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Josie Quinn knows the probability of having a store with expensive goods like hers being robbed, but usually when she feels anxious about going to work, the day proves her fears to just be meaningless anxiety. A calm day describing rings to men and women alike possibly looking to have a fiancé soon, people complaining about prices, it’s a routine at this point. Robbery isn’t something she’s experienced before, even on the days a suspecting pit was in her stomach.
But this day, Quinn really wished people in modern times could go back to robbing banks .
She was restocking in the back since the store was empty, doing meaningless tasks just to let the day go by. It took a few seconds after hearing a strange click from the store and a male voice yelling “ GET OVER HERE NOW ” for her to realize what was happening. Walking slowly out of the storage room with her hands up, Quinn was met with a large man dressed in all black pointing his gun directly at her. The alarms were already blaring loudly in the store from his other men busting the cases and putting anything shiny in the large sacks they were all holding.
The man aimed his gun closer to her. “Gimme all the money you have in there, now .”
Quinn ignored her shaky hands as she placed everything she could offer right into the bag, the cash adding up to hardly anything considering most people pay with credit cards. When the man realized how little there was in the bag, he scowled and slammed his hand on the counter. Quinn jumped.
“Go in the back,” he growled, “If you bring me everything then you might get out of here alive .”
She wasn’t able to speak, only taking quick but careful steps into the back room again without saying a word. In a frantic haste on deciding how to take all the boxes to the man as quick as possible, Quinn ended up shakily grabbing as many of the padded boxes as she could carry, piling them on top of each other. With a few larger boxes and some small ones previously wrapped neatly for pickup, she walked back to the counter to set them in front of the man.
And when she did, her heart stopped.
The robber was confused and growing impatient at her sudden stop, but Quinn couldn’t help it. Her eyes were blown wide in disbelief when two men suddenly appeared behind the robber out of thin air , both of them wearing similar costumes besides for the different shades of blue, one was obviously more decorated than the other. They both had the same dark skin color only visible on the slight slip of skin where the bottom of their mask couldn’t reach, their faces covered entirely and eyes impossible to see. But even so, Quinn could still tell based on one of the man’s body posture that he was giddy.
And to be fair, so was she. Staring ahead in awe despite the circumstances, eyes blown wide. Because she’s never been this close to the Colored Spirits before.
Quinn knew exactly who they were. Two superheroes of a local group that were known for always being close together, always working in perfect synchronization. The giddy one in the lighter blues was Maya Spirit, his cooler companion known as Navy Spirit. She’d seen all the talk shows and online articles about their powers before; connecting so closely that one couldn’t use them without the other. People observing how they could only disappear if they were making physical contact with each other in some way, most commonly by holding hands. They would touch and disappear, then reappear when they separated once more.
And they were right here, in her shop!
All these thoughts and observations raced so quickly through Quinn’s head in just a second, but the robber wasn’t patient enough for even that. “I literally have a damn gun at your face, are you stupid!? Go to the fucking back, get me more shit!”
Her eyes finally snapped back at him, the robber’s gun getting closer to her face as he grew more impatient. For a second Quinn thought the last thing she was going to see was this very scene; a gun in her face with two superheroes right behind her killer.
But right before the trigger could be pulled, Navy grabbed the arm of the man and twisted it up, Quinn flinching back a bit at the loud noise of a gunshot going off right into her ceiling. The man frantically looked around the store for whatever grabbed his arm, but no one was there.
“What…?” He whispered to himself, turning back to Quinn with her hands on her ears and her heart pounding. He opened his mouth to speak, to let out his confusion with rage and impatience, but then a hand grabbed at his hair and smacked his head right into the counter.
Oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my God oh my-
“Fuck!” The robber stumbled to the side and almost fell to the floor from the impact, gripping the counter before he could fall and pointing his gun at the Colored Spirits. The two of them disappeared again the moment the gun went off, reappearing behind him and punching him right in the back of the head. He groaned as he fell to the floor with his eyesight spinning, shooting his gun off frantically in an attempt to get just one hit. Just one.
Quinn screamed and took a duck for cover with her hands shielding her head. Loud bangs continued to go off, but the robber didn’t even realize his targets were gone again.
But through the gunshots there was a loud, over-dramatic battle cry right before the bangs finally stopped, followed by the sound of someone getting smacked right into the brick wall. A groan was the only new noise in the silence after the gun was dropped, the alarm from the broken glass long forgotten in the background.
Quinn slowly took her stiff hands away from her head, staying on the ground but looking up at the superheroes on the other side of the store slowly and carefully. There were three of them now.
Oh my God, Quinn thought, Is the entire team here for one robbery!?
She recognized the third person immediately as well. His skin was dark but not as dark as the Colored Spirits, and he was much shorter than them too. His costume had a hood with a stitched on piece of cloth covering his eyes completely, but you could still tell they were shining bright with how wide the boy’s smile was, the bottom half of his face still showing. Red, gold and white was all over his suit, a red cape that only reached to his knees and was covered in yellow stars, and a cloth crown attached to his hood so it stayed on the top of his head. The Royal Guard.
“ Did you see that!?” He yelled, bouncing up and down on his feet with unrelenting energy. “I smacked that dude right into the wall at the best time, and I think there’s an indent in the wall now but I’m sure it’s fine, that was just really great timing! ”
Maya’s voice sounded light. Lighter than in the clips Quinn had seen before. “You did great, Kiddo.”
The Royal Guard’s smile only grew bigger at the praise, but Navy Spirit seemed to have noticed something suddenly. “I just realized,” he said, “The store’s empty. Where are his other friends now? They have the majority of the store’s goods on them.”
“Oh, remember how Nightmare and I were gonna wait outside to jump them? They took off down the road in some black cars before I came in here.”
Navy sighed. “...And you didn’t chase them.”
“No, cause Nightmare already was, and I heard like, a bajillion gunshots coming from inside. I had more pressing matters to attend to, thank you very much!”
Royal Guard’s smile beamed with pride, his hands on his hips in a superhero pose. Navy and Maya seemed to share a look before Navy caved in. “Alright then, understandable. However, I think your assistance will come a lot more in handy on the road now. You’re the one with super speed, so you can catch up to the cars easily, and if the people driving them are logical, chances are they’ve split in different directions by now. Maya and I can take care of things here, but how about you contact Nightmare and see if you can help him with the cars?”
“Sounds easy , hardly a task at all! Later, nerds!”
And just like that, Royal Guard had sped out the front doors leaving nothing but a blur of himself behind him.
Quinn slowly lifted her head from the back of the counter. “...Can I get a picture with you two?”
***
“ There’s two black Ford Focus ST’s on the roads right now. I’ve got one that was down on 67, but if SLEEP’s radar is right, the second one is going down Lincoln Avenue and heading to the highway. That’s the one I want you to catch, got it? ”
Roman nodded before realizing that Virgil couldn’t see him, his voice going through the phone call system Virgil had installed in each of their suits. “Got it, I’ll head over there now and give them a firsthand look at Artemis!”
“ Just don’t chop off any faces, we don’t wanna kill the guys. Get them away from the wheel but don’t crash the car, you’ll cause a pretty damn deadly pileup. Pull it over safely- ” Virgil paused for a moment as Roman jumped roof to roof trying to search for the car with the directions he was given. “... You do know how to drive, right? ”
“Why wouldn’t I?”
“ You’re barely fucking sixteen and poor as shit, that’s why!” Virgil suddenly seemed slightly panicked on the other side of the line. “God damnit, do you need me to drive over there? I can call Navy or Maya to come take this one to get back all the loot and shit and I can help you over there with the driving. I know you don’t have a license, so don’t even try that one!”
“Relax, Robert Downer, I’ll be just fine!” There it is, Roman thought, spotting the car matching Virgil’s description perfectly. Just before it got on the highway too. “Navy taught me how to drive his car plenty of times before, which isn’t exactly legal , but I know what I’m doing! I’ll call you if I need anything else, but I spotted the car, so it’s too late now!”
“...Fine, fine, but don’t cause a fucking massive crash in the busiest street in the entire city. I’ll find a way to kill you, don’t test me.”
“Bye, Nightmare!” With that, the call finally ended, Roman jumping across three more buildings before coming perfectly in line with the car. He sheathed his sword Artemis from its place around his waist and jumped from the roof, landing straight on the hood of the car so hard his feet dented into it enough to give Roman a balanced footing. He saw the driver of the car’s eyes widen before trying to jerk the car back and forth to shake him off, Roman burying his heel into the hood for balance.
“Get off, you fucking freak of nature!” The driver yelled, and for once in his life, Roman decided to listen. But not in the way the guy wanted.
He quickly jumped off the hood of the car and stabbed Artemis right through the roof, cutting open a slit that he could slip through to enter the car. Another robber in the back of the car punched Roman square in the jaw, smacking his head against the window with force the moment he jumped in. Well that wasn’t very nice.
Roman grabbed Artemis’ hilt and went for an aimless swing while his vision danced, but despite Roman’s powerful speed, his hand was stopped right in its tracks with a strong grip.
Suddenly, the robber was right in his face with a broken scowl, full of anger and hurt alike. “You really want those damn human’s approval so bad, don’t ya?” His grip on Roman’s hand tightened, grabbing his face as well. “Even after all they’ve done? You’re one of us, you know exactly what they’re fucking guilty for! But we want a little cash to get by and suddenly we’re the fucking bad guys!?”
All Roman could feel on his body was the unusual heat on his wrist. Scalding heat that felt like a burning iron plate was wrapped around his arm, leaving Roman’s only reaction to be to scream. Artemis hit the ground as he struggled to get away from the burning , his eyes slowly focusing in his haste. When he looked down at his wrist to see the problem, the first thing he saw was the robbers hand a lava red. Steam came from between his fingers.
Of course he has powers.
Roman’s head went into the back of the window once, twice, three more times as the robber slammed his head back continuously, saying his lament through gritted teeth. “Traitorous little bastard is all you are! It’s all your friends are! You’ve experienced the pain they cause first-hand and you’re still on their side! Boot-licking pieces of shit! ”
The side of his face where the man was gripping started to burn too, a scalding, unbearable grip, and Roman’s body went limp from pain. His vision was dancing and his mind could only think of the heat , the unbearable burning like his hand and face were taped to a gas oven.
The robber smiled. “You’re about half as strong as they make you seem. What, you don’t like pain? Don’t like being left without your little buddies to come save you? Are you scared? ”
“Dennis, just fucking kill him so I can drive straight!”
“Not yet, I wanna see the face behind the mask .”
That phrase brought adrenaline through his veins, sheer panic being able to give him strength. Oh no, Roman’s mind yelled, Do something focus just get him off of you!
Roman screamed louder when he bent his burning wrist to grab the burning robber’s hand in his, adrenaline rising as he bent his arm back in one swift motion. Before the robber could even processed what happened, Roman grabbed his face with his now one good hand and bashed his head into the window, shattering the glass entirely. The man fell to the floor when he let go, faint breathing the only sign he was actually alive.
Oops, too much strength.
“Denni-” The driver didn’t even finish his sentence before Roman grabbed him by the collar with his one good hand and threw him to the back of the car, grabbing Artemis and piercing the blade right in the side of the man’s pants, pinning him to the seat and switching places as the driver. The only conscious robber yelled from his place as he tried to get free, but hey, he should be grateful he wasn’t bleeding like the other guy.
“Alright, time to get us off the road!” Roman grabbed the wheel with his unburnt hand in the 2 position like Logan had told him before purposely ignoring the “two hands on the wheel” rule just this once. He pressed his right foot down to step on the gas and-
......And-
...Oh no.
Roman scooted down to where his head was at level with the bottom of the steering wheel, only then finally being able to step on the gas and stop a pileup, the car behind him honking its horn loudly. No matter how much Roman tried to maneuver himself, he couldn’t see through the window and press the pedal at the same time. He frantically tried to search for a lever to pull the seat up, but he couldn’t seem to locate it anywhere. In a sudden panic, Roman called into the air: “ NIGHTMARE!”
The gadget in Roman’s mask started to ring, and the phone was picked up in a matter of seconds. “ What’s up, Princey? ”
“So, I might have a, uh...a slight dilemma?”
Virgil went quiet. “ And what would that be? ”
“You know how I said I could drive the car off the highway?”
“... Yeah? ”
“...I can’t reach the pedals.”
The screeching of tires was heard in the background as well as the voice of another man yelling, Virgil yelling back, then the slamming of a car door. “You can’t what!?”
“I can’t reach the pedals! The driver’s tall and I’m short! ”
“ Oh my God, Jesus fucking Christ what the fuck are we gonna do—I’m coming over there, I’ll summon a couple signs and shit and direct traffic and I can come get you before you kill someone-”
“But won’t they figure out you’re lying about your powers that way? You’re supposed to make monsters, not stop signs!”
“ I think my damn ‘my-creations-aren’t-real’ secret is less important than you killing twenty people! ”
Roman’s heart was beating, turning sharply at a turn he didn’t see until it was too late and almost blowing out the tires. He was frantically looking around to have some kind of visual on where the road was , catching a glimpse of the right side mirror. Roman sighed in relief when he could see the street slightly, where a simple iron rail kept the cars from falling down ten feet into a little pit.
If this moment was in a cartoon, a lightbulb would have gone off above his head.
“Wait, I think I have a plan! You have me on a tracker right?”
“ Duh, have you met me? ”
Roman ignored him, “How much longer do I have that rail-thingy on the side of the road?”
A slight silence over the phone. “ For about half a mile or so. ”
“Perfect! See you in a bit, bye!”
“Princey don’t you fucking dare-” The call was ended before Virgil finished his sentence. Gotta make this quick then.
Roman pressed down the lock on the door and opening it up. Roman looked at the rearview for a moment and sped up to get away from the car behind him, hoping he wouldn’t slam into someone in front of him in the process. He counted to three. One...two...three!
He made the car do a sharp turn and drove right through the metal rail.
The conscious robber behind him yelled “You’re fucking nuts!” as the car went over the edge, Roman rising in his seat as they did a free fall. He stumbled over himself for a slight moment when he tried to push himself back up, slipping when his burnt hand touched the leather seat and set his nerves on fire. He pushed open the car door completely, tripping as he used his feet to leap out of the side, the conscious driver still screaming in the back. Metal thumped under his boots when Roman jumped back on the hood of the car, running off and scraping the car with the speed of his feet as he did so. He fell down to the ground and stumbled to get his footing as quick as possible, then, the car was falling straight toward him.
Roman grabbed the front of the car with both his hands, stopping 700 pounds of metal from crashing right into a ditch, gently setting it down.
And he did it all in seven seconds.
However, the adrenaline of the moment did eventually disappear, and the sharp pain in Roman’s hand returned just as bad as before from using it to stop a car. He jumped up and down while shaking his hand around to help with the pain. “Ow, ow ow ow, okay, that hurts. ”
“What hurts!? What the fuck did you do, Princey!?”
Roman looked up and saw a taller man with a black, purple and steel suit on, his face covered with an iron mask full of gadgets, but he could still sense the franticness in his eyes. To anyone else, Nightmare would have been the most intimidating man to have swearing at you, but Roman knew better now. He just smiled widely at his mentor. “I stopped the car from crashing all on my own!”
“ By crashing it!?”
“Hey, you’re the one that told me to get it off the road, not my fault you didn’t specify how. ”
“I’m gonna kill you. I’m well and truly going to murder you.”
“I’d like to see you try, honestly.”
“I’m gonna slap the shit out of- Holy fuck what happened to your face.”
Roman’s right eye was throbbing as the skin under it looked very unnaturally white and charred all at the same time, peeling a little. “Well that’s not a very nice thing to say.”
Virgil stood there stunned for a moment before clicking on the phone button of his mask and letting it ring. “Navy, Maya, we caught all the robbers. Let’s head back to our place and let the cops handle the rest before I blow a fucking fuse.”
“On it, Nightmare! Just hold on a bit, we’re kinda...caught up with a fangirl.”
***
“...So then I caught the car when it fell and nobody got hurt! We’re not counting that one fire-dude that burned my precious face, though.”
“Another individual with superpowers fell to the corrupted end, I see…” Logan looked down at the ground for a moment, processing. He eventually shook his head when he sensed Patton’s worried glancing his way, instead handing Roman a large container of Gatorade. “Drink this.”
“Aren’t you supposed to give him water through the IV?” Patton asked.
“In a normal case of third degree burns, yes. However, Roman’s enhanced resistance abilities make it so he can drink it himself just fine. If he can speak, he can drink a bottle.”
“It’s really not all that bad!” Roman took a breath after drinking a third of the large bottle, “Sure, my hand wants to fall off and run away, but I’ll be fine tomorrow.”
Virgil in the background made some vague hand gestures in Roman’s direction to symbolize his grumpiness as he didn’t have his mask on. Without one of the two masks Virgil always wore around the place, he didn’t have the technology in order to communicate. The masks he built from scratch were meant to analyze his mouth movements and put them into words, a few other complicated controls allowing him to also add the correct tone to his voice. But Virgil just sat in his suit with his helmet on the seat next to him, leaning his head in one hand and looking around the room. He wanted to seem tough, but they all knew Virgil was panicking a little from Roman’s recklessness.
Logan looked back at Virgil on the other side of the L-shaped couch. “He will be fine, however I think that’s enough patrol for one day. Right, Virgil?.”
Virgil nodded slightly and kept looking at the massive TV on the other wall, focusing on some commercials about washing products to keep himself from staring at Roman’s face and hand. Logan continued tending to the wounds as best he could with only a nursing degree under his belt, the burn already starting to slowly mend itself back together like Roman’s powers often did.
“SLEEP?” Logan called, “Could you maybe turn up the heat in the penthouse? Burns need warmer rooms in order to heal.”
Virgil’s handmade AI SLEEP peered out from the corner of the hallway, flicking down his sunglasses slightly as he processed what Logan asked. “Penthouse temperature’s going up to 89, babes.”
Virgil snapped to get SLEEP’s attention and started to sign at him. Get my other mask and a pair of shorts or something, then. It’s already hot as shit in this suit.
“I’m a security system, not a maid, but since you asked so kindly… ” SLEEP stared right at Virgil. Virgil didn’t move. He moved closer to him. “Since you asked so KINDLY …”
... Please. He signed unenthusiastically.
“...Then I’ll be so happy to!”
Virgil didn’t even look back at SLEEP to flip him off as he walked away. The only reason Virgil didn’t do more than that was the disapproving dad glare Patton was giving him from the other side of the room.
“Alright, that’s all I can do.” Logan said, taking one last look at Roman’s burned hand and face. “You do not need surgery considering your face is already starting to heal on its own, and since your enhanced resistance makes you immune to sickness, antibiotics and a tetanus shot would be unnecessary. However, I highly recommend you stay here for the night so that no one wonders what happened to your skin before it recovers.”
“Staying a night at multi-millionaire and emo Virgil Raine’s penthouse for a night? My, the horror! How will I ever recover from such a difficult task?! Sleeping on a comfortable guest bed and eating all the food he has? Cruelty I tell you!”
“Ah yes,” Virgil spoke and everyone looked over at him, slowly slipping out of the remainder of his suit with his other black mask covering his mouth again, SLEEP leaning on the back of the couch behind him. “It’s totally not like you basically live here anyway.”
“Your penthouse is comfy and as long as I check into the shelter once a week I still live there. It’s not my fault I know how to get through the window.”
“Yes it is!”
“It’s SLEEP’s fault for not warning you I’m sneaking through your window.”
“I’m supposed to warn him of threats,” SLEEP smirked, “a baby with a star cape isn’t that threatening.”
“ I’m not a baby! ”
“Virgil, your baby is whining.”
“Oh wow, would you look at the time,” Virgil looked at an invisible watch on his wrist, grabbing the clothes he also told SLEEP to bring and standing up. “I’m gonna go change and let you all fight this ou-”
“Hey look!” Patton pointed to the expensive TV excitedly. “The news is talking about us!”
Everyone looked over to the previously ignored TV, showing a woman in front of the jewelry store they had just been at not even three hours ago. The news lady was with the same fangirl that had stopped Logan and Patton earlier, lending her the microphone. “It was definitely crazy I’ll admit, I’ve never seen any of them up so close, and they did manage to get all my stuff back! I’m definitely really grateful The Core Four showed up when they did.”
“...The Core Four?”
“Core Four?” The news lady repeated, tilting the microphone back to the woman. “Yeah! That’s what I’ve seen the four of them be called anyway, on website formats and stuff. It’s less of a mouthful than their full names, even with the Colored Spirits being shortened. Oh! I actually got to talk to both of them-”
The five of them tuned the woman out after that point, focusing on the apparent team name they never knew they had. Eventually, the banner at the bottom of the screen changed to Core Four Saves Quinn’s Jewelry .
“Huh,” Virgil said, “I guess we’re called The Core Four now.”
Logan pouted slightly. “I thought I was coming up with the group name?”
“The news beat you to it. Rip you.”
Logan glared at Virgil, and Virgil just shrugged. “Plus, it’s kinda catchy.”
“I like that it rhymes!”
“We are the center of this very city, keeping it safe and protecting all that inhabit it! The core! Core Four! I love it!”
Logan caved in. “I must admit, it is...an acceptable name for a team like us.”
“It took them a year to decide on that?” SLEEP said, “Step up your game, missies!”
“Nightmare, Royal Guard, and the Colored Spirits altogether.” Virgil looked at everyone else. “That official? Core Four?”
The other three nodded their heads, Roman smiling brightly. “Core Four!”