hundreds of roaches, wasps, beetles, and flies all form a loose message as Regent lifts his head to it. 

‘COME DOWNSTAIRS’

My Puppeteer makes me and his other prisoner get up with him, both of us heading back the way we came as Epoch continues to drone on. The Undersiders have realized what this is about, speeches are only made when an audience can hear them. And though this street seems mostly abandoned, The Adepts know their voices will be heard here, they know a camera is focused on them.

A camera they likely placed.

It is an underhanded tactic, televising an ambush is a coward’s way of besmirching reputation. It is one such technique I’ve had to do myself and unfortunately, one I’ve been on the receiving end of as well.

The three of us make our way back to the first floor and my body yearns for the chance to kill the girl waiting for us. Skitter stands in the center of the room, her army taking up more space than any of us as Regent quickens his pace towards her.

His patheticness disgusts me, the way he fawns over her, over his teammates, the way he leapt at the chance to deny any romantic inclination of the people who so clearly loathe him. He’s like a lost puppy, imprinting on the first people that gave him even the slightest amount of attention.

The anger I sensed in him earlier is still present, still just under the skin but that is nothing compared to the yearning in his posture, the desire that the girl in front of him would at least say a kind word to him.

Of course the girl doesn’t say anything, the queen of vermin takes her swarm with her just after thrusting an earpiece into Regent’s chest. Again, I wish I could have my voice, at least to tell her how much of an idiot she must be.

For someone who immediately switched strategies when her mandibles proved useless against me, Skitter is not nearly as quick on the uptake as I would’ve assumed. If she can’t realize it, surely her compatriots would’ve by now. 

Regent might follow them now, might do anything to keep their favor but that blind loyalty has a limit if it is not constantly reinforced. A conversation here, a pat on the shoulder there, little things every day or so would keep him as a model servant but instead, they push, they isolate… why?

I have not seen the face beneath Regent’s mask so I cannot say anything for his complexion or appeal but I find it hard to believe that anyone could be so repulsive that they’d be thrown away despite the greatness of their power.

Skitter slinks away and takes all of her troops out through a crack in the wall as Regent quickly puts the earpiece in, why he didn’t have one already I do not know. The boy doesn’t even look at us as he forces us to stretch, popping all my knuckles and making Shatterbird stretch her arms out.

I can faintly hear the crackle of Grue over the earpiece when my eyes blink. When my eyes open barely a tenth of a second later, I find that Regent's ear is bare.

He's slower than I and he presses his finger where a button just was. The tip of it hits his ear and when he finally realizes it's been taken, a voice speaks up.

"Sorry man," 

Regent picks the worst time for me to blink and I just barely catch a blur in front of him before he doubles over in pain, gasping for breath. I got a bit more of his form this time, he's likely male, with either a black costume or some sort of black Breaker effect.

Despite its long disappearance, Regent has me swipe above him anyway, hitting nothing but air as Shatterbird and I close formation.

Regent shuffles behind me, still gripping his stomach as I scan the room. 

The sounds of battle draw my attention to the door but my eyes refuse to give it more than a passing glance.

Whoever just took the earpiece has cut our effectiveness in half, without the three of us, I think the other Undersiders might have trouble with these Adepts.

It's a smart strategy especially considering Skitter's lack of care for the boy behind me, her bugs are nowhere to be seen, likely congregating around the teammates she finds more worthy.

Regent still groans behind me, clutching at his midsection gasping coughs. I am annoyed, with the strength laden behind that fist, our enemy could have removed Regent from the equation with a swift punch or stab. That can mean one of two things, either our enemy isn’t intelligent enough to do that or, more likely, they recognize the trouble myself or Shatterbird would cause if let go.

The rage inside of me burgeons to be let loose but the struggle is futile, the cage surrounding my mind is inviolable no matter which way I press.

There is a gust of wind behind us and Regent forces me to join him in looking at the rundown receptionist desk. Our enemy sits a top it, his strange costume just as much a departure from the conventional spandex as Epoch.

He wears black robes like the other Adepts but where Epoch’s seem more in line with an old fantasy novel, this new cape wears the stylings of an eastern monk. One of his sleeves is wrapped in black bandages whilst the other hangs loosely from his wrist, a bright and golden ‘I’ stitched upon it.

The only other splash of color on the whole outfit is his dark mask, the mouth and eyes are not visible, leaving only a smooth faceplate with a long curved line over his left cheek, clearly meant to symbolize the crescent moon.

“So…” the speedster says, suddenly flashing into a blur and laying on the desk within a blink. “My name is Solstice and I’m really sorry to say this but…” he blurs again and he’s right in front of me. Faster than normal, I bring a knee up and just barely catch the cloth before Solstice is on Shatterbird’s unprotected side.

The former Nine member lashes out with her arm, the glass there rises like the feathers of a startled egret and hits nothing as the Adept member is suddenly back at the desk. “Me and a few of my friends are… well, we’re here to keep you out of the game.”

Before Regent can respond, two more people enter the room. One through the hole in the roof we came through and the other smashing through the wall. I barely catch the first figure, a woman of flames before the second has slammed into me.

Instantly my fists start to batter against whoever dares strike me unannounced but just as my fists begin to dig into him, we crash through the opposing wall. The dust and debris sticks to me and I can barely wipe it out of my eyes before we crash through yet another building, and then another and another and another until finally I am tossed away from the Brute.

WIth enough distance between us, I can stand and wipe at my mouth, spitting out the salt stained brickwork of the past few buildings as I size up my opponent.

He is big. Almost three meters tall and composed entirely out of a golden gleaming metal. Unlike his associates, this one wears nothing on his form though he clearly does not need to, his eyes, nose, mouth, ears and anything that makes him stand out from a mannequin are all blank. 

The chunks of dented and warped metal over his shoulders and back, where I had clobbered him, slowly groan back into shape. He rises up to his full height and when he cracks his knuckles, each one sounds like a tolling bell.

“Hello,” he says, timbre deep and voice booming, “They call me Rhodes, and I’d say it was nice to meet you but I’ve never been one to lie.”

I wish to speak to the man before me, I wish to meet him warrior to warrior and it is a pleasant surprise to find my mouth speaking for me alone. 

“Hallo,” I greet, unable to keep the irritation out of my voice when we begin to circle each other, everything from the neck down still infuriatingly out of my control. “Ich heisse Ubermensch, but you may call me Emeric.”

My opponent snorts at my cordiality, his gargantuan form uncannily mimicking a normal man.

“And why do you tell me your name?” he asks

“I greet all true warriors with my name,” I reply, “it is an honorable gift to give and receive on the battlefield, that you might know the true name of the man who kills you.”

Rhodes doesn’t flinch like those who came before him, if anything, there’s even more human in his voice when he speaks up.

“Well Emeric, I’m afraid I cannot tell you my name, I don’t plan on killing you when I win.”

And now it is my turn to chuckle. While I commend this warrior’s optimism, I have no doubt in my mind that he cannot kill me. Even when we went through those past few buildings I’ve not a scratch on me, he is strong, perhaps like me in that he has yet to face someone who can genuinely fight him.

But I am beyond his strength.

There is a very short list of people who can scratch me and even shorter list of people who can kill me, I’ve got those lists in the forefront of my mind at all times and Rhodes is not on either.

I try to open my mouth to speak, to wish him good luck regardless of the folly he’s undertaken but of course, my jaw snaps closed as Regent takes control of me in earnest. Instead of meeting him as I should, Regent forces me into a charge which Rhodes is only a little slower to pursue himself.

Our hands slap into each other and his metallic wrists buckle and warp under the strain of trying to match me. Just as I predicted, he is fearsome but I am out of his league. I pull his right hand forward and in the stumble I cause him, I let go of his left hand and slam a hook into his jaw.

The giant soars to the other end of the street, a cloud of dust puffing out from the half destroyed street corner. He stands easily despite his malformed arms and sizable dent in his chin. And before my very eyes, those wounds start to close up, the metal beneath popping back into place like a puffed up bottle of water.

A healing factor? My eyes scan him, starting at his head and darting down to his feet, my puppeteer just as eager to examine him as I. I find that he isn’t truly healing, though the damage is gone, I can clearly see that he has shrunk maybe a third of a meter.

Whatever he’s made of, he has a finite amount of it to manipulate, eventually, so long as I keep hammering him, I’ll get to the man inside.

But despite the obviousness of that fact, despite that he must know how easy it is to deduce, Rhodes meets me anyway. His punches and kicks warp around me, though they send me back, further away from his comrades, this is a war of attrition and he only has so much to give.

Maybe ten minutes into our bout, he has shrunk to just under my size and yet still, he tries to push against me. It is only when he tries to throw an uppercut and his fingers smush against my chin, that he leaps back, breathing heavy.

He has done well and though judging by his voice that he is inferior to me and my people, I am glad to have given him my name, that he might be another to fall under my might. Regent does not let me say a word, he only forces me to approach Rhodes with my fist raised, ready to end this fight in a single blow when the building behind my opponent ruptures inwards.

My arm comes up to shield my face as Regent forces me to step back, as if that blast has any chance of harming me. The building crumbles and falls under its own weight in a cacophonous roar, the dust and wind it kicks up blinds me for the barest of moments.

And when I open my eyes, I find that the bright golden beam that sliced through the stone like butter is slamming into the back of Rhodes. And even though the heat of the beam makes my eyes water even from this distance, Rhodes doesn’t look to be in any pain… in fact, he’s getting bigger.

Again, I am forced to take a step back as the giant makes his last height seem dwarfish. He grows and grows as the beam feeds him, the metal layering on top of itself like a forge, he falls to his knees to stay underneath the three story buildings and as the light behind him slowly flickers away, he laughs, the metallic echo of before becoming more as he pops his knuckles yet again.

Each pop sounds like a car accident as he brings one hand up, the fist maybe a foot or so taller than my whole body.

“Now I can fight,” he says before that fist slams down.

Ayesha Rahman/ Shatterbird

May 12th, 2012

I am getting sick of this. In the past year alone, I’ve had Dragon herself shoot at me, a clone made in my image, gone to an Endbringer fight, been the sole focus of a Brutish Nazi major, and the list just keeps getting longer. Honestly, I thought staying in one place would afford me less near death experiences, not more.

But of course, that isn’t the case. It seems every thought I’ve had since Regent took control of me is only made to be contradicted.

The fiery cape makes me loop around the room with her, the thrust of her flames greater than the meager amount of glass at my disposal. My mouth opens and Regent makes me shriek loud enough to tear my throat, loud enough that nearly all glass around the block shatters into shards for me.

By the time I’m getting it to float towards me however, the cape has taken me back to the rooftop, her flames licking against the thin layer of armor Regent hastily wrapped around me. We’re not back on the apartment complex for a moment before I’m being pushed across the street to the next one.

The fight below draws Regent’s eyes for the second I’m able to see it. Epoch is flitting around the battlefield, he and whatever he’s looking at flit around in bursts of white, the dog’s chasing after him are confused. I watch two of them, Brutus and Angelica I believe, rip the man in half, his bright silverish blood pools around them and then before the gore can be swallowed, he’s fine a few feet away.

A woman in purple is attacking Blasto’s creations, a trio of birds fly out from the head of her staff and begin to breathe fire on his raptors and Tangles.

And then I’m soaring beyond the street, my glass trailing after the both of us and just barely managing to catch me when my opponent lets me go. Thankfully, Regent has had enough practice controlling me that he can use my abilities almost as well as I could and I’m able to fly back up and meet my opponent in the air.

The flames blanket her entirely and the form beneath is almost impossible for me to make out. What can I see though is a red robe with some… holes in it. Holes wide enough that she might as well be wearing a swimsuit rather than the cloth that leaves most of her hips, arms, legs, and shoulders bare.

“Shatterbird…” she hisses, voice crackling just like her fire. “Do you know who I am?”

Oh god, not another one of these idiots. Regent offers me the slightest bit of control and he half pilots me to wipe away the dust on my shoulders and front. The cape in front of me gets angrier, the fires flaring as I give her a glance.

I swear, every single one of these holier than thou capes always assume they made an impression the first go around, that I’d bother to remember them. But the truth is, it’s a sea of faces out there and I don’t have the ability or want to remember every single extra and stagehand I crushed beneath my heel.

“I’m sure you’ll tell me,” I reply, condescension in my tone and I’m not sure if it comes from Regent or not. That clearly isn’t the right answer because my opponent immediately rockets towards me, the fire enveloping her in a sphere that rotates well past her form.

Somehow, this fire has weight to it as it slams into me, making some of the weaker parts of my shield crack and turn inward as she growls.

“My name is Equinox you bitch!” she rears back, nearly half of the fire in her defense crawls up one arm, becoming denser until it’s just a ball of light. Regent must know instinctively that my glass won’t survive a blow like that and he simultaneously makes me float up and away while two tendrils of glass spear up at my opponent from the street.

My jailer’s not usually squeamish but for some inane reason, right when the attack looks like it’s about to spear through the revenge happy idiot, the attack forks and wraps around Equinox’ ankles.

It does the job well enough I suppose, her attack slips from her hands, some of the fire immediately engulfing a run down convenience store below us and the rest hastily trying to reignite her defenses.

She isn’t quite able to get the glass off of her in time and with a flick of my wrist, the tendrils holding onto her slam her down into the rooftops. She barely impacts with the gravel before another gout of flame shoots out from her, the tip of it almost grazing where my armor’s weakest.

I take note of the attack reminded of how Jack would always find the littlest part to stab through and irritation rises inside of me when Regent does nothing for it. That attack was clearly well aimed and with the intention to kill but my shackles refuse to protect either flank of me.

Infuriatingly, I start to float down to her. I try to fight it, more out of a sense of obligation then any actual belief I’ll get free, even with all my glass wrapping around her limbs and snaking up her torso, Regent shouldn’t assume I can hold her down.

This Equinox character might be hot headed but I’ve found pyrokinetic’s are always good for an ace in the hole. She might not have Mimi’s boundless lack of restraint and growth, but I doubt shooting fire and making herself fly is all she can do.

Equinox thrashes against the glass, my puppeteer feeling merciful in his diligence to smooth out each shard, so that no jagged edge pieces this simpleton’s skin. I look down my beak at her, surprised that my body moves the way I desire and that my lips open for my words.

“All that effort,” I tell her, feeling a smile come up on my face. “All those sleepless nights—” I crouch down, almost nose to nose as my glass suffocates her flame,”—dreaming of revenge, and what did it get you? Wounded pride and a reality check are the greatest mercy I can give you… that and some advice, if it were truly me, controlling this glass? You’d have been paste the instant you dared to touch me.”

Despite my words, despite the coaching Jack ran me through, the threat and admonishment don’t incur the reaction I desire. Equinox doesn’t wilt or shy away from me

Instead, she laughs.

I tilt my head at her chuckles, then furrow my brow when those quickly become cackles and long gasps. She arches her back even when her fire finally snuffs itself out. Without the flame I can get a better look at the girl I’m fighting and I have to say, I don’t know where she gets this confidence.

She’s pretty I suppose, with mocha colored skin and long black hair falling down her back. Her face is a fair bit less sculpted than my own but I suppose she could pass for an ugly sister of mine. Granted, none of my family would’ve been caught dead in that outfit.

The lack of flame actually makes me want to avert my eyes more. It’s less a costume and more a stylized one piece swimsuit, with a deeper neck than most would find comfortable, two large holes on either side of her hips and not a stitch of fabric to cover her arms or legs. Thankfully, she has sort of loincloth sewn into the hem of her waist but otherwise, the costume is wholly indecent.

She wears a small domino mask, the kind people avert their eyes from lest they realize how fucking useless they are. It makes her eyes… admittingly rather striking but that’s offset by the crooked grin of her open jaw, her mirth leaking out in between words.

“Madre de dios,” she says, her laughter finally petering out, “Don’t you know what Equinox means?”

Before I can answer, an explosion comes from the center of her chest.

The shockwave sends me flying back and it’s only because of the glass of my costume that I manage to land on my feet. The shield I had encasing Equinox dropped from my awareness the second she blew up, all of it becoming too small for me to control.

A chill ghosts over my body as Equinox stands, her formerly maroon costume rapidly changes into a dark purple, the fabric reacting to the ice that slowly crawls up her body. There’s that ace.

Regent tries to get more of the glass around us to envelop her but where the fire yielded, the ice does not, staying pristine and unaffected even by the sharpest granules blasting against it. I lift off the ground when Equinox lifts her hand to me, a neon blue torrent of ice shoots out from her palm and my defenses do little to make the cold any less severe.

I discard the glass as quickly as it’s hit, the ice forming on top of it makes it too heavy for my power and even with a whole block to work with, I don’t see a war of attrition playing out well for me.

I can’t help but think of a strategy, even knowing damn well that Regent and I are rarely on the same page. I shouldn’t be fighting her, at least not like this, I should be flying off, keeping my distance as I gather more glass and sand.

But then, just as I feel my feet leave the ground, Equinox surprises me yet again. Her blast wasn’t meant to hit me, nor was it meant to limit my resources, it was meant to blind me. The ice that generated from her, the thick flurries it caused, I couldn’t see more than half a foot in front of me and thus, I couldn’t see that she’d advanced.

But I can see the explosion in her chest.

Another shockwave comes and this time I don’t have the luxury of nothing behind me. This time, the back of my head painfully collides with the ice wall behind me. I just barely blink back stars when there’s a hand on my throat.

Equinox is standing in front of me, her skin glistening with the remains of her icy armor, the droplets quickly vanish in front of my eyes as her skin begins to steam. 

I try to summon up the glass around us, only to find that there isn’t any in my immediate vicinity. My eyes open wide and I look around us, at the piles of particulate too small to do anything with, everything, every minute shard has shattered but I can’t understand how.

The shockwave couldn’t have done this, nothing that would leave me alive would destroy all this glass so completely. 

Regent must not be controlling my expressions because the SHaker in front of me starts to laugh, fire crawling up her legs and forcing me to keep mine flush with the wall of ice behind me. I don’t know when or how she got this barrier up but it’s too thick to scream through, too thick for any sound to get past.

“You’re so stupid,” Equinox mocks, shaking her head with disbelief. “And here I thought the girl who murdered mi tio and tia would’ve known how her own power works.”

Her bravado angers me and my arm whips out before Regent can hold me back, my unarmored hand slapping against her bare cheek. I feel no satisfaction from the blow, in fact, I wrench my hand away as quickly as it came, a scream passing my lips as I look at my palm.

The skin is red and charred, like I just put it upon a stove, the flesh already begins to blister as I let the arm fall, my stomach woozy from the sight. The fire climbing up Equinox’s form ramps up, climbing past her hips and onto her chest as she snarls, any earlier amusement puffing away into smoke.

“You have no idea how much I want to kill you, to turn you to ash right here and now…” she brings her free hand up to punctuate her statement, the fire climbing up her fingers and sharpening into bright blue nails of flame. She flexes her hand and I close my eyes tight when she sighs. “But I can’t.”

That makes me open them again. Many heroes (if that’s what the Adepts are, I can’t remember honestly) try their best to live a bloodless life but there are very few fools among them that would stick to that pacifism in the face of a helpless Shatterbird. 

She’d likely have to split the bounty with Regent but last I recall it was somewhere around 30,000,000 dollars for my head. 15,000,000 is enough for anyone to live comfortably, especially given the cost is a few moments of her time.

Her brown eyes look far away as she growls. 

“I want to,” she tells me, “I want to do nothing more but we Adepts? We’ve got a code, something psychopaths like you will never understand.”

I resist the urge to roll my eyes, even if Regent’s grip on me is ironclad, I don’t dare risk the ire of someone who literally holds my life in the palm of their hand. Thankfully, what minimal desire I have to vex her is quenched when her smoldering eyes look at me, her pupils like two pits of molten copper.

“But that doesn’t mean you’re getting off scot free bitch, till your little healer sees you, you’re out of the fight.” 

I do my best not to scream when the hand on my throat gets hotter, I try not to give her the satisfaction of my pain as the air around us gets wavy with heat. I try as best I can and in the end, the only reason I don’t keep screaming is that she’s burned through the chords I had.

Alec Merceau/ Regent

May 12th, 2012

Both of my thralls are taken out of the room within less than a second, Ubermensch crashing through the wall behind me, carried off by some fucking golden man and Shatterbird by a living torch.

I barely have a moment to deal with my growing perspective before I find my feet taken out from under me. The ground tastes like shit and I don’t even get my hands underneath before there’s a whoosh of air and a subsonic kick to my ribs.

Thankfully, I don’t think anything cracks but the blow still sneds me rolling to the other side of the room, my back banging against the cold wall and my breath knocked out of me. I try to keep my head here, try to keep my focus on Solstice, not on the other two deciding to fucking greet each other.

I can’t do it, watching through three sets of eyes isn’t all that great when we’re close together, let alone when they’re being taken blocks from me. I try to shut it out, everything I don’t need from them, I let them have their mouths and toes, let them have their necks and their pinkies, things I can live with out.

It helps a bit but as soon as I get my hands under me, Solstice has me up against the wall, his skinny arms not letting him lift me off the floor completely. I take a swing at him before he can speak, knuckles clenched exactly how Brian taught me and hitting nothing but air as Solstice pulls me forward by my shirt.

The instant I stumble forward, he resettles his grip on my shoulders and uses it to pull his knee into my stomach. His speed is pissing me off, he has so much more time to set up his attacks, most wouldn't be able to get a knee off that quickly, especially one that makes me feel like my intestines are in my throat.

I wheeze and for some reason, the asshole lets me. He just takes a step back as I try to walk, my hands wrapped around my burning stomach as my face turns puce from the lack of air.

“C’mon man,” Solstice says, fucking patting my back. “You gotta breath, I really don’t want to give you mouth to mouth.”

With my face turned to the floor, I take a second to think of what to do, I should just charge him, he might be bigger than me but I’m invinci— no, that’s Ubermensch. I shake my head, trying to keep myself grounded here when I immediately put a half baked plan into action.

I hook my leg out around Solstice’s ankle at the same time I force my power through my eyes, for a very, very brief instant, I can sort’ve grasp the patch of skin I just shot through. Solstice stumbles at the action and with the involuntary twitch, he should by all means fall over.

Only, he doesn’t. For a fraction of a second, his form blurred even faster, his whole body was briefly on the floor in front of me but within another blink, he’s completely vanished.

“C’mon dude,” I force myself to look up and let go of my stomach, ignoring the screaming pain from my abdomen as I stare at the black clad Adept on the desk. He’s rubbing the back of his head but otherwise looks completely unharmed. “I’m trying to make this painless as it has to be, can’t you cut me some slack?”

Cut him some— what the fuck is he on?

Something has to show in my gait as I approach him and he sighs.

“Listen, okay? I’m not a traditional speedster, my power works by accelerating my own personal time. That twitching you do can fuck up a moment right? Well, I can stretch that moment dozens of times, you can't hurt me and I’m not dumb enough to knock you out.”

I hadn’t noticed it earlier but Solstice has an accent, it’s hidden well enough that even I can’t pick out where it comes from exactly but something about how he stretches the vowels feels a bit Chinese.

“Okay,” I reply, “what do you suggest we do then? Play go fish?”

He laughs at my suggestion and shakes his head as he speaks.

“You joke, but if I had cards, I’d take you up on that.” He punctuates his statement by activating his power and like a video in fast forward, everything he does, every breath and twitch and scratch, all of it is played at at least twice speed.

I doubt he’s explained his powers completely to me, although I doubt anyone could sum up all of their power’s nuances in a few sentences. He hasn’t spoken whenever he’s run at me and he isn’t doing it now, moving at whatever speed he’s going at. A bit of intuition sparks up in my eyes, experience letting me connect a simple dot.

He hasn’t talked like that because he can’t, the words would be a garbled mess of noise, the pronunciation flashing by faster than anyone could parse. Now normally, that wouldn’t be that big a deal, it’s a limitation that’s easily worked around.

But this guy’s a talker. That’s the key, get him close, get him talking, and I’ll have my moment.

Turning away from him, I take a step towards the door, the sounds of battle outside are strange, there’s a warbling ring and the sounds of fire and if I could just get myself out there, I could—

“Are you serious, man?” Solstice asks, chomping at the bait like a grade A sucker. “I’m not letting you leave and I’d really like if you didn’t use your powers out there, TremTrem would be pissed with me.”

I can’t quite make it to the door and I force myself to lean against the destroyed wall, my body begging me to collapse then and there.

“You know why we’re doing this right?” Solstice asks and I can’t reply verbally, my mouth a little too preoccupied with not throwing up. Instead, I give him a push of my hand, the universal gesture for shut up. The silent motion doesn’t work however, instead the speedster takes it as an opportunity to continue. “Well, it should be obvious, we can’t have two polyamorous villain groups on the east coast can we?”

Okay, now that gets my attention and I whirl on him as quick as I can, eyes glaring and— too quick, that was way too fucking quick. I strangle the gasp in my throat and curse my traitorous body as I start to sink down to the floor. The groan that slips through my lips is enough provocation for the Adept kicking my ass and he puts his hands up with a laugh.

“Don’t worry about it dude, tabloids and PHO aren’t quite there yet, no one besides us have figured it out yet.” He snorts to himself and looks away from me, “Not like the tabloids will ever say it out loud of course, but that’s squeamish America for you.” 

“What—” I cough, not realizing how dry my mouth was until just now. “What the fuck are you talking abo—”

“Dude,” Solstice cuts me off, voice a bit more serious but still clearly not giving all that much of a shit. “Don’t worry about it, for real. Like I said, most haven’t figured it out but to another quintuplet? You guys might as well be screaming it. The signs are pretty fucking obvious.”

For some fucking reason, the terminology’s the thing that sticks out to me the most and I latch on to it in favor of anything else I might have to think about.

“Wait, a quintuplet? Aren’t there—”

“I suppose you could call it a pentatuplet if you prefer,” Solstice cuts me off, looking towards the ceiling as he let’s his legs dangle off the desk. “Although I—”

I’m so fucking sick of this dude and his goddamn interuptions. 

“Let me fucking finish, okay?” I don’t mean for the words to come out like they do, for the heat of this morning to leak out the way it does but my words are still bathed in red as Solstice puts his hands up. “You said Quintuplet, I saw six other people out there, doesn’t that make you guy a… a fucking septuplet or whatever the fuck?”

“Oh god no,” Solstice laughs, “Rhodes and Eminence are old enough to be… okay, I give them shit but they’re not that much older than me. Either way, they’ve got their own thing going on, it’s me, Epoch, Arty, Trems, and Equinox that are together. Although I don’t think we’re the only ‘cule in The Adepts, there’s not any overlap between us and the tier 3’s.”

Unsure of most of terms he just threw around, my mind supplies me with the easiest question.

"Wait, you— five. You're dating four people that are… dating each other?" The idea doesn't make any sense, balancing that many people doesn't sound stable let alone enjoyable, how the hell can anyone keep that act going even if there's four other people to pull it along?

Solstice doesn't answer me, instead he just tilts his head and clicks his tongue.

"Wait…" he pauses, his right hand pointing to the door and his left crossing over it to point at me. "aren't you five together? You, the Thinker, Grue, dog and bug girl right?"

He has th gall to sound fucking confused as he finishes his question, as if he expected me to leap at the chance to say: 'oh yeah, we're all together and we all make flower crowns and sing kumbaya or whatever the fuck'

Heat climbs up my neck and unlike the fire doing the same to Shatterbird's, mine is all internal as the flush reddens.

Goddamn it this is the second guy today to think we're all together and the third that I was dating Lisa.

"No!" I answer, the outrage in my voice is twice what I usually put in and I can't tell why. "We're not fucking dating and— what the fuck do you mean: 'the signs?!'"

Solstice is quiet for once, his jaw clicking closed behind the mask and his pointed fingers lowering before the left joins his right, both index digits shaking in my direction.

"You— are you sure you're not together?"

The question brings in even more silence, quiet enough that if there wasn't a fight going on outside (and two more in my head) you could hear a pin drop.

"Of course I'm fucking sure!" I shout, my volume making Solstice fall back enough that he grabs on to the lip of the desk to steady himself. "How the fuck could you not be sure of that?"

"You'd be surprised," he counters, "We'd already kissed Artificer dozens of times before she asked what we were. I figured it might be like that."

"Might be like—" I let my head fall to the wall behind me as my mouth hangs open, no words leaving it as I try to think of what to say. "No, no, none of us are like that okay? We're not into whatever freaky shit—"

"Hey!" Solstice cuts me off, actual anger in his tone as he sits up straighter. "I know that fucking tone shit for brains, polyamory isn't a fucking sex thing and I won't let you talk about it like that's what it's all about. It's about love and openness and— y'know what, you'll figure it out."

"What is that supposed to mean?" I fire back, my ribs finally starting to shut up as I stand. Solstice brushes me off like I did earlier, one hand flapping in front of him. "Don't you fucki— what do you mean 'you'll figure it out' asshole?!"

"I mean you'll figure it out, we're like 90 percent sure you guys are pining and—"

"Well I'm a hundred percent sure we're not!" I cut him off, finally able to get off the wall and stand on my own. Fuck this noise, Ubermensch can't get away from Rhodes and I think Shatterbird's about to get her throat ripped out.

I start heading for the door, my head buzzing like an ant hill as I clench my jaw. These assholes really brought three people just to fuck with me.

“Dude…” Solstice says, exasperation in his voice, “C’mon man, I’m trying to be reasonable here.”

His complaint is noted and I take another step, he sighs like I’ve just turned off the tv and before I can lift my other foot up, he’s in front of me again. His hands are on either side of my head, the palms over my ears as he speaks, tone much firmer than anything else he’s said today.

“I really don’t want to hurt you,” he warns, “And not just because dealing with Ubermensch and Shatterbird would be a pain. I really don’t want to hurt anyone but I mean it, if you keep testing me, I will go to max speed and shake your head like a can of coke.”

I take a moment to digest his threat.

“Fuck off,” I reply, bringing a hand up to bat away one of his own. Seeing that I’m not the slightest bit cowed, SOlstice gives a growl of frustration before trying to take the reigns again.

“I mean it dude, if you try to go out there I’ll… I’ll break your fucking legs!” 

I can’t help it, the threat makes me snort. That’s such a rookie thing to do, you don’t switch threats, it makes you look unwilling. ANd just looking at this guy, the way his throat bobs with a nervous gulp, he’s not actually prepared to do either of the things he promised. 

It was a good attempt though, I gotta give credit where credit’s due and if I were anyone else, that bluff might’ve worked.

“Yeah well,” I try to brush by him but he’s unyielding in the face of my barely 130 pound effort. “Grue will break my legs if I don’t.”

It’s lame but I chuckle at my own joke, the best jokes are the ones with the tiniest bit of truth to them after all. My chuckle is the lone sound in the room and when it peters out, this silence feels different than what came before. The other ones were awkward and maybe a little tense but this one… it somehow feels looming.

I look up from Solstice’s robes, not remembering when my eyes trailed down, and I learn that it’s possible for a mask to show emotion.

Solstice stares at me, his whole body still for once as the last bit of my mirth is swallowed up by the choking quiet. Within a moment the lack of sound evolves, becoming low and deep somehow, haunting in its completeness.

A minute or an hour later, Solstice finally replies, taking one step back as his head tilts down to my shoes and back up my whole body.

“What…” he can’t quite hide the cough as he resettles his footing, unwilling to let himself be even a step further from me. “What do you mean by that?”

I roll my eyes and try to bat at his other hand when it slides down to grip my shoulder. My hand hits his wrist ineffectually and I let it drop between us as I answer.

“Just a joke, okay? Don’t read too much into it.” the answer I gave, clearly isn’t the one he wants and his hand squeezes me tighter as he digs, incredulity in his voice.

“Just a joke?” He repeats, “What kind of fucking joke is that? That you’re friend will break your fucking legs if you don’t go risking your life?”

That everpresent heat inside of me sparks at his words, like a hungry fire trying to spread outside of a stone circle. I push it down as best I can put I know some of it leaks through the sigh I give.

“It’s just a fucking joke, alright? Don’t your teammates joke with each other?” again, I think I’ve put my foot in my mouth when Solstice stiffens, the grip on my shoulder becoming painful as he shouts at me.

“No! We don’t joke about fucking hurting each other man, we don’t—” his head turns away from me and though it’s hard to hear through the explosions still sounding in from outside, I can faintly catch him mumbling under his breath. “How the fuck did we get it so wrong, how did we—”

The actual meaning of his words doesn’t mean shit to me, it’s how he says them. That being, at a normal pace.

I smirk as I rear my head back and slam my forehead against the nose of his mask with all my might. The smirk sharpens when I hear something crunch underneath and the scream that follows.

Solstice steps back, both hands clutching at his mask and I try to follow it up with a swift kick. My leg sings in pain as I bring it forward and unfortunately, Solstice is able to dodge it by several feet, his steps twice as fast as he walks backward.

He brings his hands down from his face to examine them even though it’s impossible any blood leaked through his pristine mask. When he finds nothing, they fall into clenched fists at his side, his voice coming out a lot higher

“Ohyoumotherfucker!” His shout is almost funny, no wonder he doesn’t talk when he uses his power, I wouldn’t either if it made me sound like a chipmu—

My back is up against the wall before I can blink, my spine clattering painfully against itself and the moldridden concrete as Solstice starts his supersonic asskicking.

He lets me collapse to the floor as he rains punches and kicks down on top of me, the pain for one doesn’t really register until the next five have landed. I huddle in on myself, arms over my head and legs tucked into my chest like I’m preparing for a tornado.

My piecemeal defense doesn’t hold up under the assault and when a kick slams into the small of my back (or maybe when the next ten do) my vision starts to fade, the edges of it going black and leaving me with only the eyes of my thralls.

Shatterbird is getting her throat ripped out and I think Ubermensch just got slammed down into the sewers… fuck, they’re gonna be free here in a second. The thought actually brings me a bit of… relief. Yeah, that’s it, relief.

If they thought dealing with them was bad when I was in control, they’ll see how dumb they were when they’re left to their own devices. I start to drift off when the wailing stops, Solstice is either satisfied or I’m too beat to recognize any… new… blow—

There’s the sting of something against my thigh and it feels like liquid electricity is shot through my veins as I bolt up right, my breath coming in rapid gasps as I open my eyes.

The whole world feels like it’s doubled itself, the lights and sounds bang on my mind and I try to ground it through the normal sense I can pick up from my powers. What the hell just happened? I look down at my shaking hands and spy something white between the fingers.

Letting my hands fall, my eyes focus on the thick white and yellow device slammed into my thigh. In a blink, it’s yanked out of me and I scream at the sensation and watch it roll across the room as Solstice stands over me, his whole form blinking and twisting in this light, faster than I’ve ever seen.

And then, he turns it off and stands over me, catching his breath at a normal rate.

“Look…” he says, voice… sympathetic despite the bruises blossoming on my skin. I hate it, the one word filled with so much goddamn pity it’s ready to burst with a single poke, like he has any goddamn right to pity me! 

I’m fucking Regent, I’m— my ribs are in enough pain that I can feel them scream even through the haze of the epipen. 

“I don’t know you, I won’t make conclusions off people I don’t know but… look, if you need—” He’s cut off by the tolling of some loud fuck off bell, the ringing sounds like a stereotypical prop effect you’d see in a period film and Solstice turns his head to the door with a sigh. “That’s my cue to bounce ReRe—” his nickname for me is appalling and before I can tell SoSo to fuck off, he’s in front of me again, blurring as his hands roam over me. I brace myself for a punch or something worse but I open them when I realize he’s uncrumpling my clothes and even fixing my hair when he steps back. “See you… when I see you I guess.”

And with that lame goodbye, the speedster has vanished, nothing but dust kicking up in his wake as he exits the room. 

The world outside is quiet but not in that way that says Grue’s fucking with the sounds, I can hear birds, the distant sound of traffic, some fires crackling but as much as I strain my ears, I don’t hear a single explosion, gunshot, or scream.

The Adepts… I think they’re gone. I close my eyes and let myself feel the coolness of the concrete through my shirt and pants, the temperature feels nice against my burning skin and I focus on my thralls, calling them to me.

Ubermensch is climbing his way out of the sewer, that giant, Rhodes I think his name was, had slammed into it a few times, his sheer size letting him bat around my thrall like an invincible chew toy.

Somehow the disgusting muck and run off of Brockton Bay doesn’t stick to him, it slides off both him and his clothes like oil and I make him shake like a dog to get the last stubborn drops out of his hair and beard. It might’ve annoyed him to have it in but it would annoy me a lot more if I had to deal with that stench.

Shatterbird is making her way off a rooftop, her throat is agony but she can’t make a single sound from it. The glass I managed to save encases her in a thinner shell than I’d like, lowering her to the ground as she starts her walk back to me.

Without her voice, I have to conserve what little she has left, I can’t risk stressing those last few shards and leaving her defenseless before Panacea can get to her. She’s a linchpin in  the Undersiders grip on the city and if I lose her then the others—

The others won’t see me as useful.

The thought makes me growl and I stand up despite the aches in my bones. Useful, that’s all I’m supposed to be and look what that got me. The Adepts send three of their seven capes just to slow me down, I take on half of their forces, get my ass kicked in three different fights and somehow, some fucking how I just know the others didn’t get any of the other four Adepts, despite the numbers on their side.

My blood is boiling by the time my thralls make it back to me, both of them coming in through the hole Rhodes made on his way out. Both of them look like they’ve been through hell, even with his immunity to most powers, Ubermensch looks dazed by his fight with Rhodes and the single burning handprint on Shatterbird’s throat looks like it belongs in a horror movie.

With a snap of my fingers, the three of us leave the same way we came in and I take a moment to take in the damage.

The street is in ruins, whole chunks of asphalt lift up out of each other and form jagged spikes like an ancient caves floor. Some parts of it are glossier than the rest, the sunlight reflecting off the tar as it dribbles down the broken road.

One of Blasto’s Tangles hangs from a  crooked streetlight, its long arms are wrapped around the light fixture and its viney legs graze the street, the glow of its single eye dimmed with its death. The apartment complex opposite is almost falling apart, the ruins of it threatening to collapse under the wind.

I swallow something in my throat when I look at the splatter of blood on the sidewalk in front of me, its grass green, so very alien from the blood most bleed but I know for a fact that it's blood. There’s a moan on my left side and I wince at the creature laying there.

It’s one of Blastos Gorillas, the four armed thing looks at me with… fear. 

It’s strange, I know for a fact that it wasn’t able to do that earlier, it couldn’t look at me with anything. It wasn’t alive, not really anyway. Any mind inside of it is just a shadow of a shadow, the remains of what might’ve been an actual gorilla.

But now it does, its golden eyes stare at me and its breath heaves in strain. I don't think the guy’s gonna make it. For some reason… that bothers me. It’s just a thing, a mindless monster that shouldn’t illicit anything with its passing but…

I have Ubermensch put a hand on its one reaching arm, watching as the eyes turn soft for a moment as they gaze up at my thrall. This monster doesn’t know what it’s looking at, doesn’t know the man above him will kill if given the chance.

And there’s something blissful in that ignorance, that it can’t see the blood staining Ubermensch’s hands. Its eyes start to droop, half lidded and tired before finally shutting closed, at peace that it won’t die alone.

I don’t know why but the moment keeps on stretching even after the thing has slumped against the brickwork. I just stand there, staring at the corpse and unable to think. Something… slimy tries to go up my throat, there isn’t much of whatever it is but swallowing it down is a bit harder than I would’ve thought.

With that done, I can finally look at the rest of the street and my heart plummets on who I spy at the street corner.

Grue, Bitch, and Tattletale are discussing something in a heated debate. Lisa is scowling but trying her best to be civil, Rachel moves her head like an actual dog when she yells, and Brian’s hands speak through him better than his words ever could. I can’t help but stare at them, the way the sun bounces off of Lisa’s ruddy golden tresses, the way Rachel’s new mask let’s her own locks fall free to her shoulders, the way Brian’s hands twitch forward before he strangles them back.

I want to walk over, more than anything that’s all I want. I almost let my tired mind start the walking for me when Rachel leans her head back just a bit too much.

The bright red, angled eye of her mask just barely catches me but her whole head turns the second she spots me. With her sudden lapse in focus, the others look with her as well, Grue’s helmet and Tattletale’s piercing eyes all snap onto me like crosshairs and I can’t help the flinch going through me under their attention.

Thankfully, I was able to shove the feeling into Shatterbird before I turn my eyes to the other street corner. They don’t want to talk to me right now, they… I should just go, We’re already pissed at each other and as ready to fight as I am, I’d rather save a screaming match for when we’re back home.

I start to walk to the end of the street debating the logistics of Ubermensch carrying me and Shatterbird home when a pair of hands push me down to the sidewalk.

On instinct, I have my thralls turn as I catch myself, Ubermensch clenches his fists and puts his arms’s up in a classic boxer’s pose as the miniscule bits of glass on SHatterbird flare like a cockatiel. 

One of The Adepts is still here, someone that thought—

It’s Rachel.

The person who shoved me, the person who’s staring down Ubermensch like it’s a twelve gauge pointed at her face, the person who is completely defenseless with her hounds back with Tattletale, is Rachel.

She looks at me like I’ve stabbed her, her posture frozen and her hands still raised up as she takes me in. Her new mask leaves the lower half of her face out in the open and her jaw is left open for half a second before she closes it with a snap. There’s something about the way it tightens that screams resignment to me.

I can see that same feeling in her eyes, that look of ‘Well… that’s how it is then.’ 

Immediately, I have my thralls put their arms down but for some reason, the gesture comes slower than I demand it, like… well it’s stupid but it’s almost like my own power is saying I’m mistaken. That she, that Rachel, one of my best friends, the girl I’ve taught how to hold a pencil to and bandaged when injured, is somehow—-

No, that isn’t right! 

She’s Rachel damnit! She’s the girl I held when she finally broke down in October, she’s the girl that held me when I finally did the same last Christmas. She’s the girl I confessed to that my scars still ache like lightning whenever there’s a bright flash, the one who kissed my hideously injured hand and told me that it was just as pretty as when she met me, the one who wiped at my face and lied with me that they weren’t tears.

She’s Rachel and… my power… I don’t feel comfortable putting my weapons away around her.

Eventually, by the time Grue has stomped over to us, I’ve finally gotten Ubermensch’s fists and Shatterbird’s glass to lower, the action feeling like I’m trying to push a lifejacket to the bottom of a pool.

The shadow of the building covers me and my thralls but leaves her to stand luminescent in the twilight, her skin and hair look radiant and I know I fall flat in comparison, She’s calm and stands tall, without a scratch on her while I’m hunched, the pain in my torso makes me crouch like a wretch in the dark, my black clothes are covered in dust and debris.

We couldn’t look more different and it aches to know that fact.

I raise my own hand up at the same time Rachel puts hers down. I don’t have anything ready to say but my mouth opens all the same.

“Rachel… I didn’t mean—”

“Home,” Grue cuts me off, the darkness coming off him like a smokestack. The eyes of his helmet have never looked emptier as he stares at me and his power isn’t thick enough around his hands to hide the pops his knuckles make when they clench. “Now.”

I don’t remember the ride back to the tower, I don’t remember the way Judas flinched when I sat on top of him, I don’t remember the way he used to like me second best. 

I don’t remember walking in the lobby of the tower, I don’t remember seeing Taylor and Amy there, I don’t at all remember the way the other three dropped their anger at the sight of her, how they fawned over her, how they asked if she was alright and scanned her side for injuries.

I don’t remember any of that the same way I don’t remember putting my thralls back in their respective cages. All I remember is the ride back up to the penthouse, that the elevator still felt suffocating when it was just me.

The others were still downstairs, probably still dropping everything in making sure Taylor’s fine even though it’s obvious she’s okay! Don’t they realize Panacea wouldn’t have let go downstairs if she weren’t?

And what about me?

The adrenaline’s worn off and even after half an hour, I’m still not used to the pain I’m in. Nothing’s broken as far as I can tell but it’ll be a damn miracle if I’m not pissing blood tonight. I look wounded, I look like I’ve been through hell and I don’t know what happened to Taylor but somehow, I doubt it’s as bad as me.

The thought is tinder and the heat inside me burns brighter than ever, something crawls up my throat and I let it out as the doors open. The Penthouse looks exactly like how we left it and I walk to the couch as I reach up to pull off my mask.

They’re gonna fucking blame for it, I fucking know it. What ‘it’ is exactly doesn’t matter, the Adepts showing up, Taylor getting hurt, the sun got in their eyes, it doesn’t matter what the fuck the reason actually is just so long as it’s my fault.

The fire inside of me burns to my limbs and hands, filling them with a buzzing energy that demands to be released. I know I can’t swallow it this time, I know for a fact that if I try, I’ll just end up hurting myself.

Not like that matters I suppose, I’ve already got a damn good headstart on that front. I throw my mask off to the side as I take my seat on the centermost part of the sofa, uncaring about the dust and dirt I must be fusing into the cushions.

I reach for the remote and controller on the low table in front of me and this time, the pain in my ribs is almost refreshing. The burn makes my eyes open wide and I hiss as I lean back to the couch, the tv on and the console booting up a game I haven’t been able to play in months.

I turn the volume up as loud as I can, the sound actually shaking the railing above me as I get past the main menu and back to my place. The controls don’t come back to me as quickly as usual but that’s just because of the break I was forced to take.

The guns and explosions don’t sound real at all but that’s a godsend after hearing the real deal so many times in a single afternoon. Pixelated blood flies from pixelated bodies and the noise almost drowns out everything else.

Almost everything, but not the ding that cuts through it all.

The elevator opens and the four sets of approaching footsteps somehow take my attention despite their relative quiet. I try to shrug it off, try to keep playing my game, but then those footsteps stop and the people they belong to stand above me.

All of them are still in costume, Grue is the closest, actually stepping down between the table and couch to loom over me. His leathers blend into the darkness wafting off him until he’s just an indistinct blob with a bleach white skull floating near the top.

He doesn’t say a word, like he expects his mere presence to be enough to cow me into line, that I’ll turn off my game and kiss his boots. Yet for some reason, the technique isn;t nearly as effective as it would’ve been yesterday.

If anything, it just makes the fire inside me burn white as I tear my gaze away from him and back to the screen. I try to listen to the game, try to keep my eyes fixed on the nameless alien I’m shooting at when another teammate steps closer, mirroring Grue as she takes her spot between the sofa and table.

I look up her tattered jeans to the snarling girl beneath the snarling mask. Rachel looks at me with barely constrained hate and though the fire bats it away well enough, the look in her amber eyes is sharp enough to make my chest ache.

That ache makes me pause the game as I lean back and do my best to match her gaze.

“What?” I ask and immediately Rachel replies.

“Where…” she trails off, anger making her voice shake. “Were you?”

Oh, she wants to know where I was, why I wasn’t wiping her ass during the fight. I can’t help but snort as I tilt my head at her, the anger on her face heightens alongside my amusement.

“Was a bit busy,” I tell her, “Y’know, getting milk and some cigarettes and oh! Yeah, fighting three of them at once.”

I’m not sure whether it’s my answer or the tone I said it with but Rachel’s lips rise up in a snarl, her teeth bared and incisors somehow sharper looking in this light. She grabs at my controller, wrenching it away from my hands and throwing it behind her without tearing her eyes on me.

The look she’s shooting me is downright feral but… it doesn’t hurt, if anything, it just makes me laugh a bit. My chuckles add fuel to her fire and that in turn just makes me laugh harder. She’s so goddamn furious and it’s adorable, like she can actually risk hurting me.

Now don’t get me wrong, she could beat the shit out of me right here. Even if our wounds were swapped, if it were me with a Panacea glow up and her more bruised than not, she’d still kick my ass black and blue. But the ability to do it and actually doing it are two very different things.

Sure, she could put me in a bodycast for a few months but I’d be laughing all the while, without Regent… well, let’s just say the insurmountable Undersiders might look like easier prey to people like the Elite or Fallen, especially given the ass kicking we got dealt today.

I turn my head to the left and past the human smoke cloud, I lock eyes with Lisa, her inquisitive green gaze stares at me like a mortician, her eyes are the scalpel and… oh, isn’t that a shame? I’m right, aren’t I sweetheart?

Her glare hardens but it just bounces off me, the fire inside of me has become a fucking shield, there’s nothing they can say or do to pierce it and… fuck! It feels great.

“Wipe that smile off your face,” Lisa orders me, her words hissed out through a locked jaw. “Just because we need your power doesn’t mean we need—”

“Oh would you fuck off with the ‘all seeing eye shit?’” I ask her, reveling in her shocked expression. I haven’t been this bold in months and it’s gotta sting to know she hasn’t ground me under her heel yet. “It might’ve been sexy when I watched you doing it to someone else, but it’s not even cute when you do it to me, split lip.”

The insult slid off my tongue like a throwing dagger and her eyes actually look pained when she brings a hand up to her mouth, to the three inch long scar Jack Slash gave her when she thought she could mouth off to him.

There was a time I’d hate looking in those eyes and seeing even an ounce of pain but for once, it feels vindictive to me to watch her blink the tears away. To know, that I can hurt her the way she’s been doing it for months, that I can stand on an even playing field and—

“Don’t you FUCKING TALK TO HER LIKE THAT!” Grue screams inside his helmet as he reaches down for me, his hands lifting me up by the lapels of my shirt. THe display would probably make plenty of people piss themselves but to me… it just looks like he’s grasping at straws.

“Oh?” I ask, smiling in that way that used to make their eyes melt. “I’m sorry, you’re the ones that barged in here and decided to pick a fight? Can I not hit back?”

“You couldn’t handle—” I roll my eyes as slowly and visibly as I can before cutting him off.

“Take off that fucking thing when you talk to me,” I order and when he doesn’t let me go… a sickening thought bubbles up in my mind. Something I’ve never done before… but…. I could make him do it.

Something has to show in my eyes because Brian lets me go the second I look down to his hands. The fall back to the couch forces a laugh out of me for some reason, a giggle that gets a little faster as he takes his helmet off and drops in my lap with a bit more force than necessary. 

Darkness leaks out of his eyes and floats up to his hairline like an upside down crying man and the look he gives me, or the parts that aren’t shrouded in his power, is down right murderous.

“There we go,” I mock. “That wasn’t so hard was it?”

“What the hell has gotten into you?” Brian asks, his helmet no longer serving as an echo chamber for his power. 

“Oh…” I reply, putting in as much melodramatic sympathy as a middle school performance of Romeo and Juliette. “I’m sorry I’m not wilting the way you like, it’s gotta hurt knowing you can’t hurt me the way you’ve been.”

“We—” there’s a denial on Lisa’s lips and whether it’s for hurting me or that she still has tricks up her sleeve, I don’t care to find out.

“No,” I cut her off again. “There’s no more Lis’, no more secrets you can unearth, nothing that can scare me. I used be Jean-Paul Vasil, used to be Hijack, and I’ve killed more people that didn’t deserve it than people that did. I did so many horrible things and you’ve already spilled them all. You can’t hurt me and—”

“That’s not what this is about!” Taylor cuts me off and I turn my head to her like it’s a literal weight, exaggerating the movement as much as I can to stare at the bug queen. Why on earth they let the ice queen take the stage is beyond me, if the mental icepick and biker ripoff can’t hurt me then why the—

Taylor’s crying.

Big fat tears slide down her face as she stares at me, her kind and soulful brown eyes blink out more tears as she sucks in a harsh gasp. Her shoulders shake and the mask gripped in her hands squeaks as her fingers wring it in nervous energy. 

The shield that protected me is completely useless as she sniffles, her face red in humiliation as she soldiers on to speak.

“I—I—” She gasps again and I think something in my chest shatters as she resists the urge to bawl. “I g-got hurt a-and—” her eyes stare into my very soul, without an ounce of anger or malice to them as she finishes. “D-don’t you care?”

The bravado I was spitting has run dry and I try to sit up as I look at her, uncaring about the cuts opening up on my sides as I speak.

“Of course I care,” I try to soothe her and try not to hate myself when she shakes her head. “I do! I just… they brought people to the fight, people just for me and— and— I’m sorry, I’m sorry I didn’t get away, I’m sorry I didn’t help you but I care, I would’ve—”

“No,” Rachel’s voice is hard and save for the slight rasp at the end of her word, she doesn’t even sound angry. “You wouldn’t have, even if no one was focusing on you, you wouldn’t have helped us and you know why?”

She takes my attention as she leans down, her eyes packed full to the brim in hate. 

“It’s because there’s nothing inside of you, no hate, no love, nothing. You’re sad and empty and if we died today you wouldn’t have even cared.”

Her words reignite the anger in my gut and I can finally name the feeling, the fire that kept me warm all day, the fire that tried to burn me alive, it’s rage, and it comes out as I bring one hand up to my sleeve and yank it down.

They all flinch at the bright white lines on my skin, the way they slide up my arm like the flesh was made of glass. It’s hideous and anyone who says otherwise is a liar as I try to match their eyes, all of them looking away in shame as I speak.

“I…” my voice trembles in rage, the syllables coming up my throat like knives yanked out of a corpse. “I would die for any of you, don’t you get that? If it were needed, if I could cleanly give my life to any of you so that you could keep going, I’d do it. I have done it! Do you think this is because I thought I’d be okay? Do you think I yelled at Behemoth because I thought I’d survive?!”

They finally turn their eyes back to me and the expressions on their faces, they don’t bring me any comfort despite what they say. The shame, the fear, the regret, the sorrow and pain, all of it screams that they understand and that… that they’re sorry.

The everpresent lump in my throat tries to make itself heard and I think I only half swallow it down as my vision gets watery, some fucking dust from the fight falling into my lashes.

“Don’t you get it?” I ask, a final time, “That I… that I’d die for you?”

And for the briefest second, the smallest infinitesimal moment, it looks like I’ve finally gotten through to them, the darkness overtaking Brian’s form is snuffed out to reveal eyes wheeling up in sorrow. His lips are drawn up and puckered slightly, trying to keep back his anguish even as his shoulders shake.

Lisa isn’t in much better shape, one hand going up to hide her mouth but unable to stop the cry that bursts through. She shuts her eyes tight, knowing for a fact that if she opens them up, she’s going to start crying. Her shoulders hunch and draw in on themselves as she brings her other hand up to press against the first, like a soldier bracing a door.

Rachel tries to step closer to me, regret bathing every contour of her face as her bottom lip trembles. She puts one hand out, the fingers relaxed and non threatening as she reaches for me, like she can just take her words out of the air. A whimper comes out of her as she closes her eyes a second too slow, sorrow sliding down her cheek as Taylor’s cries get worse.

The brown eyed girl isn’t like our other teammates, she doesn’t try to push her emotions down or away from her even though she’s the best equipped to do that. She lets her mask fall to the floor as she brings both her hands up, the fingers clutched around her shoulders and trying to wring out whatever comfort she can from the self hug.

Things look like they’re finally over, that the hump we’ve been in, the decay of our relationsh— our friendship might stop, that they might…. That they might let me in again.

But then, just as quickly as the moment came… it goes.

Rachel’s hand clenches into a fist an inch away from my skin and she pulls it back, the regret that seemed to stain her eyes is wipe away in a long blink and her back straightens before she turns away from me.

Taylor’s sobs stop with a single, sharp inhale and her eyes steel over, the glaze to them tells me where the emotions went and if I strain my ears, I can almost imagine the droning in the floors below.

Lisa's sharp gaze finds itself again and without a shield to protect me, I feel naked in a barbed wire field. Her eyes rack over me with a disdain she's only held for the worst bastards that came for us.

Brian's the worst, his tears stop falling and the whites of his eyes turn black as he grimaces. I can almost see the words coming up his throat but it still feels like a gunshot when he speaks.

"So why don't you?"

I have no rebuttal, nothing I could possibly say to that. I've been shot at, stabbed, my mind has been twisted and stretched like taffy but that, those four words feel like the worst thing ever.

Everything that came before it, all the pain that's ever been dealt to me… it all feels like a shadow of this when the others depart.

I don't know how long I sit on that couch, the TV turns blue when the console shuts itself off and the color helps me realize my folly.

The fire, the rage, that ugly thing that kept an even uglier thing content, that isn't something for me. I don't have right to that feeling.

Feelings are for people and… I don't count.