Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

August 20, 1986

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Chapter Text

Well, this is incredibly awkward and dispiriting. The organization you work for is not as financially organized as they should be! But this is, perhaps, typical mad scientist life management skills. Probably the Doctor is too busy making superheroes to attend to finances, and Doormaker doesn’t seem to do much aside from make doors, which would leave everything else in Contessa’s lap--not a great way of conducting business, since she presumably has to go do heroic things as well as handle the administrivia.

The Doctor is not very sympathetic, though. “It’s bad enough the petty cash piggy is usually useless, but the serious money seal should always be full, and I don’t mean full of whatever shiny doodads that catch Doormaker’s fancy,” the Doctor interjects. “How can we operate if we don’t even keep enough assets to fund a revolution in a mid-sized Latin American country on hand?”

Contessa hangs her head. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I’ll make sure I do better.”

Your teammate, partner, buddy, BFF, and person-soon-to-be-hugged-by-you chastised by an unreasonable authority figure, shamed into admitting failure? The sight is too painful for you to bear, and you must speak up.

“Look,” you say. “Maybe you should hire an accountant?”

“An excellent idea, Miss Costa-Brown,” says the Doctor. “Do you know of one who accepts plastic snakes and dead flies as payment?”

Contessa winces at the sarcasm. “It . . . It’s actually possible,” she says. “I know how to find someone we don’t have to pay. He’ll help us make money on the stock market.”

“Go and get him immediately,” the Doctor says, and stalks out.

“How do you run things around here without money?” you ask.

“I’ve been asking people to just give me things, for the most part,” Contessa says with a shrug. “They always agree.”

“Oh,” you say, recalling her remark about how she was going to pay for the allergy medicine. Do you have a—wait, is that your superpower?”

“Something like that,” she says. “There’s a boy out there whose superpower is to understand and manipulate complex mathematics. We can collect him.”

That does sound like a very imposing and useful superpower; before the cancer stole you from school, math was easily the hardest and most intimidating subject you dealt with. “Yeah, he sounds great. Why haven’t you gotten him before?” you ask.

“Because he’s eleven,” she says. “And a serial killer.”

“He what?”

“He doesn’t want to be,” she adds hastily. “He’s in a bad situation. Which is why he’ll work for free--we’ll give him something interesting to do and we won’t make him kill people anymore.”

That is indeed heroic, rescuing boys from being made to kill. Unfair child labor practices have always been particularly outrageous to you, seeing as your parents made you clean out the litterbox for less than a dollar a week (pre-cancer, of course; post-cancer, cat poop went the way of math textbooks). “I’m in,” you say.

“Ever heard of the Slaughterhouse Nine?” Contessa asks.

Chapter Text

Meanwhile . . .

Your name is Dale Ryker, and you have had one hell of a day. It all started to go wrong when you decided to buy new socks. That is the decision you will rue for the rest of your life. You should have just learned to darn (pity your high school had no home economics classes).

There were omens, you think. All your non-ugly clothes were dirty, so you had to wear terrible red pants. You considered getting a haircut but then thought a mullet would be acceptable for just one more day. You then drove your beautiful red car, the only thing about your life that had value, to Macy’s. However, Macy’s was out of socks, and you were forced to go to a much more expensive boutique, one that specialized in radical clothes.

Things weren’t completely terrible there. You paid for your socks--triple what would have been charged at Macy’s, but it’s not like you had options--and the cashier was cute, if a little distracted.  You then walked away, foolishly unaware, arrogantly complacent.

The worst part of all this? You almost made it out. Almost exited the building. You were at most two feet away from the doors when a hat came flying out of nowhere and struck you in the neck.

You’re not so insecure in your manhood you can’t admit it: you collapsed. Immediately.

After a few moments of lying on the floor, dazed and wondering if your morning Wheaties had been laced with acid, you struggled to your feet and examined the hat. You ascertained you were not hallucinating and you decided to just forget about it and move on with your day. It was certainly an odd and uncomfortable experience, but it wasn’t anything you couldn’t get over.

Yeah, you got maybe half a foot before a cop and a kid came up to you. Apparently the flying hat belonged to her, and--despite the fact you were an innocent victim--she thinks you stole it. The cop took one look at her quivering lip and accusing finger and arrested you on the spot.

You don’t even understand why she was even upset about the hat; she was already wearing one, and insisting on the second was just greedy.

You also don’t understand why a simple misunderstanding about flying hat ownership led to you getting not only arrested, but charged. You even have a trial date and had to post bail, because being hit by a twelve dollar hat leads to felony larceny charges in this state. The justice system was remarkably thorough, here, puzzlingly swift in retribution for a non-existent crime.

. . . And yet, the police don’t seem to care that your car was stolen while you were in jail.

Stolen and crashed.

You stand before your vehicle, which is crumpled against a brick wall, grappling with questions of fairness, justice, and physics.

The driver’s side is mildly dented. That is in itself a veritable tragedy, but it’s more of a light-hearted comedic number when compared to the explosion of twisted metal that was once the passenger’s side. It almost looks like the impact came from inside the vehicle, which--no, that makes no sense, whatsoever.

Your life is ruined. Your socks have holes in them, you are soon to be a felon for no reasonable reason, and your once gorgeous car is dead as the nails on Marley’s coffin. You have no idea why this has happened to you. You’ve been a good person so far. You’ve paid your taxes, you’ve sponsored starving children in Africa, you’ve even refrained from using your sweet ride to run over hobos.  You don’t understand why the world has singled you out for such misfortune.

Your existential crisis takes on  physical dimension; it turns into a headache. Soon it will be a migraine, and you could do with some aspirin. You turn away from the ruined husk of everything you once loved and walk a block or two to a pharmacy.

You push the door open.

Your jaw drops.

All is chaos. Displays have been defaced, packaging has been shredded, lights have been cracked, bottles have been opened and emptied, pills have been crushed. Nothing in this store is intact; you are doomed, not only to life as a felon without an automobile, but to an afternoon with a headache.

You would flee this wretched spectacle, but your transportation is utterly, permanently inoperable and your headache is really bad.

You pick your way through the detritus of what was no doubt once a functional store and find a woman hiding behind three overturned shelves.

“Ma’am,” you say, “I’m not one to question anything that’s presented to me, but I have to ask--what in the name of God and his archangels happened here? Also, do you have any aspirin?”

You’ve touched on an unpleasant memory; no sooner are the words out of your mouth than the poor pharmacist bursts into tears.

“I was viciously robbed by an eighth grader,” she wails.

“What?” you ask.

“This kid,” she says, practically choking on her sobs. “Everything was going well up until this cute little kid with these dorky knee high socks came in. Took one look around and started destroying everything. I tried to stop her, but she choked me and said she would do to every bone in my body what she’d done to my store if I didn’t hand over all my benadryl.”

“Er,” you say. Whatever you were expecting, it wasn’t that.

“I would have just given it to her if I thought she was sick!” The pharmacist wrings her hands. “Now everything is ruined and nobody will believe me.”

Well, it is an absurd story. You can’t blame people for not believing her. You don’t believe her.

. . . Just like nobody at the police station believes you.

“Say,” you say, “Was the kid who knocked this joint over wearing two hats?”

“Yes,” she says. “How did you know?”

“A hat hit my neck and then my life fell apart,” you say. “I think it’s her fault.”

“How?” she whispers. “She looked so cute. What is wrong with her?”

You agree. Back in your day, youth smoked marijuana instead of terrorizing upstanding suburbanites and ruining their lives.

You hear someone cough slightly, ahem, and you turn to see the source of the noise.

A black woman in a lab coat stands there, her hands clasped behind her back.

“Hello,” says the woman. “I sense you’re desperate.”

“How did you get in here?” asks the pharmacist. “Today’s been bad enough without being bothered by burglarious pharmaceutical company reps.”

“I’m not trying to get you to buy something,” the woman says, smiling. “I’m here to give you something. Both of you, since I know you’ve both had a very rough time today.”

“What do you mean?” you ask.

She withdraws her hands from behind her back. Each is holding a glass vial filled with blood-red liquid. “I have something to take the edge off.”

Chapter Text

2.2: Mucho Ham Costume

“What,” Contessa says, “is that?”

“It’s a ham costume,” you say. “Like Scout’s?”

She stares at you.

“Didn’t you read To Kill a Mockingbird when you were growing up?” you ask.

“No,” she says. “I didn’t read To Kill a Mockingbird when I was growing up.”

“Then why did you want me to get a ham costume?”

“I didn’t.” She looks at you like you’re a crazy person.

You clear your throat. “I haven’t told you this, but I think the potion gave me a really good memory—”

“It did,” she agrees.

You wonder how she knew that, but it’s a question you can save for later. “And I know for an absolute fact you wanted me to get a ham costume. It’s a key component of your plan. I remember.”

“What?” she cries. “Why would a ham costume ever be a key component of any plan?”

You are now very seriously concerned about your best friend and partner in hero. “Contessa,” you say, as gently as you can, “It was on the whiteboard. Your plan calls for me to trap our accountant in a ham costume.”

“I—buh—what—how—That was very clearly a net,” she exclaims.

“Oh,” you say. This is awkward, so awkward that even the ferrari in your skull can’t think of an easy way out. How embarrassing for her.

“My drawing was perfect,” she says, directly contradicting the thoughts you were having in private. “Nearly everything I do is perfect.”

You start to sweat. Far from being perfect, her drawing was bad, really bad, and you can’t even say “tomato, tomato” or “de gustibus” to it; her drawing was so objectively bad that you went and got a ham costume instead of a net, and that in turn has thrown your entire mission into jeopardy.

“I . . . like ham costumes?” you offer. “And I thought that maybe he would too?”

“Never mind,” Contessa says. “I can work with a ham costume just as well as I can with a net.”

“Er,” you say, but Contessa is already talking to Doormaker, and you’re left with little choice but to haul the ham costume through the portal after her.

You find yourself in an evergreen forest, and it looks like it’s just before dusk. As you float behind Contessa (a lot easier than having to walk and negotiate the maneuvering of the ham costume at the same time), you talk about what you know of the mission.

“I mean, I think I might be a little young for Slaughterhouse Five,” you say. “The parts about, er, sex were kind of weird—”

You pause, just in case Contessa wants to weigh in on that. You missed out on what, exactly, best friends do when talking (thanks, cancer!), but you’re pretty sure that giggling about anything related to boys is one of them.

She forges ahead instead of replying, apparently ignoring you. You know she isn’t ignoring you, of course, because you’re best friends and ignoring your best friend is just unconscionable.

“Anyway, I really liked it. The idea about Billy being unstuck in time was really interesting.”

Contessa comes to a stop, and you almost fly into her.

“Can you imagine that?” you ask. “Becoming unstuck from time?"

“I can imagine being stuck in time," she said.

“In time for what?"

“Stuck in time," she says again, and she points at the hunting lodge in a clearing front of you. "There's a boy here who creates very short time loops that can’t be turned off. So if he traps someone and he stabs them, they will be stabbed every three seconds for more than five and a half billion years.”

“What the heck!" you exclaim. “That’s—that’s terrible! That’s . . .” You search for a word, any word, that captures your feelings. Sometimes English is so limited.  “Terrible.”

Indeed, you cannot think of anything that could possibly be worse.

There's an awkward pause during which Contessa doesn't quite meet your eye. “Yes,” she finally says. “It is.”

If only you had training in kinesics and vocalics! Maybe then you'd be able to understand the nonverbal aspects of this interaction.

. . . Maybe she wants a hug?

“I do not want a hug!” she says, exasperated.

You're a little offended. You don't think you've been so pushy about giving her a hug that you’re predictable. “Maybe I do,” you suggest, tentatively.

“Look,” she says firmly. “These people are very dangerous. They aren’t out of a book. You have to take them seriously.”

This is advice you don’t actually need. All gaiety and frivolity exited your life the moment you heard the word “leukemia,” and you’ve been unable to take anything at all less than one hundred and ten percent seriously since then.

“Do not let him see you,” she said.

You nod, solemnly.

“The good news is that he causes trouble,” she says. “So they keep him locked up in the basement. So long as we’re fast, they won’t have time to get him out and attack us with him.”

“Who else is in there?” you ask.

“Screamer and Breed are going shopping. Four of them are on the main floor, one on the kitchen and two in the living room. Our accountant is in one of the bedrooms playing checkers with another boy, Jacob. Jacob can stab things from far away. He can’t hurt you, but he can hurt me and our accountant.”

“Why would he hurt the accountant? Aren’t they friends?”

“They’d rather kill each other than let someone escape,” she says.

You take a moment to digest that.

“So,” she says. “Do you want to be the one who operates the ham, or do you want to deal with the others?”

“I think I’m supposed to operate the ham,” you say. “That’s how it was when you briefed us.”

“I also briefed that you were supposed to have a net,” she says.

So awkward. You’d be willing to overlook her mistake, but she keeps bringing it up.

“We don’t have to stick to the briefing,” she says. “The Doctor wants me to get results, and both ways will get the same result. It’s up to you how we proceed.”

She pauses.

“And no, we cannot proceed with a hug.”

Chapter Text

Your name is Contessa, and you don't have a lot of time.

Whoa, it doesn't mean that you're dying. What would even make anyone assume that?

You check with your power.

Several assassination attempts on you are going to happen in the next twenty-four hours, naturally. But unless that golden monster appears out of nowhere again, you're not going to die anytime soon.

No, you mean you literally don't have a lot of time. What you have is a to-do list as long as eight Rebeccas and precious few years to work through it.

The two of you are about to embark on a very important extraction mission. Or rather, you were, but Rebecca wants a breather to explore and take her newfound powers for a spin.

If she were anyone else, you would refuse.

However... the powers the vial gave her are useful. Very much so. You foresee her becoming a key political player on the world stage, and it's paramount that you nudge her in certain directions while she's still young and malleable. You've already taken measures to remind her subconsciously of her time in the hospital. Unfortunately, you didn’t keep the Doctor abreast of those measures. Oh well. There will be other opportunities to cement the new member's loyalty.

You give Rebecca an hour. An hour is plenty of time to knock twelve fairly major tasks off the list. (Fifteen if you stop by Kazakhstan.) Plenty of time for Rebecca to grab ice-cream.

Plenty of time to stalk her and find out where she’s keeping those goddamned cats.

Seriously, what the hell? Where are they? When you asked your power why your nose was suddenly so itchy, it responded only with “CATS”. That much made sense. You noticed mild nasal congestion that one afternoon you visited a shelter in Stockholm, though at the time you were preoccupied microchipping all the schnauzers with tiny surveillance cameras.

You ask, again, where the CATS are. Your power insists they are with REBECCA.

This would appear not to be the case. There are no furry critters trailing at her feet or orbiting her head, no suspicious wriggling lumps under her jacket or in her pants. But your power has never steered you wrong before. There have to be cats somewhere about her person, and you’re going to find them!

You’re going to have to lure them out.

To do that you’re going to need cat toys… and money to pay for them? At the thought of money, you feel a twinge of shame for having disappointed the Doctor.

It’s not entirely your fault—you’ve been busy. Plus, you’ve always been able to get whatever you wanted regardless of what you had in your pockets (mostly packets of artificial sweetener at the moment).

But the Doctor has been proposing more sustainable financial plans to serve the organisation’s long-term goals for a while now, and you should have set those balls in motion earlier.

She’s right.

The Serious Money Seal should always be full.

You silence the echo of her voice in your head as you go back to base. Dwelling on past mistakes is counterproductive. Anyway, that issue should be taken care of within the next two hours. You’ll have to procure the toys for free.

After informing Doormaker of your agenda, you step through a portal to just outside a chain pet store.

A nearby salesperson perks up at your entrance. “May I help you?”

“Where are the cat toys?” you ask perfunctorily. You’re already striding towards the feline products section. Walking down the aisle, you notice giant deluxe tins of gourmet tuna, chicken, beef liver—wow, cats eat higher quality food than humans—but no toys on the shelves.

“Oh no,” he says, scurrying to keep up. “We stopped stocking toys. Too much controversy. The strike, you understand.”

The strike? You pause as your power supplies you with the relevant information. Apparently anti-child-labour activists recently pressured store owners into boycotting goods produced by the most influential business in area. Turns out they outsource their manufacturing to the local sweatshop and have done so openly for years. Lobbyists have been shouted down until the recently elected governor spoke out against exploitatioblah blah blabity blah you don’t care except that this is terrible timing for you.

Good for that salesperson, though.

Minor inconvenience. You’ll just pop into the pet store the next continent over and—

You didn’t inform Doormaker. The next door won’t open for some time.

This would be so much easier if there was a way to request doors on the fly.

You don’t fancy twiddling your thumbs until then, and not getting the toys within this timeframe is going to disrupt your schedule. You’re going to have to dismantle the sweatshop and seize all their products. At least you won’t have to leave town.

You hitch a ride to Fairtrade Indusries (your power informs you that that is indeed how the operation’s title is spelt), guiding the driver through traffic. He’s very cooperative regarding your backseat driving, especially once you share your detailed knowledge of his night-time activities.

You arrive at the factory. It doesn’t look much like one: the assembly line isn’t so much a line as a snarled series of knots. True enough, there are kids in there and they are labouring and being exploited. You’re unbelievably glad Rebecca isn’t here, or she’d turn this into some tedious moral crusade.

You weave your way around the clusters of preteens miserably stitching together stuffed mice and dripping globs of glue onto the fabric. Upon closer inspection, they’re sticking these really nasty frayed feathers to the ends. Others still stand on footstools next to giant vats of colourful liquid, their fingers perilously close to toxic dyes.

The scene is depressing as cancer—forget dismantling, you’re just going to retrieve a select few cat toys from storage and leave.

“Hey bitch, did I say you could go? Back to work or I’m docking half your pay.”

...

“That’s four whole cents, if you’re too stupid to count.”

...

“Yeah, I mean you, runt. Who—”

Moments later, the factory is burning to the ground. The children have been evacuated. Some of them are still capering around the flames, weeping with joy at being free from sixteen-hour workdays, having their family’s debts cleared, or spontaneously getting adopted. Last you saw, the supervisor was at the window trying to build a ladder out of scratching posts.

Pity his products are so flimsy. The ladder will collapse, and—

Yes, those would be his screams now.

You have acquired two sacks of cheap cat toys.

When you get back to base, you randomly pick out a phosphorescent orange plastic ball with misshapen ears on either side. The label claims there’s catnip inside, but your power confirms there is not. A quick check reveals that all the other toys are similarly garish and defective. They are perfect for your purposes.

Rebecca arrives shortly after you finish setting everything up.

“Sorry I’m late!” she says, touching down. “You won’t believe what happened on the way to the—”

A bag of what appears to be a giant stinking hunk of meat is strapped to her back, but you dismiss it as a possible quirk of her superpowered diet. If she can get free food, so much the better. You’re more focused on the two cups of frozen dessert in her hands. Specifically on how they aren’t McDonald’s vanilla soft-serve.

“That isn’t ice-cream,” you say.

“It kind of is?” says Rebecca, puzzled. “It’s gelato. Italian ice-cream. I’ve never had it and somehow I knew you hadn’t either so I thought we could taste it together."

She chatters on, radiating enthusiasm and youth and all the things you've long given up. You think about snuffing that out early. Not so much because you're annoyed at her for getting the wrong ice-cream but because it's a matter of principle, and potentially life or death. One way to do it right now would be to warn her about what could happen if she doesn't always get exactly what you ask for.

"I mean, not together together—that’s why I got two cups. I’m not super concerned about backwash or anything, but it’s weird, I remember in third grade there was this thing where if you shared drinks it was considered indirect kissing and I just thought—”

Instead, you settle down and try the gelato.

It’s pretty good.

Chapter Text

Mucho Distraction

Despite the original plan calling for you to be the one to snag the accountant, you decide to be the distraction. Even with the taped up armholes, a ham costume is more useful as a distraction than a trap for a serial killer. Out of politeness and concern for your friend’s feelings, you will not discuss your decision in depth; this misunderstanding is entirely Contessa’s fault, but ruminating on her inability to draw a net to save her life would be rude.

Besides, you’re in the ham costume already! How can you throw it over a murderous accountant’s head and wear it at the same time? Logistics, people.

Contessa agrees and starts to work her way toward the back of the house.

You fly up to the window. With your strength, you could just smash through it, but you don’t want to attract attention from the lower levels (especially not from the terrible loop boy!). You choose to exercise caution and sneak a peek before utilizing your strength.

The scene before you is surprisingly idyllic, all things Contessa told you considered. There’s a cozy fire roaring in the fireplace. A black-haired boy is sprawled out on his stomach in front of the fire, reading a book, and a blond-haired boy is curled up in an overstuffed armchair behind him, wrapped in a rose-covered blanket and dozing.

They’re eleven, like Contessa said, but they look so much younger.

These are serial killers? You wonder if Contessa meant “this boy is totally a serial killer and not an innocent nerd” the way she meant “this is totally a net and not a ham costume.”

Man, you really hope she doesn’t have a tendency to get important details wrong. There’s only so much leeway you can give her before you start questioning everything she says, and you don’t want to be in that position with your partner.

But your faith in Contessa receives a boost as you look more closely and realize things are amiss. It’s August; why is there a fire? And what is roasting on it? Certainly not chestnuts.

Gross.

The black-haired boy is twirling a butterfly knife in the hand that isn’t holding open the book, and he’s casually slicing the curtains up—that is actually why you can see through the window to begin with. And the book he’s reading—Oliver Twist? Yikes. This must be Jacob, the one Contessa warned you about.

The blond boy, your serial accountant nerd killer, might be snuggled up in a nice chair, but the blanket he’s snuggling in isn’t covered in floral patterns like you initially thought—those are blood stains. His forehead is creased, his expression tense even in rest.

Well, this is a nightmare.

Better wake ‘em up.

You break the window. Not noisily, you don’t want to attract the notice of anyone else, but you give it the lightest of taps with one of your shoes. It shatters, and you fly through.

. . . You don’t almost get stuck because of your ham costume’s bulk. Nope, that would be undignified, and you are a radical hero, not an undignified klutz who can’t handle a simple outfit.

Jacob leaps to his feet and brandishes his knife at you. He seems ready to attack, but then he sees what you’re wearing and the bloodthirsty look on his face dissolves into utter confusion.

“Sssh!” you hiss before he can speak. “I’m here to rescue you!”

“You?” His voice manages to convey incredulity, amusement, and even contempt—and that kind of gets under your skin. It’s really, really, really not your fault that you had to forsake your radical black clothing. “Rescue us?”

“That’s right!” you proclaim, striking a heroic pose.

“From what?”

“What am I not rescuing you from?” you say airily. “Unfair labor practices, to start with. What does your wage look like? Do your parents or other court-appointed legal guardian even know what you get up to?”

Behind him, Contessa stealthily enters the room, stepping over a broken checkers board.

“Don’t talk about my parents!” he shouts. The noise wakes up the accountant, who can’t join the fray because Contessa has him pinned to the chair with his own grody blanket.

You can’t really focus on that, though, because Jake Edgelord here is getting in your face with his slicey knife. The ham costume, despite being of the highest possible quality (the salesman even said so), is shredded in seconds.

“You aren’t bleeding,” he says, eyes narrowed.

“Yeah,” you say, and you allow yourself a broad, heroic (not gloating) smile. “I’m pretty much invincible.”

“Invulnerable, surely.” He absent-mindedly twirls his knife. His tone is thoughtful, his eyes appraising. “Not invincible.”

You feel a chill run down your spine as you consider what he’s saying. Invulnerable: unable to be wounded. Invincible: unable to be defeated. And he’s right: if he figures out what you’re doing, if he looks the wrong way and sees Contessa whispering in the accountant’s ear, or if he decides to call for help, you absolutely could be defeated here.

You put on a brave face.

You cannot be hurt by him, you can hurt him, and he’s eleven. You close the distance between the two of you, and you tower over him. “I could just pulp you here and now,” you say, trying to make your voice menacing. Threatening people isn’t heroic, but—well, you could. “And I could fly away before your time-loop boy ever gets up here.”

“Probably,” he agrees, craning his neck to look up at your looming visage as behind him Contessa helps your nerd sneak out. “But you haven’t. Why not?”

Ah . . . Good question.

“Because,” you begin. “Uh, because . . . “

Chapter Text

You pause, thoughtfully and thoroughly considering your many options. This would be a problem if you were a normal person, but you think so fast that Jacob won't notice. How did you even function with your stupid cancer-tricycle brain?

(You didn't. You almost died.)

Now.

You could continue the distraction by expressing your outrage about the ham costume, but . . . You just want to forget about the ham costume, honestly, though by now you realize you are incapable of forgetting anything. The embarrassment of the ham costume mixup and Contessa's cringeworthy denial of responsibility will both remain etched on the marble Ferrari of your brain until the moment you die.

Best not to add to those memories.

You could continue expressing your feelings about child labor, but the shouting and the slicing seem to indicate it's a little bit of a sore spot for him. Perhaps you shouldn't call attention to his wretched circumstances before he's even escaped them.

Maybe he just needs to be reminded there is good in the world—and himself.

Yeah, that sounds right. Do two things at once: continue the distraction and reach out to a boy who is plainly suffering.

You move to hug him, but a horrible premonition of dread seizes your heart and stops your arms.

You remember when you tried to hug Contessa and she dodged you and gave you a taco instead.

The same taco you shattered because you didn't know your own strength.

What if you shattered this boy?

Lying is immoral, anyway.

"The truth is this," you say. "I didn’t come here to rescue you at all."

"I knew it," he said.

"You did?"

"You're here to try to kill me."

"Uh," you say. "I'm not? I already would have if I were?"

"Then . . ." His eyes narrow. "You're here because you got lost on a way to a production of To Kill a Mockingbird and you were trying to bluff your way out of having to deal with a real fight."

"What? No!" You shake your head, partially because you can't believe he said such a silly thing, partially in a futile attempt to clear the images of ham costume out of your head. "I'd just fly away in that case. I'm definitely supposed to be here, talking to you. I'm a hero."

"And you're not here to kill us?"

"What—" You pause, trying to wrap your mind around this one. "What the hecking flip kind of hero would I be if I just went around killing people?"

"You don’t seem to be any kind of hero," he sneers.

You roll your eyes. Honestly, boys are just so immature. "Anyway, as I was saying, I didn’t come here to rescue you. But now that I'm here and have seen for myself how wretched your working conditions are, I've decided I am going to rescue you." You float towards him, gentle your voice as you would if you were talking to a scared animal, and reach out to every single ideal you possess for strength. "There is good inside of you, Jacob, and all you need to do is remember that."

"Look," Jacob says, and the word is crammed with eight times  more superciliousness than you’ve heard in your fifteen years of life combined. "Look, Scout—I think I'm going to call you Scout. Does Scout work for you? Bad costume choices and completely ineffectual in a fight."

Absolutely not! You didn’t survive cancer and befriend Knee Socks and change the world and only to be crucified to a ham costume for your entire career. The world seems to grow cold, your field of vision seems to narrow, and you seem to not be able to speak.

"My name is—" Suddenly, you’re forced to choose a name mid-sentence, and you don’t know what would make the best choice. You're tough and Jacob’s insults can’t stick to you, so maybe "Teflon"? No, that's just blatantly ripping off things you’ve seen elsewhere.

He's waiting, though, and you begin to panic.  "Alexandria," you say, hastily choosing the first nicely-named thing you can think of. Well, second, but Contessa would probably be annoyed if you took her name.

"Well," he says, and that contempt is back there. "I've never heard of you."

"I just got powers this morning," you say. At least, you think it was this morning. With all the occurrences and all the teleporting and all the decision-making, it feels like it's been months.

His eyebrows and sneer are back in force. "And the first thing you do was decide to go after the Slaughterhouse Nine."

"Not really?" you reply. "I had cheeseburgers and did some relationships counseling and got clothes and Benadryl and ended the Cold War and ate gelato first. I didn't even know who you were until she mentioned you, and I initially thought you people were a book she didn't remember the name of."

Jacob’s eyebrows lift. "She?" he asks.

Oops. You probably weren't supposed to mention you weren’t alone.

Jacob turns around to see what’s going on behind him, but of course the answer is nothing. Contessa already took your nerd.  "Harbinger!" he cries, then turns on you. He jabs a knife at your face, but the blow does nothing. "You took him," he shouts.

"I did not," you say, irritated. Really. You know not everyone has your memory, but surely most people could remember what they were doing five minutes ago. "I've been standing here talking to you."

"I need him," he says. "He's my friend.” Your heart starts to soften in sympathy, but he keeps right on talking with his mouth and ruins it. “I can't kill King without him."

"You don't have to do that anymore," you say. "I can fly you anywhere."

"I don't want to go," he says. "I like it here. I just want King to be gone and to have my friend back."

You chew this over. Maybe there’s some sort of chemotherapy for moral outlook, because this guy is pretty far gone. Your plan is a failure; you don’t think you can persuade him.

Wait, no! That's a quitting attitude. You are Alexandria, and you do not quit. Quitting is nonsense for people with cancer.

You open your mouth to try again, but Jacob starts shouting.

"King!" he bellows, at least as much as an eleven year old can bellow. "Attack! Intruder! I can't hurt her and she can fly! Help!”

Uh oh.

Judging by the amount of footsteps, there is now a veritable herd of villains running up the stairs.

Chapter Text

Mucho Basketball

The door slams open before you can make your choice, and a blond man barges in. A thin, spindly man in a disgustingly ill-fitting suit follows. A blood-red monster of a man smashes through the wall next to the doorway, revealing a red-skinned woman still standing in the corridor at the top of the landing. Some kind of gas is leaking from the holes in her arms, and you back up because that's just kind of freaky.

The blond man is tall, ludicrously tall, really, and he looks pretty buff. He looks around the room once, dials in on you, and marches right up to you like he owns the place or something.

(He might, actually. You should probably apologize for breaking the window--but then again, his teammate broke the wall.)

"What did you do with Harbinger?" he demands.

You shrug and smile, trying to play it cool. You succeed because you are very cool.

"He's safe," you proclaim. Safe from having his powers exploited in the name of serial murder. "No need to get into the particulars."

"Sure," he says. "Then how about we get into this?"

Then he punches you in the face!

You reel, not because the blow hurt you, but from shock. This man just punched you! Without any warning or witty banter or monologuing! What kind of villain is he?

The kind of villain who punches a hero on sight and then shrieks in pain, it seems. He grabs his punching hand with the other and you can see the welts on knuckles and the cracked bone below the torn skin.

Your face is pretty strong. Ha! That'll teach him not to not monologue!

But his wounds heal before your eyes, and the thin man beside him howls in pain as the knuckles on his left hand break. The same wounds he gave himself on your face, transferred to another.

That's an interesting power. The implications for hostage taking are obvious.

"You're tough," says the tall man.

"Yeah," you say.

"I want my boy back."

"No," you say. "That would be immoral."

"Seems we're at an impasse."

"Seems so," you agree.

"I could get Gray Boy to trap you," he says casually.

"The loop one?" you ask, making yourself sound indifferent to the bone-chillingly terrifying threat. "I suppose you could . . ."

You pause dramatically. No dander-agitated sneeze interrupts you this time.

"Or?" the tall man prompts, dutifully taking his cue.

"Or we could settle this another way." Your exterior is all sangfroid, but inwardly you are leaping about with barely suppressed excitement. This is going to be so cool. "How about a friendly wager?"

The blond man looks wary, but Jacob's eyes light up. "Yeah?" he asks. "What wager?"

"We have a competition. Winner gets to keep Harbinger. Me versus the five of you." You smile in what you hope is a condescending way. "I'm stronger than all of you, so you deserve the numerical advantage."

"Hmm," the blond man says. "What kind of competition?

"A basketball game," you say. "And if you lose, not only do I keep Harbinger, but you all have to become heroes."

Silence follows, and stays for about ten seconds before being driven off by all five villains bursting into raucous laughter.

Rude!

"I'm serious," you snap. "If you say no, I'll just punch you until your whole entire head flies off your neck."

Can you even do that? You're not sure. But it seems like the sort of thing that sounds menacing, the sort of thing these villains would respect, at least until they're cured of their villainy.

The villains, even the big freaky red monster man, are laughing so hard they're wheezing. They are utterly incapacitated; nothing is stopping you from rounding them all up and flying them to the nearest police station.

Nothing aside from the fact you don't have handcuffs, and you owe it to the civilian police to deliver only properly secured villains.

You make a mental note to remember handcuffs the next time you go on a heroic outing. You'll remember, of course; remembering is, among having two adorable cats and wearing radical clothing and being laughed at by a bunch of serial killers, one of the things you do.

You take your basketball (what? you've always had a basketball with you. don’t you ever check your inventory?) and bounce it at the blond man. Hard. Hard enough to crack the floor. He dodges it, barely, but he stumbles into both of his red-colored teammates. Neither of them looks particularly pleased by the contact.

You retrieve the ball and set it casually spinning atop an index finger. Then you tug your sunglasses midway down the bridge of your nose and look over them at your adversaries. “Me. You nutjobs. This ball. Outside. Now.”

Things have gotten super real.

Tipoff is a cinch. Yeah, the blond man (who calls himself King, which is some royalist, unAmerican garbage) is taller than you are, but you can fly.

Things go amazingly, ludicrously well. Being a basketball hero is easy. The only hard part is making sure you don’t violate the rule about traveling, and you rapidly develop a workaround.

Step one: fly into the air.

Step two: bounce the ball really hard so it goes the length of the court.

Step three: fly over the heads of your foes and catch the ball.