Chapter Text
Everyone has a Word. Kevin ’s Word is… one might say…
Shitty.
His friend Elfo has the Word “Beauty.” He’s great at glamming someone up for a short period of time, and thus works at a salon. It’s a pretty great Word for him, considering The Way He Is.
Kevin ’s friend Darla has the Word “Healer.” She can stabilize anyone without any supplies at all, and if she has supplies, she can accelerate their healing to be insanely quick.
Kevin, meanwhile, has the most boring Word that anyone has ever had, probably. It ’s why he keeps it a secret, so at least people can assume he has something mild but useful like “Parking” or “Coupon.”
But he doesn ’t have those Words. He has his Word. And his Word does nothing at all to help as he parks his car crookedly at the back of the College ’s crowded parking lot. It does nothing at all to help him as he bumps his head on the top of his car getting out.
And it does nothing at all to help him when he gets kidnapped.
☼☼☼
When the bag is finally pulled off his head, Kevin is no longer in the College of New Dawn ’s parking lot. He is, instead, in some abandoned warehouse with spiderwebs in the rafters and only the barest amount of sunlight peeking through the dusty windows.
He ’s handcuffed to a steel chair. When he looks up, he finds himself face to face with someone he’s never seen before, a person with blond hair and blue eyes and freckles and the absolute weirdest get-up he’s ever seen on a human being.
“Where… am I?” Kevin asks. The stranger doesn’t answer.
“Who are you?” he tries again. The stranger doesn’t answer.
“Well,” says Kevin after far too much silence. “If you’re going to kidnap me, I’m not going to make it pleasant for you. I’m going to tell you all about my day, in excrutiating detail.”
“I would rather you didn’t,” the stranger says. Their voice is deep and gruff.
“Aha! They speak!” Kevin exclaims, amused by the way the stranger furrows their eyebrows. The stranger doesn’t say anything, just taps their foot against the floor from where they’re sitting on their own steel chair. Kevin decides to carry through on his threat. “I woke up at around seven. Then I snoozed my alarm clock. Then I went back to sleep. Then it went off at 7:10, so I snoozed it again. Finally, my brother woke me up at 7:40, and I had to rush around getting dressed for class. But my friend glammed up half the stuff in my wardrobe and it hasn’t returned to normal yet, so I had to reach deep into the back to find something to wear. Then I hopped in my car and drove to the College, and then I parked, and then you kidnapped me, nad then I said “Where am I?” and-“
The stranger ’s face is slightly red. They huff, “Shut up!” and their freckles start to glow red.
Oh.
Oh no.
“You’re Changeling,” Kevin says with wide eyes, his face paling of color.
Changeling is the city ’s top villain, known for eir Word: Everchanging. Every day, ey have a new face, and eir only tell is that eir freckles glow when ey’re experiencing any strong emotion, including annoyance. Ey can change locked doors to unlocked ones, change healthy flowers to wilted, sometimes even change people’s minds if they’re susceptible enough.
And, most importantly, ey are dangerous.
And ey have just kidnapped Kevin.
Changeling rolls eir eyes. “Oh, calm down,” ey say. “I’m not going to hurt you.”
“But- But you’re Changeling!”
“Do you want to be hurt?” Changeling asks, raising eir eyebrows, and Kevin frantically shakes his head. “Then shut up and wait quietly.”
“Wait for what?” Kevin asks, confused.
“What part about ‘shut up and wait quietly’ are you confused on?”
Suddenly, The Destined crashes through the dusty windows, landing in a hero pose across the room from Kevin and Changeling. The Destined looks up, his cape blowing in the wind, and locks eyes with Kevin for a moment.
“I think I’m going to win this fight,” he say confidently, and Changeling stands up with a grin so fast that eir chair falls over.
“Oh, do you?” Changeling asks, stalking closer with a swaying gait. “Arrogance leads to downfall, you know.”
“It’s not arrogance,” says the Destined. “It’s just the truth.”
The two of them run at each other and jump into fighting stances. Changeling throws a punch that the Destined easily blocks. The Destined spins and elbows Changeling in the chest, and Changeling lets out an ‘oof’ and then whirls around with a kick, all the while quipping back and forth with the Destined.
“Interesting face you have today,” the Destined says.
“Your face is interesting every day,” Changeling replies.
“Was that a compliment or an insult?”
“I think it’s clear it was an insult. Do you always fight like this?”
“Like what? Like a hero?”
“No, like a fool.”
“The true fool is one who assumes everyone around them is lesser.”
“Oh, I’m not assuming,” Changeling says with a grin. “I know.”
The quipping—rather, flirting, in Kevin ’s opinion—goes on for a little too long. Eventually, Kevin groans and says “Can’t you just defeat em already?”
Both parties are startled out of the fight for a moment, looking at Kevin with wide eyes. Then Changeling ’s freckles start glowing pink—embarrassment—and the Destined nods sharply. He quickly throws a punch to eir gut and then whips em around, grabbing both eir hands to hold behind eir back.
“Of course,” says the Destined. “It is done.” Then, to Changeling as he leads em over to the steel chairs, “You know, I fight better with an audience.”
“That’s why I lured you here alone,” Changeling purrs, and Kevin splutters.
“Um, hello?” he pipes up, and Changeling’s freckles glow pink again while the Destined simply looks away.
“Kevin, you know-“ The Destined stops himself just short of revealing a detail about his Word, and then he quickly ties unclasps Kevin’s handcuffs and puts them around Changeling’s wrists instead. “I’ll call the Sun Court to pick you up and take you to jail while I take this citizen to safety,” he says loudly, and then he grabs Kevin’s wrist and begins dragging him out of the warehouse.
“I’ll see you again soon!” Changeling calls out after them, and Kevin isn’t sure who it is ey’re talking to.
☼☼☼
Once they ’re far from the warehouse on their walk home, Alex takes off his Destined costume to reveal his civilian attire underneath. Then he starts asking questions.
“Are you okay?” he asks worriedly, and Kevin sighs.
“I’m fine, just shocked, I guess.”
“You’re not harmed at all?”
“No, I told you, I’m fine,” Kevin replies.
“You were kidnapped,” Alex says, unimpressed.
“Yeah, but Changeling never hurt me. Actually, it was really weird. Changeling just sat there across from me and didn’t threaten me or anything. The most ey did was tell me to ‘shut up.’”
“Strange,” Alex mutters. “Not eir usual M.O. What could ey be planning?”
“Yeah, it is strange,” Kevin says. “Don’t ey usually just rob places?”
“Important places, yes,” Alex confirms. “Ey’ve even broken into the College’s classified area before.”
“And yet ey kidnapped little old me!” Kevin says.
Alex rolls his eyes. “Little old you, huh?”
“Yep!”
“You’re really a rather inconvenient kidnappee, you know. My Word doesn’t work on you, so I can’t use your belief.”
“Yeah, yeah, it’s my Brother Power,” Kevin jokes. “Gotta be as annoying and inconvenience you as much as possible.”
Alex grumbles, but it ’s good-natured, and they spend the rest of the walk home in comfortable silence. Once they get home, Alex switches on the TV. The news is covering Alex and Changeling’s fight—or, at least, the aftermath of it. The reporters are talking to Zabrell, the head of the Sun Court hero group, as xe laments that their rogue member Changeling has escaped yet again by the skin of eir teeth.
“They didn’t catch em,” Alex sighs. “Will they ever?”
“I thought you didn’t like the Sun Court,” Kevin says.
“I don’t,” Alex replies. “But that doesn’t mean I want Changeling running wild through the streets. Ey’re the city’s number one villain at this point.”
“I guess,” Kevin says, but secretly he’s thinking about how Ileao didn’t even try to hurt him. Regardless, he changes the subject as Alex turns off the TV. “Hey, can you help me with my essay?”
“Of course,” Alex says, but then his phone starts ringing. He takes it out of his pocket and checks the alert with a sigh. “I’m sorry, Kevin, but I’m needed on the south side of town. There’s been another villain sighting.”
“Oh,” Kevin says. “Right, okay. Good luck!”
“Thank you,” Alex replies with a small smile. “And good luck with your essay.”
Kevin works on his essay long into the night. The essay is focused on Words and their history, and the subject matter has him thinking about his own useless Word. As he lays in bed that night, he thinks about it—about how ridiculous it is that his brother got something as good as “Propaganda” while Kevin got such a let-down, a Word that does literally nothing, a Word that states its own detachment from the Word system.
Unanchored.