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Ted had had his suspicions about Fred, but he hadn't expected to be right. Just because he imagined Beth moonlighting as a stripper sometimes didn’t mean it actually happened. Sure, Fred did cancel their nightly CoD time once a month and had an extremely large house with twelve locks on the basement door, but it didn’t mean he howled at the moon or fought against Ms. SuperCape a couple times a week with equipment made in a secret basement lair. Because one, being a werewolf was highly illegal (in Canada, you could be sentenced to death three times in one trial). And two, Ted didn’t think supervillains were willing to put that much time into CoD when they liked beating up real adults in real life.
Unfortunately, the sweet life of pizza, beer, and beating up prepubescent gamers nightly with Fred had all ended when Beth pushed Fred off the cliff.
Ted wasn’t even sure how the argument had started. Something about “Your hair is awful” and “How many times do you dye it a day” but he had been too busy watching the flashing lights on the other side of the bay to really remember it. He did remember Fred falling. It had been horrific until Fred had activated some kind of device that beeped a lot and also let him fly. Then it had mostly been confusing. Ted knew he got home at some point, but he thought he remembered a ray gun? And something about the police? He had woken up in bed the next morning so the entire night could have just been his imagination.
Except that when he woke up extremely early the next morning, Fred was asleep on the couch across the room. A Fred who was very furry. And also the metal remnants of what he had just remembered was some kind of flying device. Ted remembered it from not just the night before but from the news coverage six months ago when Mr. Robot had killed Dr. Science on national TV. He was very sure it was the same suit - Dr. Science had been well loved and CNN had exploited every moment of Mr. Robot’s infamy that they could.
Fred stirred. Ted froze.
“...Ted?” Fred muttered as he shifted back into human form and looked over at Ted. “Oh shit. Beth exposed me, didn’t she. It wasn’t just a really bad shared dream.”
Ted was still too frightened to respond to anything. He really just wanted the last 24 hours to be a dream.
“I’m sorry,” Fred sighed, “I suppose you were going to find out eventually. And Beth had it out for me. I ended up in the wrong club last Saturday.”
“What are you going to do to me?” Ted blurted out.
“Do? Ted - I play CoD with you at least 6 nights a week. Just because I happen to be a werewolf supervillain doesn’t mean I’m going to do anything to you.”
Ted fought against his rising panic. He hadn’t talked to a werewolf or a supervillain before. Or at least, not one when he knew about it.
“Why are you playing with me? Is this an elaborate plot of some kind?” Ted managed to get out.
“Well, ok, yes, it was at first,” Fred admitted. “But I figured out that your parents don’t really have a priceless supply of plutonium pretty early on. And I was really enjoying spending time with you. Never had much time to make real friends before, I was too busy trying to build a freeze ray.”
Fred stopped expositioning and threw a controller at Ted. “Come on, we’ve got a couple hours before anyone else in this town is awake. Let’s beat up some noobs.”
Ted supposed he could live with this. Maybe he had suspected Fred of being a werewolf supervillain, but he had never suspected Fred’s friendship of being false. He picked up the remote and turned the tv on.