Valentine's Day

Brian Laborn/Grue
February 1st, 2013

The alarm beside my bed has just barely started up, the preprogrammed little beeps barely loud enough to hear but steadily rising in volume. Here in less than twenty seconds, it’s gonna be blaring.

I reach for it blindly, swiping the notification to dismiss it and the moment the alarm quiets, the windows to my right start to lose opacity, slowly letting in trickles of light as the tv turns itself on, blinding me for a moment as it turns up to a volume I can just barely hear.

On reflex, I try to get both hands up to rub at my face but find my left arm completely pinned by a warm body. With just my right hand, I pinch my nose and do my best to wipe the sleep away. Eventually, through a lot of squinting, I get my eyes to adjust to the room and look down at the person I’m holding.

I brush Taylor’s hair away from her face as best I can, careful not to tug at the pinned waves as she burrows her nose into my bicep. My fingers shift through her silky black locks when the obnoxious chime of the Brockton Bay news catches my attention.

“Though the PRT has yet to give an official statement regarding his actions, public opinion on what Undersider’s leader, Grue accomplished earlier this week is pretty clear cut.” A news anchor with a name I can never bother to remember stares at the camera, his voice confident and bold as he greets the audience.

There’s another one of those annoying chimes as the logo in the bottom right grows to consume the whole screen before blurring away with a woosh to reveal the accomplishment in question. It’s a video of me, the one Lisa had professionally filmed and sent to every major news agency from here to Miami.

It’s been cut down heavily, starting with me already at sixty feet tall and lifting the front half of a rusted cargo ship out of the silt and foam. The metal groans and creaks for just a moment before the audio is cut down, the anchor speaking over the footage.

“While the efforts of various clean up crews and companies have done much to revitalize Brockton as a city, the same could not be said for the infamous boat graveyard. While the recent shipping and trading company, Styx was responsible for the creation of the Brockton Ferry and the narrow canal into the Bay itself, they were unsuccessful in clearing much of the debris that warded off larger companies.”

The anchor takes a deep breath and I watch as the me of last Tuesday throws the ship aside, moving it further away from the mouth of the bay. I did that exact same thing with close to a hundred different boats, all of them either put on the shore itself or broken down into enough pieces that they could fit there too.

Once I had them all put away the sun was starting to set and the last surviving valkyrie was almost asleep in my pocket, blind and deaf to the whole world as I used her power to get rid of Brockton’s worst eyesore.

No heroes came to interrupt me, although really, the only fliers left in the Bay wouldn’t be able to do much at that size. Well, Dauntless probably would’ve but I doubt he minded me literally opening up the Bay’s economy.

With the day finished, I had dusted my hands off and made my way back to shore, thankful that whatever the hell Menja’s power does to increase durability meant that my leathers weren’t ruined by the saltwater.

“That was until Grue himself came to take matters into his own hands, using his ability to copy and duplicate powers, he was able to grow to a size that let him clear the Bay of almost all wreckage save for the debris that can be cleaned up using mundane machinery.”

My brow furrows at the anchor’s words, he might be in our pocket but he shouldn’t be making it so obvious. The graveyard could’ve been cleared using normal non powered methods, it wasn’t some Tinker creation or long lasting Blaster effect, it was just some old boats gathering sand and salt.

Of course, having powers did make it a lot easier to clean up but still, he shouldn’t be singing my praises the way he is.

“While Grue has not made a reappearance since last Tuesday morning, many are wondering just how he’ll deal with the wreckage of the Protectorate’s former headquarters, located nearly a mile and half farther than the graveyard. While the former floating base has been grounded well away from any shipping routes, debris from it is known to wash up on the shore nearly every day.”

I tune whatever else he was going to say out, my mind turning to the cape I borrowed powers from. Menja hasn’t been the same since Leviathan, losing both her sister and her lover to the Endbringer two Mays ago.

She worked with Hookwolf and his chosen for about a month after that, serving as the mad dog’s right hand man a lot more than she ever did for Kaiser. But then Hookwolf joined up with the Nine, leaving his team to die here.

She fled to Boston like the other Chosen and caused enough of a stir that Accord felt the need to seek help from the closest thing he could call a rival. With Blasto’s aid, her and a lot of the other White Supremacists had to go underground.

Since Accord’s death and Blasto’s retreat into us, she tried her luck with the chain gang for almost a year. The details are a little fuzzy to me but I know things didn’t work out the way she hoped they would.

With virtually no other options and unwilling to leave the coastline she’s spent her whole life on, she came to us about halfway through January.

Why on earth she decided to come here, to the same city that kicked her out, I'll never know. I'm fully willing and able to use her power for as long as I need it, the boats buried beneath the more obvious wrecks will make themselves known soon enough but once those are gone… well, I'm going to try and kick her to the curb.

She came to us in hopes of a probationary membership and while we did offer that to Rune when she joined up, I'm afraid the Undersiders only have room for one former Nazi. And that’s only because Cassie actually put in the work to better herself, she didn’t just come to fights to help us out.

She learned, she fucked up a lot in the early days, she said some real hateful shit like it was second nature and it was like pulling teeth to get her to see why what she was saying was fucked up but she learned.

It took months, months of actually just talking to me and Aisha and all the people she used to hate for no good reason, but she became someone I’m proud to have fight alongside me. Scribe hates the person she used to be and even though she’s still a villain, she goes out as an Undersider every single day in atonement for the crimes she committed in the name of the Empire.

And I could tell with just one conversation that Menja isn’t going to budge at all. She grew up as a bigot, lived in an echo chamber as a bigot, and fought and killed as a bigot. She could be on our team, she could even be an asset by I’m not about to let her.

Lisa’s been trying to sell me on some kind of favor system, simply put, if a cape lets me use their powers for whatever goal we need done in that moment, we’ll return whatever favor so long as it’s within our territory.

It might be a viable idea at some point but  I’d rather not have the first user of that system be Menja of all people.

Thinking about what I’ve been doing in the harbor makes me lean back on the bed, letting myself get sucked into the soft sheets as my mind wanders through the past year.

All in all, it’s been a very good year to be an Undersider an even better year to just live in the Bay.

The jobs are coming back, the reconstruction efforts are actually hitting their stride, and Mayor Christener’s actually decided to do something about Crater lake. Granted, that something isn’t to drain it, according to the report he gave Tattletale, the current plan of action is to just remove the debris and scum from it and then bolster the parts of Lord Street that separate it from the ocean.

Taylor takes me out of my thoughts for just a moment as she mumbles something in her sleep, her leg coming over to tangle with my own as my left hand rubs at her shoulder.

With so many jobs coming in and the city on the fast track to looking like New York… can we really call ourselves villains anymore?

I shake my head as soon as the thought comes, no, we’re still villains, there’s too many dead at our hands to say otherwise and while most had it coming, a fair bit of them didn’t. But labels like that don’t really matter, especially in the grayzone we find ourselves in.

If we ran like the PRT insisted everyone should have after Echidna, this city would be nothing more than ruins, empty streets for all the homeless to flock to and completely disregarded by the United States.

It’s solely because of us that this city is still liveable, that this city is getting better and that in maybe two months time, it’ll be back to how it was before Leviathan. And then two months after that, it will be even better, maybe as prosperous as when the Marquis had the run of things. And then it’ll just keep going until it evens out with New York.

We’ve been doing good things but… I hold Taylor just a bit tighter as I think of all the bad it took to get here, all the money we had to sink in and most it coming from… last June.

The ends justify the means, I tell myself that everytime I have to put on my helmet and I say it again before I head for bed. The things we did were… I don’t like thinking about them this early in the morning.

And of course, just as my thoughts need somebody to rub salt in them, the news cuts to commercial break and a familiar ad starts to play.

I stare down my nose as the stereotypical patriotic music starts to play, it’s a shot of a shipping yard with maybe three dozen people running around and pretending to look busy despite the fact that no one’s worked on one of those yards in almost fifteen years.

Daniel Hebert steps in from the right side of the frame, the camera tracking him as he keeps his eyes fixed on it, his face screwed up in a convincing display of concern.

“The Bay is getting better,” he says, quirking his lips to the side as he gently nods his head. “People are working, checks are being signed but… well, I don’t know about everyone but I for one am tired of pretending things are alright.”

I sigh as I turn my attention back to the nightstand, trying to find where I put the fucking remote as Taylor’s father continues to drone on.

“I’ve seen this city go through some pretty awful times, I was here when the Teeth tried to run things, I was here when the Marche actually did, I saw the Empire rise and I was here when the Dragon came to town. But I’m telling you that right now, Brockton Bay has never been in more danger.”

The remote isn’t on the nightstand and I turn as much as I can to palm my hand on the floor below, my fingers just graze against the casing as the head of the DWU keeps talking.

“As the only man willing to run against Quinn Calle, I am telling you as a dockworker, as a citizen of Brockton Bay that things aren’t as wonderful as they seem. The Undersiders have a grip on every industry, every job, every home, every family and they are only getting a tighter grip with each passing day.”

My fingers knock the remote away just a bit and my lips thin, I swear, when we gave him the ferry he wanted so badly, Lisa assured us that that would be the end of it.

“Men like Director Lionheart would have you believe that what I’m saying isn’t true, that I’m just fear mongering for the sake of it but as much as I’d love to believe that things are getting better because of the Protectorate’s efforts, we all know how little they’ve mattered in the past few years.”

Oh my god, would he just shut up already? My hand finally finds the remote and I lean up to get the best angle with it.

“When I’m elected, I promise to make efforts to bring the heroes back to the bay rather than sending them out. I’ll—”

Whatever other promises he tries to sell us on are silenced with the click of a button. I set the remote down as the windows almost let it in all the light and reach up to pinch at my brow. Promises, promises, promises, that’s all he ever talks about and he doesn’t realize just how… impossible they are.

Mayor’s have a fair bit of power when it comes to city infrastructure, recommending things for the city council, being a tiebreaker on those votes, even vetoing city legislation but when it comes to the PRT, to the Protectorate… they’re nothing.

They have no power to hold heroes, they have no power to deny transfer of heroes, all of that’s a federal decision and making promises for things that aren’t in his wheelhouse will just make him look like a jackass if he gets elected.

Of course, he’s not going to win, even if he wasn’t actually in the minority, the vote’s already got safeguards in place to make sure our candidate wins. It took a lot of money to get Mr. Calle to accept our offer but he’s got everything Brockton Bay needs in a mayor, charisma, intelligence, and completely beholden to anything we tell him to do.

My stomach shifts a bit at the thought, that we’re just… casually overthrowing democracy but it needs to be done. If we hadn’t subverted Mayor Christener, he wouldn’t have been so quiet about Styx, the company at the forefront of the Brockton Bay Restoration Project.

Mostly, Styx does good work, it employs almost fifteen thousand hard that work on demolition, construction, and all manner of things that help clear the way to make Brockton a nicer city. The vast majority of things it does are for the genuine good of everyone living here.

That doesn’t mean it’s completely clean of course.

Styx launder a lot of money for us, helps keep our bank accounts clean, and makes the delivery and pick up of most of our dead drops harder for the police to spot.

And that’s the kind of work we need the new mayor to do, like Mr. Christener, we need him to strangle investigations, stall certain detectives, and divert attention whenever we ask. 

Of course, while Mayor Calle will work the police and media side of things as best he can, Director Lionheart will be doing much the same for the Protectorate and PRT side.

I try to hold in a groan when I remember the director’s new name.

Did he have to take his husband’s last name? I’m not cynical enough to think he married him just for some for sort of PR scheme but having the most notoriously cowardly Director with the name Lionheart is just asking for jokes to be made.

That said, we might have to tighten the leash on him a bit, I’m not sure where to credit his changing attitude to but the man actually got curt with me over the phone last week. Curtness I can understand, I can even respect it in certain amounts but something in my gut warns me that it’s just the beginning.

Before my thoughts can tangle in on themselves any further, the body beside mine stirs. As quick as I can, I turn onto my side and wrap my other arm around her, pulling the black haired girl into my chest and closing my eyes.

“Go back to sleep,” I tell her, my voice petering off into a yawn as I reach down to pull the blanket back around both of us. Taylor stills just a bit before her arms snake around me, her breath slowing as my mind gets heavier.

What we’re doing is futile and we both know it, once she’s awake, there isn’t a force on earth that get her to go back to bed. And after maybe half a minute of pretending it’s working, she pulls away enough to look up at me.

“Five more minutes?” I ask her, trying to keep the word buzzy feeling out of my voice when she quietly nods. That feeling goes away as we hold each other close, my fingers running gently through her hair and undoing knots as painlessly as I can.

What we’re doing might seem a bit… intimate to some but we’re not together like that, not in the way PHO loves to speculate.

We almost had something after the Nine and I think we were close to rediscovering that when we first moved in but… no, we’re not together, not like that anyways. We’re just two people that… need a little help sometimes.

And last night was just another one of those times.

Honestly, I don’t even remember what my nightmare was about, I can remember some shapes and a few flashes of color but really that’s it. Some white, some black, a whole lot of pale blue but the actual content of it vanished almost as soon as I woke up.

The only thing I can recall is heading back up to my room with a glass of water and hearing the sniffling a few doors down.

Nightmares come and go for all of us, the horrible dreams are frequent enough that we’ve had to come to each other a lot, but Taylor has something a bit different.

Last night, I went into her room and found her on her bed, her knees up for her arms to hug and tears streaming down her face. She looked at me with the saddest eyes I’d ever seen and without a word, she let me walk over to her and pick her up.

She drained half the glass and at my urging drank the rest while I carried her to my room. None of us know why she does it and none of us are willing to dig either, it’s just a fact of life in the tower, Taylor will cry herself out of sleep at least once a month.

The only thing worth knowing about it is that one of us has to help her through it whenever it happens.

Granted, that’s not a policy or anything but she’s usually too stubborn to get us herself even though she’s always relieved whenever we get there.

The first few times I had to come in she was pretty annoyed but not last night, I don't what gets her to cry and I've never had the courage to ask.

Sleeping like this might be weird to other capes, especially when we're not dating but it's not a unique thing for her and I.

Some mornings, Lisa and Rachel are leaving the blonde's room together, other days it's one of them that I'm waking up to. In fact, maybe once a month or so, we all just crash together in my room, purely because it's the one closest to the stairs.

Although, nights with the four of us together aren't random, those nights either happen because of some shit that happened that day or the anniversary of something awful.

The last time we all slept in this bed together, with Rachel and I's arms wrapped around Lisa and Taylor, was January 3rd… the same day two years ago that Taylor got her powers.

I hold the girl a bit closer and even though I know it's just playing in my head, I could swear I can still hear her sobs. Taylor's strong, one of the strongest people I've ever known but… we all need help sometimes.

The time before that was November, I can't remember the day exactly, I just remember that Uber and L33t came back to the Bay, tried to pull their usual shit and…

Rachel brought a new dog out there, a little schnauzer named Bruduce.

The pup made it out okay, there's very little Panacea can't fix if she puts her mind to it, but Rachel… she didn't have a great reaction to it.

Of course that's to be expected, to her dogs are like family, like brothers and sisters and… well it would be like if Uber had speared Aisha on his stupid lightning spear.

The two 'joke' villains had realized just how badly they fucked up when Rachel screamed, actually hopping off of Judas to rush to the limp body of her newest hound.

She shook the dog violently but whatever energy she'd lent to make the pup bigger was starting to fade. 

Lisa had told me right then that once the outer body decayed, there wouldn't be any pressure on Bruduce's wounds.

Uber and L33t tried to bail of course, the instant Olympian and the failure of a tinker bounding away in oddly medieval mech suits before the former was slammed to the ground by Atlas.

The tinker wore a much larger pot bellied suit with a comically big and obviously tinkertech hammer, which he attempted to use to squash the giant bug.

And it would've worked… a year ago, when Atlas was just a giant beetle.

But Taylor and Amy have been hard at work pushing Atlas to the pinnacle of biology while still being… buggy enough for Taylor to control. 

His shell isn't quite metal but the chitin gleams with some kind of steel bolstering to the cells. His whole body is maybe twice as heavy but that's a pretty small increase given that he's grown twice as big.

To make a long story short, Bruduce survived and Uber and L33t are probably somewhere in Salt Lake City by now, robbing every tech store, jumping at every shadow, and screaming at every bug.

Taylor's five minutes end just as I spot a blurry figure moving in the doorway. My eyes focus to see Lisa leaning up against the open door, two mugs held haphazardly in one hand and one in the other.

"Morning," she greets and Taylor turns in my arms to squint at the blonde. The Thinker snorts and I know why, it's the same reason she always does whenever she sees Taylor early in the morning. "I still don't get why you won't let Panacea fix your eyesight."

Taylor rolls her eyes and puts a hand up, the back of her hand on my shoulder in a clear gesture. I roll my own eyes and turn enough to grab the glasses on the nightstand.

Like everytime Lisa makes that comment, Taylor doesn't grace it with a response as she puts her glasses on.

Instead, she just gets out of the bed and without stretching, passes Lisa by as she heads out of the room. The green eyed girl just shakes her head as she walks towards the bed, setting one mug down on the nightstand as she speaks.

“I swear, she can play god with Amy all day but she still won’t use a bathroom that isn’t hers.”

I don’t know what to say to that observation and just take the offered mug quietly. Lisa waits until I’m in the middle of my first sip to speak. 

“So, how’s the sugar with a splash of coffee?” She’s got the same smug grin that she always wears whenever she makes that joke, which is to say, I see it every morning. And as per our routine, I glare at her over the rim of my mug as I swallow.

“Three sugars is not that weird,” I tell her, “If anything, enjoying it black is the outlier.”

Lisa scoffs at my reasoning and slides into bed with me. I switch hands with the mug and wrap my left arm around her as she presses herself into my side.

“Usually people say three sugars to mean three teaspoons Brian, not three tablespoons.” While her reasoning is just as sound as my own, I still scoff at it. That just sounds to me like most people don’t know how to enjoy coffee.

Thankfully, Lisa provides me with a pretty good segue as she grabs at the discarded blanket. She pulls it up over her own legs and I’m not quite able to keep the smile off my face when she pouts up at me.

“It’s cold,” she defends against the comment I didn’t make. “You didn’t have to say anything, and it’s not just because of my power that I can read you.”

“Well…” I reply, “Then why do you feel the need to lie to me?”

“I’m not—” Lisa pretends that tugging up the blanket needs all of her focus as she tries to come up with a reply. “I’m not lying, it just really is that cold, y’know? Not my fault you don’t feel it through all your muscle.”

“Lisa… I shake my head and pull her closer into my side, “It might be February but this whole tower is temp controlled, I even let you talk me into the stupid floor heaters. You can just tell me if you need a hug, alright?”

I meant for it to be teasing at first but I realized about halfway through that it’s a lot more serious than I was treating it. Lisa’s a lot like Taylor in needing comfort, which is to say, she needs it as much as the rest of us do but she’s only a little less stubborn than the brown eyed girl.

“I know…” she says, sinking into me a bit and draining a lot of her mug. “I— can’t this be enough? Can’t me getting you coffee be enough of a ‘hey! I could use a hug?’”

“I mean… it can,” I relinquish, tightening my arm around her, “But… do you want to talk about it? Did you have a—”

“No…” she interrupts, her eyes drifting a bit to look at the black screen. “I didn’t have a nightmare or anything, my scar doesn’t itch, none of that crap it’s just… I don’t know actually. Things are great in the city right now, there’s enough work to keep me busy without it feeling overwhelming but… I just get the feeling we’re swimming in circles right now.”

“I know what you mean,” I reply, setting my mug on my nightstand. “We’re getting stuff done but it’s… it’s too easy.”

Lisa snorts.

“Not quite what I meant,” she says, a bit of mirth back in her voice, “But there’s worse things to be cursed by I suppose.”

The conversation peters out there and with the tv off we just spend a few minutes basking in the early morning, our hot drinks slowly vanishing before Lisa decides to speak up again.

“We should get dressed, Rachel’s already downstairs with her dogs and the Protectorate won’t just wait around forever.”

I hum at her words and as she gets up out of the bed, Taylor returns, dressed in her costume sans mask. The light from the window dances in her black curls and waves and she gives both Lisa and I an awkward little wave as she grabs the mug Lisa set down earlier.

My nose is a bit too clogged to smell whatever it is but I’m betting it’s green tea, that seems to be her favorite.

The idea of meeting with the Protectorate used to fill me with nothing but anxiety, but now… it's almost boring.

There just aren't enough heroes left to make it seem all that daunting, right now Brockton Bay only has a Wards team and three Protectorate members.

And out of those capes, it's really only the leader that makes me pause. 

Since Leviathan, Dauntless has only been fulfilling his promise, he's getting stronger every single day.

He's wasted here, last Christmas, things were so peaceful the Protectorate put on a fucking TV special, a kind of celebration that the Endbringers are still dormant after all this time.

It was a silly little show, the kind of thing that inspires a generation of kids to go outside wearing capes and masks and playing pretend. It shattered some rating records obviously, especially considering that the Triumvirate themselves took a day off to be a part of it.

Everyone, even the Undersider, gathered around their TV’s to watch Speedsters race, Brutes lift weights, and other mindless shows of exhibitionism. To most people it was just a fun little thing on television to watch the recording of every month or so. But to the villains, it was a promise.

We all got that message when Dauntless managed to tie Alexandria in an arm wrestle and just barely beat Myrddin in an all out spar. He might be wasted here but he also showed that he wouldn’t be someone we could just ignore.

He’s as Alexandria and Tattletale figures he’ll be about as fast as Legend by 2015, after that the only real hurdle for him to leap is Eidolon. I’ve personally punched the world’s strongest Brute with her own power, I stared down the living laser himself after Leviathan, but those two… they aren’t anything compared to the man that crippled Behemoth.

Still, he isn’t nearly so powerful that he can roll over us, in a straight fight, Ubermensch and him about even right now it’ll be months before that changes. And that isn’t even getting into that Dauntless won’t go anywhere near me.

I’m not sure whether it’s his decision or his bosses but personally, I would hate to find that my power can take away from his. He has a lot of potential to really change things, not just for the city or even the country but… he could make things better for the whole world, provided no one like me sets him back.

He’s a force to be reckoned with, that’s for sure, but he isn’t the reason the bay’s free of certain groups.

The Elite stopped probing at us last July, they had feelers all over the city but when the Gesellschaft sent their last attempt to reclaim Ubermensch, Uppercrust and the highest echelons of their organization pulled back when Kaplan fell over dead in the street, his callout met with a single shot from Foil’s old arbalist.

I don’t even know what the Nazi was capable of, just that he thought we’d fight him face to face like idiots. His cap is on my desk actually, all of the Nazi pins and symbols have been ripped off of course.

With the Elite having left, the Southern Rangers tried their hand at the city, hoping to make it the Houston they always wanted. They barely even held territory before we ripped them apart. The four of us didn’t even need to take to the field, just a few good strikes from Glory Girl and her girlfriends was all it took to send the rednecks packing.

The Fallen came after them but they didn’t even fight when we ordered them to leave, the once mighty Endbringer cult were more like ghosts than actual fighters. With their gods silenced, the Crowley clan came here, to the last spot Leviathan ripped apart.

I sit up a bit and feel my eyes get unfocused. Leviathan, May 15th, 2011… that was almost two years ago now.

It’s amazing how fast things can get away from you, I would’ve sworn that just yesterday we were still cleaning up after Echidna’s sudden disappearance.

“Brian?” Taylor asks me, her voice soft as her silk covered hand presses against my shoulder. “You alright?”

I put my hand over hers and nod before I speak.

“Just wondering why we still let the Protectorate set the meeting times.” I reply before shrugging off her hand and getting up.

“Oh let them have something,” Lisa chastises, also getting out of bed. “We’re gonna have to play ball if we’re really serious about moving into Boston.”

Lisa’s point is a good enough reason I suppose, the Chain Gang and Horseman have been working hard to make Boston into the new Brockton Bay, with gang wars either always happening or always being the tiniest fuse away from doing so.

It’s made them weak to outside forces, they might know each other very well but they’ve been playing that game of theirs for so long it’ll be a really bad shakeup when we come in. The thought of it doesn’t make me as antsy as I think it should, in fact, I’m fighting to keep the smile off my face.

Peace has been good for us but well… I think the only way to get over this weird stagnant feeling in my chest is if I actually go out there again, actually show people what I can do.

Lisa snorts, probably reading my mind as she pats my back.

“We’re gonna be meeting Velocity’s replacement today, try to keep the bloodlust off your face okay?”

I brush her off with a wave of my hand and head for my closet. The doors slide open and I barely take a step inside before I remember that the primary suit is being remade right now. Amy and Taylor’s last draft was good, the kind of bulletproof that barely left a bruise underneath but it had some kinks to work out but last week they figured out a way for my costume to be just as strong as the others but still porous enough that my fog isn’t inhibited.

But, just because they have the idea doesn’t mean they could whip it out in only a few days, it’s actually kind of strange how they act when they’re around each other, ideas bouncing back and forth like ping pong balls. You’d almost think they were Tinkers.

I close the closet behind me and turn around to find Taylor sitting on the edge of my bed, nursing her cup of tea and turning on the tv. It’s still on the news and there’s an odd sense of… I’m not sure what fills the air. Kind’ve like nostalgia but not quite.

There was a time when Taylor would’ve been blushing red at how I am now, wearing just my boxers, there was a time when she and I were… I don’t know. We’re great friends now, we were great friends before but there’s just… I can’t— it’s like it’s on the tip of my brain and I just can’t shake it loose.

I do my best to let the feeling pass and head to my office, sure that I have at least one spare suit in my desk. I can just barely hear Lisa ruffling around in her room as I pass it, the blonde undoubtedly getting her costume on.

My office isn’t all that remarkable, the only difference between it and the other rooms we use is the lack of bedroom furniture.

I should probably add more to it, save for the rug, three chairs, and heavy desk, the room is a bit barren. Granted I haven’t really had the need for it since I got it all set up but that doesn’t mean I won;t need it at some point.

That said, I don’t really use it as a study either, there’s something about the whole room that just rubs me the wrong way. I think the problem is just how big it is, there’s so much clearance on either side of the desk that it doesn’t feel as grandiose as it should.

“Grandiose,” I mumble to myself as I walk around to my side of the desk. “Taylor and her damn books, always making me break out a thesaurus.”

I pull open the bottom drawer and grab at my skull shaped helmet, the almost piercing white off it made all the starker against the pure black of its eyes and back. I set it on the desk and grab for the leathers underneath, the pants and jacket come on easily and I’m lacing my boots up within a minute of getting those on.

The helmet’s tucked safely under my arm as I head back into the hall, my three roommates are already discussing something. Lisa looks up at me just as I’m passing over them and she waves a thin manilla folder as I descend the stairs.

I join her and the others right as they’re getting out of their chairs, Rachel leads us to the elevator as I take the folder from Lisa. I open it up and begin reading over the dossier she’s typed up, half of it being copy pasted from the Protectorate files and the other half being her own notes.

“Fullstop,” I read aloud as I look at the attached photo, a native american woman with long straight black hair and an opaque, bug eyed visor taking up all of her upper face stares back at me.

“She’s a Trump/Blaster,” Lisa tells me as Rachel hits the button for the elevator, “Mid to long range complete power nullification on a direct hit.”

I actually look away from the folder at her words.

“How long does it last?” I ask, unable to completely hide my worry from her power.

“At a minimum? 24 hours, but they’re not sure what it can do at its peak, as you can imagine, there’s not a lot of Parahumans lining up to lose their powers for weeks at a time. She’s a recent trigger though and a cape from her hometown is still in holding.”

“I take it that shouldn’t be possible,” I ask, knowing that Lisa doesn’t let information hang like that unless she wants us to ask about it.

“Nope,” she replies just as the elevator dings and ushers us all inside. “The guy’s a pretty badass Mover, a teleporter that doesn’t need line of sight.”

“How long has it been since he’s been depowered?” Taylor asks as the doors close behind us.

“Almost three weeks.” Lisa’s answer is like the last nail in the coffin and as the elevator descends, we’re all silent as the information digests. I start flipping through the dossier as quick as I can but there isn’t really a lot to read.

The new cape is fresh as hell, triggering some time in late December according to the opening notes; she only made herself known when a local gang leader tried to snatch her up. Gang is a bit of a loose term here, the town only had 30000 people in it and the gang barely made up a hundred members.

She took him down and reading over the exact specifics of her power make me pause. This… feels like an attack.

“Why are they moving her here?” Taylor asks, voicing the same question I have. “The Protectorate is supposed to be neutral with us but this feels—-”

“Like they’re getting ready for a fight?” Lisa interrupts, filling the blank. “It’s more getting the new girl to see how the organization really works, she’s green as hell, practically Ward green and they can’t risk someone with her kind of power being disillusioned by someone other than them.”

“So they’re sending her here for a bit,” Rachel takes over, her voice gruff with a lack of sleep. “Just to show they aren’t so tough all the time.”

“A bit of that but mos—”

“Rachel,” I interrupt the Thinker and turn to look at my amber eyed teammate, her latex mask snarling at me like always. “When did you go to bed?”

She’s silent for a moment too long and all three of us groan.

“It’s not a big deal,” she tries to defend herself. “I just had to get some of the dogs a bit more playtime and— it’s not like I fucking need to sleep anymore, right?”

“Amy’s modifications are not so you can stay up all night!” Taylor chastizes, “Besides, we’re still working out a lot of the side effects and—”

“I feel fine,” Rachel interrupts, “Sides, I can’t use my powers fucking anywhere else in this city and Judas and the others like when I get to play with them.”

Her wording brings us all up short and Lisa and I both whirl around to face her.

“Have you been growing with them?!” Lisa asks at the same time I say, “You better not be testing that out on yourself!”

Rachel isn’t cowed by either of us and instead she just crosses her arms as she speaks.

“Course I’ve been using it, Amy didn’t fuck around with my DNA just so I could not use it.”

“That was literally the reason!” Taylor yells, her voice ringing off the walls. “She said to only use it in emergencies, to only— what were you thinking?!”

“I was tired,” Rachel replies, shrugging her shoulders. “It was getting late and… I didn’t want to put them in their kennels. I used the power and… it works on me the same way it works for them.”

There’s another long moment of silence, all of us trying to wrap our heads around why Rachel would just… just—

“Well…” Lisa cuts into it finally, “At least we know Panacea’s modifications are… at least somewhat stable?”

There’s a much shorter pause before Taylor whirls on her, both hands thrown up in exasperation.

“We don’t know that! For all we know, Amy playing around with her DNA might be a ticking time bomb! Plus, you said it wouldn’t work, that if we wanted to spoof her power, Amy would have to make her one hundred percent dog!”

“And I was wrong,” Lisa says, putting her own hands up and trying to placate her. “But my power’s got a great read on Rachel, she’s okay… a little tired but she’s gonna be fine.”

“I’m standing right—”

“We’re calling Amy the second we get home,” Taylor says, exasperation in her voice as the elevators open up for us. Without anything left to say, we head out into the lobby and after Rachel grabs the three leashes from the front desk, the four of us and three dogs I don’t know the name of head into the waiting APC.

“Anyone going to be meeting us there?” Rachel asks, voice a bit tense.

“Just Parian and Foil,” Lisa answers, plunging us back into silence as the vehicle chugs to the PRT HQ.

The ride there isn’t anything to comment on, the armored vehicle doesn’t have any windows to watch the scenery go by and even if it did, it wouldn’t be much to look at anyway. It’s barely a ten minute ride from our tower to the squat by comparison PRT HQ and in that time, none of us talk to each other.

It’s like this with every Protectorate meeting, even knowing how cowardly Lionheart is,  I wouldn’t put it past anyone in their organization to not try and back stab us the moment they’d be able to.

The APC opens up from the outside barely a moment after we park, two troopers on either side beckoning us into a dimly lit parking garage. Rachel and I step out first, our heads turning just enough to look at our surroundings without seeming nervous.

The lot’s the same as always, with as few people as possible manning the two APCs, the one exit outside and the one entrance into the building.

Foil steps out of her APC as well, her visor turning to us for just a moment before she reaches back into the transport, one hand taking Parian’s and delicately helping her girlfriend out of the vehicle.

Sabah’s mask hides her face entirely with a false ceramic expression oozing the imperious authority that she can’t actually match. Like all of the oldest Undersiders, Parian has changed a lot in the few years we’ve had her on board.

At first, I remember her being terrified of us, the Nine were coming down hard on everybody but even with those psychopaths at her door, she still put herself as far as far away from Skitter and the rest of us as possible.

But now she’s almost just as feared as her or I, her golems used to entertain children but now they serve as a pretty damn good frontline. She nods at me once and waits by her transport until the four of us pass her. Once we pass her entirely, her and Foil both start to flank us as we head into the wide hallway underneath PRT HQ.

This hall only has two doors along its length, one is an elevator that leads all the way up to the Director’s floor and the other is a conference room we’ve been using for about a year now. The door to that room is open and the six of us walk in to meet the man already there.

Director Lionheart sits at the opposing end of a large circular table and if I didn’t know him personally, I’d say he makes one hell of an intimidating figure.

His hair was probably black at one point but the years have turned the longish hair gray, the cut itself is about twice as long as what I would consider acceptable for a position like his and it blends in nicely with a full but not scruffy beard.

He has eyes that seem carved into his face, heavy and sunken like a lighthouse is looking right at you, the bright green of them speak of an intelligence that I’ve yet to personally see. His hands are clasped in front of him, the nails prominent as he separates them and raps his knuckles on the table.

“Grue!” he greets, an uncharacteristic exuberance in his voice. “Thank you for coming, I know Velocity’s transfer was short notice but I appreciate your punctuality.”

“Of course,” I answer, taking a seat directly opposite him when I notice another thing that’s odd. There aren’t any guards here with him.

That itself isn’t all that strange, the normal trooper wouldn’t even make me pause but usually Dauntless is glued to his sides during these meetings, the Director treating him like a security blanket.

“Fullstop and Dauntless will be arriving shortly,” The Director speaks up, answering my silent question. He smiles widely and I note that his beard somehow doesn’t obscure the expression in the slightest, if anything it amplifies it. “I believe he was giving her… well a bit of a briefing before this meeting, I trust you know how new she is.”

“Yes…” I answer and trail off to look at the Thinker on my right. The Director isn’t supposed to act like this, honestly he’s not even supposed to be here unless he’s got the Triumvirate’s runner up guarding him. But somehow, he’s sitting across from six of the most dangerous parahumans in the Bay, across from the killer of two directors before him and somehow… he’s smiling.

“I’d offer you a drink,” he says “but I’m afraid I don’t know any of your preferences and well, we could hardly waste the effort cluttering a whole table now could we?”

He chuckles to himself but it isn’t the pathetic little stall I’ve heard him use before, the kind where he grabs at the collar of his shirt like it’s a rope. This laugh is genuine, as if what he just said was even slightly funny.

I lean back in my seat just as the others take their own spots, Lisa on right, Taylor on hers and Parian on the edge with Rachel on my left and Foil completing our crescent shape. With Lisa sitting next to me, I squeeze her hand once, our little signal that I want to know why things are feeling off.

Lisa recognizes it and nods just slightly enough that the gesture’s completely hidden when she leans forward.

“Well, Mr. Lionheart, you’re certainly… chipper.”

If the Director is at all bothered by the condescension, he doesn’t show it, in fact, his smile just widens a bit as he tightens his tie.

“You’re not the first to notice,” a bit of a happy sigh in his voice. “My husband has offered me so much comfort this past year, James he’s… he’s more than I deserve if I’m being frank.”

“James…: Lisa prods, curious to learn more about the Director’s mystery husband. “James Lionheart, that’s an interesting name.”

The Director’s smile turns crooked and he shakes his head a bit.

“I suppose it would be but that isn’t his name.” Lionheart’s shoulders shake a little, a silent laugh kept inside before his newfound professionalism smothers it. “Lionheart is… well, it’s my mother’s name. I always wanted it but my father was insistent and well… it’s no secret I haven’t been much to stand in the way of things.”

His voice gets a bit pensive and somehow, again, despite that there are six people here, each with six different ways to kill him, his eyes get a little unfocused as he thinks inward.

“And when I told James, he urged me to get it changed, even said to use marriage to obfuscate the reason why.”

“Is that how he proposed to you?” Foil asks, catching all of our attention and wincing when my eyes land on her. She should know better than to speak at these meetings, she’s only around to serve as intimidation and we could’ve chosen any of the other—

“Believe it or not, yes—” Lionheart chuckles again, this time longer. “He’s always had an amazing knack for knowing exactly the wrong words at the right time.”

Before the Director and gush anymore on his husband, there’s the sound of an elevator sliding open through the door.

“Ah,” the older man says, “That must be Dauntless and Fullstop. Now—,” he turns his head back to me, one hand raised and palm facing the table. “—I should warn you, she’s a bit of a… well, she’s an idealist. The stubborn kind I’m afraid.”

It’s a bit of a relief to see the dealer in Lionheart come out, for a moment, I was worried his newfound spine would urge him to renegotiate—

A blast sails through the door, the actual of it is nearly invisible and I only notice it for the odd warbling sound and the way the air bends around it. By the time I see it, it’s already completed its path, hitting Parian’s right shoulder and sending the clothing cape flat against the table.

The power behind the blow didn’t seem like much to me but then I watch as the ruffles of Parian’s dress, the cloth that should be held up by her power, deflate until they form around her legs.

I stand up quick enough that my chair topples behind me, Lionheart and Lisa shout as Fullstop crests into the doorway, a snarl on her lips as she raises her hands up.

“Warlord Bastards!” she growls out, the air around her fists shaking as she lines up another shot. “I’m not going to let you get away!”

“Fullstop!” Lionheart roars, the conviction in his voice layering on itself. “Stand down, that’s a damn order!”

Darkness spills from my body, the silent monochrome spreading over the floor but not quickly enough to stop the hail of shots that come from the Trump. Taylor and Lisa barely dodge maybe a half dozen shots before my eyes follow one of the whispering anomalies in the air.

I watch in horror as the barrage bounces off the wall.

With so many of them in the air, too many to keep track of,  Rachel and I make the only decision we can. We both rush the newest member of the Protectorate as quickly as we can.

I put my hand on Lisa’s shoulder and try to push her to the floor, out of the line of fire when I a sharp pain suddenly makes itself aware on my lower back. I grunt as I fall forward, the darkness stuttering and slowing to a near drip as another shot hits both Lisa and Taylor.

Rachel’s winding her fist up when another one of those fucking bolts ricochets off the floor to hit her square in the chin. The impact itself feels like a decently hard punch and it sends Rachel reeling backwards.

“Like fish in a—” Whatever the hell Fullstop was going to say next is cut off by the crackle of lightning behind her. She’s not even able to turn her head when Dauntless’ arc lance thumps her square on the crown.

She’s knocked out immediately and without her hands up, the remaining blasts puff out with a whumpf.

For a moment, the room is completely silent but then—

“What the hell!” Rachel shouts, whirling on the director at the same time I do. She steps on to the table, taking the most direct approach towards him when both Dauntless and the unconscious Fullstop suddenly block her path.

“Bitch—” Dauntless starts, one hand raised to block her and the other holding on to the scruff of Fullstop’s costume. “That was not a sanctioned oper—”

“Fucking save it!” Bitch yells, forgetting that her powers are pretty much null and void and that she’s in the face of the strongest man on the east coast save for Legend. “Locked us in a fucking room, took away our— our fucking—”

“That was not my goal.” Lionheart interrupts, too dignified than to stand on the table himself. “Fullstop is—”

“A bitch,” Lisa finishes for him, one hand rising up to her temple. “A fresh trigger with a hero complex to rival Eidolon. You didn’t she was this stupid, it wasn’t even a possibility in your head and—”

The blonde’s eyes widen as she looks up.

“She didn’t take our powers, at least, not completely.”

Her words make me look down and I realize, though the flow has slowed to a near crawl, my darkness is still coming out of me. I look to the others for confirmation and at Taylor’s nod, Rachel snaps for her hounds to join her up on the table.

She pets one of them and their flesh ripples underneath her palm, the first signs of her growth affecting them.

“I believe…” Lionheart takes a deep breath, “That this meeting is adjourned, at least for now.”

Part of me wants to strangle him for the flippancy, that he thinks he can just say it was a mistake and that we’ll just walk out of here. But that part of me is nothing when Parian starts to weep, her hands toying with her dress as her girlfriend marches around us to get to her.

“Baby,” Foil says, grabbing at Parian’s wrists, “Baby it’s okay, you—”

“It’s gone,” Parian mutters, sorrow staining the two short words. “It’s gone! Lily! It’s gone, I— I can’t feel it! I—”

If the doll themed cape has anything else to say, it becomes lost in an unintelligible wail as she holds onto Lily like her life depends on it.

“Direct blasts,” Lisa surmises for us. “It can take a cape’s power for twenty four hours if it’s a direct hit but only weakens them if it’s a ricochet.”

“We were not aware of that,” Lionheart says, the grimness in his voice telling me he knows exactly how much he fucked up here. “We can make a meeting for a later date, I can—”

“We know the way out,” Taylor cuts him off, her voice venomous as she heads for the exit. The rest of us follow her without a word, with Foil carrying her sobbing girlfriend out to join us.

The ride back home isn’t nearly as quiet as the one coming here and as soon as the doors close behind us and the APC starts up, Rachel starts speaking.

“That fucking cunt!” she yells, her anger only marginally lessened with her three dogs trying to comfort her. Her leg still jerks out to slam against the metal bench opposite her and there’s something about the action that makes the echo linger a bit more than it should. “She thinks she can pull that shit with us?!”

“They’re going to run her through the wringer,” Lisa says, maybe to herself, maybe to calm Rachel down as she brushes her hair behind her face. A stray strand untucks itself and the blonde’s face screws up in annoyance before she runs her hand through her hair.

Something in my brain shivers at the gesture, that motion, the hair running through and over the fingers, she doesn’t do that… that belongs to someone else.

I roll my shoulders when that fucking echo doesn’t go away, the sound draws something up and out of my chest and I speak up just to try and get rid of it.

“They better, attacking us like that, unprovoked… they’re lucky we don’t burn that place to the fucking ground.” The threat isn’t like me and I know it, but there’s just… that feeling, it’s almost too immense to call anger. That five letter word just isn’t enough, this feeling… it’s like it’s tearing me apart.

I exhale and my breathe feels like a spear sliding up my throat, that fucking noise isn’t going away and the metal of my seat doesn’t give when I clench my hands around it. I want to bend it and break it but the steel doesn’t budge and that just makes the feeling worse.

“At least we’ll get something out of it,” Taylor tries to offer a brightside but her voice is strained, she’s clearly just as pissed as the rest of us. “More concessions, less of those stupid spectacle fights, less— fuck I hate this!”

“How bad?” Lisa asks, her own power finally not enough for her to draw on.

“I’ve barely got a block,” Taylor answers, “And the swarm, it’s not listening as well as it should, it’s— I can’t force myself into it!”

I clench my fists and try to ignore the conversations happening around me, I almost pull the darkness up out of my ears when I realize it only wants to come out of my hands and feet. I keep my eyes closed and my tongue bitten until finally, we’re back at the tower.

Charlotte says something about being back early but we all just ignore her and pile into the elevator, all wanting to just spend the next twenty four hours in the penthouse and sweating this out.

Lily calls Lisa and the Thinker barely promises her retribution before she shuts her phone off, the weakness of her power pissing her off just as much as our own downgrades.

I take off my helmet as soon as the floors start climbing but that fucking sound keeps rising up, the pitch of it makes my ears ring and if I could slam the elevator closed behind us, I would. But the only sound that ushers us back home is the damn ding of the elevator and I can’t— I can’t—

“Fuck!” I shout, throwing my helmet to the floor and watching as it bounces a few times, the material refusing to crack even at the force I threw behind it. I stomp out of the elevator and towards the couch, the darkness pushes up against my skin but even at my hands and feet it comes out twice as slow and heavy, almost useless. “What the fuck is going on?!”

I look at the girls and take the tiniest bit of solace in that I’m not dealing with this alone. Rachel’s fists are at her sides, her breathing heavy and muscles strained like she’s got her back to an invisible door with troopers on the other side. She looks up at me with wild amber eyes and her breathing is ragged when she speaks.

“I don’t know,” she rasps out, starting to pace. “My head feels like it’s on fire, it was bad in the APC but–”

“It’s just getting worse!” Taylor cuts her off, leaning against a wall and slowly limping her way towards me. “My head— I can’t think– I just—”

She starts to cry and for some reason, the sobs hurt me a million times worse than it should, like someone’s dragging sandpaper against my brain. My own eyes start to prick with tears and my stomach twists as she heads for the couch.

I turn when she passes me and I nod to myself.

A distraction, that’s what— that’s what we need.

I hop over the couch and take my seat and just as my back hits the cushions, Taylor puts all of her weight on me, sobs wracking her form, I hold her as close as I can but even with her warmth pressing into me, my mind bends and creaks at the onslaught.

Anger builds with sadness, with every heart beat, something twists and I— I can’t find the damn remote!

“Lisa!” I shout, almost delirious with whatever fucking soup my brain’s turned into. “I can’t find the fucking remote, got my hands busy here.”

I look over the couch and Lisa’s eyes are blown wide, the green of them stare unshakingly at the upstairs and a look of horror rises up on her face as Rachel starts ripping cushions off the couch.

I’m about to ask what my shortest teammate is scared of when Rachel speaks up, her usually gruff voice drawn quiet and shaky.

“It’s gotta be under here, right? It— it has to…”

She trails off and my eyes follow hers to the empty spot under the couch.

The almost empty spot I should say.

I pull Taylor along with me just as Rachel reaches down and pulls the object out.

It’s a gaudy thing, an xbox controller slathered with tacky gold and glittery filagree, the buttons replaced with rhinestones and other fake gems and it… oh my god.

A cold sweat rises as the whole penthouse suddenly feels a million times too big. Rachel clutches the forgotten thing to her chest and her eyes overflow with tears as she falls to her knees.

“We— w-we—” She doesn’t say anything else, her sobs too quiet to hear as even Taylor calms down in my arms. Well, she doesn’t so much calm down as she is stunned.

“Alec…”

My head turns fast enough that my neck twinges in pain to stare at Lisa. The blonde lowers her wide eyes to me, she sniffles once and rocks forward like she’s just been shot.

“Alec… he’s— oh my god, what did we— what did—”

She breaks down then and all I can do is look at the elevator and hope he’ll be back any moment now, that’ll he’ll come waltzing in with one of his stupid jokes and… and he’ll forget how much we hated him.

We… we hated him.

I’ve gone toe to toe with some of the worst things this planet has to offer, I’ve had to fight the Butcher, the Nine, even two fucking Endbringers and nothing has ever hit me quite as hard as this.

Taylor starts to wail again and I lock eyes with Lisa just as Taylor’s sobs turn into a warcry. Rachel gets up with a stomp and I spare her a glance before Lisa speaks up, spitting a name out like a curse, like it’s a molten bullet.

“Heartbreaker.”