Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Earth Prime, October 22, 1988

Rand slams the door to his truck shut as he settles in the front seat. Kian climbs into the passenger seat, nothing covering him but Rand’s denim jacket. At least he has the decency to hold it closed.

Rolan clambers into the backseat, and right behind him is Becky. Rand tries not to shudder at the sound of the clicking coming from both of them. 

For the fifth time in as many minutes, he asks a question in his head: Can I trust them?

Yes, comes the undeniable, steadfast answer.

He still doesn’t trust it.

Regardless, he starts the truck and buckles up. “Alright. Where are we going?”

“We can go to Chicago,” Rolan offers. His voice is quiet, overlayed with a constant buzzing. “I’ve got my place there.”

Rand doesn’t want to look at him. Or Becky, for that fucking matter. Why is she even here? How did she survive? And Rolan? How are they here?

How did they survive when the Queen died?

No answer. His head hurts from all the questions he’s been asking. He’s been running off almost no sleep, and the way he abused this new sixth sense to try to get to the bottom of things a couple days ago is biting him in the ass.

He keeps his eyes forward as he pulls out of the driveway of his parents’ house. The roads are covered in bodies. He just runs over them. They’re all—they’re all dead, there’s nothing to be done for them. The government is going to be crawling all over this place soon anyway. Word’s going to get out about what happened here in Galloway somehow. 

“Chicago works fine for me,” Kian says. His voice is quiet too. Weird. He’s always loud, boisterous, flamboyant, Kian.

Is this really Kian?

Yes, comes the answer, along with a sharp pang in the back of his head.

He takes a deep breath as they near the town border. He doesn’t see the fleshy barrier that was over it earlier. Still, he can’t help but wonder if they can even get out, if the Queen is dead, if some of those things she made are still around and are going to try to stop them, because if Rolan and Becky survived then surely, surely there are more. 

God. His head fucking hurts like a bitch. He’s had a migraine for two straight days, almost since…

He grimaces through the pain and throws some questions into his head, hoping for answers. 

Is the Queen dead?

Yes.

Can we leave Galloway?

Yes.

Will anything stop us when we get to the border?

No.

The answers make him feel better by only a miniscule amount. He doesn’t trust this… weird sixth sense he’s acquired. Kian said it was some kind of “power,” like the heroes running around in their underpants on TV that have been crawling out of woodwork since the seventies, but that’s bullshit. It’s all bullshit, because those heroes are probably getting their powers from like—government made chemical potions or some shit, powers in a can. And that bug thing was not a supervillain, Kian, it was a monstrosity that never should have existed, and was probably put in Galloway by the government in the first place. 

He decides to ask it another question.

Am I a superhero?

No, comes the answer.

He breathes a sigh of relief. He’s not like those capes out there, see? He’s got proof of that now. The answer is no, he’s not like those heroes, and that’s that, despite what Kian will insist otherwise.

They pass the “Now Leaving Galloway” sign and he lets some of the tension drain from his shoulders. They’re out of Galloway. They’re fine.

Maybe. He doesn’t know for sure that they’re out of danger.

Are we in danger?

No answer.

That doesn’t make him feel any better.

He glances next to him at Kian. He’s gazing out the window, staring at the trees on the side of the road. Rand remembers what he saw on that tree at the top of the hill, the mass of flesh that was Kian, red sinew fused to the trunk. Those were his real powers, not the bullshit Kian fed him about having a superpowered singing voice. 

Apparently, Becky had changed them. Somehow. Those were her powers, apparently, the ability to fucking—make other people’s powers stronger. Temporarily, apparently, but that could be a lie. The Queen made Becky that way, gave her that ability for a reason. Maybe Becky’s part of her master plan. Maybe Becky is the Queen. 

Why are they even bringing Becky along? Why is she here? She’s not the same Becky they knew in high school, she was replaced by one of the Queen’s clones years ago, apparently. Rolan, at least, is someone they’ve known before, he was replaced when he was 14, so—Rand knows him a little. Knew him in high school. He played D&D with this Rolan. He can stay. He’s fine. But Becky…

Can we trust Becky?

Yes.

Fuck that, then. Whatever. 

Kian though... There’s got to be something wrong with him. He had those fleshy powers before. How did he get them? Some fucked up experiment? Did he get them from the Queen? Did he come back to Galloway before now? Is he also a clone? 

Can I trust Kian?

Yes.

Rand grips the steering wheel tight and turns his attention back to the road.

He keeps his eyes open wide, searching for anything and everything that could possibly be a threat. He doesn’t spot much. The sun is just rising, so the only other living things around are birds that chirp in the treetops and cicadas that buzz in the undergrowth.

Rolan and Becky won’t stop fucking clicking in the backseat.

Can I trust Rolan?

Yes.

It’s always so quick to answer when he asks those questions. Too quick. Maybe it’s hiding something somehow. Maybe this power, whatever it is, is alive, and it’s hiding something. Hiding something about Rolan and Kian and Becky, maybe. Hiding something about the Queen.

Maybe he was infected by the Queen.

Fuck.

Can we trust Becky?

Yes. 

He can’t trust this. He can’t trust this—this thing in his head telling him all these answers. It fills in the blanks wrong, throws him off—it said yes when he asked if there was a brain controlling Galloway for fuck’s sake, and he believed it, like an idiot—

“What are we gonna do when we like, get to Chicago, dude?” Kian asks. “Are we just gonna like, walk into your apartment?”

“Yeah?” Rolan says, like that should be obvious. “It’s mine. They can’t keep me out of it.”

Turning away from the road for just a moment, Rand twists around in his seat to look at Rolan and Becky. Too many pairs of beetle black eyes stare back at him. Rolan’s left sleeve is torn, a long mantis-like claw extending from his arm. His jaw jitters when he clicks, the sound coming from somewhere high in his throat, overlayed by a buzzing deep in his chest. He doesn’t seem to notice he’s doing it. 

Becky doesn’t look any more normal than he does. She’s got mandibles sticking out of her mouth, snapping at nothing like a spider waiting for a fly to zip into its jaws. Her eyes are black too, all four of them, staring directly at Rand like she could look into his soul. A small pair of antennae stick out of her black curls, twitching with every sound. Her buzzing is a bit higher than Rolan’s, louder, like she’s trying to be heard, to be listened to. 

They both smell like a mix of wine, beer, blood, and swamp water. They all probably do.

“Man,” Rand says, “do you think anyone’s gonna let us in anywhere with you two looking like that?”

Becky startles, and she looks down at herself, as if she didn’t even realize, like she fucking forgot somehow. Her buzzing quiets a little. 

“You look like you could be those things, dudes,” Kian says. “The monsters from TV.”

“Those aren’t real,” Rand scoffs, turning back to the road.

“They are, dude! They were on the news!”

“The news isn’t always right, Kian!”

“They’re callin’ them Case 53’s or something,” Kian continues, twisting around in his seat to look at Rolan and Becky. “You think that’s what the Queen was?”

Rand doesn’t mean to ask the questions, he’s not looking for an answer, but they pop up in his head unbidden regardless: Are the monsters in the news real?

Yes.

Was the Queen the same thing as them?

No.

What was she?

No answer.

“She’s not one of them,” Rand says. “She’s something different.”

Kian turns to him. “Like what?”

“Like—I don’t know, Kian, I don’t have a fucking handle on this shit.”

“Ask your powers, dude!”

“I did! They’re not giving me a fucking answer, man!” He clenches his fists on the steering wheel. “And these aren’t even powers. I’m not like those fucking heroes, it’s—it’s something else. Maybe the Queen did something to me, like—I don’t know, she corrupted me or something, she got in my head, and maybe she’s still telling me shit and I’m her next host and she’s going to explode out of me like a chestburster and—”

“She didn’t,” Kian insists. “She didn’t get you, man, we would have heard you in the hivemind if she did.”

“Are you sure you didn’t hear me? Maybe I was like—I don’t know, some background voice—”

He hears a loud crack in the backseat and whips his head around. Rolan’s mantis claw arm is changing, twisting, cracking as the hard chitin warps, and Rand has half a mind to pull the car over and get out and run because Rolan’s still one of those things and they’re still in danger he’s going to hurt them—

His arm morphs, growing fingers, white chitin turning back into a pale flesh colour, and then it’s just... normal. A normal human hand. Rolan gently rubs his newly formed hand with his other, staring down at it like he can’t believe it’s real. Becky stares at it too, eyes wide and curious, a couple clicks leaving her throat before she closes her mouth in an attempt to stop herself. 

“We didn’t,” Rolan says. His voice is quiet but firm. “Trust me, you’re hard to ignore. We would have heard you.”

Can I trust Rolan?

Yes.

Rand bristles at the thinly veiled jab, but he tears his gaze away from Rolan’s hand and fixes his gaze on the road. “Okay. Fine. But this isn’t—this told me I’m not like those heroes on TV, so... I don’t know, man. I don’t know.”

Kian shrugs. “We’re gonna figure it out together, dude. We’ve got you.”

Rand glances at Kian for probably the ninth time in this entire conversation. He’s holding his jacket closed tight, legs crossed. Rand watches as Kian carefully arranges the denim over his lap as best he can. He can’t even see Kian’s chest tattoos.

“Kian, why are you naked?” Rand blurts.

Kian’s entire body tenses at the question, and so does Becky’s, the clicking in her chest getting quicker, and Rand—he wants to know, he’s curious as hell, but—something feels off. The question pops up in his head against his will—What happened to them both?—and he forcefully ignores his sixth sense to avoid hearing any answer it might give him. It doesn’t give him one anyway, and he’s not sure whether to be relieved or worried about that.

“Kian?” Rand says quietly. “Did Becky—”

“It was the Queen, dude,” Kian snaps, turning to narrow his eyes at Rand. “It wasn’t Becky. And she made it so I could use my powers to save us, man, we should be thanking her.”

Becky shrinks down in her seat. She turns to look out the window, steadily clicking. 

“Did you guys... fuck?” Rolan asks. “It’s—fine if you did, we don’t—we don’t care.”

Becky coughs into her hand and the clicking lessens. “Something like that,” she mutters. The first words she’s said since they got in the truck.

What did the Queen make Becky do? comes the question in Rand’s mind, and he tries to think of anything else so he doesn’t hear the answer. He doesn’t get one anyway. He doesn’t need to fucking know. He doesn’t think he wants to anyway.

“What did the Queen do to you guys?” Rolan asks for him, almost like he knew what he was thinking. 

Can Rolan hear my thoughts? 

No.

Becky grimaces, the buzzing getting louder, just a little. Kian doesn’t say a word. Usually he’d smile and brush it off, but this... this is different. Whatever happened to them both at that tree was different.

“Just made my powers different,” Kian says. “It’s fine.”

Is that true?

No answer.

What did the Queen do?

No answer.

Why doesn’t he get answers to some questions? Are they too long and complicated? Are yes and no questions the only thing he can ask? What’s the limit here?

His head hurts more than it when he first got in the car. Kian reaches one hand into the backseat. Wordlessly, Becky links her pinky with his and rests her forehead against the back of Kian’s seat, looking down at the floor. Rolan won’t stop buzzing.

Can I trust them?

Yes.

Rand tightens his grip on the steering wheel, fixes his gaze on the road, and stops asking questions. 

March 13, 1989

It’s weird. Living with people who aren’t his parents. 

He’s always tried to stay quiet, stay out of his dad’s hair, be as little of a nuisance to his mom as possible. And he’s still trying to do that with Kian, Rolan, and Becky, but every time he asks in his head if they think of him as a burden, the answer is always, without a doubt, a firm no.

Which is insane to think about. 

He’s never going to ask them outright. Hell fucking no. He doesn’t need to shove his fucking insecurities on the three of them. It’s just... something to get used to. That’s all. 

There’s something weirdly domestic about it, though. Despite the... well, the everything. 

He walks into the living room and sees Rolan sitting on the floor with the coffee table in front of him, doing some paperwork or something, sifting through case files from his briefcase, dressed in... is that one of Kian’s shirts? He looks like he just rolled out of bed, and even though his mantis arm is gone, concealed within a normal looking human arm, he’s still hella buggy. He’s got four eyes that stare down at his work like a cat staring at a mouse, and he won’t stop buzzing and clicking like crazy. 

“Morning,” Rand mutters. He still feels tense, sometimes, when he hears Rolan and Becky buzzing, but it’s not something they can stop. He might get used to it. Eventually.

Rolan just chitters at him, not looking up from his work. Rand passes by the couch and nudges the door to the kitchen open. 

On the kitchen wall is a mass of red, sinewy flesh, pulsing like the beating of a heart, strands of it clinging to the ceiling, spread out like a web. Rand jumps a little seeing it, but Kian’s face is visible through the thin pink veil, eyes closed, face relaxed, like he’s sleeping. Gross. 

He just scoots past the mess and opens the fridge to grab some eggs. “Morning, Kian.”

The mass of flesh shifts, and Kian slowly opens his eyes. The red tissue clinging to the walls and ceiling begins to retreat into the centre of the mass with a gross squelching, and Kian peels himself off the wall, raising one hand to rub at his eyes while the other is still plastered to the wallpaper, slowly returning to normal. He’s wearing one of Rolan’s sweaters, an old college crewneck with a couple holes along the seams. 

“Morning, dude,” he mumbles. 

“Why do you sleep like that?” Rand asks as he takes the carton of eggs out of the fridge. 

Kian shrugs. “Don’t wanna sleep on the couch. Makes my back hurt something heinous, dude.”

“And plastering yourself to the wall is any better for your back?”

Kian snorts as his other hand turns to normal and unsticks itself from the wall. “Yeah, dude.”

Is that true? 

No.

Then why does Kian do that?

No answer. Too complicated a question, too open ended. He’s still figuring out the ins and outs of this... thing. Sixth sense. Power. Whatever it is. 

God. Timothy Rand does not deserve this domesticity. Timothy Rand deserves to waste away in his parents’ attic with his stupid weed plant, getting high twenty-four-seven and playing out D&D scenarios alone in his room. And yet here he is. Living in an apartment with three freaks of nature, two of whom have steady jobs, and all three of whom cook and clean and wear each other’s shirts and make coffee in the morning and leave just enough in the pot for Rand to have a cup. 

It’s kinda gay. Is this gay? It’s totally gay. Even with Becky here, he thinks this might be a little gay. 

Is this gay?

Yes. 

Well, fuck him. 

He sighs and grabs a frying pan out of the cupboard, setting it on the stovetop. He cracks a couple eggs into the pan and starts asking questions. 

Does Kian do that on purpose?

No answer. 

Does Kian like sleeping like that?

No answer. 

Come on, these should be easy questions. Yes or no. 

There’s got to be nuance to the answers, then. Maybe he uses his powers on purpose sometimes, and other times it just... happens? Maybe he sleeps better like that sometimes, and other times he can’t control it and wishes he could just sleep normally?

Has he slept normally since Galloway even once? Like, without all the gross goop and shit.

No.

He glances sideways at Kian, who’s currently brewing a pot of coffee. He looks totally unbothered, leaning on the countertop and staring at the coffee pot like it holds the answers to the universe in it. He never looks different after he comes out of his weird cocoon thing, no red stains from the goo or anything, like he just absorbs it all back into himself. Rand would love to know exactly how Kian’s powers work, but that would require too many questions, most of which he has no idea how to ask.

Rand hears the door open, and then something soft hits the side of his head. He whips around to look. “Hey!”

Becky stands in the doorway, grinning. Her hair is tied back in a braid that’s got strands hanging out of it, framing her face. She’s wearing—is that one of Rand’s Led Zeppelin shirts? Whatever, everyone keeps stealing everyone’s clothes at this point, it’ll get back to him in the laundry. Who gives a shit. 

He looks down and sees the scrunchie she fired at him. He leans down and picks it up, then shoots it back at her. It sails past her head and into the living room. 

“Mornin’, Tim,” she says. 

“Morning.” 

Kian grabs four mugs from the cupboard and sets them on the counter just as the coffee finishes brewing. He takes the pot and pours coffee into each of the mugs. Rand watches as Kian drops a handful of sugar cubes into one. Rand opens the fridge and grabs three different things of creamer—Rolan’s hazelnut flavoured stuff, Kian’s caramel creamer, and the half-n-half for Becky. He sets each of them on the counter. Kian starts pouring creamer into three of the mugs with a muttered “Thanks.”

Rand stares down at his eggs. He’s not really hungry, he just kind of... automatically starts making breakfast now, without really thinking about it. Rolan’s gotten him into that habit, he thinks. Rand used to just not eat until lunch, where he’d sneak downstairs and make a sandwich or something and sneak back up to the attic to avoid his dad’s judgement. Weird that he can just stand in a kitchen and...  not feel like he’s about to jump out of his skin just for existing in the general vicinity of food that he hasn’t paid for himself. The lack of that feeling, that fear, unsettles him more than the feeling itself did.  

Once Kian’s poured a sufficient amount of hazelnut creamer into the mug with the sugar cubes and stirred it a little, Rand reaches over and takes it. “Watch my eggs for me,” he says. 

Becky gives him a thumbs up. She sidles up next to Kian, not touching him, leaving just a few centimetres of room between them, reaching for the half-n-half to pour some into the mug from Rolan’s cabinet that she has designated as hers. Kian closes the distance, gently bumping his head against hers, almost like a cat. She doesn’t try to move closer or touch him back, just lets Kian press himself against her side. 

Is she afraid to hurt him?

Yes. 

Rand leaves the kitchen, coffee in hand. He finds Rolan still on the floor, hunched over the coffee table with his paperwork in front of him. 

Rand pushes a couple papers aside and sets the coffee down. “Here.”

Rolan usually says thanks when one of them brings him coffee, but this time he just buzzes louder, chittering like a bug. 

Rand gently nudges Rolan’s shoulder. “Love you, man. Lemme know if you need anything.”

Rolan clicks out a sound like kind of sounds like “you too,” but it’s hard to tell. It’s not gay, or whatever. This isn’t—this isn’t gay.

Is this gay?

Yes.

He heaves a sigh and goes back into the kitchen. 

December 15, 1989

“What the Protectorate thought was a simple earthquake relief mission has gone incredibly awry, as a giant creature that locals are calling Hadhayosh, or Behemoth, has appeared miles away from Marun, Iran's second largest oil field. It appears the tremors were not a simple earthquake, and were instead caused by this beast’s presence lurking beneath the ground. No one knows what Behemoth is or where it truly came from, but Eidolon, Alexandria, and Legend—the Triumvirate, the three most powerful heroes on the planet—are all on the scene, subduing the creature as best they can. We will keep you updated on casualties—”

Becky picks up the remote and turns the volume off. “Rand, dude. You’ve been rewatching this recording for two days.”

Rand glares at her. “Beck, come on, I was watching that.”

She sighs. “You’ve seen the Behemoth broadcast, like, a million times. There’s nothing more to glean from it, man, you’ve got all the answers you can get.”

“You don’t know that!”

Is Behemoth the same thing as the Queen?

No answer.

Where did Behemoth come from?

No answer.

Can Behemoth be killed?

No answer.

Rand puts his head in his hands, just for a second. It hurts, his head pounding with every question he pushes at it. He’s not even getting answers, for fuck’s sake. On top of that, his lower back hurts, the place where Officer Dudes had jabbed him with a stinger and nearly liquefied him. He wishes he’d gone somewhere to get it checked out before, but now that it’s healed, he’s pretty sure it’s stuck like this. Ugh.

He looks back at the TV screen. The news broadcast shows a giant creature, about 50 feet tall. It has grey leathery skin, covered in cooled magma, cracked like obsidian, spikes sticking out of its muscled body, thicker in the shoulders and joints. Its hands are nothing more than mangled growths of rock. Right smack dab between its large obsidian horns is a single red, glowing eye. It has a mouth, sort of, a large hole lined by rocky spikes that somewhat resemble teeth. It stomps through the field towards Marun, the ground trembling with every step.

“I can figure out where it came from,” Rand insists, turning and reaching for the remote in Becky’s hands. “If I can do that, then—”

Becky holds the remote up high, her legs cracking in a sickening way as they grow a couple extra joints just to make her taller. She’s already tall without that, for fuck’s sake. Rand can’t reach it unless he climbs Becky like a tree. 

“What, you’re gonna go out and fight that thing yourself?” she asks.

“If my powers would fucking work with me, maybe!”

Becky stares at him like he’s gone insane. “Timothy fucking Rand.”

“Okay, maybe not fight it, but—I can do something, okay—”

“Hey, what’s going on in here, dudes?” says Kian’s sleepy voice. A buzzing accompanies it, and Rand doesn’t need to turn around to know that Rolan’s entered the room as well. Fuck.

“Nothing!” Rand jumps for the remote. Becky leans back to keep it from him.

“God dammit, Rand,” Rolan mumbles. “You think the heroes aren’t already trying to figure this shit out? They’ve got ten times the resources and power any of us do. If they can’t figure it out, we can’t.”

His voice is raspy from sleep, overlaid by a constant low buzzing. Becky’s own buzzing automatically changes frequency to be louder than his, and his own changes to get quieter, letting her buzz over him. Neither of them seem to notice they do that. Is there a pecking order for the Queen’s clones? Is Becky ranked higher up than him? Rand might have to ask his powers about that later, but this is more important right now.

“No, you can’t, I can! Or I fucking—I should be able to!” Rand stands up from the couch and reaches for the remote, dignity be damned. “Come on!”

He hears Rolan sigh and walk closer, and then Rand is being picked up by the scruff of his shirt. “Hey!”

“You’re not going to get anywhere like this,” Rolan says, like he’s scolding a child. He turns Rand around to look him in the eyes. Rolan’s grown his hair out a little since Galloway, brushed back instead of clipped short. His legs are longer like Becky’s, with one too many joints like some kind of animal, and Rand has seen firsthand how fast he can move with them. He’s gone almost full bug mode, but he still has his left arm. At least right now. 

“Put me down,” Rand snaps. 

“Not until you—”

Rand kicks Rolan in the shin, hard, intending it to hurt and for him to drop Rand, but Rolan’s skin is tough as nails and it only serves to hurt Rand’s toe. 

“Shit,” he hisses, resorting to kicking his legs and reaching up to try dislodging his shirt from Rolan’s claws. 

Rolan sighs, and then Rand is being put down. Rand glares at him as if his stare could commit murder. 

“You’re not getting anywhere with this,” Rolan says, his voice firm. “If you really want to help, we could try working with the PRT like I’ve suggested a million times.”

“That’s not gonna work, we can’t trust them!”

“Says who?”

“Says me.” Rand narrows his eyes. “And my stupid powers. So there.”

Becky grimaces. “I mean, dude, you said yourself, they don’t work all the time.” She’s clicking up a storm, and every time she clicks, Rolan clicks back, like they’re having some stupid secret conversation Rand can’t understand. 

“But they work sometimes!” Rand whirls on her. “And every time I ask if we can trust the PRT, it tells me no!”

“It could be filling in the blanks wrong,” Rolan says, narrowing his eyes. “Like it did back in Galloway with the brain thing.”

Kian hisses through his teeth. “Low blow, dude.”

Rand bristles. “It was—Galloway was being controlled by a brain! The brain was just... in the body of a giant bug lady! It wasn’t wrong!”

“Wasn’t fucking right either!” Rolan says.

“Okay, dudes.” Kian steps between them with his hands held up to each of them, as if to push them apart if they try to start throwing hands. “Look, let’s... let’s just calm down, okay? Behemoth isn’t our problem, not right now—”

“We don’t know that,” Rand interrupts. 

Kian looks him in the eyes. “Ask then, dude. Are we in danger right now? Is this thing going to show up again?”

Rand hesitates. He sorts out the wording in his head—he’s learned that the phrasing needs to be specific as hell or else he won’t get anything really useful—and he asks. 

Will Behemoth attack again?

No answer. 

Will he show up again in...less than a month?

No answer. 

Fuck. Can he be killed?

No answer.

His shoulders slump. “Fuck, man, I don’t know. It doesn’t answer any questions I ask about him. My head hurts.” He rubs at his eyes, wincing at how it feels like he’s pressing the heels of his hands directly into his nerves. Where are his sunglasses? 

“That’s okay. Let’s just... assume we’ve got time, then.” He feels Kian place something on his head, and he feels the familiar nosepiece of his sunglasses poke his scalp. “You can come back to this tomorrow, and we’ll help you. Right guys?”

“Yeah.” Becky’s voice is softer than it was. Her legs crack as they shorten to their normal length. Gross. “We’re here to help you, man.”

Rolan sighs. “Yeah. You’re not doing this shit alone, Rand. Not... not again.”

Rand lets out the slightest sigh through his nose. “Okay. Fine. Whatever.”

“Awesome, dude.” Kian slings his arm around Rand’s shoulders. “And hey, the heroes will take care of shit in the meantime. It’s fine, dude. It’s not like that thing attacked Chicago.”

“Could have been worse,” Rolan agrees.

Rand nods slowly. The question pops up in his head: Can I trust Rolan, Kian, and Becky? and the answer, as always, comes not a second later: Yes.

Another question comes up, one he’s thought of multiple times as he looks up at the TV screen, watching the heroes flying around the fiery giant on screen. 

Can we trust the heroes?

No answer. 

July 10, 1990

“Rand, what are you doing?”

Rand doesn’t turn around, pinning a newspaper clipping to his bulletin board. “Just trying to figure things out.”

Can we trust the Prime Force?

No answer. 

Do they really have the general public’s safety and best interests in mind?

Yes.

Where did they get their powers?

No answer.

Did they get their powers from the government?

No answer.

Did the Triumvirate get their powers from the government?

No answer. 

Will Behemoth attack again?

No answer.

“You’re gonna drive yourself insane doing this,” Rolan sighs. “Not everything is a fucking conspiracy, man.”

Rand whirls around to look at him. Rolan stands in the apartment doorway, already changing partway out of his normal human form, two extra eyes open below his first pair, little mandibles poking out of his lips. He shuts the door behind him and slings off his suit jacket. 

“It’s not a conspiracy,” Rand insists. “This is real, Rolan! The Prime Force just came out of nowhere! Where were they a few days ago when Behemoth showed up in Brazil?”

“Maybe they didn’t have their powers yet,” Rolan says. 

Did the Prime Force have their powers already four days ago?

Yes. 

“Well, they did! So where the fuck were they?”

“It takes time to get a hero team organized,” Rolan sighs, tossing his jacket over the back of the couch. “What, you think the PRT just magically has all the resources in the world at their disposal?”

“But—showing up right after the Behemoth attack? Like, a few days? They have to be connected somehow!”

Did Behemoth make the Prime Force?

No.

Did the Prime Force make Behemoth?

No. 

Did the Triumvirate make Behemoth?

He doesn’t get the chance to hear the answer to that one, because a door in the hallway opens and Becky steps out, trudging out to the living room, wearing one of Kian’s shirts and her hair in curlers. She rubs her eyes and yawns. “Are you still on this, man?”

“Has he been doing this all day?” Rolan asks her. 

“Yeah, he’s been driving me fucking nuts, man. I tried to have a nap and I woke up to him complaining about a headache and walking back and forth to the kitchen to get painkillers.”

“In my defence, I thought you were still awake,” Rand says. “Now I’m almost onto something, if you guys wanna give me like five minutes.”

“Hey, Timothy.” Rolan puts his hands on Rand’s shoulders. “You’re losing it, man.”

Rand shrugs his hands off and turns around to look at his bulletin board again. “Don’t Timothy me, I’m not fucking losing it! I’m onto something here, if I could just—if I could see—”

The door swings open and Kian waltzes in. “I’m home!” he calls out, unnecessarily loud. Rand internally curses at himself for forgetting when Kian and Rolan were supposed to come home from work. Kian’s also going to have something to say about all this, he knows it—

Kian shuts the door and toes off his shoes. He’s dressed in his stockbroker shit, a nice business suit and tie with his hair pulled back into a neat bun, the pink ends expertly twisted within the blond to hide it. Despite his usual fashion sense, he always seems comfortable in his suits. Rand never thought he would see the day Kian would enjoy wearing suits, but he guesses there’s a lot he never knew about Kian.

Kian furrows his brow as he takes off his suit jacket and tosses it next to Rolan’s. “Dude, is this a fucking conspiracy board?”

“It’s not a conspiracy!” Rand snaps. “It’s real!”

Becky shoots Kian a look. “Babe, your boyfriend is freaking out.”

“You don’t need to talk about me like I’m not here!”

Kian steps closer, loosening his tie and slipping it off over his head. He stops next to Rolan and stares at the board, at the newspaper clippings and string and sticky notes. 

“Don’t say a fucking thing,” Rand says before Kian can even open his mouth. “I know you’re going to say I’ve lost it and I’m fucking nuts, but this isn’t me being nuts, okay, this is—”

“What kind of things have you been asking it, dude?”

Rand blinks, taken aback by Kian’s question. “Uh...”

“Have you been directly asking it about Behemoth?” Kian asks, turning to look at Rand. 

Rand shrugs. “I mean, yeah. I don’t know what else I’m supposed to do.”

“But it doesn’t answer?”

“No, never.”

“But it answered most of your questions you’ve asked about the Queen, right?”

“Yeah. But they’re not the same thing.”

Kian hums, crossing his arms, baby blue eyes flickering over the notes on the board. 

Rolan turns to look at Kian. “What is it?”

“Do you think Behemoth is immune to your powers, somehow?” Kian suggests. “Like—like maybe he’s got powers that cancel out yours? Makes him hard to see?”

Rand finds himself asking the question in his head before he can think about it—Is that the case?—but of course, he gets no answer. He runs a hand through his hair and gives his board a good once over. 

“Maybe,” he mumbles.

Kian hums. “Maybe you could try phrasing the question differently. Like... like instead of asking will Behemoth attack in the next year, you could ask something like will a catastrophe on the same scale as Behemoth happen in the next year. You know? Work around it, find a loophole, dude.”

Rolan raises a brow. “Would that work? Wait, I’m—I’m not endorsing this.”

Becky snorts. “You’re a lawyer, dude, don’t you look for loopholes in shit all the time?”

“I mean... yeah, that’s half my job. Phrasing is important. I mean, even if this works, this wouldn’t be a perfect solution. If you asked that and it said yes, that catastrophe could just be a natural disaster or something—”

“But it would be better than nothing,” Kian points out. “And even if it is a natural disaster and not Behemoth, then at least we know beforehand and maybe we could like, alert the heroes to be there just in case. They’d still be there to help people in danger, dude.”

Rand thinks about it for a moment, gazing at his strings and newspaper clippings. It seems like a long shot. Like, a really long shot. But...

Fuck. Will... will there be another horrible catastrophic disaster on a similar scale to Behemoth within the next twelve months?

Yes.

Rand inhales sharply. “It works.”

A smile tugs at Kian’s lips. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.” Rand lets out a laugh of disbelief. “Yeah, holy shit! Kian, I could kiss you!”

“I still don’t endorse this,” Rolan mumbles, but his protest is quiet, and he looks more intrigued than annoyed. 

“Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.” Rand waves a hand at Rolan and takes off his sunglasses, staring at his board. “Lemme—give me a second. Give me a second, let me ask more questions.” Fuck, what else could possibly indicate anything about Behemoth’s whereabouts? He can’t ask about locations, cycling through every country in his head would be ridiculous. He can get general locations, though. Make it vague, and narrow it down. 

Will there be another devastating disaster like that in the next eight months?

Yes.

Will it be... in the northern hemisphere?

Yes.

Will it be on the east side of the northern hemisphere?

No.

Will it be in America? 

No answer.

Will it be here in Chicago?

No answer. Fuck, is he getting too specific with locations? Maybe it knows and is blocking him off somehow. Keep it vague. Narrow down the time frame first, figure out what the pattern is, then work on locations.

Will there be another disaster like that about eight months after the next one?

No.

What?

“Hang on, hang on.” Rand looks back up at his newspaper clippings. His head is starting to fucking hurt, really badly, but he forces himself to focus on the small print. “The—the last one, it was eight months ago. It said there would be something in another eight months, but I asked about another disaster after that one and it said no.”

Rolan furrows his brow, evidently interested now, despite previously announcing his disapproval. “Why?”

“Ask it, dude,” Kian urges, wringing his tie between his hands, almost nervous. “Does Behemoth like, go away? Does he attack later?”

Does Behemoth attack later?

No answer. Fuck, right, too specific. Can’t talk about it by name, his powers evidently can’t see that, but it can see general disasters, time frames, whether or not the worlds’ capes will be in one specific spot fighting something, see the destruction after, and make vague insinuations and guesses from that.

Will there be another catastrophic disaster over eight months after the next?

No. 

Will there be another disaster like this under eight months after the next?

Yes.

Will there be another disaster like that six months after the next?

No. 

Fuck, work with me. Will there be another disaster five months after the next?

Yes.

He takes a deep breath. His eyes fucking hurt. “It’s gonna happen more. It’s—it’s going to start attacking things more often. Five months after the next one. It’s gonna speed up.”

Becky’s eyes widen, and a second pair opens up under the first. She lets out a single click. “It’s—it’s going to attack more?”

“And you’re sure it’s referring to Behemoth?” Rolan asks.

“I don’t know, man! Like you said, it’s not perfect, it’s just a loophole, but—” He pinches the bridge of his nose. “Fuck, ow.”

Is there another cause of these disasters?

No answer.

Are these disasters like, caused by the weather? Hurricanes, tornadoes, something like that?

No. 

What the fuck causes it?

No answer. 

Rand’s head pounds. He groans and presses the heels of his hands into his eyes. “Fuck. It’s not natural disasters. It’s—it’s probably Behemoth. It’s not giving me answers.”

“How sure are you?” Rolan asks. His voice is quiet, overlaid with a gentle buzzing that sounds almost concerned in its pitch. 

“I don’t know, like. Sixty percent?” Rand steps back from his board, nearly bumping into Kian, who places a hand on his shoulder to steady him. “I need to lay down.”

The other three all exchange a glance. “Should we tell the heroes?” Becky asks softly. 

“Would they even believe us?” Rolan points out. “It’s not like we’re registered capes or anything, we’re not with the PRT, we’re essentially in hiding and no one knows we were involved in—in the Galloway shit. As far as the PRT and everyone else knows, the Queen took over Galloway, then spontaneously blew up, and no one knows why. I want to keep it that way.”

“Shouldn’t we tell them your guesses anyway?” Kian says. “It would be better to try so they can like, try to help, or fight better, or—”

“Kian, if they know about Rolan and Becky, they’re probably gonna put them in a fucking lab or some shit,” Rand says. 

“Are... you sure?” Kian asks.

Rand shrugs. “Dunno. Not asking. But they’re not—they’re not like those fucking capes out there. They didn’t get their powers the way everyone else does.”

Kian shifts a little, uncomfortable. “And how’s that?”

“I don’t know man, I’m still working that out, but I got interrupted on that train of thought when Behemoth showed up in São Paulo. Point is, Rolan and Becky are freaks, you’re also kind of a freak, and I don’t know what my fucking deal is, and my powers always say no when I ask if we can trust the PRT.” Rand lowers his hand from his face and slides his sunglasses back on. “I’m making the executive decision here. We’re not telling them shit.”

Kian’s face falls. He looks up at Rolan, silently asking for backup, but Rolan just shakes his head. He turns to Becky, who just shrugs. 

Kian nods slowly. “Fine. But... but if we’re not telling them anything, I’m—I’m gonna start—I’ll go be a hero.”

Rand’s eyes widen. “You’re gonna what?”

“I’m not gonna go to the PRT, dude!” Kian says quickly. “I’m just—I wanna—” He gestures to Rand’s board. “This is nuts, dude! I just—I need to do something, okay? I can’t... I can’t sit here on my ass and do jack shit while things like Behemoth are out there. I’m not gonna fight him myself, fuck no, dude, but if I can... I don’t know, if I can help somehow, help anyone at all, I wanna.” He looks at Rand, blue eyes watery. “I barely did anything when we were fighting the Queen. I wanna do something good.”

Rand grimaces. He knows all too fucking well how that feels. 

“Fine.”

Rolan barks out a startled laugh with very little humour. “What? You’re just—you’re fine with this? You’re gonna let him go be a hero and put himself in danger?”

Rand whirls on Rolan. “I can’t stop him, man! If he wants to do it, I’m not gonna fucking tie him up to keep him here!”

“Kinky,” Kian mutters, but Rand ignores him. 

“I’ll make sure he’s safe,” Rand continues. “I’ll—I’ll ask every time he goes out to do hero shit to make sure he’ll be okay if he leaves. As long as he doesn’t go off and fight that fucking thing, I don’t care if he goes out and arrests a couple easy villains every once in a while.”

“Um,” Becky interjects, steadily clicking. “Kian’s going to need help out there, if he’s going to be doing hero stuff. Maybe...” She looks at Kian. “Would you maybe want a partner? Someone to help you out if things go wrong?”

Kian’s eyes light up. “Fuck yes, babe!” He lunges forward and crushes her in a hug, making her stumble back a bit. “Holy shit, dude, we’re gonna be fucking heroes! This is so rad!”

Becky looks over Kian’s shoulder at Rand and Rolan. Hesitantly, she brings her arms up to hug him back, gently patting him on the back a couple times, like she’s handling something fragile, something breakable. 

Rolan glances between the three of them. Rand looks him dead in the eyes. He does think Kian is fucking nuts, absolutely, but he knows how he feels. If he could go out there and do something decent with his powers without risking getting beat up or killed, he would too. 

“Jesus fucking Christ, you’re all insane,” Rolan whispers.

Kian lets go of Becky, who takes a generous step back, lingering near the door. “Okay,” Kian says. “I’m... okay. I’m gonna figure out a costume and everything, and—and Becky, I can help you with yours. I’m—We’re gonna do it, dude.” He smiles a little. “This is gonna be fucking awesome!”

Rolan sighs and shakes his head. “Fuck me.” He turns and leaves the room. “Good fucking luck.”

Rand turns back to his board. 

Can we trust the PRT with this?

No answer. 

March 28, 1991

“During Behemoth’s attack on New York City yesterday, a new hero appeared on the scene out of seemingly nowhere. His full powerset appears to vaguely mimic Behemoth’s abilities, with general pyrokinesis and radiation control being very large factors in his combative abilities. With the help of the Prime Force, this new hero, now known as Magma, successfully drove off Behemoth—”

Rand grabs the remote and shuts the volume off. The news broadcaster keeps talking in silence as a picture of Magma appears on screen, a man with dark brown skin and braids that fade into a bright glowing orange closer to the ends. He doesn’t wear a mask, just a simple black superhero suit with red and orange accents. There’s a fire in his eyes that makes him look angry. 

Rolan sighs from where he’s leaned against the doorway, wiping down a glass with a dish towel. “Five months, huh?”

Rand nods, staring at the screen. The reporter is still talking. He knows what she’s saying. He’s watched this recording five times already since it came out yesterday. 

Where did Magma come from?

No answer. 

Is he a clone of Behemoth?

No. 

Did his powers come from Behemoth?

No. 

Were his powers purposely made to mimic Behemoth?

Yes. 

How?

No answer. 

“Five months until the next one,” Rand agrees, setting the remote down and crossing his arms, staring intently at the screen. 

“Where are Kian and Becky?”

Are Kian and Becky in danger?

No. 

Are they on their way home?

Yes. 

“Coming home.”

Rolan nods. The buzzing in his throat gets quieter. He turns and goes back into the kitchen, and Rand hears the clattering of dishes in the sink. 

August 22, 1991

There’s another one. 

Out of everything—everything that Rand could have possibly predicted, this was not even within the scope of possibilities on his radar. 

They’re calling it Leviathan. It attacked Oslo, Norway, and wreaked havoc for an hour before the Protectorate was finally able to drive it off. 

Rand sits in front of the TV, remote in hand, watching the live broadcast from the local news station reporting everything. Leviathan is a completely different beast from Behemoth, a 30 foot tall creature with an even longer whip-like tail, disproportionately top-heavy with large masses of muscle along its shoulders and arms, running on all fours, leaving behind an afterimage of itself made of water with every movement, flooding the streets. Moisture glints off its green skin, its head completely featureless save for four glowing eyes on its face.

The new hero who did so well against Behemoth turned out to be useless against Leviathan. Worse than useless, actually. He got knocked over by a wave and was down in the first five fucking minutes. Alive, but severely injured and probably humiliated. 

“Shit,” Becky whispers. She’s in her hero costume, which isn’t much of a costume, really. Her hair is in wild curls, a pair of mirrored sunglasses on her face and a black mask over her lower face, which she now has dangling by one of the ear loops. She’s wearing one of Rand’s Led Zeppelin t-shirts. Why she keeps stealing his shirts specifically, he’ll never know. Over the shirt is a long leather jacket that would drag against the ground if not for her six inch platforms. How she walks in those, Rand has no fucking idea, but at least her whole getup is more conspicuous than Kian’s. 

Kian hasn’t changed out of his costume, either. It’s just a headband over his eyes that he cut holes into so he can see through it, and a black turtleneck and leather pants under his jaguar print coat. So easily recognizable, or it would be if there weren’t like a hundred other people who dress so similarly to Kian in Chicago’s nightlife. Rand’s pretty sure he met at least five people with blond hair and pink tips the one and only time Kian took the three of them to a gay bar. 

“Is he like Behemoth?” Rolan asks under his breath, mostly to himself. “Do they—do they have a schedule for when they attack?”

Will Leviathan—fuck, will there be a disaster of this scale five months from now?

Yes.

“Five months,” Rand says. “It’s—it’s five months now. Twice a year. Maybe three at some point, if the timing lines up.”

“Where?” Rolan asks. “Where’s the next one?”

Northern hemisphere?

No. 

West side?

No. 

“Southeast,” Rand says. “Don’t know what continent or country. It gets—it gets weird when I try to get specific, like it knows I’m trying to work around it with a loophole, or it just can’t see things that specific.”

“Could just be a natural disaster,” Rolan says. “It was last time you ‘predicted’ a Behemoth attack.”

“Was still good to know there was a huge earthquake on the West Coast anyway dude,” Kian says. “The PRT appreciated the tip, they were in San Diego pretty much as soon as it happened.”

“They should have seen it coming anyway,” Rand scoffs. “They have their own people with precognition, right? Better than my wild fucking guesses.”

“I’m not so sure they’re even looking for that kind of thing,” Rolan mutters. “With Behemoth and now this thing out there, they probably see earthquakes as...” He shrugs. “I don’t know. Insignificant.”

Rand sighs. “How’s your hero shit been?”

Becky tears her gaze away from the TV to look at Rand. “Hm? Oh. Uh, the PRT knows we exist. So that’s something.”

“You said you ran into Myrddin last week?”

Becky nods. “Yeah, yeah. I gave him your anonymous tip about there being a disaster around Europe soon. You know, this.” She nods at the TV. 

“Clearly didn’t listen, since it took the capes half an hour to get there and this thing destroyed half the city by the time they did,” Rand scoffs. 

Rolan stares at the screen with four beetle black eyes. “Kian? Becky?”

“Yeah?”

Rolan swallows. “Do you... do you want some help? Out there? Like, with your hero stuff?”

Rand’s eyes widen. “Rolan?”

“I just—” Rolan runs a hand through his hair. “Look, this is—bad. This is fucking bad. I’m not fighting that thing. But—the rest of the heroes are busy with shit like this, and if it’ll only get worse if there end up being more of them—”

Are there more of them? Things like Behemoth and Leviathan?

No answer. 

“—then the entire world is going to need people who can do something to pick up the pieces. And if I can do literally anything to help even the scales... maybe I should?” He sighs. “I don’t know. I became a lawyer so I could do something good, but I don’t think arguing over traffic laws in a courthouse is going to make much of a dent in anything anymore.”

Rand stares at the TV screen through his sunglasses. Questions race through his head, only some of which he gets answers to.

Will there be another disaster in the next five months?

Yes.

Does the Protectorate know what these things are?

No answer.

Can we trust the Protectorate to take care of these threats?

No answer. 

The question that pops up in his head that’s the most important, though, is: Does the world need more heroes?

Yes, is the straightforward answer. 

“You were so against them being heroes when they started,” Rand says. “And now you wanna be one too?”

Rolan gestures to the footage of Oslo. “Look at that and tell me the world doesn’t need heroes, Rand.”

Rand doesn’t look at the footage. He can’t tell Rolan otherwise. He already knows. 

Rand lowers his head and takes a deep breath. “You guys are gonna need some kinda backup,” he says reluctantly. “Someone who knows shit, or can find shit out, who can relay information to you while you’re out there.”

Kian’s eyes widen. “Like our guy in the chair?”

“Yeah, like—whatever. Sure. Guy in the chair.”

A grin stretches across Becky’s face. “Dude. Tim. Are you—”

“I’m not gonna be like the heroes out there, okay?” Rand takes off his sunglasses and runs a hand down his face with a heavy sigh, unsure of why he’s even entertaining this at all but knowing he has to do something. “I’m not gonna have a cape name or a costume or what the fuck ever. I’m just gonna—like, keep an eye on you guys from afar, maybe we can get our hands on some body cameras so you can livestream to me when you’re out there or something, or just have cellphones, I don’t know. But—Rolan, you’re fucking right. I—I wanna do something good.”

Kian’s grin turns into a full on beaming smile. “We’re gonna be heroes, man. Holy shit.”

Rolan takes a deep breath. “Fuck. Yeah. I can’t believe I’m gonna do this.”

Rand looks back up at the broadcast, at the footage of Oslo flooded, buildings collapsed, dead bodies floating in the streets. 

Were we always going to become heroes?

Yes.

February 6, 1992

Technology like the computer monitor in front of Rand on his desk used to be extremely hard to come by, but with the rise of capes and the rapid invention of advanced technology, shit like this has become ten times easier to get his hands on. The bodycams were a little harder, but still not too hard considering the fact that this stuff didn’t even exist as little as five years ago. The visuals are blurry as shit and the audio is delayed by at least five seconds, but still insanely impressive that this stuff exists in the first place. 

Rand watches through the three open windows on his monitor, a pair of headphones over his ears. He mostly watches through Rolan’s cam. It’s a lot more exciting than watching Kian and Becky’s “patrolling,” because Kian’s mostly consists of him wandering through alleyways and sometimes dipping into the nearest bar to grab a drink. It doesn’t seem too productive, but Kian insists that having underground and nightlife connections are very important for the city’s safety, and Rand’s powers agreed for some unknown fucking reason, so he’s not telling Kian to stop. 

Becky’s patrol isn’t much different. She doesn’t go into as many buildings, but she talks to just as many people, mostly those hanging out in alleyways and in doorways. She’s had a small run-in with a rogue parahuman, some college age kid who thought it would be a good idea to use their evidently newfound strength powers to try breaking into a store, and all it took to drive him off was for Becky to lower her mask and lash her stinger at them, leaving a surface level gash on their arm.

She and Kian know what they’re doing anyway, having been doing this longer than Rand and Rolan. Kian’s successfully broken up one alleyway fight and stopped a mugging. The fight was easily fixed by promises of buying the guys drinks if they knocked it off, and the mugging was fixed by Kian spreading his webbing on the wall of the adjacent building and scaring the fuck out of the mugger. No major violence so far on anyone’s end tonight, but that can easily change. 

Rolan’s patrol has been a lot less eventful, but that doesn’t mean it’s been less exciting. 

Rolan’s a fucking beast. Rand hasn’t seen him fully bugged out in a while, and he still can’t see Rolan’s entire body from the angle of the camera, but he can see Rolan’s limbs, the extra joints in his legs, the mantis-like scythe that makes up his left arm, the hard white chitin that’s spread across the skin of his other arm. His costume is incredibly barebones, just an old sleeveless undershirt he doesn’t mind getting ripped if his body changes further, sweatpants, and a long scarf over his lower face. 

He practically flies around the city, jumping up to rooftops of short buildings straight from the ground, leaping from building to building like he was made for it. Rand watches his window intently, feeling his stomach drop every time Rolan jumps down from a high ledge and freefalls before landing on another rooftop. It’s like being on a rollercoaster without actually being on a rollercoaster. 

Rand’s headphones crackle when Rolan’s voice comes through. “Everything going okay?”

There’s a delay, and then Kian’s voice comes through his headphones as Rand watches the mugger on Kian’s feed run away screaming (as well as the muggee, which is fine, as long as she’s okay and uninjured). “All good, Bug.”

Rolan scoffs. “I’m not being saddled with that name.”

“Then think of something better,” Becky says, watching the young parahuman kid she scared run off, “or that’s what you’re gonna be, dude. We’re not using our real names.”

“No shit,” Rand says. “If anyone figures out who we are, we’re fucked.”

“I mean, we’re cleaning up the city for them while the heroes focus on shit like the Endbringers and the Slaughterhouse 9,” Kian says. “They should be thanking us, I think.”

Rolan snorts as he clambers up the side of a building. “Like they’d ever do that.”

“You never know, dude! I haven’t seen any of ‘em in months! Maybe they’re like, trusting us to keep things running here while they’re beating up giant monsters and shit.”

Is that the case?

No.

Does the Chicago Protectorate know about us?

Yes.

Do they trust us?

No.

“Not the case,” Rand says. “They don’t trust us as far as they can throw us.”

“Figures,” Becky says, fixing her mask back over her mouth. “I mean, I probably wouldn’t trust us either. Fucking look at us, man.”

“They have to be watching us, right?” Rolan asks. “No way they’re not keeping tabs on us somehow.”

“Hey, guy in the chair,” Kian says. “We being watched or what?”

Are they watching us?

Yes.

Right now?

Yes.

“Well, they’re looking at the three of you now,” Rand says, his heart leaping into his throat at the sudden realization. “Check if you’re being tailed, all of you. Bug, be a little more conspicuous, get lower, stay in the alleys. Stinger, I think you’re okay doing what you’re doing, but maybe start heading towards Widow just in case he needs backup. Widow... I don’t know how you could be conspicuous at all, actually.”

“Not my fault I’m interesting and people wanna watch me,” Kian says, but he glances back and forth down the alley he’s in and stays pressed close to the wall as the sinewy webbing from his hand is absorbed back into his skin. 

Rolan does as he’s told, vaulting off the edge of the building he’s on and landing on the wall of the opposite one, clinging to the side like a spider, his scythe digging into the brick. He starts moving by hopping from wall to wall, a little slower, but definitely harder to see in the darkness and harder to keep track of from above. Becky changes directions and starts heading towards the west side of the city.

Are they still watching us?

Yes.

Kian darts down another alleyway, and Rand watches all three of their feeds, searching for signs that they’re being tailed. It’s hard to tell when he’s not there to see it himself, so he starts asking. 

Which one is being followed? Kian?

Yes. 

Is Rolan also being followed?

No. 

Is Becky being followed?

No.

“Bug, Stinger, you’re good. Make your way to Widow’s location, he’s the one being tailed. Bug, pick up Stinger, you can move faster than her.”

Rolan starts moving faster, ducking between two other buildings and leaping from wall to wall, heading in the direction of where Becky’s patrolling. “Are they going to hurt us?”

Are they going to hurt us?

No. 

Do they want to question us?

Yes. 

Do they want to recruit us?

No answer. Nuance, it’s always fucking nuanced, can’t have a straight answer to this shit. Dammit. 

“They don’t wanna hurt us,” Rand relays. “Just question us. Maybe recruit, but I didn’t get an answer on that one.”

Rolan huffs. “They can try, but it’s not gonna happen.” He clambers on top of a building and launches across couple streets in one jump, and Rand startles as he lands right in Becky’s camera feed. She reaches out and lets him pick her up, holding her to his chest with his right arm, and then he leaps back up and lands on another building. 

“Widow, you doing okay?” Rand asks. 

“Yeah, yeah, I’m—” Kian turns a corner into a darker alley and jumps at the sight of a figure in front of him. “Fuck! Shit, dude!”

“Don’t run,” Rand says immediately. If that’s Myrddin—and judging by the cloak and staff, it probably is—running would be pointless and only paint Kian in a bad light. 

Kian skitters in place, startled but fighting his instincts to heed Rand’s advice. His body camera moves a bit as he presumably looks behind him to see if he can run if need be. 

“What’s going on?”

“Bug, Stinger, get to Widow as fast as you can. I don’t think he’ll need backup, but I don’t trust him to talk to this guy alone and not say something stupid.”

“Hey!” Kian says. “Rude.”

“I still hate that name,” Rolan mutters, but he quickens his pace.

“Rude?” says the person in front of Kian, tilting his head. Rand spots the glint of a metal visor beneath the hood of his cloak. His voice is deep, intimidating. “I haven’t even spoken yet. Unless you’re responding to someone else?”

“Don’t give us away yet,” Rand says, heart pounding. He’s just working off intuition, asking a small handful of questions to make sure things won’t go south.

Will Myrddin chase Kian if he runs?

Yes.

Is there anyone else with him?

No.

Would he even need backup to catch Kian?

No.

“Just say shit. Buy us time until Bug and Stinger get there.”

“Hate that name,” Rolan mumbles.

“Then pick a different one!”

“No, this is like, totally fucking rude as hell, dude,” Kian says to Myrddin with a nervous laugh. “Fucking scaring me like that? I’m just a random guy, man, you could have been a villain or something.”

“The same could easily be said about you,” Myrddin counters. “Maybe you’re the one who scared me.”

Kian pauses. “Did I?”

“No.”

“Dammit.”

“Be glad you didn’t. You could be in a pocket dimension by now if you had.”

Kian hums. “Noted.” He shuffles in place a little, restless. “So, were you looking for me or something? What’s this about?”

“You don’t have to be tense,” Myrddin says, turning his staff in his hand. “You and your partner have spoken with a couple PRT officers before to give them your... anonymous tips. I’m aware of you, and I have no intention of fighting you.”

Is that true?

Yes.

Rand relaxes, but only barely. “He’s not here to fight. I still don’t know if he’s here to recruit you or something.”

“Should I ask?” Kian mutters.

“Ask what?” Myrddin says. 

Luckily, Kian recovers from the slip quickly. “If you’re here to recruit us or some shit. Should I bother asking, or is it supposed to be obvious?”

Myrddin hums. “I’m not sure yet. I had some questions to ask you first. You’ve been making waves around the city.”

“I have?” There’s something light in Kian’s tone, something excited. 

“You have. Someone with powers like yours would be hard to forget.”

Kian lets out another shaky laugh. “Yeah, well, I didn’t choose ‘em, dude.”

“None of us do.”

Is that true?

No. 

Did Myrddin choose his?

No.

“Your anonymous tips, however, have been a much larger point of interest for the Protectorate.”

“Okay. And? What about ‘em, dude?”

“You knew about Leviathan.”

Kian splutters. “Wh—no! I mean, we—I knew something was gonna attack around then, but I didn’t—I didn’t know it was gonna be something new.”

“Regardless, you knew something would happen.” Myrddin takes a step forward. Kian takes a step back. “All I’m asking is how?”

Kian hesitates. “Uh...”

“The rest of the Protectorate is concerned that you know where the Endbringers came from,” Myrddin says. “That perhaps you know what they are, and where and when one of them will strike next.”

Kian lets out a startled laugh. “Wh—no, dude, I’m—I’m a fucking idiot, I don’t know shit!”

“You’re literally a stockbroker,” Rand sighs, “you’re not stupid, man.”

“You have an informant then,” Myrddin muses, taking another step forward. Kian takes another step back. 

“Anytime would be great, Bug,” Rand says.

“Stop calling me that,” Rolan snaps. “We’re close. What do we do? Attack?”

“No.” Rand doesn’t need to ask to know that would be a terrible idea. “Just—just get in there. Talk some shit, I don’t know, stall.”

“Stall for what?”

“I’m still figuring that out.” The best thing to do would be to tell Myrddin about himself, clarify that he doesn’t know shit and is just making wild guesses so it gets the pressure from the PRT off Kian and Becky’s asses, but just the thought, the idea of making himself known in any way makes him want to crawl into an underground bunker and never come out. 

Rolan, Becky in his arms, turns down an alleyway, and Rand can see Kian and Myrddin’s figures in the middle of it. Rolan drops down next to Kian, and now Rand has a triple view of Myrddin, the head of the Chicago Protectorate, one of the most powerful capes in not only North America, but the entire world. He would hate to be there in person right about now, but being here through the others’ earpieces while Kian’s being questioned about having an informant is probably just as bad. Maybe worse. 

Myrddin tilts his head. “You have two partners.”

“Yeah,” Kian says. “This is, uh—”

“Tithonus,” Rolan says, letting Becky down to stand between him and Kian.

Myrddin hums. “You strike me as more of a mantis than a cicada.”

Rolan’s scythe arm cracks down the middle, the hard chitin breaking, then softening as his arm morphs itself back into a normal human hand. “Common mistake.” 

There’s a constant buzzing coming from both Rolan and Becky’s mic feeds. Rand mutes them both, leaving only Kian’s. The tripled voices are annoying to deal with, and listening to Kian’s means the other two’s buzzing is quieter. Easier to hear when it doesn’t sound like a god damn jet engine in his ear. 

“I don’t suppose you’re the informant?” Myrddin says.

“Informant?” Rolan says. 

“Your ‘anonymous tips’ regarding the attacks from Behemoth and Leviathan,” Myrddin clarifies. “We’re wondering who is providing this information, and how.”

“What, do you want us to stop giving you tips?” Rolan scoffs.

“Bug, down,” Rand says. “He’s not being hostile.”

Rand can almost feel how badly Rolan wants to tell him off for calling him that. Luckily, Rolan holds his tongue, and Rand heaves a sigh and tells himself he’ll call Rolan whatever the fuck that other name is next time, just so he doesn’t give Rand away.

“So, you don’t have an informant? You know these things yourselves?”

“We figure them out,” Becky says, shoving her hands into her pockets. 

“How?”

“Can’t tell you.” 

“And why is that?”

“Personal reasons,” Becky says. “All you need to know is that we don’t know where those things came from or how to kill them, but we can make vague guesses on where and when they’ll be next.”

“I don’t suppose you’ll tell me how you’re able to make these guesses?”

“Well, they’re not always accurate. Actually, most of the time, we have no idea if it is going to be one of those things or just some natural disaster.”

Myrddin sighs. “I was afraid of as much.”

Rolan shifts on his feet, impatient. “Look. We can keep tipping you off with what little information we can get, and we can take care of the city while you’re off fighting monsters we wouldn’t stand a chance against. Or, you keep pushing, we get annoyed, we stop tipping you off, and you get blindsided by every Endbringer attack from here on out. Take it or leave it.”

“Man, when did you get so stubborn?” Becky mutters. 

“Since I became a lawyer,” Rolan mumbles back, hopefully too quiet for Myrddin to hear. 

Myrddin hums. “You would do that? All to keep your secret?”

“Yes.”

“And there’s no chance I can convince you to, perhaps, join the—”

“Not a chance,” Rolan says before he can finish.

Myrddin pauses, seemingly taken aback by this. Rand prepares to watch them get in a fight, maybe for Myrddin to put them in a fucking pocket dimension for defying him, but after a few tense moments of silence, Myrddin just nods and steps back. 

“Very well. If you prefer to work alone, I will not force you to do otherwise. But I do ask, when it comes to these new threats, these Endbringers, please, don’t hesitate to lend a hand. They’re... like nothing we’ve ever seen before. We could use the assistance, even if it’s just another pair of eyes...” He pauses, looking between the three of them. “Or four on the battlefield.”

Becky hesitates. “We’ll keep that in mind.”

“If it helps, dude,” Kian pipes up, “these things seem to be attacking in kind of a pattern. Every five months we think now? And the last one was Behemoth, so maybe he and Leviathan are like, taking turns now. That’s just a guess, though.”

Myrddin nods. “Yes, we gathered as much. But if you can, do let us know if that pattern changes, won’t you?”

“Will do,” Kian says. 

With that, Myrddin draws a rune in the air with his staff, and then he’s off, flying into the night sky. 

“Do we come home?” Kian asks softly. 

Rand stares at the screen for a moment, silent. 

Is there trouble we can help with elsewhere in the city?

Yes.

Is the Protectorate going to start their own nightly patrol soon?

Yes.

Can we trust Myrddin?

There’s silence for a moment, to the point where he thinks it’s just going to be another question left with no answer, but then it comes: a quiet, but firm Yes.

He sighs. “The Protectorate is gonna start their own patrol soon. Better not to get caught up in it. Come home. Nice job out there, Widow, Stinger. And Tithonus?”

It’s not a bad name. Rolls off the tongue. He just doesn’t know what it means. Probably some stupid nerd shit Rolan’s into. 

“Yeah?”

Rand shrugs. “You could use some work.”

Rolan snorts. “Fuck you, man.”

June 7, 1992

Rand looks up from the coffee machine as Kian nudges the kitchen door open. “Morning,” Rand says. “You didn’t sleep in the kitchen today, I was wondering where you were.”

Kian’s got dark circles under his eyes, which is weird, because he usually covers them up with makeup the moment he’s awake. Rand doesn’t even need to ask to know he either didn’t sleep well or didn’t sleep at all. 

Kian sighs and runs a hand down his face. He’s wearing one of Rand’s Led Zeppelin shirts and a too big pair of Rolan’s sweatpants—not really a notable thing anymore, he’s constantly stealing their clothes to lounge around in—and his hair is a mess, blond and pink strands hanging out of his ponytail and falling over his face. 

“Leviathan attacked Sydney, Australia last night,” he says. 

Rand turns to him fully, coffee forgotten. “You didn’t wake me?”

“Dude, you need your sleep.”

“So do you.”

Kian sighs. “Well, you’re awake now, and you’re probably gonna be awake for like three straight days figuring shit out now.”

“Why? What happened?”

“Yow know Magma?”

“Fights Behemoth, really fucking good at it, eats shit and dies every time he fights Leviathan? Obviously.”

“He’s got a brother.”

Rand’s eyes widen. Kian turns and walks back into the living room, and Rand follows, grabbing the sugary cup of coffee he already prepared and taking it with him. 

The TV is on with a news broadcast on screen. Rolan sits on the floor with the coffee table in front of him—he’s also wearing one of Rand’s shirts, the asshole, but Rand can’t say shit because he’s wearing one of Rolan’s college sweatshirts—and he won’t stop chittering, a constant low sound in the back of his throat. Becky stands behind him, arms crossed—fucking hell, is everyone just raiding Rand’s closet today? She better not get makeup or anything on that shirt or he’s gonna lose it. 

Rand places the coffee cup in front of Rolan. He makes a series of clicks that Rand has come to recognize as a “thank you.”

“A new hero by the name of Tide appeared on the scene of Leviathan’s attack on Sydney last night,” says the news reporter. “His hydrokinesis played a very big part in keeping the fight under control, as Leviathan’s ability to summon large swaths of water, seen in his first appearance in Oslo last year, was devastating to the infrastructure of the city. With the help of the heroes and villains who assisted in the fight, Tide was able to fend off Leviathan and drive him away, forcing him to retreat back into the ocean, not to be seen for hopefully another ten months.”

Rand sits down on the couch and picks up the remote, making sure the volume is up so he catches every detail through Rolan’s constant buzzing. “What the fuck,” he mutters.

“Upon seeing this new hero, many had questions, taking to online message boards to pose their inquiries. Magma has since confirmed that Tide is his brother, but many civilians are still skeptical about the origins of these two brothers. Their first appearances at the respective Endbringer attacks that they appear to excel at fighting have made many in the public pose wild theories—”

Rand shuts the volume off. He stares at the screen, a million theories running through his head. Aliens? Clones? Spawns of the Endbringers themselves? Government plants?

“Got anything, dude?” Kian asks. 

Are they aliens?

No.

Government plants?

No answer. 

Clones?

Yes.

Rand startles at the quick answer. Okay, clones. Fuck, that’s—that’s a little more surprising than he thought. Technology’s advancing fast, but he didn’t think it would be fast enough to have cloning technology. 

But clones of who? Or what?

Are the clones of the Endbringers?

No. 

Are they clones of other capes?

No answer. 

Were they made in a lab?

Yes. 

Fuck, he doesn’t know how to narrow it down from there. He doesn’t know what to ask to figure out who made them. 

He looks up at the screen. It’s showing some shaky footage of the Leviathan fight, recorded from someone’s flip phone, incredibly blurry. The faint figure of Leviathan sends a wave of water hurtling towards the Sydney Opera House, and a much smaller figure in a black and cyan wetsuit with blue-tipped dreadlocks rises in front of it on a wall of water, hands raised, and Leviathan’s wave is absorbed into the water swirling beneath Tide’s feet. People run screaming out of the opera house, and fast capes dart into the crowd, picking up civilians and flying or running them away while Tide faces Leviathan head on, as if he was made for it. 

Rand hesitates, and then he asks another question. 

Would it help anyone to know that Magma and Tide are clones?

No.

He sighs and leans back on the couch. “Doesn’t matter what they are,” he says. 

Becky turns to stare at him, eyes wide. “What?”

Rand shrugs. “They’re fighting these things better than anyone else ever could. It wouldn’t help anyone to know what they are. As long as they’re fighting, it doesn’t matter.”

Becky hums. She turns back to the screen. They all watch as Tide raises a wall of water around the coastline, absorbing another wave of water from Leviathan as civilians scream and run for their lives. 

November 24, 1992

“I think we need an official team name, dudes.”

Rolan looks up from his desk in the corner of the living room—they got it for him for Christmas, because he didn’t have one before and working on the coffee table or in bed was killing his back—and takes a sip of his coffee. “Why?”

Kian shrugs. “Well, like, the Protectorate have their team name, why don’t we have one?”

“The Protectorate isn’t their ‘team name,’ they’re a government organization,” Rand says, flipping through his notebook of D&D notes. “It’s a title, like—the CIA or something.”

“Yeah, but it’s still something for people to call them,” Kian says. “What are people calling us?”

Rolan shrugs. “I don’t know. Our hero names that we specifically picked out for people to call us?”

Kian heaves a dramatic sigh and flops down on the couch, right across Becky’s lap. Her hand automatically makes its way into his hair, gently combing through his blond curls. “But I want a team name,” he whines. “You know, something to, like, unite us or whatever.”

“I don’t know if we need one,” Rand says. “Do we?”

“I think it might be cute,” Becky says. “Something for people to call us as a collective, you know?”

Rolan furrows his brow. “I mean... I guess it might be nice.”

Rand scoffs. “Man, come on.”

“What? I’m just saying it might make sense. Something other capes can easily use to refer to us as a unit.”

“It’s gotta be something good,” Kian mutters. “Like, short and catchy.”

“Tithonus and the Three Stooges?” Rolan suggests under his breath. 

“Hey!” Becky takes a scrunchie off her wrist and shoots it at him. It hits his forehead and bounces onto his paperwork.

“If we’re gonna have a name, I want a say,” Rand says, “and we’re not doing that.”

“I want something bug related,” Kian says. “Because we’re already like, kinda bug themed.”

“Becky and I have to be bug themed,” Rolan says, his constant buzzing getting a little louder. “We don’t really get a choice. You don’t have to be a bug.”

“Yeah, but I wanna kinda lean into the spider motif, you know? My name’s Widow, my powers look kinda like a gross web—ooh, I should put a red hourglass on my shirt or something!”

“I’m not being a bug,” Rand says. “But whatever, if you want to be bugs, knock yourselves out.”

Kian hums. “We could call ourselves... like, The Swarm or something.”

“Not a very big swarm,” Rand points out. 

“Gimme a break here, dude, I’m just throwing ideas out there.”

“What about The Hive?”

Rand and Kian both turn to Rolan. He’s turned around in his desk chair, staring at the two of them, a steady clicking coming from his chest. 

Kian hums. “Sounds better than The Swarm.”

“Still a pretty small hive,” Rand mutters. “Why that though?”

Rolan opens his mouth, then closes it. His buzzing gets higher pitched. “Well—I mean, we called the Queen’s control a hivemind, and—I don’t know, we’re not a hivemind, but we’re... kinda like a hive.”

They kind of are, if he thinks about it. They work as a unit, as partners, each of them with specific strengths to make up for each other’s weaknesses. Weird to think about. 

Fitting though, honestly. 

He nods. “Got a nice ring to it,” he admits. 

Becky beams. “I like it. It’s cute.”

The corners of Rolan’s lips twitch into a very small, very faint smile. “Cool. Cool.” 

A hive. 

Rand can’t help but mirror Rolan’s smile a little bit. He looks down at his notebook again so they can’t see it. 

February 2, 1993

“Cauldron.”

Kian nods. He’s got his hands folded in his lap, looking down like a kid who’s done something shameful. He’s completely still, not even picking at his nails like he typically does when he’s nervous. Like he feels like he’ll be chastised, attacked, if he moves even an inch.

Rand stands at his bulletin board. His back hurts from standing so long, but he doesn’t give a shit. That’s—that’s not fucking important. What is important is the information bomb Kian just dropped on him.

“Let me get this straight,” Rand says, looking down at the coffee table and his pages and pages of notes. “In ’86, you wanted to be a hero, so you started asking around for people who could provide you with Tinker tech.”

Kian nods, once, firm. He doesn’t look up at Rand’s face.

“Someone reached out to you—you don’t know their name—and invited you to meet with an organization called Cauldron. They offered you the opportunity to have powers.”

Kian nods again. Rand takes a deep breath and runs a hand through his hair.  “So... you met with some lady who called herself Mother—”

“Doctor Mother,” Kian says quietly, speaking up for the first time since he finished spilling his story.

“Doctor Mother,” Rand corrects himself. “And she offered to put you through rigorous psychological and physical testing in order to get you fit to take a vial that would give you powers. You accepted.”

Kian nods. He’s starting to pick at his cuticles.

“You went through testing for a year, tried to kick your drug habit in order to stay in peak physical condition to make sure you got the powers you wanted. You were told that at this point in time, about two-sevenths of the people who took a Cauldron vial died, four-sevenths experienced unwanted physical changes, and only one-seventh actually became parahumans. You accepted anyway.”

Kian lets out a shaky breath. “Dude, you don’t have to—it’s—”

“You wanted cool Changer or Brute powers,” Rand continues, resisting the urge to pace around the room. “They mixed part of a vial with another to make the thing they gave you, and something about you was still volatile, or at least not in peak condition, because it led to... what you have.”

Kian’s webbing spreads from his hands, sticking to his pants. “Yeah. They—they mixed part of a vial labelled Division with one labelled Web, and I paid extra to have some of another one called Balance put in so there would be less chance of, like... turning me into a monster. Like the Case 53s. I had the option to owe them favours instead of paying, but I had a fuck ton of stock broker money, so I paid like half of it up front, and I’m paying off the rest. I’m... my debts almost completely paid off, I’ve just got another few thousand to pay, I think.”

Rand has one million questions. The most important thing, though, is that he knows now where the Case 53s came from, and potentially where the Queen came from. He’s not even sure if she was a Case 53, or if she was just a particularly powerful parahuman who wanted to do some horrible, insane shit, but...

Did the Queen get her powers from Cauldron?

Yes.

God. He lets out a breath and walks over to the couch to collapse on it, putting his head in his hands.

He knows now. He knows who’s to blame for everything that happened in Galloway. Which—may be not useful now, but it’s... nice to have some kind of answer to that, at least, after all this time.

He reaches over and puts his hand over Kian’s, gross fleshy webbing be damned. Kian makes a sound, confused, but Rand just squeezes his hand.

“Thanks for telling me,” he says quietly.

Kian swallows, He examines Rand’s face, as if expecting him to blow up, to yell, to lose it on him for keeping this, but Kian’s been a web of secrets hidden under a rockstar persona since they were kids. Rand’s just glad Kian told him at all.

Hesitantly, slowly, Kian leans over to rest his head against Rand’s shoulder. Rand maneuvers his arm until it’s wrapped around Kian.

Cauldron—although indirectly—is responsible for everything that happened in Galloway. They’re responsible for Rachel’s death.

He takes a deep breath, pushing down the anger that starts to rise in his chest.

Somehow, someday, they’ll take Cauldron down. One way or another.

June 20, 1993

“I can’t believe I’m doing this.”

Widow straightens his jaguar print coat. “Don’t worry, you look bodacious as fuck, babe.”

Rand stares up at the PRT building in front of them. He’s in a barebones costume, just a denim vest, a pair of motorcycle goggles, and a black scarf over his lower face. He’s wearing a hoodie under the vest so he has a hood, just for a little more anonymity. It’s uncomfortable, but no way he’s risking letting anyone recognize him here. Sure, the city’s too big for him to have met enough people to be recognized, but he’s not taking that chance. 

“Me looking ‘bodacious’ isn’t what I’m worried about, Widow,” Rand says. “I’m worried about the fucking Protectorate and what they’re going to try to get us to do.”

“Are they going to try getting us to do anything?” Stinger asks. “Anything we don’t want to do?”

Will they?

No answer. 

Rand sighs. “Don’t know. But this—I hate to fucking say it, but getting and staying on their good side is necessary. This entire meeting is necessary.”

Tithonus straightens his own scarf, making sure the lower half of his face is hidden. He’d be hard to recognize out of costume anyway with all his changes, but it’s good to be cautious. Rolan’s out in the public much more than Rand is. “Well, we’re not gonna get anywhere out here.”

Rand takes a deep breath, stomach turning, and he starts walking toward the door. Widow, Stinger, and Tithonus follow right on his heels. 

He pushes the doors open and walks in. The PRT building is nice, almost like a hotel lobby. It’s a well lit room with plenty of windows and soft white lighting, a receptionist desk against the wall with an elevator to the side. There’s no receptionist at the desk, however, and instead of bustling with people, the room only has a handful of people in it, a bunch of PRT officers in full body armor. Aside from them are three heroes, decked out in their suits. One, a woman in a painted mask over her lower face and a red kimono. Another is a man in a simple black skintight costume that goes over his lower face, his eyes visible through his see-through green visor. Standing in the centre of them is a man in a brown cloak with a metal visor over his eyes—Myrddin.

Rand walks in, hands in his pockets, trying to maintain some level of confidence in his walk. Rolan, Kian, and Becky’s footsteps right behind him help a little. It’s good to know they’re here, at least, even if Rand will be doing most of the talking. 

Myrddin looks down at Rand, holding his staff tightly in his hand. It’s unsettling that he can’t even see his eyes. 

“The informant I was informed you didn’t have,” Myrddin muses. “May I ask why it took you so long to show yourself?”

“Can’t trust the PRT,” Rand says, keeping his words clipped and short. He’s actively trying to suppress his stupid Louisiana accent. He should get a voice filter maybe, make it harder for people to recognize his voice. He’ll have to figure out where to find one after this. 

The woman—Revel, right, her name is Revel—scoffs. “Can’t trust us? Care to explain why?”

“My powers tell me,” Rand says, matter-of-fact. “They give me the objective truth when I ask questions. And I’ve been asking a lot of god damn questions, especially about all of you.”

The guy in green visor shifts on his feet, like he’s uncomfortable with the notion. Revel narrows her eyes at the four of them. 

“You get why that would be a red flag, right?” says the guy with the visor. “Some guy who apparently just knows shit has been asking questions about us? We have secret identities, you can’t—”

“Anomaly,” Myrddin says, voice firm, casting a look behind him at the man. He turns back to Rand. “If you can’t trust us, why would you agree to meet with us?”

“Because,” Tithonus speaks up, “maintaining some level of civility is important if we’re all going to be here in Chicago. We’re well aware you guys could chase us out, but this is our city too, and we need you to trust that we’re not going to bring trouble to the city or cause it harm.”

“How are we meant to trust you,” Revel says, “when you can’t extend that same trust back to us?”

“I said I can’t trust the PRT in general,” Rand says. “Not that we couldn’t trust the three of you.”

Myrddin tilts his head. “I’m not sure I’m following.”

“When I ask my powers if I can trust the PRT, it always gives me a no. But asking about the three of you individually—” He takes a moment to ask again, just to make sure, Can we trust the three current members of the Chicago Protectorate? Yes.— “it says we can. I’m not entirely sure as to why, but evidently, the three of you are working with the city’s best interest. You at least have good intentions. But I can’t be sure of that with the rest of the Protectorate.”

Revel furrows her brow. “What about the PRT can’t you trust?”

“Still figuring that out,” Rand says. “The answers don’t always come when I want them to. But until I find the right questions and my head gives me the right answers, we’re playing it safe.”

Myrddin hums. “A shame. I was hoping this meeting might end with four more members in our ranks. We are a rather small team thus far. We could use the numbers.”

“Not happening, dudes,” Widow says. “What he says goes, and he says the PRT’s up to some shady shit.”

“We’re not risking it,” Stinger adds. “Not worth it.”

“What was the point of meeting, then?” asks Anomaly. “If you’re not joining us, why are you here?”

“Because we want to make you a deal,” Tithonus says. 

“A deal,” Revel mutters. She studies the three of them like bugs under a microscope. Rand tries not to shudder under her gaze. “What kind of deal?”

Tithonus clears his throat, his buzzing getting quieter to let him speak clearer. “We’re not joining the Protectorate,” he says, “but we would like to come up with some sort of arrangement that benefits both of our teams. Something that allows us to continue operating here without the PRT interfering, but also allows you to call on us for assistance when it’s needed.”

“Like a contract of sorts?” Revel asks. 

Rand shrugs. “I mean, I was thinking we could just come up with something and shake on it, but if you’d like it in writing, we can get a lawyer in on the conversation.”

“That may be preferred,” Myrddin says. “We can find someone who—”

“We’ll get a lawyer,” Tithonus interrupts. “If you don’t mind. If you’d like to get your own and have them talk to ours, you can, but we want our own present if we’re making up a contract.”

Myrddin nods sharply. “Understood. I trust you to find a capable representative that will keep both our interests in mind.”

Rand can’t help but bristle a little at the sentence. I trust you. Like he’s trying to almost rub it in their face, like he’s trying to make them feel bad for not extending them the same courtesy. 

Regardless, Rand nods and steps forward, extending a hand. “We’ll have our lawyer be in contact, then. We can meet again in maybe a week, discuss some guidelines?”

Myrddin switches his staff to his left hand and reaches out to take Rand’s hand. “That sounds good to me... What may I call you?”

Rand shakes his hand. “Conspiracy. Call me Conspiracy.”

July 19, 1993

Rolan clears his throat as he sorts through the papers in front of him on the table. “Alright. Taking into account everything we’ve been discussing over the past few weeks, I believe I have drafted out a version of the agreement that should benefit all parties involved.”

Myrddin turns his staff in his hand, something Conspiracy has noticed he does often. A nervous tic, maybe. “I certainly hope so, considering Tithonus has been notably absent from almost all of these meetings.”

“He’s a busy guy,” Conspiracy says. 

“He’s got a nine-to-five, dude,” Stinger says. “He’s working during lawyer hours.”

“An unfortunate circumstance,” Rolan says, “but as long as his teammates are confident they can speak for him...?”

Conspiracy nods. “I can. This isn’t about individuals anyway, it’s about coming to an agreement between our teams. Anomaly’s been missing from a lot of these meetings, too, I’d like to note.”

“He’s also a busy man,” Revel says. 

Is that true?

No.

Does Anomaly like us?

No. 

Can we still trust him?

Yes.

“I would prefer that all concerned parties be able to know the terms of the agreement,” Director Hearthrow says, narrowing his eyes. The Chicago PRT’s Director stands at Myrddin’s left, where Anomaly would have been sitting had he deigned to show up. “If Anomaly has a problem—”

“He will be fine,” Myrddin says. He nods at Rolan. “Mr. Deep, if you could read out the terms for us.”

“Certainly.” Rolan clears his throat again and holds up a few papers in front of him. “This Memorandum of Understanding, hereinafter referred to as the MOU, is entered into on July 19, 1993, by and between the Chicago PRT and Protectorate and the independent Parahuman team known as The Hive, collectively referred to as the ‘Parties’. The purpose of this MOU is to establish a framework for cooperation and collaboration between the Chicago PRT and Protectorate and The Hive to promote mutual understanding and establish boundaries for both parties. By formalizing this agreement, both parties seek to leverage their respective expertise, resources, and networks to achieve shared objectives for mutual benefit and for the benefit of the citizens of city of Chicago. This MOU does not create a legally binding obligation but serves as a statement of intent and commitment to work together toward common goals in good faith and cooperation.”

“Can we continue to the terms, please?” Director Hearthrow sighs. 

Rolan bristles, just a little. A lone click leaves his throat and he lightly coughs into his fist to hide it. “With all due respect, Director, I am doing my job. Please allow me to continue to do so uninterrupted. The entire contract must be outlined before I will allow anyone to put their signatures on this document, legally binding or not.”

The Director narrows his eyes just a little, but he nods. “Alright. Proceed.”

“Thank you.” Rolan turns back to his papers. “This Memorandum of Understanding outlines the scope of collaboration between the Chicago Protectorate and The Hive. The Chicago PRT and Protectorate agrees to refrain from attempting to recruit members of The Hive to the Protectorate in any manner, as well as refrain from interfering in The Hive’s heroic activities, including but not limited to: regular patrol schedules regardless of whether they are in accordance with the Protectorate’s own schedule or not, villain interrogations and apprehensions, and communication with other independent hero teams and/or individuals, unless the PRT and/or Protectorate can prove that The Hive’s actions will cause significant harm or damage to property and/or civilians. In exchange, The Hive agrees to remain open to communication with the PRT and Protectorate, and provide the aid of the Thinker classification powers at their disposal to direct the Chicago PRT and Protectorate’s course of action when facing threats deemed a Class A or higher, as well as lend their Brute and Changer powers to the Protectorate in cases where such powers are needed.”

The Director visibly shifts on his feet, impatient and restless. Rolan casts him a sidelong glance. A single quiet click leaves his throat that he covers with a cough. 

Does the Director like this deal?

No.

Would he prefer we join the Protectorate where he can watch us?

Yes.

Well, tough shit.

“Furthermore,” Rolan continues, “both Parties agree to come to the aid of the other if possible when called upon for assistance, as well as keep the civilian identities of either Party confidential should their identities become known to someone from the other Party. Both Parties commit to working collaboratively within this defined scope to achieve the objectives outlined in the MOU.” Rolan looks between the two hero teams situated at opposite ends of them table. “Do both parties find this scope of responsibilities outlined in the agreement satisfactory thus far?”

Conspiracy nods. “As satisfied as I think I’ll get.”

“The terms are acceptable,” Myrddin affirms.

“Perfect.” Rolan looks back down at his papers. “This Memorandum of Understanding shall come into effect on July 20, 1993, and shall remain in force until terminated by either party with a two week written notice. Either party may terminate this MOU at any time by providing written notice to the other party. Upon termination, both parties shall fulfill any outstanding obligations incurred under this MOU up to the date of termination. The Parties agree that any amendments made to this MOU must be in writing where they must be signed by the respective authorized representatives of both Parties, Myrddin of the Chicago Protectorate and Conspiracy of The Hive.” Rolan sets his papers down. “Are these terms acceptable for both parties?”

Conspiracy nods. “As long as it keeps the PRT out of our hair. I agree to the terms.”

“As do I,” Myrddin says. 

“Alright.” Rolan picks up a pen and clicks it. “I will get both of your signatures, as well as Director Hearthrow’s. Myrddin and Conspiracy, they don’t have to be your legal signatures, obviously, as those may contain your civilian names or initials.” 

He passes the papers to Myrddin first, who takes the pen and scrawls his signature on the place for his name. He passes the pen to Director Hearthrow, who sends an icy look at Conspiracy before taking the pen and scribbling his own signature on the paper. He hands the contract back to Rolan, who turns and passes it to Conspiracy. 

He looks down at the papers. He skims over the paragraphs, not because he’s worried Rolan will have put something he doesn’t like on there, but because he just—he needs to see it in writing. He needs to know the PRT aren’t going to come after them for this. 

He takes the pen from Rolan’s outstretched hand and scribbles his hero name in cursive on the line for his name, as well as the date, then passes the papers back to Rolan.

“Perfect.” Rolan slides a paperclip over the papers. “I’ll keep this copy for my records, and I will fax copies to both hero teams, as well as Director Hearthrow.”

Myrddin nods and slowly stands from his seat. “Good. Thank you, Mr. Deep. You’ve made this process relatively painless.”

Rolan lets out a slight laugh and stands from his own seat, reaching out to shake Myrddin’s hand. “I’m glad I could be of help. It’s been an honour working with you.” 

Myrddin shakes his hand, and Rolan turns to Revel to do the same. She obliges, giving his hand a single firm shake, and then Rolan extends his hand to Director Hearthrow. 

The director hesitates, but he takes Rolan’s hand. He winces as Rolan grasps his hand. “Strong grip.”

“My apologies.” Rolan gives him a tight smile and then pulls away, turning to Conspiracy. He holds out a hand. 

Conspiracy stands and puts his hand in Rolan’s. He shakes it once. “Thanks.”

Rolan nods, giving him the barest hint of a knowing smile. “It’s been an honour meeting you. All of you.” 

He reaches out to shake Widow’s hand. Widow gives him a flirty wink. “Thanks, dude.”

Rolan lets out a quiet click that’s barely loud enough to be heard. He clears his throat and lets go of Widow’s hand, turning to Stinger. 

There’s an audible smirk in Stinger’s voice when she speaks. “Thanks, man. Appreciate the help.”

“Anytime.”

Rolan swiftly packs up his papers into his briefcase and walks around the table to the doorway. “Pleasure working with all of you. You have my billing information?” He turns to look at Conspiracy.

Conspiracy waves a hand. “Yeah, you’ll get paid, man. I’ll write you a cheque.”

Rolan nods and leaves without another word. Conspiracy turns back to face Myrddin and Revel, pointedly trying to ignore the Director. 

“We look forward to a long and prosperous partnership,” Myrddin says.

Conspiracy nods. He turns to leave, and Widow and Stinger follow on his heels. “Likewise.”

September 18, 1993

“Behemoth attacked South Africa last night.”

Rolan hums as he takes a sip of his coffee. “City?”

“Johannesburg.” Rand reaches across Rolan to grab the coffee pot. 

“Casualties?”

“Lots, obviously.”

“I mean, was it better or worse than usual?” 

“Better. Magma drove him off.”

“Course he did.” Rolan huffs. 

“There’s a handful of new ones, though. Capes, I mean. Well, new on the Endbringer scene, I guess.”

Rolan turns to the stove and cracks an egg into a pan, but he clicks to let Rand know he’s still listening as he sets his coffee cup down next to Rand’s. 

“There’s this team way up in this Canadian city called Fauna that call themselves the Godslayers. One of ‘em is like, a powerhouse with insanely strong powers. He rode a dragon into battle, for fuck’s sake, man.”

Rolan snorts. “A dragon?”

“Looked like one, kinda. Its wings were like, feathery and shit, but it was definitely a giant lizard. The Godslayers and Magma held Behemoth off and let the Triumvirate and Prime Force get some good hits in.” Rand pours last of the coffee into another mug and skirts around Rolan to get to the fridge. “Shit, are we outta Kian’s creamer?”

“I told you to pick some up yesterday.”

“I was busy, why couldn’t you do it?”

“I had a court case, and then ten minutes after that was done, Revel called me to ask to help out with some of The Royals hanging around on Oak Street.”

Rand sighs and grabs Becky’s half-n-half. It’ll do for Kian in place of his usual creamer until he can get to the store today. “They’re getting to be a problem, huh?”

“Yeah. Like, at least The Folk don’t deliberately go out and attack people, usually. They’re just doing their thing. The Royals are actively trying to steal territory from other gangs, hiring parahumans—it’s a fucking mess.”

Rand pours some half-n-half into the coffee mug. “Parahumans keep popping up, huh.”

“Crawling out of the woodwork.” Rolan takes a sip of his coffee and grabs a spatula to poke at his eggs. “You think the Chicago Protectorate’s gonna start recruiting?”

“Can’t recruit us.”

“I mean in general.”

Will they?

Yes.

“Yeah. I mean, that new Wards program has to be helping them a bit, right?”

“Guess we’ll see.” Rolan turns and picks up the coffee cup Rand put together. “Watch my eggs.”

Rand raises his hand in a mock salute. “Yes sir.”

Cup in hand, Rolan nudges the living room door open and disappears. “Kian?” he calls out, a gentle buzz in his voice. 

Rand follows, poking his head into the living room. He can watch Rolan’s eggs with his powers, they’ll be fine.

The red and pink fleshy mass on the living room wall shifts, and Rand sees Kian’s striking blue eyes open from behind a thin veil of flesh. He blinks a couple times, groggy from sleep. 

“Morning, Sleeping Beauty,” Rand calls. 

Kian cracks a smile from within his cocoon, and the flesh begins to retreat into his body, the webbing slipping back from the wall. His legs are free first, and he steps onto the floor with bare feet. As soon as his arms are free, he reaches out and takes the cup of coffee from Rolan’s hands. The thin veil over his face pops and he raises the cup to his lips to take a sip as the rest of his webbing slowly gets absorbed back into his skin. 

“Dude, is this half-n-half?” he asks, voice raspy from sleep.

“Rand forgot to pick up your creamer yesterday,” Rolan says. 

Kian snorts. “Course he did.” He peels himself off the wall, leaving not even a trace behind on the paint. 

Are Rolan’s eggs burning? 

No. 

Do they need to be flipped?

No. 

“I’ll pick some up today,” Rand says, leaning against the doorframe. 

“Grab some smokes too,” Kian says, shaking out his hair so it falls on his shoulders in messy curls. He’s been letting it grow out longer lately. Rand likes it. “You took my last pack, babe.”

“Yeah, well you took the last of my weed from my last stash, so we’re even.”

Kian snorts. He walks up to Rolan, rubbing his eyes sleepily, and gently nudges his head against Rolan’s jaw. A series of clicks emanate from Rolan’s throat, and the buzzing in his chest gets louder as he nudges Kian back, like cats bumping their heads against each other. 

The apartment doorknob jiggles, and then it swings open. Becky walks in, limping a little in her platforms. She hisses a little as she toes them off on the welcome mat. 

Is she hurt?

Yes.

Rand dips back into the kitchen to grab the first aid kit on the wall. “What happened?”

“Patrol,” she mutters, slinging off the bag on her shoulder that contains her costume. “Ran into some of The Royals on Oak Street. Anomaly dropped in and saved my ass.”

Rand walks over to the coffee table and sits down. Becky limps over and flops onto the couch in front of him. 

Is it a sprain?

No. 

A cut?

Yes.

Will it need stitches?

No.

He holds out a hand and Becky lifts her leg to let him grab it. He rolls up her pant leg to the knee, blood sticking to the fabric, making her hiss with every gentle tug. There’s a long gash from the top of her calf to her ankle. 

“What happened?” Rand asks, resting her foot on his knee so he can pop the first aid kit open and find the gauze.

“Some asshole with a knife. Not a normal one, some kinda Tinker tech. What’s the verdict, doc, am I gonna need stitches?”

“Nah, you’ll be fine.” He unrolls some gauze and tears it off, pressing it to the wound. “It looks deeper than it is.”

Do Rolan’s eggs need to be flipped?

Yes.

He glances up at Rolan and Kian. They’re still doing their gross gay shit, Rolan clicking up a storm while Kian rests his head on Rolan’s shoulder and takes a sip of his coffee. 

Rand sighs. “Hold this here.”

Becky places her hand over the gauze and presses down on it, hissing a little. Rand pushes himself to his feet and goes back into the kitchen, beelining for the stove. He picks up the spatula and lifts up the edge of the eggs to check them, then flips them over. The yolk sizzles as it hits the hot pan. 

He hears a gross sound behind him, something wet, and then he feels something touch his foot. He looks down to see red webbing clinging to his ankle. 

He turns around to see Kian standing in the doorway, sinewy flesh trailing stretched from his hand to Rand’s foot. 

“Not gonna let me say good morning?” Kian says. 

Rand snorts and turns back to the stove to poke at the eggs. “You took the last of my weed.”

“And you took my cigs, dude, we’re totally even.” The webbing tugs on Rand’s ankle. “Come on.”

Rand heaves a dramatic sigh and turns around, leaning against the stove. The webbing goes lax between Kian’s hand and Rand’s foot before he starts reabsorbing it as he makes his way closer. It’s objectively gross as fuck, but Rand’s gotten used to it. 

The webbing lets Rand go as Kian stops in front of him, and he tries his best to force back a smile as Kian leans down and nudges his head against Rand’s. 

The kitchen door swings open. Rand shuffles over, almost pressed against the wall next to the fridge, and Rolan slots in next to them to get at the stove. Rand passes him the spatula and Rolan takes it with a quiet series of clicks that Rand recognizes as a thanks.

Becky limps in and hoists herself on top of the counter next to the stove. Her leg is wrapped up tight with gauze, and she’s shed her bloody pants for a pair of Kian’s boxers. She grabs the coffee cup next to Rolan’s and takes a sip. 

Kian scoots behind Rolan to get to Becky. She opens her knees to let him stand between them. He rests his head on her shoulder and presses a kiss to her collarbone. She hums, a gentle buzz in her chest, and rests her chin on the top of his head. 

Rolan leans over and gently nudges his forehead against Rand’s temple, buzzing high in his throat. Rand snorts as both Rolan nuzzles at him like a fucking animal. 

God. They’re all so gross. This is disgusting. 

“Ro, dude, get off my dick,” he mumbles. “I gotta run to the store.”

Rolan just buzzes louder and noses at the side of Rand’s head. 

Do they want me to stay?

Yes.

Rand sighs and leans against the fridge as Kian presses his forehead to Becky’s, humming a quiet song Rand can’t recognize the tune of, and Rolan’s mandibles scrabble at Rand’s ear in what might be a half attempt at a kiss. Hard to tell. 

Coffee creamer and smokes can wait until tomorrow. 

February 2, 1994

“I think we need a new apartment.”

Rand looks up from his notebook, chewing on the end of his pen. “Hm?”

Becky shrugs. “I mean, this is a nice place, but like... you know. It’s small. For four people. And Rolan’s the only one with his name on the lease, and I kind of...” She shifts in her seat on the couch, where she’s got her guitar propped on her lap. She plucks at a couple strings. “I don’t know,” she mutters. “Sorry, forget I said anything.”

Rand looks down at his notebook. He’s got notes about Tide and Magma and the Endbringers scrawled across the page, right next to some doodled ideas for a team logo. He kind of wants to take the Icarus from all his Led Zeppelin t-shirts and alter some things so it’s more buggy. One arm being a mantis claw, a centipede crawling across the chest, beetle wings instead of angel wings—he’s got ideas, and some of them are sticking. He’ll have to run it by everyone else before he commits to anything. 

He glances back up at Becky. She’s wearing one of Rand’s shirts again, go figure. The blue mascara she’s wearing is clearly Kian’s, and she’s got one of Rolan’s favourite pens behind her ear so she can jot down lyrics and notes as they come to her. 

They’ve always got each other’s shit on them. Taking stuff, keeping it, making it so their laundry gets jumbled up in one big mess and no one knows what belongs to who anymore. Like they’re trying to secure their own places in the... relationship? Group? Whatever. Like the others can’t kick them out as long as they’ve got something of theirs on them. 

Rand watches her long fingers pluck at her guitar strings. “No, I get it,” he says. “It’s pretty small. I’ll bring it up to Rolan.”

She looks up at him, eyes a little wide, like she hadn’t expected him to agree with her. She blinks all four of her black eyes.

“Okay.” She looks back down at her guitar and notebook on her lap and plays a couple notes. Her voice is quiet. “Cool.”

October 16, 1994

“Lift with your legs, dude.”

Rand turns and shoots a glare at Kian from under his sunglasses. “Okay, you come and lift up this desk, mister rockstar.”

“Nah dude, I’m not lifting that shit. What do I look like, Alexandria?”

“I got it.” Rolan brushes past Kian and walks up the ramp of the moving van. “Is anyone watching?”

Is anyone other than us looking?

No.

“You’re good.”

Rolan kneels down and lifts up the desk with about as much effort as it might take Rand to pick up a wooden chair. He clicks a couple times, grimacing a little as he straightens, muscles straining, and then carries it out of the van and up the driveway of the house to the door. 

Kian puts his fingers to his mouth and lets out a loud wolf whistle. Rolan rolls his eyes as he tries to maneuver through the front door with the desk in his arms. 

Becky pokes her head out of the garage. “Babe, can you bring in my tools? I’m trying to set up the storage shelves.”

Kian winks at her. “I gotcha, babe!” He turns and rummages through the boxes for a moment before he comes up with a large toolbox. “Dude, could you take this to Becky? I’m gonna find her other toolbox.”

Rand steps forward to take it, gripping the handle tight in both hands. It’s a little heavy, but he manages not to drop it as he lugs it out of the van. 

“What do you even keep in here?” he mutters as he reaches the garage. “Fucking bricks or some shit?”

Becky grins as she takes the toolbox. “Wouldn’t you like to know.”

“Yeah, that’s why I’m fuckin’ asking.”

She sets the toolbox on a table next to a half finished shelf. “Thanks. Oh, bring your truck into the garage when you can, I wanna check the battery. You said it’s having trouble starting again?”

“Yeah, it’s making weird sounds.”

She hums as she digs through her tools. “Could just be the cold, but I’ll take a look.”

He hears a yelp and turns around. A small tower of boxes threatens to fall out of the van, Kian behind it, fleshy pink webbing sticking to them, the other ends of the strands stuck to Kian’s hands in an attempt to keep them from falling. The box on top slides off the stack, and Kian winces as it hits the ground and something breaks inside. 

“Ah, shit.” Kian looks at the house. “Rolan, I think I broke your wineglasses!”

“It’s fine!” Rolan calls from inside. “They were cheap anyway, we can get new ones!”

Becky nudges Rand, a small smile on her face. “Go give him a hand, nerd.”

Rand nudges her back. He rushes out of the garage, back to the moving van. “Kian! Don’t move everything by yourself, dumbass, you’re gonna break everything!”

Chapter Text

April 13, 1995

“I still don’t know where Dragon came from.”

Rolan looks up from his desk at where Rand is sitting on the couch, staring at the TV. A large dragon-like robot stands next to a handful of other heroes, all of them in the middle of some sort of press conference or some shit. Rand’s only half listening to it. He’s more focused on drawing Becky’s D&D character. 

“She came from Newfoundland, right?” Rolan pushes his reading glasses up his nose. He had to get them a couple months ago. His sight isn’t going, not in his bug form, but in his human form, he’s found that it’s been harder to see when he’s reading. Why he doesn’t just keep his bug eyes all the time, Rand doesn’t know, but he doesn’t want to ask. Personal preference, he assumes. 

“Yeah, but she showed up, like. Right after Leviathan destroyed Newfoundland in December. Like she was ready or something. There’s gotta be more to her.”

Rolan shrugs and looks back down at his work. “Well, you have fun with your theories. Keep me updated.”

“Is that sarcasm?”

Rolan shrugs and keeps looking over his case files. Rand looks up at the screen, heroes lined up in front of some PRT building somewhere—looks like Brockton Bay, and a question thrown in the back of his mind confirms that is the case—being questioned by the press. The Dragon suit stares at the press like an animal, its bright green eyes cold, lifeless. She’s the most powerful Tinker in the entire world—never seen in person, just speaking through her machines.

Is Dragon a clone?

No. 

Is Dragon human?

No.

Is Dragon dangerous?

Yes. 

I mean dangerous to the general public. Is she a danger to us?

A very long pause, long enough that Rand almost doesn’t think he’ll get an answer, and then he gets a firm No.

Will she be helpful against Endbringers?

Yes.

Okay. That’s all he needs to know. For now. She can help, so what exactly she is or where she came from can wait. Probably. 

He watches the Dragon suit move to stand next to Armsmaster, looming over him and the rest of the capes on screen like a big scary guard dog. Armsmaster stands a little straighter, grips his Halberd tighter, as if he can feel her gaze on him through the machine. 

Rand narrows his eyes and turns back to his notebook. 

He’s got a fucking eye on her.

October 4, 1995

Becky takes a sip of her coffee as she stares at the TV screen. “Leviathan got Japan?”

“Kyushu, entirely gone.” Rand sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “At least it’s not as bad as Newfoundland.”

“I don’t think anything could be as bad as Newfoundland,” Kian mutters, rubbing the sleep from his eyes. “Tide getting knocked out that early in that fight fucked everyone over.”

“Not to mention Retribution just not showing up,” Rolan scoffs. He’s wearing his glasses, despite all four of his eyes being beetle black. “Where the hell was he, anyway?”

“Haven’t bothered to ask.” Maybe he should have at the time, but it’s been ten months since Leviathan’s last attack, so it hasn’t really been on Rand’s mind lately. He’s been too busy handling shit in Chicago, responding to the PRT when they need assistance, and doing domestic shit like making dinner for the others when they come home from work and all that. He’s still not used to domesticity, but he has to admit, now that he’s living a life like this, it would be hard to give it up. 

“So, Kyushu’s completely underwater?” Becky asks. 

“That’s the second time Leviathan has completely devastated a place,” Rolan mutters.

“Behemoth’s not much better,” Kian says. “Remember Chernobyl in ‘92, dude?”

“I think that was the worst one,” Rolan says. 

“I mean, half of Newfoundland is underwater, man, Chernobyl’s just a city. It was not worse than that.”

Rand feels someone nudge him and turns. Becky stands next to him, looking at him with four beetle black eyes as the other two talk. 

Rand is pretty sure she’s thinking the same thing he is. 

Rand turns away from the screen to face the other two. “Guys, I want to fight the Endbringers.”

Rolan and Kian both shut up immediately. A loud chittering rises in Rolan’s chest, a combination of distressed and confused. “You want to what?”

“They’re just getting worse,” Becky says. “The current capes can’t keep up. Even if we can like, run recon, get people out of the fighting, shit like that... I think we should.”

“Are you hearing yourself?” Rolan’s clicking gets louder. “I—you’re fucking insane. Both of you. You’re going to die out there.”

“People are already dying out there,” Rand snaps, “and if I can do anything to help prevent that, I want to. This isn’t something I’m going to argue about, Rolan. I... I want to contact the PRT and ask if they’ll let me help. Even just from a distance.”

Rolan turns to Kian. “Can you believe this shit?”

Kian grimaces. “I...”

Rolan’s face falls. “Don’t tell me you were thinking the same thing.”

Kian sighs. “Dude, it’s fucking bad out there! I get it! We could die! But like—I wanted to help people when I got these powers. If I’m not doing that, what’s the point of them? Sure, they’re not the powers I wanted, but I want to do something good with them.”

Rolan glances between each of them in turn. He heaves a sigh and takes off his glasses, running a hand down his face. “We’re going to fucking die out there,” he mutters. 

Rand almost smiles at the “we.” He wants to. 

Instead, all he feels is a sinking feeling of dread.

Will we die out there?

No answer. 

August 29, 1996

Canada is a nice country, Conspiracy must admit. It’s a shame the first time he’s getting to see it is when one of its cities is getting ripped to shreds. 

He clings tight to Tithonus’ armor as Tithonus jumps over piles of rubble in the coastal city of Ranz, both of his arms wrapped tight around Conspiracy as if he’ll slip away if his grip falters in the slightest. Stinger and Widow are—fucking somewhere, he’s not sure where, but they better be safe or Conspiracy is going to lose his fucking mind—

The technical armband on Conspiracy’s arm spouts off cape names, casualties, and he listens closely despite the wind roaring in his ears and the sloshing of water every time Tithonus touches down on the ground. “Reaper, down. Adamant, down. Archangel, deceased. Rime, down. Purgatory, down. Dodgeboy, deceased. Origami, down.”

Widow and Stinger are fine. For now. He keeps listening, just to make sure.

Is the danger headed south?

Yes.

Are we headed south?

A pause. Yes.

They’re going south-ish, then. Conspiracy smacks Tithonus on the shoulder a couple times to get his attention and points in another direction, anywhere away from Leviathan. “That way!”

Tithonus turns on a dime, whipping around in half a second, taking off in the direction Conspiracy pointed him in. “Where are Widow and Stinger?”

“I don’t know!” 

Is there anyone around here we can help?

Yes.

Are we headed in their direction?

Yes.

“Keep going! There’s someone ahead, we can help them. I’ll—I’ll try to find the other two, just keep going!”

Tithonus does as he’s told, jumping over ruined buildings as fast as he can through the water rushing through the streets. Conspiracy holds on as tight as he can. He wishes he kept the hoodie under his vest. It’s fucking cold out here. He makes a note to wear the hoodie specifically to Leviathan fights from here on out. The denim vest doesn’t do shit to keep him warm. 

Conspiracy glances at his armband as it spews off more names. “Myrddin, down. Hawk, deceased. Armsmaster, down. Pretender, down. Gauntlet, down.”

People are dropping like flies. Conspiracy doesn’t think there’s been a moment of silence from his armband since the fight started. 

Tithonus slows down, and Conspiracy looks up to see why. His powers were right; there is someone down there, an unconscious body slumped against a ruined building. Leviathan had definitely been out this way already, then. Conspiracy’s been having trouble keeping track of him, especially with so much else going on. Running recon is harder than he thought. 

Conspiracy blinks through the water running down his goggles to see who the body might be. It’s a person dressed entirely in what looks like medieval armor, covered in dragon motifs, with pauldrons that swoop into spikes, sharp edges along each piece of armor. 

“He dead?” Tithonus asks. 

Is this guy dead?

No.

Is he injured?

Yes.

Anything that will get aggravated if we move him?

No answer. So yes, then, but not if they’re careful with him.

“He’s alive. Injured. Can you carry us both?”

Tithonus scoffs. “Can I carry you both—the fuck do you think?”

“I’m just saying man, his armor looks heavy!”

In response, Tithonus sets him down, and Conspiracy grimaces at the water that soaks into his shoes. Note to self: wear rubber boots the next time Leviathan attacks. 

Tithonus leans down and hoists the armored guy into his arms. He grunts a little at the weight, but he nods at Conspiracy. “On my back.”

Conspiracy does as he’s told, clambering onto his back, legs around Tithonus’ waist and arms around his shoulders. A little undignified, sure, but in a situation like this? Who cares if someone sees him getting a fucking piggyback ride? At least he’s not dead. 

Tithonus starts moving again, running through the water, jumping over buildings, making his way to the makeshift parahuman med bay that’s been set up for capes. He’s not moving as fast with the extra weight, but Conspiracy keeps his mouth shut about it. 

He keeps a constant flow of questions going through his head, trying to keep track of where Leviathan might be, asking every minute if Widow and Stinger are still alive just to make sure, trying to see if there are any other people in their path they can help. The medbay’s been set up in a small community centre near the western edge of the city, furthest from the coastline as they can get. 

There are bodies in the water. Tons of them. Some civilians, some capes, lying dead in the streets, floating like driftwood. 

Conspiracy wonders if Tithonus is thinking of Galloway right now. He sure is. 

He takes a deep breath. This is—nothing. This is literally nothing. They’re going to be seeing this shit a lot more if they’re committed to fighting Endbringers whenever they crop up. He’ll have to get used to it. They all will. 

The medbay comes into view and Tithonus slows down again, chest heaving a little under his armor. Conspiracy slips off his back and opens the door, holding it open for him. Tithonus ducks inside, the other cape in his arms. 

“Hero or villain?” someone asks as soon as they step in. It’s another cape, someone in a bright white costume Conspiracy doesn’t recognize. 

“Don’t know,” Tithonus says. “Just found them out there.”

Is the armored guy a hero?

His head hurts a little when it gives him the answer, but he powers through it and focuses on the single word his powers give him. Yes. 

“Hero,” Conspiracy says. “Don’t know what team, don’t know what’s wrong with him, but he’s injured somehow and you need to find someone who can get some of that armor off to take a look.”

The cape nods. “Come with me.”

Tithonus follows. Conspiracy watches him go, taking a moment to look around. The medbay is packed, capes rushing back and forth to different curtained off sections—he recognizes Changeling, with his bright white hair and purple horns, walking around with a charming smile as if they’re not in the middle of a fight with one of the most dangerous creatures in history. Changeling winks at him as he passes. Conspiracy just looks away. 

Someone shoves past him, clipping his shoulder. It’s another cape, dressed in a cloak and mask like a fantasy rogue, carrying a girl with purple hair, but—her limbs are gone, replaced with... water. 

Another look tells Conspiracy it’s a girl he and the others saved on the college campus less than half an hour ago. Great. Awesome. She got somewhere they all thought would be safe, and then her powers triggered, and now she’s like them. 

Feels like a slap in the face, to him, that normal parahumans get their powers in their lowest moments, times of panic where everything feels hopeless. He wonders what happened to her to get her powers to trigger, especially something like this, where her limbs are nothing but liquid.

The rogue finds an empty cot and nudges the curtain aside. Another cape approaches and immediately asks “Hero or villain?”

“Hero,” the rogue responds.

The other cape sighs. “I meant her.”

“Civilian.”

“Really?” 

“As far as we know, yes, civilian.”

“Then she shouldn’t be here.”

“She’s not going in a shelter, not like this. She can’t even walk, she doesn’t know what’s happening to her.”

Conspiracy steps forward, nudging the curtain aside. “Go find someone for her,” he says to the other cape. “Changeling, maybe. She’s got a concussion.”

The other cape turns and leaves. The rogue lets out a sigh of relief. “Thanks. Just—keep the people who can see her to a minimum, we don’t know what she wants to do after this. I need to go, my teammate, Gauntlet—”

“Guy in dragon armor?” Conspiracy asks.

“Yeah, him.”

“My partner brought him in. Bed in the far corner. He’s okay, not sure what’s wrong with him, but he’s alive.”

The rogue nods. “ Okay. Thank you...”

“Conspiracy. You?”

“Bracer. Thanks.” Bracer looks down at the purple haired girl. “You’re gonna be okay,” he says softly. “They’re gonna take care of you here, and I’ll come find you after the fight. Okay?”

The girl nods. “Thank you.” Her voice is shaky, afraid. 

Bracer darts off, quick as a flash. Conspiracy peers through the curtain at the girl in the bed, the water that makes up her limbs moving like it’s alive. Not any weirder than anything he’s already seen, but still. Disturbing.

Fuck. Maybe if he and the others had been quicker to save her, she wouldn’t have seen whatever she saw, never would have gotten powers, wouldn’t be looking at him with that fearful, watery, lost look in her eyes. 

She’s the first person he’s seen right after triggering, but he’s pretty sure she won’t be the last. 

He mutters a curse and closes her curtain, walking off to find Tithonus. He’s in the corner talking to Changeling, voice low. Bracer slips past both of them and into another curtained off area, the one with the armored guy. Changeling smiles at Tithonus, much too wide and happy for someone in the middle of a bunch of dying and injured bodies, and then he practically skips past Conspiracy to the cot with the purple haired girl. 

Conspiracy walks over to Tithonus. His armband is still going off, naming capes that have fallen and died. He hasn’t heard Widow or Stinger’s names come from it yet, which he’s taking as a good sign. 

“We have to get back out there,” Tithonus mutters. “There’s—so many people who need help, need to—get to shelters or get medical attention, if we can mobilize through the east side of the city closer to the coastline, Leviathan should have passed through there by now, there’s bound to be people out there who need help getting to shelters and capes who need to get to the med—”

“Hey, T,” Conspiracy interrupts, heaving a world weary sigh. “You’re... you’re talking a lot of words here, and I’m only processing like... half of them? Can we just—let’s maybe take a second. I... I need a smoke.”

Tithonus falls quiet. They both watch as someone else walks in—a man made entirely out of metal that Conspiracy recognizes—Reaper, part of Changeling’s team, but missing an arm, wires sticking out of the socket—dragging a limp body behind him, a guy with dark hair and a mask that covers about three quarters of his face. He drops the man on the floor, and another cape rushes towards them, clearly a hero, with white hair like Changeling’s and a costume with a wispy black and blue cape. He kneels next to the unconscious man and starts looking him over for injuries. Reaper plops himself down to sit on the floor, glaring at everyone who passes by him. 

Tithonus sighs. “Got a smoke to spare?”

December 5, 1996

“So she’s just been... hovering?”

Rand nods, staring at the TV screen. He’s not even entirely sure what he’s seeing. It’s a... thing, floating in the sky above the city of Lausanne. It’s got the body of a human woman, pale skin, breathtaking in an uncanny way, gossamer strands of hair floating around her like tendrils. Dozens of wings sprout from her back with little to no regard for symmetry, curling around her body in an attempt to keep her decency. There doesn’t even seem to be anything to hide at all though, no discernable genitals, just flat smooth skin. The wings aren’t even flapping, just slowly moving through the air like she’s underwater, as if she doesn’t even need them to stay in the air. 

“She just showed up a couple hours ago,” he says. “Over Lausanne, Switzerland. She hasn’t done anything yet, but who knows how long that’ll last?”

Rolan sets down his briefcase. “Is she... what is she?”

“I’ve tried asking. I don’t get any answers.”

Rolan clicks, just once, concerned. “What does that mean?”

“Honestly?” Rand lifts his sunglasses to look Rolan in the eye. “I think this means she’s like Leviathan and Behemoth.”

Kian snorts from where he sits lounging on the couch. “Dude, look at her. The Endbringers are like—fucking heinous, dude. She’s not even attacking anything.”

“But she might.” Rand’s leg bounces against the floor as he studies the screen and the—the fucking abomination hovering over the city skyline. “She just descended from the fucking sky and has been flying there for hours and we’re supposed to trust that she’s some benevolent fucking—thing?”

“Some people are saying she’s an angel,” Becky says, looking down at her phone. “Others are saying she literally is God.”

“God isn’t real, that’s bullshit.”

Rolan furrows his brow. “Hey, have you asked if God is real?”

Rand waves a hand. “Not important. There’s probably something out there, but it’s not—whatever, we’re talking about this fucking thing in Switzerland.”

“I mean, we’ve seen weirder shit,” Kian says. He takes a hit from the blunt held loosely between his fingers. “Maybe you’re not getting answers about her because she’s got powers that contradict yours, dude.”

“You mean like the Endbringers do?”

Kian shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I just don’t think she’s dangerous, look at her.”

Rolan turns away from the screen to look at Rand, a high pitched buzzing in his throat. “Rand? What do you think?”

Is this thing an Endbringer?

No answer.

Is it like Leviathan and Behemoth?

No answer.

Is it a parahuman?

No answer. 

Is it dangerous?

No answer. 

Rand curses in his head. He can’t get a read on this thing. He can’t tell what it is or what it’s here to do. That only leads him to one conclusion, one he really doesn’t like. 

“She’s bad news,” he says. “We need capes on the scene ready to respond when something happens.” He reaches into his pocket and takes out his phone. “I’m calling Myrddin.”

“Do you think they’ll listen?”

“Only one way to find out.” 

He waits as the phone rings, and rings, and he sits there waiting, cursing at Myrddin in his head. Old man still doesn’t know how to fucking use new Tinker tech. 

The phone picks up. “Conspiracy,” Myrddin’s voice says. “I assume you’re calling about—”

“The fucking thing in Lausanne, yeah.”

“Good. I was actually hoping to pick your brain about it. We have questions, and you may have answers.”

“I can try, but I make no promises. Is the Protectorate headed towards Lausanne now?”

“Not at the present moment. It doesn’t appear dangerous. If it were an Endbringer, it would have attacked by now.”

“Maybe, yeah, but maybe this one is just different.”

“Is it an Endbringer, then?”

“My powers aren’t giving me direct answers on it, which makes me think yes.”

“I mean,” Kian speaks up, “your powers don’t give you direct answers on a lot of things that don’t turn out to be world-ending monsters, dude.”

“Okay, yeah, but this is—it’s different, okay? Trust me. This is—this has to be something dangerous. Myrddin, can the PRT call a Dragon ship to take us to Lausanne? Please?”

Myrddin hums. “Saying please for once? You must be serious.”

“This is not the fucking time for jokes! Can we get to Lausanne or not?”

Myrddin pauses. “I’m certain that can be arranged. You’re lucky you’re not the only team who wants to get out there. The Greats up in Manitoba are reaching out to the Guild for once and asking for a ride to Switzerland as well. Their precog is rather insistent on it.”

Rand breathes a sigh of relief. “Thanks. We’re going to figure out what this thing is. If it is an Endbringer—”

“We’ll be ready to respond accordingly. The Greats should arrive there before you do.”

“We’ll convene with them and keep you updated when we get there. I really think we should be treating this like a potential Endbringer. Class A threat, at the very least.”

“I will take it into consideration,” Myrddin says, and he sounds firm, determined. He will consider Rand’s words, at least, even if the PRT as a whole won’t. 

“Thank you.” Rand hangs up. “Suit up. We’re going to Switzerland.”

December 7, 1996

“She hasn’t moved.”

Conspiracy stares up at the angelic form floating above the skyline. He’s been watching her for hours, leaning over the balcony of the Swiss cape headquarters. They’re not Protectorate; Europe has a different branch, and America is big enough that the PRT has its hands full with their own country, Endbringer attacks aside. 

He glances next to him. Solstice stands there in his silly toga looking costume, a comedy theatre mask over his face. He stares at the angel in the sky with Conspiracy. He would be the perfect picture of nonchalance if he wasn’t picking at a scab on his arm, the tiniest blemish in his otherwise clear brown skin. 

“Will she?” Conspiracy asks. He grimaces just from talking. His head is killing him. He’s been asking his powers questions nonstop these past couple days, and they were not permitted to bring any weed with them to Switzerland, so he’s stuck relying on whatever ibuprofen Tithonus remembered to bring for him. 

Solstice shrugs. “I can’t see it. I keep trying, but there must be something blocking me.”

“Same thing you get with Endbringers?”

Solstice is silent for a moment. “Not sure. Similar, I think, but I’ve hit roadblocks like this before with other things.” He’s got an accent that Rand had trouble placing for a couple days. East Indian, mostly, but there’s a weird mix of something almost British in there, and he doesn’t pronounce his H’s sometimes, almost like he’s French. Conspiracy’s picked up some Louisiana French over the years, but apparently it’s way different from Quebecois French, because yesterday he walked in on Solstice and Flora having a full conversation in it and couldn’t understand a damn word. 

“You think she could be a major threat?” Conspiracy asks. He raises a hand to press his fingertips to his temple. Ow. His back hurts, too. Awesome. Just what he needs.

“That remains yet to be seen,” Solstice sighs. “Where is your team?”

“Scouting a perimeter around the...” He nods at the winged figure in the distance. “Thing. Trying to keep people away. Last time Tithonus checked in, he said it tried to talk to him.”

Solstice turns to him. “It what?”

“But it’s speaking Swiss,” Conspiracy says. “I don’t suppose you’ve got any Swiss in your large bank of languages?”

“Apologies, no. Is there anyone able to translate?”

“Tithonus told some of the Swiss capes what it said as best he could. Sounded like a basic, clumsy greeting, and a couple random pleasantries. Like it’s just... copying what people are saying around it.”

“Like it’s learning,” Solstice mutters, turning back to face the figure. “Doesn’t sound like an Endbringer to me.”

“I’m still not convinced.” Conspiracy reaches up to adjust his mask, making sure it’s still firmly set over his lower face. “Where’s your team?”

“Bracer, Icewalker, and Flora should be joining your crew soon. Bullseye is convening with some Swiss capes in the next building over.”

Almost on cue, he sees another figure in the distance, much smaller than the angel. A girl covered in icy armor, walking above the horizon line of buildings on legs that are made of long spikes of ice. Another figure stares up at the angel from a building a little further away, large vines and plant stems writhing around her like a living creature. Tithonus sits perched on another building, his mantis claw dug into the brick to keep himself steady. 

“Didn’t you get a new guy recently?” Conspiracy asks. “Where’s he been?”

Solstice hums. “Yes, Barbarian. He and Gauntlet elected to stay behind in Fauna. Someone needs to watch over the city while we’re gone. In the state it’s in, we cannot leave it unattended, and the Protectorate has yet to branch out into most of Canada.” Solstice keeps picking at his arm. “Barbarian is new, and he and Gauntlet are... rather young. I wouldn’t want either of them here if there would be too much danger that I can’t predict.”

Young? How young, compared to the rest of The Greats? Even with his sophisticated accent and fancy talk, Solstice can’t be any older than... what, twenty-two? Same with the rest of their team. 

They’re all college age kids. If Solstice is in his early twenties, what the hell does he think counts as “young”? He shouldn’t even be doing this. He should be in university getting a degree, not flying to another country to face some potential Class S threat. How young are the rest of them? Teenagers?

God. Rand’s team is almost forty. Rand never even thought he would live past thirty.

Rand... he’s never planned on having kids—never has, never fucking will—but... he’s been a big brother. It’s been years since he’s had to play the part, and for a while he was afraid he’d forget what that felt like. But looking at these kids, a familiar feeling rises in his gut; something protective, desperate, but overall, fucking terrified. Last time he felt something like this was when he saw Rachel being controlled by the Queen back in Galloway, eight years ago.

He glances next to him at Solstice, just out of the corner of his eye. Solstice doesn’t seem to notice him looking. He’s idly rocking back and forth on his feet, impatient, bored, almost... childlike. 

“Call your team back,” Rand says without thinking. A horrible feeling travels up his spine, something familiar—fear, paranoia, crawling through his system like a colony of ants, making his shoulders tense and his heart thud louder in his ears. “Bring them back here, and get out of Lausanne.”

Solstice turns to him, all business. “What? Why? Is something going to happen?”

“I don’t—I don’t know,” Rand says, tripping over his words, “but this—if this is an Endbringer, you should not be here for it.”

Solstice balks. “We’ve—we’ve been in Endbringer fights before. We’ve been going to them longer than your team has, might I add.”

“Yeah, but we’ve been in the cape biz longer than you, and this shit ain’t pretty.” He turns to look at Solstice, and he wishes he could look this kid dead in the eyes, bore a hole through his mask to look at his face. “The aftermath of Leviathan and Behemoth’s first attacks was worse than any natural disaster I’ve ever seen. If this is an Endbringer, or even something close to it, none of us know how to deal with it and Lausanne is going to end up like Oslo, you—you need to go—”

“I’m not going anywhere,” Solstice insists, voice firm, crossing his arms and turning back to the horizon. “I’ve been told that you’re a paranoid man, but this is frankly ridiculous.” He gestures out to the angel. “This can’t be a threat on the same level as an Endbringer. Look at her. Leviathan and Behemoth destroyed their cities the moment they appeared. She is nothing like them.”

Rand doesn’t look. He doesn’t fucking need to, he’s been staring at that damn thing for two days and if he looks at it again he thinks he’s going to lose his god damn mind. His stomach turns, his heart beating with adrenaline, and he grabs Solstice’s shoulder and whirls the kid around to look at him. 

“Have you heard of Galloway, Louisiana?”

Solstice splutters. “Wh—yes, I’ve heard of it. Seen pictures of the aftermath, watched a documentary—what the hell is wrong with you?”

“I was there,” Rand says, voice catching on the syllable. “That was our fucking hometown. That thing that was—controlling and replacing people, I looked it dead in the fucking eyes and we barely got out of there alive. It wasn’t even an Endbringer, but it was just as bad. Half of us only got out of there because it let us. A thousand people in that town, gone. Four of us survived. It got my fucking sister, kid, you need to—”

Solstice holds up a hand. “Wait.” He points to the horizon. “Look.”

Rand doesn’t want to. He does anyway. 

The angel is moving. Slowly rotating, its wings trailing around it like tendrils, the first time it’s properly moved since they got here. Its gaze seems... sightless, empty, and yet Rand gets the feeling that it can see him, that it knows what he’s thinking, everything he’s going to do before he does it. It seems to look right at him from across the many city blocks. 

A building near it shifts. The plant girl perched on top—Flora—leaps to another building, giant vines launching her to another rooftop with ease. The building moves, and then it lifts into the air, picked up by an unseen force. 

Another building does the same. Tithonus jumps from the roof and disappears into the street as it rises slowly, clumsily, and floats over to the angel. 

More buildings lift from the street, concrete ripping as though it’s flimsy as tissue paper, slowly orbiting the angel. Icewalker disappears into the street and comes back up holding Bracer and Stinger in her arms, her icy legs lengthening until she can step over rooftops with ease, making long strides towards the Lausanne cape HQ. Tithonus leaps onto a building holding Widow, making his way away from the angel. The Endbringer. 

The Endbringer opens her mouth, and Rand has time to think a single question, desperate, terrified, not expecting an answer but grasping for one anyway. 

What do we do?

In response, his powers give him an answer. A single word, the only non yes-or-no he’s ever gotten in the eight years since he got his powers. 

RUN. 

December 8, 1996

“You want to explain exactly what happened again?”

Conspiracy runs a hand through his hair. His head is fucking killing him right now. The fact that he can even make out anyone’s words without his skull imploding in on itself is a miracle. As soon as he gets home, he’s digging through whatever weed stash they have and taking a twelve-hour nap. 

“Everything I’ve told you is everything I know,” he sighs, wishing he could take off his motorcycle goggles to look Myrddin and Director Hearthrow in the eye. “I don’t have anything else.”

“One more time,” Hearthrow insists, his voice firm, and Conspiracy has to try really hard not to punch him in the face. “Just to make sure you’re not forgetting anything.”

You’re unreliable, is the silent statement behind his words. You’re unstable. We can’t trust your memory, and neither should you.

Conspiracy wants to tell him to get fucked. He just barely refrains. 

“I don’t really know exactly what happened,” Conspiracy says for what feels like the millionth time. “That thing, it—it turned to face us and it just... screamed. It sounded like—like needles in my fucking brain, like it was reaching into my neurons and—yanking on them, or something. When I asked my powers what to do, they said... Run. It’s the only time it’s given something that’s not a yes or no. I didn’t even know it could do that.”

“And then?” Myrddin’s voice is a touch softer, more patient, but still firm. 

“I... I saw memories. Some childhood stuff, some things from my trigger event, random shit, I think. And... I don’t know, my head hurt so much from my powers and that thing screaming halfway across the city I passed the fuck out.”

“I got us out of there,” Tithonus says, arms crossed over his chest, standing to the right of Conspiracy’s chair. “Dragon’s ships were still waiting for us. I loaded the four of us onto one of them and she flew us away. The Greats were just a minute behind us.”

“I thought you wanted to fight this thing,” Hearthrow says. “Wasn’t that the point of you being out there?”

“The point of us being out there was to find out what it was,” Tithonus snaps, buzzing with a barely restrained anger. Hearthrow’s been getting on his nerves lately, and Conspiracy would be surprised if he didn’t snap and strangle the guy one of these days. “We observed it for two days, sent you reports every six hours, and that’s all we intended to do.”

Anomaly scoffs from where he stands next to Hearthrow. “And everything you reported with turned out to be useless. ‘Subject seems benevolent, no ill intent suspected.’ The least you could have done was try to step in and fight it so Lausanne’s entire cape wing didn’t have to go at it alone and get half of them wiped out.”

The buzzing in Tithonus’ voice gets louder, angrier. “We never said we would fucking fight it. Why don’t you go out there and fight it your damn self next time?”

“Control your dog, Conspiracy,” Anomaly says, something smug in his voice, and Conspiracy wants nothing more than to lunge across this stupid meeting table and punch him square in the face. 

“Hey, dudes, let’s chill with the name calling,” Widow says, uncrossing his legs in his seat and leaning forward, holding out his hands in a placating gesture. “We all heard that thing scream, and we all got out of there fast, and none of us got hurt, so that’s what matters. We got some important info, I think.”

“I think it relies on some kind of psychological torment,” Stinger says, leg bouncing against the floor as she thinks. “Leviathan and Behemoth are more physical, while this thing—I mean, it’s got its telekinesis, so it definitely caused some devastation to the city, but I think the point of it is more to... I don’t know, get in everyone’s heads. I mean, we all heard it scream, we all saw some memories. It wanted to get to us.”

“And did it?” Revel asks, turning her lantern in one hand. The same nervous tick Myrddin has with his staff. She picked it up from him, maybe, or the other way around. 

“It lost interest in us as soon as we were out of range,” Stinger says. “It left Dragon’s ships alone and focused entirely on the Swiss capes. If it wanted to really get to us, it could have easily followed us, but it didn’t.”

“This thing is different from the other two,” Conspiracy says. “I don’t know exactly how, but—it is. We need to be ready, we need to keep an eye on it, wherever it is now—”

“Currently in Earth’s orbit,” Myrddin interrupts. “Dragon is observing it through her satellites and has been since yesterday.”

“Yeah, it retreated into the sky soon after the Prime Force arrived and beat the shit out of it,” Tithonus says. “Maybe if the PRT listened and sent more capes into Lausanne with us, the entire Lausanne wing of capes wouldn’t be out of commission right now, but I guess hindsight is twenty-twenty.” He levels his gaze at Hearthrow.

Anomaly scoffs. “There weren’t nearly as many casualties or as much destruction with this thing as there usually is when Leviathan and Behemoth attack. Are you sure it’s an Endbringer?”

“What else would it be?” Conspiracy says, glaring at Anomaly through his goggles. “Both me and Solstice hit roadblocks when trying to use our powers to find out more about it, the same way we get with Leviathan and Behemoth. That thing is an Endbringer. Maybe Lausanne was just a warmup or something, I don’t know, but it’s fucking dangerous. We need to keep an eye on that thing.”

Hearthrow opens his mouth to say something, but Myrddin speaks before he can get a single word out. “We will make sure of it. Should you come to any more conclusions about this new Endbringer while you’re theorizing, please make sure to let us know.”

“I will. I’m not crazy enough to think we could deal with that thing on our own.” 

“Debateable,” Anomaly mutters, but Tithonus lets out a single annoyed click, a warning, and Anomaly doesn’t say another word.

Myrddin nods at the door. “You may go. We still have to discuss this situation with The Greats as well.”

Conspiracy stands, as do Widow and Stinger. “Thank you for your time, Myrddin, Revel,” he says, deliberately not looking in Hearthrow or Anomaly’s direction.

“And we thank you for yours.”

Conspiracy leaves the meeting room, the rest of The Hive behind him. Tithonus sticks close to his right side, Widow and Stinger on his left. 

Standing outside the room are some of The Greats: Solstice, leaning against the wall, arms crossed, picking at that same scab on his arm, blood under the fingernails that are pulling at the skin; Icewalker, idly controlling a small orb of water held in her palms with her hydrokinesis, freezing it in different forms and then melting it again at will to make something new; and Flora, standing next to Solstice and speaking to him in quiet French. She stops short mid-sentence as the four of them enter the hallway.

“Conspiracy.” Solstice pushes off the wall. His hand stills, gripping his arm tight as if to keep himself from picking at his skin. “May I ask how the... discussion went?”

“It went fine.” Conspiracy nods at the hallway, silently telling the others they can go on ahead and go home if they want. He can find his own way back. 

Widow and Stinger pass by The Greats as they make their way to the elevator. Icewalker perks up, freezing her ball of water mid-transformation and letting it fall to the floor. She hurries after Widow and Stinger, talking to them in a low voice, leaving her tiny half-made ice sculpture behind—a small figure with a dozen angel wings, already melting on the black tiled floor. 

Conspiracy knows who she is. He figured it out at one point during their couple days in Lausanne. It wasn’t hard—the girl with purple hair they saw in Ranz with the limbs made of water sounded just like her, and that girl had been talking with The Greats briefly after she triggered. He probably could have deduced it even without his powers. He watches the three of them go, Widow smiling as he strikes up a conversation with her before they all disappear around a corner on their way out.

“Where’s your other two?” Conspiracy asks Solstice, very aware of Flora’s presence a little further down the hallway and Tithonus standing on his right. 

“Resting,” Solstice says. “The Chicago Protectorate was kind enough to lend us a few beds. Bracer and Bullseye both need frequent rest due to the strain their powers put on them, and they certainly strained themselves plenty in Lausanne.”

Two of their team are out of commission. Weird thing to tell him, but Conspiracy gets the silent implication behind it. An admission of weakness, and a display of trust, all in one. A quiet “you were right.”

Conspiracy pauses, hesitating. “So did I. If I didn’t live in this city, I’d be asking the PRT for a bed right now too.” Another admission, an equal exchange; he’s not at the top of his game either. Putting himself on a level equal to them.

Solstice turns to Flora and mutters something in French. Flora says something back, and then she pats him on the shoulder and turns to leave, walking down the hallway towards another door.

Conspiracy gets the message. He gently nudges Tithonus in the side. “You can wait for me outside. I’ll be out in a bit.”

Tithonus glances at Solstice, cautious, hesitant, but he nudges Conspiracy back and starts down the hall, following the direction Widow and Stinger went in. 

Conspiracy cross his arms and looks at Solstice. “What?”

Solstice sighs. “I... apologize for my behaviour yesterday. It was uncouth of me to call you paranoid and speak to you in such—”

“Drop the fancy talk, kid,” Conspiracy sighs. “I don’t fuckin’ blame you. Capes know me for being a paranoid freak. Fuck, I know I’m a paranoid freak. You weren’t wrong.”

Solstice splutters a little. “I—well, I—still, I shouldn’t have—speaking to you that way, you’re—you’ve been doing this for much longer, I—”

“I don’t care man,” Conspiracy says. “I’m not gonna apologize for shit, and neither should you. You were right to question me, but I was right to want you to get the fuck out of there. How old are you, twenty?”

“...Twenty-two.”

God, he’s literally a baby. Conspiracy reaches into his pocket for a pen. “Look, I’m not gonna talk about how I got into the cape biz, but I’ve got eight years of this shit under my belt.” He reaches out and takes Solstice’s hand, scribbling a phone number on the back of it. “If you and your team ever need some kinda backup, give us a call, okay? Or if you need legal advice when dealing with the Guild or the PRT. We’ve got a good lawyer. He’s American, but Canadian law can’t be too different, right? He’s been wanting to branch out anyway, get into more cape law internationally. Give us a shout if you ever need something. Okay?”

Solstice stares down at his hand, at the numbers scrawled on his skin. “Oh. I... yeah, okay. Sure. Thank you.”

Conspiracy tucks his pen back in his pocket. “Don’t worry about it, kid. Maybe we’ll see you out there next time Leviathan or Behemoth rear their ugly heads?”

Solstice nods. “Yeah, yeah. Maybe.” He clears his throat, regaining his composure. “Thank you.”

“Whatever.” Conspiracy claps the kid on the shoulder as he passes by him, headed for the elevator. “Stay safe out there, Solstice.”

There’s a pause, and then he hears Solstice speak behind him, quiet.

“You too, Conspiracy.”

June 17, 1997

Rolan’s voice through Rand’s earpiece is almost incomprehensible through the buzzing in his throat. “Why did Myrddin insist on meeting with you as a civilian? This doesn’t seem like something the PRT would approve of.”

“Look, your guess is as good as mine.” Rand stubs out his cigarette on the side of the building he’s standing next to. “I’ve tried asking, but my powers aren’t giving me anything.”

“Have your powers given you anything but a yes-or-no since Lausanne?”

“Not even once.”

Rolan falls quiet. “Something’s not right with that thing,” he says after a pause. “The Simurgh.”

“Yeah, well, we’re gonna have to wait until it shows up again to figure out anything else about it.”

“Where did Myrddin want to meet you?”

“Outdoor cafe on Main Street.”

“Are you sure you’re okay with letting him see your face?”

Rand slips out of the alleyway he’d been in and starts walking down the sidewalk. “Every time I ask, my powers have said we can trust him. I’m... choosing to believe it. For better or worse.”

“Okay. Just keep me on the line. I’m patrolling the west side of the city. Anything happens, I’m on my way.”

The cafe Myrddin suggested comes into view. “Got it,” Rand says quietly. 

He shoves his hands in the pockets of his jacket as he gets closer. The cafe is quaint, a cute little place with an awning over the door and umbrellas on the tables. Not the kind of place Rand would choose to go to. Most of the tables are occupied, and Rand keeps an eye out for someone who might be Myrddin. For all he knows, the guy isn’t even old and it’s some magical disguise to make himself look like a wizened old dude. 

There is someone sitting at a table that might be him. A guy that can’t be any younger than forty, with a full head of long brown hair, interspersed with strands of silver and a beard to match, dressed in a simple button up shirt and a pair of black pants. He sits alone at a table, a to-go cup of coffee in his hands, another cup in front of the chair across from him. 

Is that Myrddin?

Yes. 

Rand takes a deep breath. “Found him. I’m gonna mute you.”

“Good luck.”

Rand presses a button on his earpiece, and Rolan’s buzzing in his ear stops. He adjusts his sunglasses and walks over to the table, shoulders relaxed, forcibly nonchalant. 

He picks up the extra coffee at the other side of the table. “Bought me a cup, did you?”

The man looks up. His eyes widen for just a moment before the realization seems to set in. “You struck me as a black coffee kind of person.”

He slumps into the other chair. “You sure you don’t have any Thinker powers?” 

Myrddin gives the smallest of smiles, but it doesn’t reach his eyes. “No, I’m sure.”

“Coulda fooled me.” He swishes the coffee in the cup. It feels warm, too hot for his tastes. Besides, he’s not drinking coffee made by someone that’s not him or his—partners? Partners. That works. “So what is this about? Better be worth talking face to face instead of mask to mask.”

Myrddin’s smile falls immediately. He sets his coffee down and folds his hands on the table. They’re a bit wrinkled, weathered by work and age, but strong in the way they grip each other. 

“The PRT does not know I’m doing this,” he says quietly. “They were planning to talk to you about this if things began to look worse, but that’s not the path I want to take in this situation. Especially not after all you and your team have done for this city.”

Rand furrows his brow. “What situation?”

Myrddin looks him in the eyes. “The Simurgh. I’m sure you’ve been keeping up with the news?”

“More or less. Just looking for cape shit, really, expanding on theories. Why?”

“You haven’t checked any Swiss news outlets?”

“No? I don’t speak Swiss.”

Myrddin pauses, picking up his cup again and taking a sip, as if carefully pondering his next words. “The entire city of Lausanne,” he says finally, “is under quarantine.”

Rand’s heart skips. “What? Why? What happened? Did the Simurgh come back or something?”

“No. But her abilities and why she’s so dangerous are coming to light. People in the city of Lausanne who were exposed to the Simurgh’s scream for an extended period of time have begun... losing themselves.”

“Losing themselves? What do you mean?”

“They’re enacting horrific acts of violence against each other, bombing buildings, starting fires, assassinating local politicians, among other things. They are no longer acting like themselves. Many of them who are acting out now are individuals who were already unstable, people who have histories of violence, crime, mental illness. But more and more are acting out as the hours pass. Regular, ordinary people who haven’t done a single thing wrong in their lives. Everyone in Lausanne is a ticking time bomb.”

Rand looks down at his untouched coffee, letting that information sink in. “So... She is just as dangerous as the other two. It just takes a few months to set in.”

“That certainly seems to be the case.”

Rand looks up at Myrddin, lowering his sunglasses to look him in the eye. “You wouldn’t be telling me this out of costume just to update me. There’s something else to this.”

Myrddin turns his coffee cup on the counter, the same way he does with his staff in costume. “There is more.”

“What is it?”

“...You are an unstable individual. You don’t hide your paranoia. Hell, you haven’t even touched your coffee.”

Rand glances down at his cup. “Your point?”

“Despite your very short exposure to the Simurgh’s scream, the PRT is concerned that your extended time in her presence has done to you what it has done to the rest of the unstable individuals in Lausanne. They are wondering if perhaps you will go off the deep end and do something that will put Chicago in danger.”

Rand’s grip on his cup tightens. “And... how do they plan to make sure I don’t?”

“They are working through that. Hearthrow wants to call a meeting with your lawyer to revise our contract and hopefully officially recruit the four of you into the Protectorate.”

“So they can watch us.”

“Precisely.”

“We don’t need to be babysat.”

Myrddin shrugs. “I can’t say I completely disagree with their intent. This Endbringer is new, and the effects she has on her victims and the world at large are yet to be fully seen. But I personally do not have reason to believe you or your team will be a danger to us, and I don’t want to deprive The Hive of its freedom.”

Rand pushes his glasses back up his nose. “So... what do you want to do? What’s the solution to this? Are you going to watch me like a hawk until I do something insane and then put me down like a rabid dog?”

Myrddin scoffs. “God, no. If I could, I would reach out to have a similar conversation with The Greats as well, although none of them are as...”

“What? Mentally unstable? Emotionally troubled? Spit it out, old man.”

“Not as troubled as you are, sure. My solution, if you would be willing, is to perhaps recommend—”

“Do not tell me to see a shrink.”

Myrddin pauses. He takes a sip of his coffee and says nothing.

“You were gonna tell me to see a shrink.”

“I was not. I was going to recommend you see one. Totally different.”

Rand sighs and runs a hand through his hair. “I’m not seeing a fucking shrink. Widow is always on me about that shit, I’m not hearing it from you too.”

“It may be the best way to keep the PRT from wanting to keep you under constant watch. If you’re not a fan of that idea, however, perhaps we could propose to the PRT that we subject you to monthly check-ins, see how your state of mind is, but those would likely be monitored by at least one member of the PRT, whereas typical therapy appointments would not be.” Myrddin spreads his hands. “Up to you. I fear that if we don’t come to a satisfying solution to this, Hearthrow may terminate our contract with you. That is the last thing I want.”

Rand looks down at his coffee cup. If the people who heard the Simurgh in Lausanne are going crazy... fuck. Fuck. He might—he could be like... a bomb waiting to go off. He could be dangerous. 

But if he is a bomb, he’s not putting himself in the hands of the PRT. 

“I’ll think about it,” he says. “If you know of any cape specific shrinks—”

“We have resources,” Myrddin says. “I can find one and send them your way.”

“Just... keep it on the backburner. I’ll... I’ll consider it.”

“That’s all I ask of you.” Myrddin stands. “Thank you for the visit. I’m sure Hearthrow will begin pushing this issue with the rest of us, so I hope you come to a conclusion soon. Have a good rest of your day. And you too, Tithonus.”

Rand automatically raises a hand to his earpiece. “How did you—”

“Come on, he was the obvious choice,” Myrddin scoffs. “He’s always the one you’re planning and scheming with. You’re like teenagers with each other.”

Rand hesitates. “Are you sure you’re not a Thinker, old man?”

A grin tugs at Myrddin’s mouth as he begins to walk away. “Don’t you be throwing around that ‘old man’ schtick,” he calls behind him. “I see a couple grey hairs on that head of yours.”

Rand watches him go until he disappears down the street. He looks down at his coffee. 

He takes a sip. 

Yep. Black, just how he likes it.

He takes another sip as he starts on his way home. By the time he reaches the house, the cup is empty.

August 20, 1997

“Rand.”

Rand doesn’t even look behind him, keeping his focus entirely on his bulletin board. “What?”

“Dude, I think you’re losing it.”

“I’m not losing anything, you don’t know shit, Kian.”

“You’ve barely left your room in five days,” says another voice—Becky, of fucking course. “Come on, you’re—this isn’t good. You’re driving yourself crazy.”

Rand scoffs, wincing as his head throbs with pain. “It has not been five fucking days, I would know if I’ve been in here for five god damn days.”

“You didn’t even come out for taco night!” Kian whines. “We had to taco it up without you, dude, you didn’t even eat the one we brought you!”

“Look, I’m fucking busy, man, just—let me work.” He tries to throw another question into the recesses of his mind and inhales sharply when all he gets in response is a flash of pain. God dammit. He reaches for his desk for some ibuprofen. His hands do not shake, shut up.

“What are you even trying to figure out?” Becky asks, heaving a sigh. 

“I—” Rand struggles to open his bottle of painkillers. His hands are clammy, slipping on the lid. “Fuck. I’m just—I’m trying to—fuck.”

“Dude,” Kian says, and his voice is softer, like he’s fucking fragile. “Is this about the Simurgh?”

The bottle slips out of Rand’s hands and clatters to the floor. He curses and bends down to pick it up. His back flairs with pain as he bends down and he hisses through his teeth. He braces his hand on his desk, waiting for the pain in his lower back to fade. “No.”

“Bullshit,” Becky scoffs. “You haven’t stopped thinking about the Simurgh for two fucking months, have you?”

He scoops up his pill bottle and straightens, grimacing at the pain. “Shut up.”

“You’re not a ticking time bomb, Tim,” Becky sighs. “If you were, you would have done something by now. Everyone in Lausanne has been losing their minds already.”

“You think I haven’t?” Rand whirls around to look at her. Even the motion of it makes his head hurt, his vision blurry. He looks away to fumble with his ibuprofen. He’s out of weed, he needs something to wrangle this bitch of a headache, and Becky and Kian and a stupid migraine are not going to distract him from getting to the bottom of this.

“Well, you’re not killing people and committing fuckin’ atrocities, man!” Becky says, stepping forward into the room. “You weren’t affected like the people in Lausanne! You’re fine!”

“We don’t know that!”

“Have you asked?”

“It never gives me an answer!” Rand’s voice breaks, cracking on the last word, and he would be fucking embarrassed about it if his head didn’t hurt like a motherfucker. “I ask so often, I keep fucking asking if I’m affected by the Simurgh, if I’m going to do something insane because of her, and it never gives me a yes or no! It just stays quiet! It’s the Simurgh, she’s—she’s fucking blocking my powers, she doesn’t want me to know what I’m going to do, she’s going to make me—she’s going to—”

“Rand, dude.” Kian steps forward, holding out a hand, reaching for him, as if to—fucking grab him or something, and Rand steps back and bumps into his bulletin board, the blunt ends of the tacks digging into his back through his shirt. 

“I’m trying to make sure I’m not a fucking danger to you!”

“You’re not,” Kian insists, jaw set. “Dude, come on, just—let’s go eat dinner or something, you shouldn’t be taking painkillers on an empty stomach—”

“Says fucking you,” Rand snaps, and he stops before he can say anything else. Kian’s told them a little bit about his old drug habits, but never about how bad it had been when he lived in L.A., nor has he ever mentioned his shitty habits with food—Rand figured that out on his own, he can’t let Kian know he knows, he shouldn’t have been poking into Kian’s past in the first place but he was fucking curious back then, sue him—

“Rand,” Becky says, arms crossed, a low buzzing coming from her throat. “You need to get out of the house. You need to get out of this room.”

“I need to know what the Simurgh did to me!” he argues, and something tightens in his throat, almost like he’s about to fucking cry, but he’s not—he can’t do that, not here, not in front of anyone, if he does that then—then that’ll be it, that would have to be it, he’ll snap and he’ll do something crazy and hurt someone like the Simurgh wants him to—

The front door opens and he hears Rolan’s footsteps. “I’m home,” Rolan’s voice calls, a gentle buzzing layered underneath it. 

Becky turns to yell out the door, her own buzzing growing louder in response to Rolan’s presence. “We’re in Tim’s room!”

Fuck, fuck, fuck, Rolan’s gonna have some shit to say about all this, Rand needs to—he’s got to—fuck, he doesn’t even know, his head fucking hurts and—his stomach roils. When did he last eat? This morning, right? He had—fuck.

Footsteps reach his door and he drops his pill bottle again. Dammit. He leans down to pick it up and his back flares with pain again—not his powers, the stupid fucking injury he got in Galloway that never healed right, agony lancing up his spine and into his skull, pounding on his brain from the inside like something wants out. His legs nearly buckle under him, but he braces his hand against the wall to keep himself upright. He fucking hurts, god dammit, he’s been standing for too long, he needs to—

“Rand?” Rolan’s voice says. His voice isn’t soft like Kian’s; it’s firm, annoyed, almost angry, and Rand latches onto it like a lifeline. He doesn’t need to be treated like a fragile glass thing like Kian’s so insistent on doing—Rolan knows Rand, he knows how to whip him into shape, if Rand has a good argument maybe—maybe he’ll feel better and avoid whatever the Simurgh is pushing him to do.

“He’s been like this all fucking day,” Becky says. 

“You don’t need to talk about me like I’m not here!” Rand tries to yell, turning to face his bulletin board again, but it comes out as more of a groan as he straightens, his entire spine cracking. 

“Timothy, what the fuck are you doing?” Rolan asks. 

“Don’t—don’t fucking Timothy me, I’m trying to figure out what the Simurgh is going to make me do! You guys shouldn’t be here, I could—” His head pounds and he grimaces. “Fuck, go away. Let me figure this out.”

Footsteps shuffle in the room as Becky and Kian supposedly step aside to let Rolan through. “Tim, you’re losing it.”

“No shit! That’s why I—I need to figure out why, I need to know what the Simurgh is going to make me do—”

“She’s not going to make you do anything, because you weren’t—” Rolan groans in frustration, buzzing louder. “You weren’t exposed to the Simurgh for that long! None of us were! Just because you’re a little more paranoid than most people—”

“A little?”

“That doesn’t mean you’re going to go off the rails! You’re fucking fine, Rand!”

“How are you so sure? I keep asking, but it never answers!”

“Because if you’re not fine, the PRT is going to fucking kill you!”

Rand opens his mouth to fire back, but then the sentence sinks in and he pauses. “Huh?”

Rolan starts clicking, distressed. Rand turns to look at him finally, and he realizes Rolan’s not in one of his lawyer suits. He’s in his cape getup, his scarf unwrapped and hanging loose around his shoulders. Rand thought he was at work. Isn’t it a weekday? What—what day is it?

“I... I was just in a meeting with the Protectorate,” Rolan says, his voice quieter. “They’re discussing what to do with us and The Greats since we were in Lausanne when the Simurgh showed up. There’s a PRT squad leader who’s suggesting...” He sighs and runs a hand down his face. “Fuck, they think Lausanne should be bombed. Everyone in the city limits, rounded up and executed. The PRT is still working to reverse whatever the Simurgh did to them, but they’re not having any luck so far. Every PRT director shut down the execution idea, including Hearthrow, but if nothing can be done about the residents of Lausanne in about a year, they’re going to bring that option back on the table. It’s... not a definite thing, but... it might happen.”

Rand stares at Rolan. Kian and Becky also stare at him, but he doesn’t—he can’t even process the looks on their faces. 

“They didn’t mention anything about you specifically in the meeting,” Rolan says, still clicking, “but since we were all in Lausanne, they want to subject all of us, including The Greats, to some psychological evaluations. Just to see if we’re stable. And—and if we’re not, I don’t—I don’t know if they’re going to quarantine us in with Lausanne. They didn’t say. I couldn’t say no, if I did they would think that I’m—compromised, somehow, probably. That I’m saying no because the Simurgh wants me to, or some shit.”

Rand’s stomach roils. They want to—bomb Lausanne. If they can’t fix what the Simurgh did to those people, they’re going to kill them. If Rand is compromised, they’re going to kill him.

He opens his mouth to say something, anything, he’s not—sure what yet, but something rises in his throat and he chokes. His hand comes up to block his mouth. 

He’s gonna throw up. 

He beelines for the door, shoving past Rolan, who lets out a “hey!”—annoyed maybe, incredulous, surprised, but Rand doesn’t fucking care. He stumbles into the bathroom and collapses on the floor in front of the toilet, his back seizing with pain, head pounding, his stomach turning, and his throat stings as bile touches the back of it. 

He heaves. Nothing but bile splatters into the bowl. When did he last eat? He doesn’t fucking—that doesn’t matter, the Protectorate is going to fucking kill him, they’re going to—round him up with the rest of the Simurgh’s victims and gun him down like a rabid animal—

“Rand, Tim, hey.” There’s the clanking of armor next to him and a loud buzzing, and a body presses itself to his side, arms around his shoulders, holding him tight, and he’s not sure if it’s supposed to be a hug or a restraint but he doesn’t fucking care, it’s—tight and it’s grounding and it’s there and he reaches up to grip Rolan’s arms and keep them right where they are as he coughs and gags. 

Someone else’s hands come to hold his hair back—Becky, from the scratching of her long nails on his neck. He hears voices—Becky and Kian, talking to each other, and then Kian leaves for the kitchen. Becky buzzes something to Rolan, who clicks back at her, and then she quickly winds Rand’s hair into a twist and sticks a clip in it before she leaves the bathroom. 

He doesn’t know what they’re doing, but he doesn’t care. It doesn’t matter. He’s a liability, he’s a danger to the rest of them, he’s going to do something horrible and crazy and he should probably be put down but he doesn’t want to be and that’s what fucking scares him. His stomach clenches and he heaves into the bowl as Rolan holds him, buzzing like crazy, loud and insistent in Rand’s ears. 

He swallows back a mouthful of bile. Eugh. He lets out a pathetic hack like a cat with a hairball. His eyes sting. Tears. He sniffles. 

“Fuck,” he croaks. His breath hitches. He’s not crying. Fuck you.

“You’re not like the people in Lausanne,” Rolan mutters. His head is tucked against Rand’s shoulder. His chest vibrates against Rand’s side. “You’re not. None of us are.”

“Then why am I acting like this?” Rand rasps. His throat hurts. 

“Because—you’re always fucking paranoid, man. This isn’t the first breakdown you’ve had about shit like this. Remember when—when you used to think the Queen was still alive and that she was in your head?”

Rand spits into the bowl, grimacing. “But—it never gives me a—an answer when I ask about it.”

“Maybe... it’s the wording? You’re asking if you’ll do something insane because of the Simurgh, and maybe you will, but not in the way you mean? Maybe you’ll do something because you’re paranoid about being one of her victims, not because you are one of her victims.”

Rand huffs a little. His breath tastes like puke. “Yeah, you’d know about wording, wouldn’t you.”

Rolan lets out a tiny exhale, akin to a snort. “I am a lawyer.”

Rand lets out a deep, shuddering breath. “Fuck, man.”

“I don’t think there’s any way to know if you’re—if you’re like the people in Lausanne. But even if you are, even if—even if you’re a danger, I’m not going to let the PRT round you up with everyone else and put you down. I’d... I’d rather let the world catch on fire than lose you again.”

Rand’s stomach flips at that. He almost thinks he might throw up again. The thought is—terrifying. Being controlled by an Endbringer, being made to hurt and kill and destroy, and knowing that Rolan would hold his hand and do it all with him if it came down to it. 

He doesn’t want that for him, for either of them, but... he’d prefer that to dying and leaving Rolan behind.

Rand nods slowly. He spits into the toilet bowl again. Gross. A tear slips down his face. He reaches up and wipes it away. 

Footsteps approach the bathroom. “I warmed up some leftover lasagna,” Kian’s voice says softly. “Come out and eat when you’re ready, dude.”

A gentle buzzing enters the room a second after. “I covered your bulletin board,” Becky says. “You’re sleeping in Rolan’s room tonight.”

Rand hates when they have to do this. When they have to baby him because he’s gone off the deep end. 

Whatever. It’s—whatever.

November 1, 1997

Conspiracy opens the door and steps out into the hallway. The PRT psychologist stands in the doorway behind him, smiling like she didn’t just try to pick apart his brain with a kitchen fork. 

A couple of The Greats are in the hallway, waiting their turn. Well, most of them. Some of them are in Regina—the place the Simurgh attacked just last month, in October. There are quarantine procedures now, hastily thrown together since Lausanne, in an attempt to see who’s stable enough to be let go and who... isn’t. Solstice is here, as are Bracer and Bullseye. Icewalker, Flora, and Barbarian are all still in Regina, quarantined, helping clean up the city, being observed to ensure they’ll be safe to leave. Gauntlet is likely back at their home base, in Fauna. 

Solstice looks up as Conspiracy enters the hall. “How did it go?”

Conspiracy shrugs. “I dunno, ask her.” He nods at the shrink. 

“All of your results will be confidential,” she says, still smiling. She gestures to Bullseye. “Your turn.”

Bullseye fiddles with one of his revolvers. Has been since Conspiracy went in for his evaluation, spinning the empty chambers over and over again. He looks up, his dark blue bandanna covering the lower half of his face, the shadow of his cowboy hat hiding his eyes. He sighs and tucks the revolver away into its holster, pushing himself to his feet. His spurs click as he walks into the room. The shrink shuts the door behind him. 

“If it’s worth anything coming from me,” Solstice says, facing Conspiracy, “I hope your test comes back with results that will reflect positively for you.”

“You and me both, kid.” How old is Solstice now? Twenty-three? Still a kid in comparison to Conspiracy and this team. “You go for yours yet?”

“No. I’ll go after Bullseye.”

“How’s the rest of your team? Doing alright?”

“Yes. Half of them are still in Regina.”

“How’s the city?”

“Devastated, much like Lausanne. The PRT is keeping a close eye on the aftermath to see who is stable enough to be let out, but it’s slow going. We’re still not used to this new Endbringer.”

Conspiracy nods. He doesn’t say anything else. He doesn’t know what to say. As young as this guy is, he’s intimidating. His powers of precognition are a hell of a lot stronger than Conspiracy’s wild guesses. 

“Your team didn’t respond to the Simurgh when it showed up in Regina,” Solstice says. “May I ask why?”

Conspiracy shrugs. “Didn’t think it was a good idea. PRT already thinks I’m unstable. Thought showing up might make it worse.”

Solstice pauses, studying him through his golden mask. “You’re afraid you are already a victim of the Simurgh.” He doesn’t say it like a question. 

Conspiracy shifts his feet. “Thought you were just a precog, not a mind reader.”

“It’s not hard to deduce.”

“Why are you even here? You could be doing this in your home city.”

Solstice shrugs. “I wanted to see how you and your team are faring, so I requested Dragon fly us out to Chicago. Saves the psychologist from having to fly out to a dangerous city like Fauna, anyway. You’re well, I hope?”

“Yeah, we’re good. Not dead yet, so. Can’t complain.”

“I suppose that’s all that matters.”

Conspiracy nods, shoving his hands in his pockets. “How’s, uh... Icewalker? She okay?”

Solstice lets out a light snort. “She’s doing just fine. Taking some college classes online, thought she should finish her degree.”

Good, that’s good. He was worried, back in Ranz, if she’d be able to finish what she went there for. “Good for her. Hey, and, uh, that offer still stands. If you guys ever need anything, give us a call.”

Solstice nods. “I might. It might even be good to just chat, if possible. One precog to another.”

Conspiracy technically isn’t a precog, he just makes wild guesses with his questions, but he gets it. The rest of The Hive don’t get Thinker things. The constant flood of information, the headaches, everything. Might be nice to actually sit down and talk to someone else who gets it.

Not here, though. Another time. 

“Yeah. Hit me up whenever you want.”

Solstice nods, and that’s evidently the end of the conversation. Conspiracy turns to leave and startles when he nearly runs right into someone else, a guy in a dark cloak. Fuck, he forgot Bracer was here.

He nods at Bracer. He doesn’t even acknowledge Conspiracy’s existence, just turns a knife between his fingers, staring down at it like it’s the most important thing in the world.

Conspiracy steps around him and leaves the hallway, headed to the elevator. Tithonus stands there, arms crossed over his armor. He looks up as Conspiracy approaches. 

“How’d it go?” he asks, a loud buzzing distorting his words. 

Conspiracy shrugs. “We’ll have to wait and see.”

Tithonus nods. “Ready to go home?”

“Yeah. I’m not talking to fuckin’ anyone else until... until we know.”

January 18, 1998

“The psychologist concluded that you’re stable.”

Rand raises his eyebrows at that as he sits down across from Myrddin. “Really?” He picks up the cup of coffee waiting in front of his seat. It’s fucking cold out, but the guy insisted on sitting outside again. Fuck him. The cold air makes Rand’s back hurt. 

Myrddin nods. “Stable enough, were the exact words in her report. You are excessively paranoid, but not to an extent that would make you especially susceptible to the Simurgh’s brainwashing.”

Rand nods slowly, taking a sip of his coffee. The cup is warm through his gloves. Fuck, it’s cold. Sometimes he hates the frigid winters in Chicago, but at least it’s better than the year round humidity of Louisiana. 

“So how much did you lie to the psychologist?”

Rand chokes on his coffee. “Hm? What?”

Myrddin snorts. “Relax, you’re not in trouble. But I know you, Conspiracy. Not as well as your team, but I’m no fool. In order for someone like you to have been deemed ‘stable,’ you had to have stretched some truths.”

Rand looks down at his coffee through his sunglasses. He still wears them in winter. It’s too fucking bright out here with all the snow. Makes his eyes hurt. 

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he mutters into his cup.

“I don’t believe you’re a victim of the Simurgh,” Myrddin says. “I don’t think you were exposed to her long enough for her to get her fingers in your brain. Now that we’ve seen a second attack from her and have been able to observe some of the immediate effects and compare them to the long-term effects of what happened in Lausanne, that much is certain to me, at least. The PRT will be convinced from your evaluation that you and your team are not a danger.”

Rand nods, letting his shoulders relax just the slightest bit. “Alright. That’s... good. Why tell me this out of costume, though?”

“Despite the results of all of your evaluations, the PRT wants to reexamine our contract. They would like an addendum.”

“What might that be?”

Myrddin takes a sip of his own coffee, letting Rand agonize over whatever bullshit possibilities of restrictions the PRT might want to put on them, before he lowers his cup and answers. “They would like to discuss the possibility of banning your team from fighting the Simurgh.”

Rand drums his fingers on his coffee cup, letting the idea churn in his mind. “Why exactly do they want to ban us from her specifically?”

“Well, because of you.”

“You said they determined I’m stable.”

“Stable enough to not be a current victim of the Simurgh,” Myrddin corrects. “The more unstable an individual is, the more susceptible to the Simurgh’s screaming, and the more likely she will plant some little seed in your brain that will lead to catastrophe. We’re still figuring out protocols for dealing with her potential victims. The Greats, actually, have volunteered to take on another person to their team, a young man who triggered in October when the Simurgh attacked Regina. They’re going to observe him, he will be subject to monthly psychological evaluations, and in a year or two when the time comes for the PRT to decide if he is a liability or not, he will either be branded with a mark that shows he witnessed the Simurgh, or he will be killed.”

Rand grimaces under his scarf. “Little harsh.”

“It’s the only way to deal with the Simurgh’s victims who are too far gone.”

“Doesn’t mean I have to like it.”

“Will you oppose our actions if we decide to execute the Simurgh’s victims?”

Rand looks from his coffee to Myrddin’s face. He looks back down. “I don’t see a way we could get to Lausanne ourselves and stop you anyway,” he mutters.

“I don’t like the idea either, but it’s looking increasingly more likely that it is the only route we can take with such a large number of people who were exposed to her for that long.”

“Does the PRT want to put a brand on me for passing out when I heard the Simurgh?”

Myrddin shrugs. “They have discussed it.”

“You do realize that a tattoo or a brand or whatever in a distinct shape would be a very huge issue for someone like me who’s paranoid as shit about his civilian identity, right?”

“I’m aware.”

“I’m not fucking doing that,” Rand says. “I’m not getting that shit put on me. I’m not walking into a fucking gas station and having people see the Simurgh on the back of my hand or something.”

Myrddin hesitates. “I can relay your reluctance to the PRT—”

“But,” Rand interrupts, “about us not being allowed to fight the Simurgh...” He takes a sip of his coffee. It’s not that good. He prefers the shit they make at home. “We can... discuss adding that to our contract.”

Myrddin’s eyebrows shoot into his hairline. “Really? I didn’t expect you to be responsive to the idea.”

“Well, it’ll give us a break. And...” None of them are particularly stable in any true sense of the word. Rolan and Becky are clones the Queen made for the sole purpose of being controlled, and Kian’s not exactly a ray of sunshine despite his general disposition, and if that makes it easier for the Simurgh to get to them... “You’re right, I’m not as stable as I could be. If I’ll be more of a risk than an asset against her, then maybe barring me and my team from fighting her is a good thing.”

Myrddin hums. “I didn’t expect you to see sense.”

“Hey, just because I’m paranoid doesn’t mean I don’t know what’s good for me. The Simurgh...” He looks back down at his coffee. 

“You still think you may be a victim of hers without knowing?”

“Is it obvious?”

“A little.”

Rand huffs. “Look, I don’t know if I am or not, and while I really fucking hope I’m not... I’m not stupid enough to think I won’t end up being one if I see her again. Just being cautious.”

Myrddin nods. “Very well. The PRT will likely contact you soon to bring the four—sorry, three of you into a meeting to reevaluate our contract. I assume Tithonus will be busy at his day job?”

“Yeah, probably.”

Myrddin stands, adjusting the scarf around his neck. “Mr. Deep may be frustrated by his absence.”

“Somehow, I think he’ll deal.”

Myrddin pushes in his chair. “May I ask, just out of curiosity, would Tithonus like to actually join us in person for coffee one of these days, or is he content with just listening through your earpiece?”

“I think we’re okay with this arrangement.”

“Very well. On the off chance he may want to join us, may I ask how he likes his coffee?”

“Lots of hazelnut creamer, and a fuckton of sugar cubes. Really sweet.”

Myrddin nods. “Noted. The PRT will contact your team soon to arrange a meeting to discuss things.”

“See you around, old man.”

March 3, 1998

Rolan clicks his pen, arranging the papers in front of him. “May I ask where Myrddin is? He’s usually never late to these meetings.”

“He said he had something to do,” Revel says, “but he’ll be around quick. We can start without him.”

“I’d prefer he be here,” Hearthrow mutters from where he stands next to Revel.

“Two of ours are missing,” Conspiracy reminds him. “Widow and Tithonus are both at their own jobs, but we can speak for both of them. I assume you can speak for Myrddin?”

“Of course,” Revel says. “Just because he’ll be late doesn’t mean he won’t show.” She casts a glance at Hearthrow from the corner of her eye.

“I’m satisfied with the representatives in the room,” Rolan says. He clears his throat. “So, Conspiracy tells me you’d like to reevaluate the Memorandum of Understanding?”

“The PRT would like to add an addendum,” Hearthrow says. “The Hive is to be barred from engaging in fights against the Simurgh unless absolutely necessary, for both their own safety and the safety of the world at large.”

Rolan’s eyes widen. “The safety of the world?”

“There’s no telling what exactly the Simurgh can and will make people do,” Revel says. “If she got a hold of someone with a long history of mental illness who also has powers, such as Conspiracy, there’s no telling the kind of havoc she could wreak with someone like him. We would like to err on the side of caution.”

“Fair enough. The Hive has also discussed this possibility with me, but just so I’m not speaking for you, Conspiracy, I would like you to relay what you think of this idea.”

“I approve,” Conspiracy says. “I think it’s best that I’m not in direct contact with the Simurgh. Even if I’m not currently a victim of hers, I believe it’s possible I could easily become one if I was exposed to her for too long. I also believe it best that the rest of my team doesn’t come into contact with the Simurgh either, not because they’re unstable or anything, but because we’re a team. Where they go, I go, and vice versa. You get all of us or none of us.”

“Evidently, not the case for meetings,” Hearthrow says, levelling his gaze at Conspiracy.

“When was the last time Anomaly showed up to a meeting between all of us, again?” Stinger says, arms crossed over her chest, the buzzing in her throat getting louder, angrier.

Conspiracy almost hears a buzzing start up in Rolan’s chest in response to Stinger’s, but Rolan coughs into his chest and it stops. “Everyone who needs to be present is here, which is what matters,” he says. “I will write up an addendum to the contract. Conspiracy, were there any addendums your team wanted to add?”

“There are, actually.”

Revel straightens. “There are?”

“Just one.” Conspiracy leans forward, elbows on the meeting table. “Your Wards team. When Behemoth attacked Lyon, France in January, Shuffle and Brazier were present.”

Hearthrow narrows his eyes. “Where are you going with this, Conspiracy?”

“They’re not even sixteen. They shouldn’t be at Endbringer fights.”

“You would like to ban Shuffle, one of our heaviest hitters, from fighting Endbringers?” Revel says, her eyes wide. 

“If not all of them, at least the Simurgh. She doesn’t cause a lot of physical devastation, so you don’t need Shuffle, and they’re kids going through puberty and shit, which kinda makes them unstable by default. If you don’t want us fighting the Simurgh because you’re worried about what I could do, imagine what someone with the ability to teleport entire swaths of landscape could do.”

“Do you want to keep perfectly capable and stable heroes from fighting Endbringers?” Hearthrow asks. “For all we know, the Simurgh could have planted that idea in your head in order to keep our very capable Wards from fighting her.”

“I agree to the terms,” Revel says, not looking at Hearthrow. “You have a point. Our Wards are still rather new. Until they are at least seventeen, I don’t believe they should face the Simurgh either. I would, actually, not object if this were to be a rule extended across the entire Protectorate for every Wards team, but I’m afraid we don’t have the leeway for that kind of deal. I’m satisfied implementing this addendum for our own Wards.”

“Myrddin should hear this before a decision is made,” Hearthrow says. 

“Agreed,” Rolan says. “If you would like to wait—”

The door to the meeting room opens, and Myrddin walks in, his brown cloak trailing behind him. In one hand, he carries his staff, and in the other, a tray of... coffee cups.

“You were getting coffee?” Hearthrow hisses.

“I like to make sure our guests feel comfortable in our building.” Myrddin pauses next to Conspiracy and Stinger and places two cups in front of them. “Apologies, Stinger, I wasn’t sure what you liked, so I ordered you a latte.”

Stinger hums, picking up the cup. “Nice. Thanks.” Uncaring, she slings off her lower face mask, letting it dangle from the ear loop, and takes a sip. 

Conspiracy doesn’t take off his mask. It may be in their contract that the PRT won’t take advantage of his identity if they know it, but he’s not risking it. Not in front of Hearthrow. Revel, maybe, but not the Director. “Thanks. I’ll save it for later.”

“Of course.” Myrddin places a cup in front of Rolan. “Conspiracy told me what you like. I hope it’s alright.”

Rolan furrows his brow and glances at Conspiracy, but all he’s got for him is a shrug. Conspiracy doesn’t know what he’s talking about, he’s never told—

Rolan takes a sip and his eyes widen. A single quiet click leaves his throat. “Ah. Hazelnut.”

Myrddin tilts his head. “Did I misremember your order?”

Conspiracy and Rolan look at each other, silently communicating. Conspiracy told Myrddin what Tithonus likes, not their lawyer, Rolan Deep. 

He knows.

Is this a threat? Myrddin showing off, silently telling them he could know anything if he tried? Is it some weird backwards show of solidarity? Hard to tell. 

Myrddin knows their contract is made up by one of them. But Conspiracy knows that Myrddin is going behind the PRT’s back to let him know about shit the PRT is doing that they haven’t told The Hive yet, or never planned on telling them. They’re both breaking the rules. 

It is a threat, but also a silent deal. Stay quiet about what I do, I’ll stay quiet about what you’re doing.

Conspiracy nods at Rolan, a silent confirmation: He knows, but it’s fine. For now.

Rolan glances down at the cup, then turns to Myrddin with a polite smile, as if nothing is wrong at all. “No, it’s fine. May we continue?”

Myrddin settles in the chair that was left empty for him. “Yes, let’s.”

Rolan doesn’t touch his coffee for the rest of the meeting. 

May 4, 1998

Rand wakes to the sound of Led Zeppelin blasting from his phone. He grimaces, blinking the sleep out of his eyes in the dark room. The digital clock on Rolan’s dresser tells him it’s three in the morning.

“Turn it off,” Rolan mutters, the intense buzzing in his chest making his words nearly incomprehensible. 

Rand scrambles for his phone and glances at the screen, squinting through the glaring light. “It’s Myrddin.”

Rolan groans. “Fuck off, man.”

Rand accepts the call and puts it on speaker, still half asleep. “What?”

“You’ve been preparing for the next time an Endbringer would show, have you not?”

Rand’s blood runs cold. He’s suddenly very awake. “Don’t tell me, man.”

“Relax. I thought I would let you know you have nothing to worry about. You and your team will be sitting this one out.”

He sits up, rubbing his eyes. “It’s the Simurgh?”

“Her third attack since she first showed. Dragon has detected her moving, descending from orbit and heading towards Europe. Dragon assumes she’ll be in the U.K. within a couple of hours.”

Rolan rolls over in bed, slinging an arm around Rand, pressing his face to the back of Rand’s neck. “M’kay, can we sleep now?”

There’s a pause on the other line. “Are... is that—”

“It’s three in the fucking morning, Myrddin, you wanna ask if we’re sleeping together you ask when you come back from beating the shit out of the Simurgh.”

“I—I wasn’t going to,” he splutters. He clears his throat. “I just thought I would call to let you know that you don’t have anything to worry about for another three to four months. Take it easy. If something happens to the three of us, Chicago is in the hands of your team and our Wards.”

“Got it. Thanks, old man. Don’t die out there.”

“I don’t plan on it.”

Rand hangs up and heaves a sigh. “Did you have to say anything?”

Rolan’s entire chest vibrates with how strong he’s buzzing. “Shut up and sleep.”

Rand wants to muster up some more concern for the situation, the fact that another Endbringer is attacking another city and they can’t do anything about it. But man, he’s tired, and Rolan feels like an actual fucking massage chair, and it feels really nice against his sore back, so Rand just tosses his phone back on the nightstand and shuts his eyes. 

August 17, 1998

The earth shakes beneath Conspiracy’s feet. It’s crowded in the Vanderhoof Arena. It’s usually a rink in the winter, an empty arena in the off seasons. It was the biggest, most open place indoors that could be found for all of the capes to meet up once it was determined where Behemoth’s next target was. 

It’s a small municipality, about four thousand people. Way bigger than Galloway had been. Big enough that Rand doesn’t even feel right calling it a town—Galloway had been a town, and Vanderhoof is four times its size. 

At least two hundred capes are crammed into the rink. In the centre is the Prime Force, along with Magma, Tide, and one of the other Elementals—the former Elementals. The group fell apart in late ‘96, but Conspiracy hadn’t been paying much attention to them at that point. In his defence, he had a lot more to worry about than a group of heroes he already knew were clones. He only remembered they existed when he saw them on the news or on the battlefield fighting Endbringers. Shockwave’s death a couple years ago had been the last time he really sat down and tried to think about them, but he got distracted by the Simurgh... rather quick.

Legend is here. Alexandria as well. Eidolon is notably absent. He rarely shows anymore. Shame, since his powers provide him with whatever power he needs at a moment’s notice, making him useful in literally any situation. Conspiracy really needs to get on theorizing about that guy. Something about him never sit right with him. 

“It’s likely that at least a fourth of us will not make it out of this town alive,” Hexpert is saying, her voice echoing from inside her helmet. “You are all very, very brave to face this, especially those who have never attended an Endbringer attack before. I thank you all for your time, your effort, your strength, and your lives. You should all have received a Dragon-made armband by now. These will relay communications to the rest of us when on the field. Thinkers, you will be paired with Movers who can get you vantage points of the battlefield. Shakers, Breakers, Brutes, anyone else who has a chance of landing a hit, you will be on the front lines. Magma and Retribution will be heading the assault, switching off in shifts to attack and then run recon with support from the rest of us. Masters, you will...”

She keeps talking, listing off places everyone should go, how to use their powers to the best of their ability, how to ask for help, where the medbay will be set up, where shelters are. Conspiracy lets all the information flow over him without grasping most of it. He’s done this before. He doesn’t need the rundown. 

He could be asking questions, figuring things out, but he needs to save his strength for the fight. He shoulders the shotgun he has slung over his shoulder. It’s not something he needs, not for this fight especially, but he’s started carting one around in costume so he doesn’t have to rely on being rescued by one of the others for self defence. He usually carries rubber bullets—there’s a set of unspoken rules in the cape world, and lethal ammunition in guns is one of them. He’s allowed lethal bullets against Class S threats, and it makes him feel a little better just having it, at least. Even if it won’t do anything here. 

Dozens of other cape teams he recognizes are around the circle. The Chicago Protectorate, a little to their left. They got a new member a couple weeks ago, someone named Gauss. Conspiracy hasn’t paid much attention to them, doesn’t even know their powers. The Greats are across the room—probably not all of them, considering that they don’t seem to like to leave their hometown unattended. Solstice is the only one visible at the front of the crowd, but Barbarian is tall enough that his horned skull helmet pokes up out of the throng of capes behind Solstice. The Godslayers—the Ranz Protectorate—are here too. Conspiracy recognizes the Brockton Bay Protectorate team, the Los Angeles team, and the Houston team, mostly just from seeing them on the news a handful of times. 

The ground trembles again, harder. His heart leaps into his throat. He reaches out to grab someone’s hand, anyone’s, and Widow’s fingers curl around his own. He grips Conspiracy’s hand tight, as if afraid he’ll disappear if he lets go. 

“We got this, dude,” Widow mutters. “We haven’t died yet. We won’t this time. We know what we’re doing.”

Conspiracy takes a deep breath. “I sure fucking hope so.”

The ground shakes harder. Hexpert yells at them to start moving out, get ready to face Behemoth head-on. Conspiracy walks to the exit. He doesn’t let go of Widow’s hand. 

December 4, 1998

“We’re going to bomb Lausanne.”

Rand glances up from his coffee. “Am I supposed to be surprised by this?”

Myrddin shrugs. “Just wanted to let you know. There’s nothing your team can do about it. You won’t get a say when we vote on it.”

“But you haven’t voted on it yet?” Rolan furrows his brow, letting out a single click. “How do you know it’s going to happen?”

“It’s the only path forward, as far as most of the Directors figure. The Directors, the PRT squad leaders, the heads of each Protectorate branch, as well as some important members of the federal government are going to get together, discuss what the squad leaders have seen in Lausanne trying to round up the people thus far, and we will make a decision based on their firsthand accounts.”

“Anyone from the Guild?” Rolan asks. 

“Dragon will be in attendance remotely, and Narwhal and the current Prime Minister will be there in person. They will be allowed to contribute their viewpoints. Unfortunately, their votes won’t mean much. All they can offer is whether or not Canada will lend a hand in wiping Lausanne off the map.”

“I assume we’re not invited to this meeting?” Rand asks. 

“Unfortunately, no. But I did want to ask, Conspiracy. Do you know what the vote will lead to?”

Rand sips at his coffee as he considers how to word the question. He doesn’t wanna waste one on this, especially because he thinks he knows how this is going to play out, but if it’ll put Myrddin’s mind at ease, whatever. 

Will the PRT vote to exterminate everyone in Lausanne?

Yes.

“The vote will skew to yes.”

Myrddin nods. “That’s what I assumed. Thank you.”

“Just confirming what you probably already knew.”

“That I did.” Myrddin checks his watch. “I’ll have to leave soon. I have to rescue Gauss from patrol.”

“How are they?” Rand asks. “I haven’t met them yet. They were never a Ward.”

“They’re alright. Very secretive about their identity, but they’re not the only one I know like that.”

“Short visit,” Rolan says. 

“I’m a busy man.”

“We won’t keep you,” Rand says.

Myrddin stands. “I’ll see the both of you around. Mr. Deep, wonderful to meet you outside a professional setting.”

“Likewise.”

“See you here again next month, old man,” Rand says. 

Myrddin walks down the street, coffee cup in hand. Rand takes a sip of his own coffee and watches him go. 

“He’s not allowed to be telling us about what the PRT’s doing,” Rolan mutters. 

“So? You probably shouldn’t be the lawyer in charge of our agreement with the PRT, because you’re one of us.”

Rolan grimaces. “Still.”

“Hey, as long as we’re playing fast and loose with the rules, he can too. Besides, he’s helping us, keeping us in the loop. Would you rather not know anything they’re doing?”

Rolan takes a sip of his coffee. “Guess not.”

A cold breeze gusts past them and Rand shivers. “Fuck, can we go inside?”

“It’s not even that cold.”

“I’m not used to Chicago winters.”

“You’ve lived here for ten years!”

“Yeah, and it’s still just as fucking cold as the first time!”

Rolan rolls his eyes and stands up. “God, fine, we’ll go inside, you fucking baby.”

“Suck my dick, old man.”

“Yeah, you’d like that, wouldn’t you?”

Chapter Text

April 15, 1999

It’s two in the morning. Rand heaves a sigh and rubs his eyes. His room is quiet, dark. Pretty ideal conditions to be sleeping in. He’s been trying to for hours. 

Just one of those nights. 

He sits up. He’s not getting to sleep like this. Whatever, it’s not like he has an actual job to get to in the morning. Might as well go make some coffee, do some theorizing. He’s been trying to get to the bottom of the Elementals’ whole situation lately, why they fell apart, what exactly happened to Shockwave. He should get back on that. He was onto something yesterday before Kian made him go to bed. 

Rolan’s buzzing and clicking in his sleep is audible from the hallway. Rand shuffles past his door and into the kitchen. He might check on Rolan later. He’s always been nightmare prone. Has ever since—well, since they were fourteen. After—yeah. Makes sense. 

He turns the light on in the kitchen, blinking furiously in the sudden brightness. His back aches. It’s been hurting more lately. Maybe it’s because he’s lugging that shotgun around on the field nowadays. The thing’s heavier than it looks.

He starts up the coffee machine and digs his mug out of the cupboard. He doesn’t particularly want to leave most of an entire pot of coffee sitting there for hours until someone else gets up—it’ll be cold by then, and none of them like their coffee cold—but he’s not pouring it into the sink. He’s not wasting coffee. They can put it in their mugs and stick it in the microwave or something. 

He listens to the machine hum, waiting for coffee to start dripping into the pot, listening to the sound of cars out in the ever-busy streets of Chicago. As he’s listening, he swears he hears something else. Something... metal, maybe, coming from... the garage?

Is Becky in the garage?

Yes.

He glances over at the door that leads into the garage. He doesn’t want to waste questions trying to figure out why Becky’s awake. He reaches into the fridge for Kian’s caramel creamer and grabs Becky’s mug from the cupboard just as the coffee begins to drip into the pot. 

He pours some coffee into his own mug, then pours some into Becky’s. He pops the lid of Kian’s fancy creamer open and pours some into Becky’s coffee. She doesn’t like nearly as much of it in her coffee as Kian and Rolan do with theirs—she usually just uses half-n-half, but he’s seen her sneak some of Kian’s caramel creamer when she thinks no one is looking. He reaches into the freezer and grabs a single ice cube to plop in his own cup, and then he picks up both mugs and walks to the garage door. 

He grimaces with every step. God, his back is killing him. Maybe it’s supposed to rain soon. It always seems to ache when the weather’s going to get bad. 

He moves both mugs to one hand and opens the garage door. The gentle sounds of shuffling and metal clanging gets clearer. He slips through the door and shuts it behind him. 

Rand’s pickup truck is parked on one side of the garage, Becky’s motorcycle on the other. The place is a bit of a mess, toolboxes open on shelves, random shit in boxes they still haven’t properly unpacked despite living here for years now. The hood of his truck is open, and a pair of legs stick out from under the truck itself. 

“Can’t sleep?” Rand calls.

Becky heaves a sigh. She scoots out from under the truck, scowling. She’s in one of Rand’s Led Zeppelin shirts, one that’s so old it’s covered in holes and stains that will never get out. The sleeves have been cut off—the holes in the armpits were fraying so badly they nearly fell off anyway before Becky took a pair of scissors to them. Her curly black hair is tied back with a scrap of cloth from an old scarf of Rolan’s, the first one he used for his cape costume before he upgraded to the one he has now that stays in place better. Her sweatpants are Kian’s, a pair that he accidentally spilled bleach on and has been demoted to the part of their shared wardrobe dedicated to clothes that are wearable but unsalvageable for public use. 

She looks up at Rand. Her arms are coated in oil almost to the elbows, and there are smudges of it on her face and in her hair. 

“Something like that,” she says. She grabs a rag off the floor—the rest of Rolan’s old scarf, retired to being a rag after losing its use—and wipes her hands. “Thought I’d change your oil. I’ll take a look under the hood in a minute, see if I can figure out what’s wrong with your AC.”

Rand nods. He holds up the mugs, an offering. She sighs and clambers to her feet, walking over to Rand and reaching out to take her mug. 

“Why are you up?” he asks.

“You’re mister Thinker man, can’t you figure it out?”

“Saving my questions for later.”

“What are you working on?”

“Gonna try to figure out what happened to Shockwave back in ‘96. See if it has anything to do with the PRT, maybe give me a hint on why exactly my powers keep telling me we can’t trust them.”

“No luck on that, huh?”

Rand shrugs. “Well, we know they have ties to Cauldron—”

“The shifty people who sold Kian his powers?”

“Yeah. That’s all I got though. I don’t know what Cauldron is doing with the Protectorate, or why or how or—fucking anything, man. All I can think of is that Cauldron’s trying to make a superpowered army to fight the Endbringers, or some other threat, but I don’t know for sure.” He sips at his coffee. “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“You’ll figure it out.” Becky blows on her coffee to cool it before taking a sip herself. “I think you’re the only one who can.”

“Not the only one who can. Just the only one willing.”

Becky nods. She looks down at her mug like it holds the answers to every question in the universe.

“So, what’s keeping you up?” Rand asks again. “You wouldn’t be changing my fuckin’ oil if you weren’t trying not to think about something.”

She huffs. “When did you get to know me this well?”

“About the same time I memorized that you like stealing Kian’s creamer for your coffee.”

She narrows her eyes. “You’ve been putting his creamer in my coffee for seven years.”

“Seven years ago, then.”

She scoffs. “Fucking Thinkers,” she mutters into her cup. She hisses and pulls back. “Fuck, hot.”

He leans against the door. “What’s up?”

She sighs. “Lausanne got bombed last night.”

“Yeah, I was awake. Heard the news.”

Is that all that’s bothering her?

No.

“What else?”

“That could be it. You don’t know.”

“I do know, actually.”

“Fucker.”

“Come on, man. Spit it out.”

She gives him a half-hearted glare, a slightly annoyed clicking in her throat. “It’s Kian,” she mutters. 

Rand furrows his brow. “What about him?”

“He’s—I don’t know. You know how he sleeps on the wall all the time?”

“Yeah.”

Has Kian slept normally on a bed without getting all—like, fleshy and goopy and shit since Galloway?

No.

Yeah, he didn’t think so. He sips at his coffee as Becky taps her fingernails on her cup. 

“His fleshy stuff is like... it’s been... spreading? In his sleep? Like, reaching out, or something. It keeps making its way to the bed and it keeps sticking to me, and—”

“You don’t want him touching you when you don’t realize because you’re scared of hurting him.”

She clicks louder, an angry buzz in her voice. “Oh, fuck you, Tim.”

He spreads his arms as she turns and walks to the truck. “What! I’m just saying what I know!”

She sets the coffee cup down on the nearest shelf and picks up a container of oil, walking around to the hood of his truck. “I’m not fuckin’ mad, I know you can’t help that shit, but—fuck, man. Yeah, you’re right, whatever.”

“Sorry, I... if it’s worth anything from me, I don’t think you could hurt him.”

“Of course I could. You remember what I did back in Galloway?” She sets the can of oil down and reaches under the hood to fuck around with something. Probably the thing the oil goes in. Rand doesn’t know shit about cars. Probably the reason this truck is a piece of shit in the first place. Man, he needs to get a new one. “I wasn’t—I didn’t even control it, I just—the second I touched him, it fucked with his powers. I couldn’t—stop it.”

“You can now.”

“Yeah, now.” She lifts the oil again. “Can you pass me that funnel on the shelf there?”

He spots a plastic funnel on a shelf near the door. He picks it up and tosses it to her. She catches it in one hand and puts it in something under the hood. 

“How many times have you used that power?” he asks. “Just the once?”

“No.” She unscrews the cap of the oil. “I tagged a handful of the Queen’s Brute soldiers before you guys left the community centre and found me again. The Queen wanted me to, I was trying to kill you, or—or make someone else strong enough to kill you. I wasn’t—I don’t know. It didn’t effect them the way it effected Kian, my powers were made to make them stronger. Mine weren’t—compatible with Kian’s. They’re not compatible with anyone’s now, except maybe Rolan. But I’m not—after seeing what it did to Kian just for that short time, I don’t want to...” She grimaces and starts pouring oil into the funnel. “I’m not doing that to anyone.”

Rand watches her as she works. “What if you need to? At some point? What if... what if using your powers on someone and making their powers stronger is eventually going to mean the difference between living and dying?”

She doesn’t answer for a minute, focused on pouring oil into Rand’s truck. She lowers the can and watches the oil bubble into the funnel. She heaves a sigh. 

“I don’t know, man,” she mutters, steadily clicking. “I keep wondering, maybe—if I use my powers on Tide, maybe he could take down Leviathan, finally, or—Magma, with Behemoth, or literally anyone against the Simurgh, but I... I don’t want to break them.”

“Your power boost only lasted for like a few hours—”

“But it changed Kian,” she says, buzzing louder. “I know it did. It fucked with him, and I don’t know how. I don’t think he used to sleep plastered to a wall like that before I did that to him. It’s like... it’s like a second trigger, and yeah it gets reversed eventually, after like—I don’t know, a few hours, but that was when I was doing it to other soldiers, my powers were stretched between multiple people, so it wasn’t as...much. It changed him after, I know it did, I just... I don’t... I don’t know how.”

Becky stares at the oil reservoir in Rand’s truck as if it’ll somehow tell her exactly how to fix what she did to Kian. Rand wishes he had answers for her, but he gets the feeling this isn’t the kind of problem he can theorize through. 

“I don’t know either,” he mutters. “I... I don’t know what your powers might have changed in him. But whatever it was, I think it says something that he’s still... I don’t know, here. That he’s still hanging around you, that he fucking lives with you, that he sleeps in the same damn room as you. I know Kian’s a little self destructive—”

“A little?” she scoffs. 

“But like... come on, Beck. The dude fucking loves you. If he was mad at you or upset over what you did in Galloway, I’d know.”

Becky keeps staring at the inside of Rand’s truck, a steady buzz coming from her chest. She takes a deep breath that trembles in her lungs. “Okay.” Her voice is quiet.

“And we don’t know that what you did to him in Galloway fucked with him,” Rand says. “Maybe he’s slept like that ever since he got his powers. You’ve only done it to him and like a couple of the Queen’s clones that you didn’t care about. You don’t have a proper test group for your powers. If you want to test it on anyone else, I’m always down to get a boost. Might help us figure out more shit.”

She huffs. “I’m not risking doing that to you, Tim.”

“Just saying.”

She glances up at him. Her eyes are black. Two tiny antennae stick out of her black curls. “I’ll think about it.”

“You gonna go back to bed soon?”

“I still wanna take a look at your AC. It conks out every summer. Why don’t you get a new truck?”

“With what money? We’re both freeloaders, Beck.”

She snorts. “Yeah. Bring your Thinker shit in here. You can work while I mess with your truck.”

He sets his coffee cup down and opens the door again. “Kay. Don’t fall asleep in my engine in the two minutes I’m gone.”

“I’ll try not to.”

He turns and walks back into the house to grab a couple notebooks. As he tiptoes through the kitchen and down the hall, he asks a question, and he grimaces to himself at the answer. 

Did Becky’s powers... permanently change something in Kian?

A pause. 

Yes.

September 18, 1999

“Behemoth is retreating.”

Conspiracy turns to look at the skyline of Lagos, Nigeria. Sure enough, Behemoth is turning away from the direction he’d been deadset on heading towards, followed closely by Retribution, riding his giant feathery lizard dragon, and Magma, standing atop a building near the Endbringer. 

He breathes a sigh of relief. “Good. Fucking hell, this shit is starting to get tiring.”

“Tell me about it,” says Tithonus’ voice over his earpiece. “Must be more exciting out on the front lines. I feel like we’re not doing anything useful out here.”

“More dangerous, you mean. Be glad none of us are heavy hitters, we could have been one of the names being rattled off on these things.” He glances down at his armband. 

A spike of ice lands in front of him and he jumps. “Try actually being there,” says a voice above him. 

He looks up. Icewalker towers above him, most of her body covered in thick armor made of ice. Usually very short, she’s elevated herself by morphing her legs into long sticks of ice that are ten times the length of her own torso. Her arms are made of ice too, reflecting the light of the sun directly into Conspiracy’s eyes. 

“I’ve been knocked out once or twice in one of these,” she says, a grin audible in her voice under her ice helmet. “Be glad you’re not out there. You might throw out your hip if you have to run too much, old man.”

He rolls his eyes even though she can’t see it. Against Leviathan—and maybe the Simurgh, depending on the location, but he wouldn’t know—Icewalker’s hydrokinesis usually puts her on the front lines, providing support for Tide. Against Behemoth, she’s more useful running recon with her giant spike legs. Letting Tithonus go out alone to get stragglers to shelters and pairing himself up with Icewalker seemed like a decent idea at the time, but man, she is snarky. 

Whatever. She’s like... twenty-one? Twenty-two? Somewhere around there. Conspiracy was just as bad when he was her age. Probably worse. Probably still is, actually. 

“Whatever, kid.” He shoulders his shotgun. His armband is still spitting out names of capes who are just now dying or passing out in the wake of Behemoth’s retreat. “Let’s go find your team.”

Her ice arms melt into water, swirling around her shoulders, and then they turn into normal flesh and bone, the sleeves of her bodysuit only reaching her mid-bicep. She leans down and grabs him by the shotgun strap. He yelps as she unceremoniously lifts him into the air and starts walking, stepping right over buildings and carrying him like a mama cat with a kitten. 

“Hey! Isn’t there an easier way to carry me that doesn’t require me dangling from a shotgun strap?”

“This is how I carry Bullseye by his poncho!”

“Yeah, well I’m not Bullseye!” Conspiracy taps on his earpiece. “Man, where are you?”

“Downtown,” Tithonus’ voice says. “I found Bracer knocked out on the street. I’m bringing him to the medbay now.”

“Is he okay?”

“Probably got a nasty concussion and maybe a couple broken bones. Hard to tell. He’s still breathing though, so that’s good.”

“Be careful with him.”

“No, Conspiracy, I was going to toss him around like a ragdoll. Of course I’m being fucking careful with him, what do you take me for?”

“Okay, just saying!”

“Stinger, Widow?” Conspiracy says. “Where are you guys at?”

The streets of Lagos quake as Behemoth retreats underground, and his armband spits out a couple more names as the ensuing capes chase him away. Icewalker stumbles. Conspiracy reaches up to grip her arm to make sure she doesn’t drop him. 

He doesn’t get a response from his earpiece. Instead, along with the other capes his armband is telling him are down or dead, it gives him another one. 

“Widow, down.”

Conspiracy’s heart leaps into his throat. Widow? How on earth—he was supposed to be running recon, he shouldn’t have been anywhere near the Endbringer.

“Where is he?” Tithonus asks, the buzzing in Conspiracy’s ear growing louder. 

Conspiracy frantically taps his earpiece. “Stinger, where are you two? Is Widow okay?”

No response. Conspiracy’s heart beats louder, harder, as the adrenaline from the fight comes flooding back. Where the fuck is Widow?

His head pounds at the attempt to get an answer out of his powers. It doesn’t give him anything, stupid fucking yes-or-no restriction, but he doesn’t—he has no idea where to start, how to narrow it down—fuck, where are they?

“Where do you need to go?” Icewalker asks, the humour gone from her voice, dead serious.

“Uh, downtown. Tithonus—he’s got Bracer, you can—”

“Got it.” Ice crackles as her legs grow longer, the little bit of moisture in the air coagulating on her limbs, lifting her higher, letting her move around buildings easier. He keeps his head on a swivel, looking out for any sign of Widow or Stinger. Where the hell could they be?

They move through the streets fast. Icewalker adjusts her hold on Conspiracy to carry him under her arm. He doesn’t even care how undignified it looks, he needs to find Widow, and he can’t—his head hurts, he doesn't know where to start, where could Widow and Stinger even be—why isn’t Stinger responding? Did she come up down or deceased on his armband at some point and he missed it? If that’s the case then—he’s gonna—

A familiar shape leaps onto the side of a skyscraper, lugging an unconscious body over his shoulder, and Conspiracy points at it. “There!”

Icewalker changes direction and heads right for him. Tithonus jumps down to a lower building and Icewalker lets some of her legs melt to put her down on his level. 

“Here.” Tithonus hefts Bracer off his shoulder. “I don’t—I don’t know what’s—”

“It’s okay, I got him.” Icewalker takes Bracer in her free arm and holds out Conspiracy. “Here. I’ll get Bracer to a medbay, if you need help finding Widow after I’ll come help, I—I owe you guys for Ranz, anything I can do—”

“Thanks.” Tithonus takes Conspiracy in his arms, and Conspiracy clings to him like a fucking child, arms around his shoulders and legs around his waist. His back hurts again. Fuck.

Tithonus jumps onto another building, leaving Icewalker behind, and clambers up the side. “Any ideas?”

“No, no, I—fuck, I’ve got nothing, I don’t—”

“Focus. Are Widow and Stinger on the southern end of the city?”

No.

“No.” He doesn’t even need to ask it himself, like his powers just know, somehow, already, that he would just repeat Tithonus’ words anyway. 

“Okay. Northwest?”

Yes.

“Yeah, yeah. Somewhere northwest.”

“Good. Okay, okay.”

Tithonus starts moving, heading—somewhere, Conspiracy doesn’t really know. He hears Tithonus call out for Stinger, but he barely hears it himself. What could have happened? Behemoth was retreating. Was Widow somehow nearby when he burrowed under the ground? They shouldn’t have been near Behemoth, they should have been literally anywhere else—

“Widow, deceased.”

Rolan stops, mantis claw dug into the side of a building. His other arm comes up to press against Rand’s back, as if to make sure he’s still there. Rand barely feels it. 

Deceased?

His entire body feels... cold. Numb. He can’t... he can’t feel anything, just the deep buzzing in Rolan’s chest, pressed against his. 

Deceased. 

“—and? Rand? Tim.”

He jolts. Rolan’s breathing fast. Too fast. He might—he could pass out. Or something. 

“Where is Becky?”

There’s something in Rolan’s voice, different from his usual clicking and buzzing. Something thick, something... He’s not. Sure. 

Right. Becky. 

Where is Becky?

Airport.

“Airport. Near it. I... I think.”

Tithonus just clicks in response, and then he’s moving again. He sounds like a swarm of cicadas in Rand’s ear. Rand’s shotgun swings and smacks against his back with every jump. 

His head pounds like the beating of a heart, insistent and loud in his skull. 

Was Kian near Behemoth?

Yes.

Why?

He doesn’t get a word this time. An image, the briefest of flashes, passes his mind. A kid surrounded by rubble in an airport, Kian running towards them as Behemoth starts digging beneath the ground in the parking lot to retreat, the ceiling cracking above their heads, surrounded by bodies already crushed by falling rubble. 

Trying to be a fucking hero. Rand wouldn’t expect any different. 

Rolan makes a sound—something that borders on a word, that almost sounds like “Becky,” calling out into the air, but it’s overlaid with so much clicking and buzzing it’s hard to tell. 

Where was Becky?

Another flash, almost too brief to process. Becky, nearby, trying to lift a pile of rubble to free someone’s legs. The lower part of her mask hangs from her ear, and her mouth is open, yelling, watching as Kian runs closer to the entrance of the building, closer to where the parking lot is being torn to shreds. 

Rolan stops at the top of a building. He lets out a sound—a shriek, almost, deafening in Rand’s ears, buzzing loud enough to shake Rand to his core, a sound filled with desperation, fear, and anguish. He’s never heard Rolan make that kind of sound before.

Another shriek responds from somewhere to Rand’s right, slightly muffled but high pitched and loud, overlaid with a constant clicking. Rolan leaps off the building and onto another, headed right for it. 

Rolan lands on the ground hard. He starts running, joints cracking as his legs morph into something that’ll let him move faster. Rand’s fingers grip the straps of Rolan’s armor as tight as he can, white knuckled. 

What happened?

Images, too fast to process all the details. The ceiling of the airport collapsing, Kian caught in the wreckage, morphing his hand into a web of flesh in an attempt to keep the ceiling intact so it doesn’t land on him or the kid, a lighting fixture hitting him right on the head, shattering on impact, glass jabbing into his skin, the broken bulb burning him where it hits, Kian’s mouth open, screaming, a piece of metal, rebar, piercing through his back and out his stomach, Becky dropping the person she was helping and running towards him—

Rolan stops. His clicking gets louder, and so does Becky’s. Rand lifts his head and turns to look. They’re in a ruined parking lot, the asphalt cracked, destroyed, making the terrain precarious and uneven. Not far away is the airport building. Rand squints in the sunlight. 

Half the airport is rubble. The ceiling is almost entirely caved in, save for most of the back half and a large section in the front. A huge chunk of the parking lot is nothing but a crater. Parts of the building are crumbling into the lot, debris sliding down the slope into it. Retribution hovers in the sky atop his feathered dragon, staring down at the wreckage like he doesn’t even process what’s happening. Magma is in the crater near the debris from the building, gripping a piece of asphalt to keep himself from slipping in. 

Stuck to part of the debris is a long, stringy web of flesh, leading into the crater from the collapsed building. There’s a lot of it, more than Rand has ever seen, strewn across piles of rubble almost like it was trying to... shield something. There’s a small form wrapped in the webbing that’s halfway in the crater, stuck to the asphalt. 

Kian?

No.

Rolan starts towards it, but Rand starts struggling, squirming out of his arms. “Put—down, put me—”

Rolan lets him down, but he doesn’t let go of Rand’s vest. He grips onto the back of it like a little kid as Rand starts walking to the edge of the crater. 

“Magma,” he calls. He’s not sure how his voice sounds. Empty, probably. Hollow. He feels that way. “That—there was a kid, in the... in the airport. Widow was trying to save them. That... that might be them.”

Magma looks up at the two of them. There seems to be a permanent scowl on his face, but it softens a little. “Are they alive?”

Yes. Injured.

“Hurt, but yeah. Cut... cut the webbing open.”

Rolan clicks in what might be protest. Cutting the webbing hurts Kian—doesn’t injure him, not really, it just causes him pain. 

Rand’s not—he doesn’t think that matters. Anymore. Not now. 

He turns and beelines for the airport building. His legs feel... weak. Like jello, like they could collapse at any moment. His foot hits a piece of asphalt and he trips, nearly tumbling right into the crater. Rolan chitters, startled, and presses his hand against Rand’s side to keep him from falling. 

The webbing. There’s so... much. Why is there so much? He’s never seen this much. The only time he’s seen anywhere close to this much of Kian’s webbing is...

He hesitates at the edge of the building. Not much to call a building anymore, not with all this, but Kian’s fleshy webbing keeps some of the walls and support beams intact, gluing them together, holding some of the ceiling up. The webbing covers the entire floor, covering the shapes of dead bodies, broken tile, shattered drywall. 

Rand pauses, then steps on it. 

It moves at the contact, all of it, writhing slowly, crawling further up the rafters. It all shivers, pulsing, shifting. 

Alive.

Rand chokes out a sound that might be a sob or a laugh. He’s seen what Kian’s webbing looks like when it’s dead—when they found him stuck to the tree in Galloway and cut him out of it, how the flesh withered, drying up like leaves in the fall. 

This—this is not dead. The armband was wrong. 

He lets out a shaky breath and ventures further into the building. Broken electrical lines crackle and fizzle around the edges of the huge entrance. The webbing burns when it touches the sparks, but more of it moves in to take its place. He reaches back to take Rolan’s hand. Rolan holds it tight, squeezing hard enough to hurt. 

There’s a steady clicking coming from further in the room—not Rolan, his is different, a slower cadence. It’s Becky’s, high pitched, distressed, echoing off what remains of the ceiling. There’s a support column in the floor a little further in, illuminated by the sun streaming in through a large section of collapsed roof. Clinging to the bottom of the support column is a mass of flesh the size of a small car, pulsing like the beating of a heart, the root of the rest of the webbing. 

How the fuck did the kid so far away from there?

Another flash of images, too quick, overwhelming. The kid sliding down the tilted floor as it begins to cave into the crater Behemoth left, Kian stumbling away from them, head and torso bloody, reaching for Becky, his webbing shooting out behind him, latching on, wrapping around the kid like a cocoon, but it’s not thick enough, not strong enough, and a small part of the ceiling cracks over Becky’s head, and—

Rand looks up. The ceiling above the support column looks milliseconds away from breaking and falling. It likely would have, but the webbing is... strong. Thick. Keeping it glued together. 

He stumbles over to the fleshy mass. “Becky?” he says, nearly tripping over some debris half covered in flesh. 

He looks it over, gripping Rolan’s hand tight. It takes him a second to find it, but there’s a hole in the side of the mass. It’s hollow, or... mostly. Cradled inside the mass, held tight in a pair of what might be arms, is Becky. Her mirrored sunglasses are broken, one of the lenses popped out, the other cracked. Her eyes behind them are pitch black, one of them bleeding, glass stuck in her cornea. Her lower face mask is lost somewhere. She clicks, and Rolan clicks back. 

Rand studies the mass. From the outside, it just looks like a huge lump. He steps forward and leans down to stick his head into the hole. 

There’s another figure in there. Its clothes are torn, jaguar print jacket ripped to shreds, eye mask dangling off its face. The figure is half absorbed in the flesh, looking down at Becky, unseeing with its rolled back eyes, bloody blond hair falling around its face, mouth open, breathing slow—too slow to be normal, but the steady pulsing is strong, insistent. It has its arms wrapped around her, warped, too many joints, fingers too long, clinging to her clothes like it never wants to let her go. A broken Dragon armband is trapped in the flesh alongside scraps of clothes. 

Kian. 

Becky shifts, freeing her arm to reach up and cough into her fist. She opens her mouth to speak, but all that comes out is a series of clicks and buzzes. Rolan clicks back, automatic, like he doesn’t realize he’s doing it. He squeezes Rand’s hand tighter. 

She coughs again. “I had to,” she whispers, barely comprehensible through the buzzing. 

Rand looks back at the destruction and the plane of flesh keeping it together. He doesn’t need to ask to know that the rest of the ceiling will collapse without Kian holding it up. He reaches for answers to questions he doesn’t know how to ask. The panic is gone—Kian’s alive, not in good condition, but alive, and he won’t die here, not if Rand can do anything about it. 

Someone else steps into the building, hesitant walking across the flesh. “What is this?” Magma asks. His voice is hoarse, like he gargles rocks in his spare time. 

“Where’s the kid?” Rand asks. 

“Retribution is taking them to a shelter.” Magma gestures to the entire room. “What is all of this? I was... unaware your teammate could do this.”

Rand glances back down at Becky. She grips one of Kian’s gross morphed hands in her own, holding it tight. She’s shaking. 

“Second trigger,” Rand lies. “He and Stinger almost died. First we’ve seen of this.”

He looks around the room, studying it, ignoring the relief of Kian being alive—they have a new problem now, and he needs to figure out a solution, a way out. They need to get Kian out of here, but the ceiling will collapse and probably crush them all the moment they cut him out, and—honestly, Rand doesn’t even know where the flesh ends and Kian begins. Maybe it’s all Kian and even cutting that kid out of his webbing hurt him irreparably this time. He’s already injured. They can’t risk hurting him more. 

An idea comes to him. Not provided by his powers, just—random thoughts that come together in a mishmash of things that might work. He reaches for his armband and Rolan’s hand goes with his. He doesn’t let go, just frees up a single finger to press the button. 

“I need some backup at the airport,” he says into the band. “We need to hold up a large section of a high ceiling. Icewalker maybe, I don’t know, just get me a couple Shakers or Brutes or anyone else who can hold up big pieces of things. And get Changeling out of the medbay and send him our way, I don’t care who else he’s helping right now, we need him. Now.”

Magma moves closer, nearly tripping over a piece of debris on the way, gaze locked on the lump of flesh. “A second trigger,” he mutters. “Are you sure?”

“Dunno what the fuck else this could be,” Rand snaps. “If you’re not gonna find a way to help, you can go.”

Rolan clicks, almost annoyed, chastising, but there’s still a bit of fear in it. Rand squeezes his hand. Rolan squeezes it back. 

“Can you cut him out?” Magma asks. 

“Not risking that. He’s already hurt, and we need someone to hold up the ceiling so it doesn’t collapse as soon as he’s out of it anyway. Maybe some kinda bio Tinker could figure out how to cut him out of there without hurting him, but I’m—we’re not doing that. We’re not risking it.”

“And why is Changeling necessary?”

“Look, are you gonna keep asking stupid questions or are you going to go help with cleanup somewhere else?”

Magma narrows his eyes. He clenches his fists, but he takes a step back. “Fine, then. I’ll leave you to it.”

He turns and walks out. Rand almost hopes he trips and falls on Kian’s webbing. 

“Hey!” a voice calls. Rand looks up through the caved in ceiling to see Icewalker picking her way through the ruined parking lot, towering over it all with her spikey legs. “Is everyone okay?”

“Alive, yeah,” Rand calls back. “Think you can hold up some of this ceiling?”

“Not much moisture around here, but I can try!” She steps into the building through a huge hole in the roof, and Rand sees now that she’s carrying someone else with her. “I brought backup!”

Her legs dissipate into water, swirling around her waist, lowering her down to the floor, and she sets down her companion, a woman with bleached blond hair in a purple costume covered in bright green accents. Her mask consists of thin stems and vines, curling around her head like they’re alive. Flora, another one of the Greats. 

“Everyone is alive, you said?” she asks. She has a similar accent to Solstice, just much less British and Indian and more French, with some weird Midwestern Canadian syllables in there. Like they’ve been around each other so much their accents just rubbed off on each other.

“Yeah. Can you two hold up the ceiling?”

Icewalker cracks her knuckles. “Might be easier than I thought. Kinda damp in here!”

Rand almost wants to snap at her, tell her now is not the fucking time for quips, but—she’s literally fucking twenty-something. Whatever. She’s basically a kid, he’s not gonna yell at a college student. They were just fighting fucking Behemoth. She’s coping. 

The water around Icewalker condenses together, morphing, turning solid again, bare skin from the mid-thigh down. She’s got a couple tattoos, but Rand looks away before he can see them. Too identifiable. She probably doesn’t intend for them to be seen when she’s around so many other capes, since her limbs are usually ice on the battlefield. 

She kneels and presses her hands to the fleshy floor. Spikes of ice poke through gaps in the flesh, thickening, turning into support beams, reaching up to the ceiling. 

Flora doesn’t even move. The ground trembles, just a little, and Rand’s heart skips a beat—Behemoth again?—and then giant plant roots burst from the ground, curling around the webbing so as not to rip it, reaching up, growing rapidly, spreading out to support the ceiling. 

“What now?” Flora asks. “I suppose you have a plan?”

“Yeah, we’re just—we’re waiting on—”

A shape soars through the sky outside, blindingly white in the bright sun—Retribution’s dragon. It swoops down and lands, and Rand loses sight of them behind the remaining ceiling. Footsteps hurry across the ruined pavement, and Changeling enters the building, his perfect white hair not even tousled, his robes perfectly undamaged, a smile on his face. 

“You called?” He looks around at the room and grimaces. “Ah. Well! This is... something! Wow! Is... anyone injured?”

“Yeah, but that’s not the problem.” Rand walks towards him, and Rolan comes with him, unwilling to be parted. “Widow’s in a fucking—I don’t know. Stinger?” He glances back.

Becky takes a deep breath from inside the fleshy cocoon. “I... I enhanced his powers. He’s stuck like this, I don’t know how long it’ll be before he’s normal. It... it varies. A few hours, a day, I’m not... sure.”

Changeling’s eyes widen. “Enhanced powers?”

“Don’t get any fuckin’ ideas,” Rand snaps, whirling on him, “and don’t share that with the PRT. Keep that shit as down low as possible, or the public’s gonna find out that Changeling isn’t actually the pretty boy healer they think you are.”

Changeling balks, opening his mouth and then closing it again. “I—you—” He glances at Icewalker, who just shrugs. 

He turns back to Rand. “Stooping to blackmail?” he mutters, the smile gone from his face. “Didn’t think you the type.”

Rand says nothing. Rolan chitters next to him, afraid. 

Changeling’s face softens. “I suppose I understand.” He clears his throat. “Alright. What do you need me to do?”

“You can change people’s perception, fuck with their heads, make them think they don’t have a concussion when they actually do, shit like that. Alter people’s thought paths, their perception, their brains. Right? Temporarily?”

“Not exactly how I would phrase it,” Changeling says, a very slight note of annoyance in his voice, “but... essentially.”

Rand points at Kian. “Fix him.”

Changeling hesitates. “I... I’ve never altered... anything anyone’s done with their powers before. Nerve signals, visual input, pain receptors—hell, my entire costume is just—me projecting a visual input to everyone in a certain radius. The Corona Pollentia, the part of our brains that control our powers... that is something I’ve never touched.”

“You don’t have to change it, just put it back how it was before Stinger used her powers,” Rand says. “As best you can. Or at least—do something, control it a little, get the webbing back in his body so we can get him out of here.”

Changeling fiddles with the rings on his fingers, turning them over, twisting them on his knuckles. Behind him, Retribution wanders into the room, still in his Breaker state, entire body glowing, the light from his third eye nearly blinding them, making it impossible to even look in the direction of his face.

“The shit you do isn’t permanent,” Rand says. “How long does it last?”

Changeling shrugs. “Once a person is out of my range? Ten minutes to an hour, perhaps. The more complicated it is, the more focused it is on one person, the less time. It... depends.”

“Even if it’s just half a minute, that’ll be enough.”

Changeling takes a deep breath. He takes his robe off and shoves it in Retribution’s direction. “Hold this, darling.”

Retribution reaches out and takes the robe, staring into space like he doesn’t even see any of them. Changeling cracks his knuckles and walks over to the lump of flesh. “Alright. Give me a minute.” He glances over at Icewalker and Flora. “You two are still alright?”

Icewalker gives him a thumbs up. “Holding steady!”

Changeling kneels next to the lump of flesh, grimacing a little at the damp floor beneath him. Then he slowly, hesitantly, reaches into the hole. He gently presses his fingers against Kian’s temple. “Hello there,” he says quietly. “I’ve heard quite a bit about you in the news. We must meet under different circumstances. It sounds like you and I would get along swimmingly.”

He closes his eyes and takes a deep breath. There’s a moment of silence, a moment where nothing happens, and Rand almost thinks maybe he got Changeling’s powers all wrong, maybe he’s fucking with them now because Rand threatened him—

Some of the rubble outside moves and Rand turns to look. Some of the webbing is retreating, letting go of the debris. Part of the ceiling near the entrance collapses and everyone in the room jumps, aside from Retribution, who’s still staring into space while his third eye looks around furiously, as if trying to absorb as much information as possible. 

Part of the wall nearby crumbles as the webbing retreats. Ice shoots over to it, encasing it, keeping it up. One of Flora’s roots nudges Retribution away from the wall, and Icewalker lets it go, allowing that section of the wall to crumble while she focuses her ice elsewhere. 

Inside the lump of flesh, Kian lets out a loud, trembling breath that rasps in his throat. Changeling inhales sharply as the webbing pauses, pulsing gently, and then it continues to shrink back towards Kian, letting go of sections of the roof, uncovering debris on the floor. 

Part of the wall Icewalker was holding up falls, and a section of the ceiling tilts before Flora’s roots come up to catch it. “Sorry,” Icewalker says. “Running out of water to work with.”

“There are only so many plants deep below an airport I can draw on,” Flora agrees. “The sooner we can all get out of here, the better.”

The webbing condenses just to the large cocoon, and then that begins to shrink as well, shifting and writhing. Kian’s body becomes visible, grotesquely warped, scraps of clothing stuck in the flesh, blond hair covered in blood from the roots to the usually pink tips. Becky keeps clinging to him, arms wrapped tight around his form, as his skin ripples and changes and slowly returns to something that almost resembles normal. His eyelids flicker and fall shut, letting out another laboured breath as he goes completely limp in Becky’s arms. She curls around him, holding him tight to her chest, half hiding his body in her long leather coat. 

He’s still a weird fleshy pink-ish colour, like exposed muscle, and his joints move at strange moments, jerking and twitching, but he looks... better. Not perfect, but better.

Changeling withdraws his hand. “That should work for now, I hope.”

“What did you do?” Rand asks, just out of curiosity.

“Tried to stem the release of cortisol just a little,” Changeling says, straightening and brushing off his already pristine clothes, “then triggered a minor release of oxytocin to help him relax. I... very briefly touched the Corona Pollentia, but I admit, I... couldn’t do anything with it. I have no experience with it. Thought it best to... leave it alone.”

Is that true?

A pause. Yes.

“Regardless,” Changeling continues, “encouraging production of oxytocin seemed to let the rest of his brain communicate with it for me. He seems to have plenty of experience suppressing his own powers, because he took it from there.” He glances down at Kian and makes a face. “Not a perfect fix. He may look like that for a while until whatever you did to him clears up,” he says to Becky, “and if you decide to leave now, it will wear off after a little while once I’m away from you, and he may go back to... whatever that was. But at the moment, he’s under no stress and in no pain.”

Becky lets out a long, shaky breath. “Thank you,” she whispers. 

A ceiling tile falls to the ground, narrowly missing Retribution. “I think we should go,” Icewalker says. It sounds like she’s gritting her teeth.

Changeling claps his hands, that bright smile back on his face, as if none of this even happened at all. “Ah, yes! Of course! Come, we’ll give you all a ride back to the medbay on Lizard.” His smile flickers. “I should stay near him. I don’t think it wise for him to leave my radius for the next few hours. Unless, of course, you would like to leave for Chicago immediately.”

“We’ll stay,” Rand says. Rolan’s grip on his hand hasn’t lessened. “Uh, thank you. I—sorry for—”

Changeling holds up a hand. “I understand,” he says, his voice soft. “I would have done the same for anyone from my team.” He turns and takes his robe back from Retribution. “Now, how would all of you like to ride on a dragon?”

October 3, 1999

“Just hold on—there we go.”

Rand holds tight to Kian’s hand, helping walk up the steps to the door. Kian grimaces a little at the last step. So does Rand—his back’s been hurting all day. Probably not a great idea to send the guy with chronic back problems to pick up Kian from the hospital, but he wanted to let Rolan and Becky talk alone in the house. She’s been... troubled since Lagos. Best way he can put it.

He opens the door. “We’re home!”

Rolan’s in the kitchen, sleeves rolled up, hands in the sink. He glances back to look, his four black eyes flickering over the two of them. “Hey. How you feeling?”

Kian gives him a smile—small, a little pained, but there. “Righteous, dude. I, uh, kinda wanna lay down for a bit, man.”

“You can sleep in my room,” Rand says. “You should... you should stay on a bed, and I don’t—sleeping with someone else wouldn’t be the best idea.”

Kian nods. He lets Rand help him hobble to the hallway. He’s in an old sweater of Rolan’s and a pair of sweats, the comfiest clothes Rand could think to bring with him so Kian wouldn’t be hobbling home in a shitty hospital gown. There’s a smattering of scars on his skull, little bald spots of scar tissue from the lighting fixture hitting his head, the electrical bits burning some of the skin. He’s carefully arranged his hair to cover most of the scars, but it’ll be hard to cover it up like that all the time. Rand hasn’t even seen the scar under Kian’s shirt yet; he insisted Rand leave the room while he change, which was... weird. He’s never been insecure about being naked around any of them before. 

They reach Rand’s room and he nudges the door open. He cleaned up in here, moved his bulletin boards and all his important files to Rolan’s room—times like this he wishes they had an office space to keep everything, but he’s been thinking of clearing up one of the storage rooms downstairs to turn into an office, he’ll have to bring that up to Rolan sometime—so Kian can have the room to himself. 

He pulls the comforter aside and helps Kian sit down on the bed. Kian hisses through his teeth, but he gives Rand a weak smile anyway. “Thanks, bro.”

“Feelin’ alright?”

Kian lets out a breath as he slowly lowers himself to lay down. “Honestly, dude? I’m feeling fucking heinous, man.” He goes limp as soon as his head hits the pillow, heaving a sigh. “We’re sure the hospital won’t tell anyone I’m Widow?”

“They’d have to answer to us and our lawyer if they did.”

Kian nods slowly. His eyes flicker. “I’m fuckin’ tired, dude.” He pulls the blankets over him. Already, bits of fleshy webbing are starting to spread from his fingertips and onto the fabric, more of it spreading from his neck and clinging to the pillow, gross and sticky.

“Get some sleep,” Rand says quietly. He leaves the room and shuts the door. 

He glances across the hall to the door of Kian and Becky’s room. He grabs the doorknob and gently opens it. 

Becky sits on the bed, plucking at the strings of her guitar. She’s wearing one of her own shirts, a really old one that none of them have ever touched—too tight on the rest of them, too form fitting—and a pair of her own ripped jeans. Her left eye—or, both of her left eyes, really, are stuck the way they are, unable to change to look like a normal human eye, scars all around them, the black scleras with permanent gashes in them. He’s not sure if she can see at all through those eyes. He hasn’t asked.

“He’s okay,” Rand says.

Becky nods once. She doesn’t say anything. 

“He’d be dead without you,” he says. 

She doesn’t even move, just plucks a couple more notes on her guitar.

He sighs. “I’ll bring you dinner when it’s ready.”

He shuts her door and walks down the hallway into the living room. Rolan’s still in the kitchen. He’s scrubbing the same plate he had been when Rand brought Kian in. 

“Hey,” Rand says. 

Rolan jumps. He puts the plate on the dryer rack and picks up a glass. “Hey. Your, uh... your truck run okay?”

“AC’s janked again, but it’ll get cold out soon anyway.” He glances at the clock. Six-forty-five. Nothing’s on the stove or in the oven. Rolan’s usually got dinner cooking by five-thirty on his days off. 

“You wanna order takeout?” Rand asks.

Rolan blinks. He glances up at the clock. His eyes widen. “Oh. Oh, shit, I... I didn’t...”

Rand picks up the phone. “You want Chinese?”

Rolan swallows. “Um... sure.” He turns back to the sink. “Sorry.”

The constant buzzing in his chest gets louder, higher. He fumbles with the glass in his hands and nearly drops it in the water. He clicks, almost a curse at himself, and puts it on the drying rack. 

Rand watches him for a second, thumb hovering over the phone’s number pad. He hesitates. 

“We’re sitting out the next one,” he says. “Simurgh or not.”

Rolan doesn’t respond for a second, just keeps scrubbing the tines of the fork in his hands. He nods, finally, and places it with the rest of the clean utensils. 

January 1, 2000

“—as Leviathan’s devastating attack on the city of Shangai brings us into the new year—and a new millennium. Terrible way to start off the new year, I’m telling you, Dave.”

“Sure is, Sharon. Doesn’t exactly bode well for the coming years, does it?”

“Sure doesn’t. And if the math adds up, there will be three more Endbringer attacks in this year alone. Last time we got four in one year was two years ago in ‘98, if my memory serves me correctly. Let’s hope that doesn’t set a precedent for the coming century.”

“Fingers crossed, Sharon. Now, on a lighter subject, Changeling and Retribution of the Ranz Protectorate have recently announced that they’re engaged! Isn’t that—”

Rand reaches over and jams his hand against the volume knob, muting the radio. He returns his hand to the steering wheel, cigarette in his fingers. 

“They’re not wrong,” Rolan mutters in the passenger seat. “It doesn’t bode well. Not—not to me.”

“Yeah, well, nothing we can do about it.” Rand takes a puff of his cig. He glances at the clock. Eight fifty-five a.m. Rolan might be a little late to work, but whatever. His boss can fucking deal.

He wants to ask why Rolan’s hasn’t been taking the bus lately. He’s not sure whether to ask Rolan or himself, so he doesn’t ask at all.

He hasn’t... really used his powers much since Lagos. Theorizing, putting strings together, it’s taken a backseat to... the everything at home. Taking care of Kian while he finishes recovering, dealing with Becky shutting herself away, figuring out how to cook more than a handful of meals so Rolan doesn’t have to all the time. Normally Rolan likes cooking, but lately he’s been doing it less, and that... worries Rand. 

He hasn’t asked about it. Probably won’t unless Rolan volunteers the info first. 

Rolan holds out a hand. Rand passes him the cig. 

“Has Becky talked to you lately?” Rolan asks.

“No. You?”

“Little bit. Not... not in a way you’d get.”

Right. Buzzing, clicking. Bug stuff.

“She okay?”

Rolan shrugs. He blows smoke out of the corner of his mouth. 

Rand sighs. “Maybe I just don’t get it,” he says, flipping on his turn signal and slowing to a stop at a red light. “I don’t know why she’s so fucking cagey about it. Kian’s alive because of her. If not for her, he’d be crushed under the rubble, or that piece of metal in his stomach would have killed him, or the brain damage from the light fixture would have fucked him up for life. Her enhancing his powers made it so he’s not dead or like... permanently fucked up. That’s a good thing.”

The traffic light turns green and Rand turns onto the next street. Rolan hands the cig back to him with a sigh. 

“I think it’s a lot more complicated than that,” he says. “It’s... bug stuff. Clone stuff.”

“You think you can talk some sense into her?”

“I don’t... I don’t think sense is the problem. I think she needs to talk to Kian, but she doesn’t wanna be alone in the same room with him anymore.”

And Kian’s not going to say anything unless she starts the conversation first. They’re stuck in a loop, one they have no hope of breaking unless Rand or Rolan approach the topic and force them to talk about it, and neither of them have any idea how to bring it up or even get them all in the same room together. Not right now, anyway.

Rand sighs. He pulls up to Rolan’s work building and parks. “I’m making tacos for dinner.”

“Awesome.” Rolan unbuckles his seatbelt and turns to face Rand. 

Rand turns the cig around and holds it up to Rolan’s lips. Rolan leans in and takes a puff, letting his eyes flutter shut for a second as he inhales. He pulls back and blows the smoke right in Rand’s face. 

Rand snorts. “Have a good day at work.”

Rolan clears his throat, stifling his buzzing, his black eyes shifting, turning into a normal blue. He picks up his briefcase off the floor of the truck. “Don’t forget to pick me up, asshole.”

Rand reaches over to tighten the scarf around Rolan’s neck. It’s fucking cold out, he’s just being nice. “Yeah, love you too.”

Rolan shuts the car door behind him and walks into the building. Rand watches him go. He lifts the cigarette to his lips and sucks in once last breath, reducing it down to the filter. He stubs it out in the cupholder and puts the truck in drive. 

March 15, 2000

It’s the first time they’ve all been together for dinner at once in a long time, and Rand wishes so badly that that wasn’t the case. 

It’s awkward. Horribly awkward. They all sit at the dinner table, and usually when they’re all together, Becky and Rolan are clicking back and forth, and Kian’s talking about the latest music he’s gotten into, or Rand is talking about his latest theories, but this? This silence? 

It’s fucking dreadful, and Rand can’t stand it. 

Becky and Kian sit opposite each other, as do Rolan and Rand. Becky stares down at her bowl of spaghetti like she doesn’t even know what it is, her gaze a thousand miles away. Kian looks down at his bowl, gently prodding the noodles with his fork. Rand asked his powers today if the scarred patches in Kian’s hair are permanent and got a staunch Yes—he wouldn’t have asked if Kian didn’t insist on knowing, and Rand couldn’t lie to him about the answer. He’s been sulking  like this all fucking day about it, and Rand wishes he could shake Kian and tell him it’s not a big deal—he’s alive, that’s literally all that matters, it doesn’t fucking matter what he looks like, but he gets the feeling his input wouldn’t help matters. 

Rolan twists his spaghetti around his fork. He glances up at Rand and clicks once. Rand just shrugs. He doesn’t fucking know what to do here. Usually any tension at the dinner table is caused by Rand and Rolan getting pissed at each other, but that’s usually solved by a brief yelling match where they get out everything they want to say and then go outside and smoke together to actually talk. And maybe sometimes make out about it, but that’s just—that’s just how they work when they’re mad. 

Smoking and making out is not going to fix... whatever this is.

Rand looks down at his spaghetti. It’s not the best—he’s still figuring out how to make some shit, and he thinks he overcooked the noodles a little, but Rolan doesn’t seem to mind at least. Kian and Becky, however, have barely eaten anything. 

The tension is killing him. 

He heaves a sigh and pushes his chair back. “Okay, if the spaghetti sucks, you guys can tell me.”

Becky looks up, eyes wide like she forgot he was even here. “Hm? Oh, no, it’s... it’s good, sorry.”

Kian looks up at Rand and gives him a smile—one of those small ones, the ones that don’t meet his eyes, that just kind of sit there on his face like a mask. “It’s good, dude. Sorry, not super hungry.”

Rand crosses his arms. “Okay, so the spaghetti isn’t the fucking problem. Can I guess what is?”

Rolan buzzes a little louder. “Tim.”

“Don’t Tim me!” He turns to Becky. “You need to fucking talk to him!”

Becky’s face hardens. “To who? About what?”

“To Kian! About Lagos! About Behemoth! The airport! You’ve been in your room for six fucking months, and you guys haven’t talked about shit! I don’t think you two have even talked to each other face to face since September!”

Becky starts buzzing, annoyed, clenching her fork in her fist. “There’s nothing to talk about.”

“Yes there is! Clearly there is, or you wouldn’t be hiding in your room like a fucking hermit all the time!”

“Oh, says you,” Becky snaps. 

Rolan opens his mouth to say something, then evidently thinks better of it and shuts it. He finishes off his bowl of spaghetti and stands, taking his dishes to the sink, leaving them to their yelling. 

“You only come out for meals!” Rand says. “You’re not—Jesus Christ, Beck, you haven’t even worked on your motorcycle since September, you’re just in your fucking room all the time—”

“I’m sorry.”

Rand pauses. He turns to look at Kian, as do the other two. Kian sits in his seat, his hair falling over his face. It’s unwashed, the brown roots growing out, like he hasn’t touched a bottle of hair bleach in months. He’s in one of Rolan’s sweaters, a pair of Rand’s sweats—too short for his legs, riding up his calves—and he’s got three of Becky’s hair ties on his wrist. He holds his bowl of pasta like he’s afraid it’ll grow legs and run away if he lets go. 

“I...” Kian swallows. “I know I... I fucked up in the fight. Cuz like... if... if you dudes are mad at me, I can... I can go spend time somewhere else, I—I can take a trip to L.A., stay in a—in a hotel, just—take a break, or—”

“What?” Becky’s voice is quiet, disbelieving. Her one normal human eye morphs to match her left side, turning black, a second one opening up underneath it. “Wh—no, don’t—we don’t want—what are you talking about?”

Kian’s bright blue eyes gleam with unshed tears. “I... I didn’t mean to get hurt. I’m sorry, I just—I tried, I should have been more careful, dude, I’m—sorry. I’m sorry, I should have...” He wipes his eye on his shoulder, gripping his bowl tighter. “I tried to save that—that kid, but I should have been safer, and maybe I could have—I could have kept the ceiling up, or kept the floor from caving, or—I should have—”

“Man, what?” Rand whispers. “You... I saw it, dude, you did—you didn’t do anything wrong, what the fuck?”

Kian takes a shaky breath. “But—I—I’m really sorry, I just thought—you guys have been weird since Lagos, and you’re—” He glances up at Becky. “You’re not fuckin’ talking to me, dude, you got hurt, and I could have stopped it but I wasn’t fast enough, I—”

“What the fuck.” Becky pushes her chair back and stands up, clicking like crazy, walking around the table behind Kian to go pace into the living room, like she needs to get out some energy. “What the fuck, man, what are you—what?”

Kian makes a choked sound that could be an attempt to stifle a sob, half turning in his seat to look at her. “I—I wasn’t quick enough, I got hurt, and it’s bringing us down, I’m sorry, I—”

“Kian,” Rand says. “That’s not her problem.”

Becky whirls on him. “Timothy—”

“She used her powers on you,” Rand says, raising his voice so she can’t yell over him. “She’s mad at herself.”

“Fuck you, Rand,” Becky spits. “Fuck you, what fucking right do you have—”

“Wait!” Kian shoots to his feet, his chair screeching back, toppling over with a bang, letting his bowl go. It spins a couple times, almost toppling over. Rolan darts over to grab and steady it. “Wait, I—that’s what the problem is? I—what?”

“It’s—” Becky puts her head in her hands. “Ugh, fuck! It’s complicated! I fucking—I used my powers on you, and I shouldn’t have! I already saw what they did to you once, and it—it fucked you up! It changed you, you can’t even fucking sleep normally because of me! You didn’t ask for it, you didn’t have to—”

“No, shut up!” Kian holds up a hand to stop her. For the first time in six months, there’s something other than self pity behind his eyes. For the first time probably ever, at least since Rand’s known him, it looks like anger. 

Rand glances at Rolan. This is uncharted territory. 

Becky blinks, taken aback. Kian lowers his hand, leaning back on the table, staring at her with a mix of bewilderment and anger. “You haven’t been talking to me because you’re mad at yourself, dude? You made me think you were mad at me for six fucking months?” Fleshy webbing spreads between his fingers, clinging to the table. He doesn’t pull it back. He might not even know it’s there. 

Becky opens her mouth, closes it, floundering like a fish out of water. “I...” All the fight seems to have drained out of her. “I didn’t... mean to make you think... that.” Antennae sticks out of her hair. She lets out a steady series of distressed clicks. Rolan mirrors them, instinctive, automatic, like he’s trying to soothe her. 

Kian spreads his arms. The webbing on the table stretches with his hands, clinging to the surface. “I’m fucking here, dude!” he shouts, his voice hoarse—he rarely raises his voice, this is new. “I’m—I don’t care what you do to me! I’m fucking alive, man! Without you, I would have been dead! Twice over!”

“But it—you can’t sleep without—”

“Yeah, I know!” Kian pushes off the table, standing to his full six-foot-something height. He towers over all of them, even Rolan—the first time in a while Rand’s seen him back straight, not slouching, not relaxed or hiding in himself. “Before Galloway, I could sleep normally in a bed without making my entire fucking room look like the inside of someone’s guts! I could actually sleep without waking up every two hours because it feels like there’s a stinger going down my throat! But I don’t give a shit, dude! I didn’t think I was gonna fucking live to forty anyway! I thought—I thought I was gonna fucking OD on heroin and coke in my shitty L.A. apartment and no one I cared about would ever know! I’d rather take this—”

Webbing shoots out of his hands, sticking to the floor, sticky and stringy, pulsing like a heart. Rand flinches. He thinks back to Lagos in the airport, the certainty that Kian was dead, even if just for a few short minutes.

“I’d take this over being fucking dead, man!” Kian’s voice cracks on the last word. His webbing clings to his clothes, seeping out over the collar of his shirt. “And it saved you, too! You could do that to me a million times, no questions asked, if it even had a chance of saving any of you!” 

His shoulders slump, the anger draining out of him in a second. Tears slip down his face. He reaches up and wipes his cheeks, webbing stretching between his arm and the floor. He sniffles. 

“Don’t—don’t fucking feel bad for saving me, man,” he says, his voice quiet. “If you didn’t use your powers on me and you died because of it, I would—I’d fucking hate myself, dude. You saved me, and—and you saved yourself. That’s... literally all that matters.”

Becky’s lip wobbles. She rubs her eyes. She doesn’t say anything, just lets out another series of clicks. 

Kian takes a step forward, slow, hesitant. “I... I’m sorry, man, I... Can I—can—”

Becky just nods. Kian strides forward at the go-ahead, quick, urgent, and he wraps his arms around Becky like he’ll starve without her. She lets out a long shaky breath and wraps her arms around him in turn, fingers wrapped in his sweater. Sinew clings to the floor and the table like spiderwebs, stretched to keep a hold of them.

Becky chitters, burying her face in Kian’s shoulder. Kian presses his face to Becky’s black curls. Her antennae writhe, touching his neck, shoulders, like she’s trying to make sure he’s still there, afraid he’ll go away or disappear. 

“Sorry,” Becky whispers into Kian’s shoulder. “I’m—I’m sorry, I’m so sorry—”

Kian shushes her, holding her tight, webbing spreading from his arms over her back, tight. He shuts his eyes, trembling in her hold, muttering quiet reassurances.

Rand glances at Rolan. “You, uh... you think I can put my stuff back in my room?” he whispers.

Rolan snorts. “Fuckin’ hope so. Bed hog.”

“Hey, you hog the blankets, it’s a fair trade-off.”

Rolan nudges him. There’s a smile on his face, one Rand hasn’t seen in six months. 

Rand picks up his bowl of spaghetti and shoves the last forkful into his mouth, walking over to the sink. The dishes aren’t going to do themselves. 

October 6, 2000

“—the emergence of a new Class S threat known as the Trickster, who attacked the town of Amity just a couple nights ago. The entire town is under quarantine, and measures are being put in place to keep the Trickster and his minions within town limits. Both of Amity’s only active heroes, Purgatory and the Whisperer, have gone missing—”

“Think the PRT is gonna ask us to fight that guy?” Kian asks. 

“If they do, I’m vetoing it.” Rand gently tilts Kian’s head forward. “Stay like that, I can’t get the bleach on your roots if I’m looking up, man.”

Kian heaves a sigh, slumping where he sits on the toilet seat. “I’m not that tall, dude.”

“I’m five-foot-five, Kian, you’re almost a full foot taller than me. Keep your head facing forward, don’t tilt it down.”

He huffs, but he does as he asks. He reaches for the radio on the bathroom counter. “I’m switching it to music.”

“Whatever you want, dude.”

Kian turns the tuning knob and stops when he hears some smooth, slow pop song. “Oh fuck yeah,” he mutters. “I love Destiny’s Child.”

Kian hums along to the music as Rand focuses on smearing bleach paste on the year’s worth of grown out roots. He’s very careful not to get any on the scars on Kian’s skull. Most of them are small, barely enough to make a gap in his hair, but there’s a larger patch close to the right side of his head that doesn’t grow anything, all burned scar tissue. Rand carefully maneuvers around it. There are a couple bigger ones closer to the back, but the one on the right is the biggest, making the volume of his hair look really lopsided.

Rand takes a step to the right to get to the other side of Kian’s head and grimaces as his back flares with pain. How long has he been standing?

“You good, dude?” Kian asks. 

“Yeah. Just need some ibuprofen.”

“I think you should get your back checked out, man,” Kian says. “It hurts when you stand, it hurts when you walk, like—dude, you can get help for it.”

“I’m fine. I don’t need a shrink and I don’t need a doctor, I’m fine.”

“Okay, man,” Kian says, but he doesn’t sound convinced. “When are Becky and Rolan back from patrol?”

“Like, an hour, maybe. Beck says she’ll pick up pizza on her way home.”

“Awesome.”

Rand glances at the radio. Half of him wants to change it back to the news channel, learn more about this new threat, but there’ll be articles on the internet soon. He can do research later. Right now, Kian needs his hair bleached, and he doesn’t need any stress. 

Kian’s been slowly tilting his head forward, staring down at the bathroom tiles. Rand reaches around to grab his chin and move his head back. “Hey, tall ass, stop looking down.”

“Sorry!” 

March 19, 2001

“The Hive hasn’t been to an Endbringer attack since Lagos.”

 Rand swishes his coffee in his cup. He’s gone through most of it at this point in the visit, so the rest is getting cold. “Yeah, well. Shit happens.”

Myrddin shrugs. “I’m not protesting. If the four of you want to retire from Class S threats altogether—”

“We’re not,” Rolan says. He takes a sip from his cup. “We just needed to take a bit after Widow got injured, that’s all.”

“Yes, I heard about his... second trigger.” Myrddin pauses, looking between the two of them. “If that is... truly what happened?”

Rand grits his teeth. This fucking guy, always figuring shit out. “You want the truth?”

“It would be appreciated.”

“You’re not being recorded or anything?”

“I’m not being recorded, nor have I been followed. Scout’s honour.”

Is anyone listening?

No.

Is he being recorded?

No.

Rand sighs. “Stinger has the power to... enhance other people’s powers. Kind of like inducing a pseudo second trigger.”

Myrddin’s eyebrows raise. “Oh?”

“She can do it to multiple targets at once, but that lowers the duration and strength. She did this once back in our hometown, and it was... bad, but she was using it on other people at that point too. Widow was the sole target of it in Lagos. Hence... all of that.”

“It fucked Widow up,” Rolan says. “Her powers enhance someone’s temporarily, but they change a person in other ways, permanently. Widow is basically in a constant state of suppressing his powers so he doesn’t turn every room he’s in into a horror movie scene.”

“Interesting.”

“It’s not something you wanna fuck with,” Rand says, “so don’t think of going to the PRT with this. I’m fucking serious. It’s not exactly like a second trigger, but it’s close enough. The mental and physical strain isn’t worth it.”

Myrddin nods slowly. “I figured as much. That you had someone with Trump classification powers on your team, I mean. It was among one of my theories.”

“You can’t tell the PRT,” Rolan insists. “No one should fuck with her powers. Widow’s the only one who’s had it used on him, and he’s...”

“Still under the weather?” Myrddin asks. 

“In a way,” Rand says. “I think... maybe we can go to the next Endbringer fight? Depends who it is, obviously, we’re not facing the Simurgh, and I don’t know if Behemoth would be... a good one to come back to. But if the next one’s Leviathan, it might get us back into the groove of things. Leviathan was our first one ever, so out of all of them, I think he might be best to go up against once we’re out of our Endbringer vacation.”

Myrddin nods. “I will keep that in mind.” He stands. “It was wonderful meeting up again. It’s been a while.”

“Sure has. Take it easy, old man.”

Myrddin smiles. “Like your team won’t be pushing fifty within a few years.”

November 28, 2001

“It’s Leviathan.”

Rolan looks up from the stove, where he’s currently layering meat and pasta in a baking dish for lasagna. “Wh—right now?”

Rand nods, phone in hand. “Taiwan. Rain started in Taipei half an hour ago, and the waves on the shore have gotten big enough that they’re certain he’s on the way.”

Rolan looks down at the baking dish, steadily clicking. “We haven’t done this in two years,” he says. “Do you think...”

“We’ll be fine,” Rand says, although he’s not certain. “We’ll stick together, stay out of his path, run some recon... We’re not splitting up this time.”

Rolan heaves a sigh. “Alright. Dinner’s gonna have to wait.” He reaches into a drawer to grab the foil wrap. “Kian, Becky! Suit up!”

Heavy stomping makes its way down the hall, Becky in her clunky platforms, already slinging on her long leather coat. “I heard,” she says, her worried clicking mirroring Rolan’s. 

“Where’s Kian?” Rand asks, already making his way across the living room to the hall to go get his own cape shit. 

“Bathroom.”

Rand passes by the bathroom door and gently knocks on it. “Hey. Leviathan’s in Taiwan, if you’re up for it.”

“Uh, yeah.” Kian’s voice is quiet. “Gimme a minute.”

Rand grimaces. He doesn’t sound sure. Regardless, he heads to his room and starts changing into his costume. 

He’s not even sure if they should go. He’s tempted to contact Myrddin, tell him they won’t need the extra Dragon ship, but... he said they’d come back to fighting these things eventually. It’s been two years. It’s not like the Endbringers are going to stop. Everyone who can help against them should. 

He throws his denim vest over his hoodie and grabs his shotgun. The bathroom door is open, and he sees Kian standing in the living room, already in his costume—a white tiger print coat, since his jaguar one got ruined, leather boots, black gloves, but there’s something else, something different—

Kian turns his head to look at Rand and Rand pauses in the hallway. The entire right half of Kian’s head is shaved, his scars clearly visible instead of hidden in his hair. The tips of the hair swept off to the left side of his head have been dyed red and orange, fiery and bright in contrast to his usual soft pink. 

He gives Rand a smile, one of the small ones. Nervous. “So, uh, are we going, dude?”

Rand shakes the surprise off. “Yeah. I uh... I like the hair. Suits you.”

Kian’s smile gets bigger, and the corners of his eyes crinkle. He ties his mask around his head. “Awesome. Let’s go, dudes.”

February 12, 2002

“Doctor says I need a cane.”

Rolan shrugs, poking at the stir fry in the skillet on the stove. “I mean, I can’t see I didn’t see this coming.”

“I don’t want one,” Rand complains, putting his head facedown on the dinner table. His back hurts like a motherfucker when he does it, but he doesn’t say a damn word. “I’m not even fifty yet!”

“Your back has been fucked since Galloway, this isn’t a surprise.”

“It’s gonna effect how I work on the field! If I’m on patrol, people are gonna come for me more because I’m an easier target, and there’s no fucking way I can take a cane to a Behemoth fight.”

“I mean, maybe you don’t have to use it in costume,” Rolan offers. “Probably better than having a walker, at least.”

“The doc recommended that too,” Rand groans. “For home use at least. I’m gonna be fucking defenceless on the field, man.”

Rolan doesn’t respond for a moment, the food in the skillet sizzling. “You know, Bracer uses a cane with a knife in it,” he says finally. “Maybe you can ask where he got it?”

Rand thinks about it. A knife cane sounds... kinda sick, actually. 

He shrugs. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it.”

April 18, 2002

Fauna isn’t a particularly beautiful place. Not like Ranz had been, before Leviathan totalled it. It looks just like any other city Rand would see in America, just smaller and... snowier. 

“Can anyone explain why there’s so much snow on the ground in the middle of April?” Conspiracy mutters, peering around at Gauntlet’s workshop through his goggles. He wanders around, poking at unfinished swords and armor pieces.

Gauntlet shrugs, peering down at a blueprint on one of his many tables. “Welcome to Midwestern Canada.” 

This place is big. The Greats must have invested a lot into this place for him to have so much room for his armory. There are tables everywhere, covered in all manner of medieval weaponry, and multiple forges along the wall, melting down pieces of metal to be crafted into something else. There’s a table in the corner with guns, and he’s been told that’s Bullseye’s workstation. Apparently he’s a Tinker too, specialty in firearms. Good to know. Conspiracy’s always been curious about Bullseye’s whole deal for a while. 

Gauntlet’s not in costume, and Conspiracy had been extremely taken aback to see the guy’s face—an average looking white guy, but with tiny purple horns poking up out of his hair above his glasses, and a long thin purple tail that flicks as he looks over his blueprints. It’s Grayson—formerly known as Blacksmith, a Tinker with a specialty in medieval weaponry, a rogue cape who made a name for himself making pieces for museums before completely disappearing off the map. His parents were both capes, his father a hero—a Case 53, one of the monstrous parahumans—and his mother a rogue, a Tinker like him. Conspiracy always idly wondered what happened to the guy. Now he knows. 

“Does it always snow in April?”

“Sometimes.” Gauntlet glances out the window. “How does your, uh... bug guy hold up in the cold?”

“He’s used to it. The rest of us, we always lived in the south before Chicago. Never got this.” Conspiracy follows his gaze to the snow gently falling outside. 

“It’ll probably melt within the week,” Gauntlet mutters, scribbling something on his blueprint. “Is everyone still out on patrol?”

Everyone still out there?

No.

“Nah, someone’s come back. Not sure who, and I’m not cycling through names for you.”

“That’s okay. Just good to know. It’s probably Strider. Usually is.”

They’re so... casual with their identities. At least around other capes. It’s weird. Conspiracy is used to his team being so secretive with theirs, for good reason, and here these guys are just saying each other’s names out in the open for Conspiracy to hear. Might be Conspiracy’s paranoia talking, but they’re way too trusting. 

Conspiracy wanders over to Gauntlet’s worktable, peering at the blueprint and its complicated designs. “I thought your specialty was medieval weapons, not mechanics.”

“I took some university engineering and mechanics courses,” Gauntlet says with a proud smile. “Doesn’t always mesh well with my powers, but I can make it work most of the time if I try. Should be no problem making you a cane with some kind of defence mechanism built into it.” 

Conspiracy looks over the blueprints. He doesn’t understand a lick of it. “Looks complicated.”

“It won’t be once it’s in your hands. I’m just trying to work out what exactly I should do for you here.” He scribbles something down on his blueprint. “You’re not very quick on the field—not an insult, just an observation—so I don’t think having something like Strider’s would be good for you. You’d have to unsheathe the blade, keep the other half of the cane on you until you can sheathe it, which would be hard if you’re also trying to wrangle a shotgun—I mean, handling a cane will be difficult with that regardless. I’m thinking...” He taps on the blueprint. “If I put in a mechanism that will let you press a button and have a blade eject from the bottom, that could work. Or I could get Ram’s help and fashion some sort of gun out of it, but then I fear the cane would be too heavy to lug around all the time.”

Man, this guy likes to talk. “Whatever you decide, man.”

Gauntlet nods, furrowing his brow as he studies his blueprints. “How long are you and Tithonus staying in Fauna?”

“Booked a hotel for a couple nights. We’ll maybe go home on the twentieth, twenty-first. Not sure yet.”

“I should have this done for you by the twentieth.”

“That quick?”

“If I pull a couple all-nighters, yes.”

“Man, you don’t have to do that. That’s like—you don’t—”

“Relax. I don’t need as much sleep as most parahumans. I can thank my dad’s genes for that.” He scribbles something else on his blueprint. “As long as I’m mostly uninterrupted, I should—”

“Hey, asshole.”

Conspiracy and Gauntlet both jump. Bracer stands next to Gauntlet at the worktable in full costume, cloak over his head, scarf around his lower face. It’s like he just appeared out of nowhere. 

Gauntlet presses a hand to his chest. “Fucker, you’re going to give me a heart attack one of these days.” 

Bracer reaches up and pulls his hood down. His hair is done in cornrows, keeping it tight to his head. His cane is in his hand, but he holds it more like a weapon, grip tight, shifting on his feet. His eyes dart around the room every few seconds. Everything about him feels guarded, packed in tight to make himself a small target. Rand knows that look. He’s paranoid, even here in his home base. 

He doesn’t lower his scarf from his face. He’s probably the only one of The Greats who hasn’t shown their face around Conspiracy and Tithonus. Conspiracy’s not complaining; he’d be a hypocrite if he did. 

Bracer puts something on the table. A red to-go coffee cup. Gauntlet mutters a thanks and picks it up to take a sip. Bracer doesn’t say anything else, just collapses in a chair next to the worktable. He glances up at Conspiracy, eyes narrowed, glances at Gauntlet, then hesitantly leans down to take off the brace on his knee. 

Conspiracy takes a step towards the stairs. “I think I’ll go find Tithonus. If you need me at all—”

“I’ll come find you,” Gauntlet says. 

Conspiracy nods. He turns and walks to the stairs, leaving Bracer and Gauntlet to their own devices. 

August 9, 2002

“You’re not retaliating quick enough.”

Conspiracy raises his cane to block Bracer’s as it comes whirling around to hit him. “Look, I haven’t been fighting with this thing for that long, sue me.”

“You’re doing great!” Solstice calls from the sidelines, giving them both a smile and a thumbs up. It’s still weird seeing him without his mask. He’s very handsome, charming in a quirky way, his smile a touch lopsided, a twinkle in his eye that just seems knowing in a way that Rand has only seen in other Thinkers. He’s very excitable and humorous out of costume, a stark cry from the sort of elegant wisdom he carries when he’s out on the field. 

Conspiracy reaches up to adjust his mask. “Yeah, thanks.” His back is starting to ache. He’s never done something like this before, never trained repeatedly to use a specific weapon. He just kinda wings it with his shotgun. This is all new to him, but it’s necessary. He doesn’t want to get caught on the field unprepared. 

It’s honestly kind of wild to him that The Greats have their own training room. They must get a lot more financial support from the Guild than The Hive does from the Protectorate. That part wouldn’t surprise him, though; Canada’s lack of a large organized branch of capes means they must have to support whatever teams there are out here, independent or not. 

Conspiracy looks down at his cane, at the thin metal blades that stick out of the sides and the small spikes on the tip. He fumbles with the switch on the handle, and the blades and spikes all retract back into the main body of the cane. “Can we take five?”

Bracer raises a brow. “Your enemies won’t take five.”

“I’m forty-five, man, gimme a break. You guys are, what, teenagers? I can’t take as much as you can.”

“I’m twenty-seven.”

“Whatever.” Conspiracy leans on the cane, taking a deep breath. “I’m fucking exhausted, my back hurts, can I sit down?”

Icewalker looks over from where she’s lounging on a nearby bench reading a thick hardcover book. “Give his old man bones a break, Stri,” she calls. “He’s probably going to wither up and die any minute now.”

“Hey, I said I’m almost fifty, not that I’m fucking eighty.” He walks over to the bench, taking it slow, half hunched over. 

Bracer pauses, then lowers his own cane. “Fine. You are getting the hang of it, though.”

Conspiracy lowers himself to sit on the bench next to Icewalker. “You know, as much as I absolutely cherish these training sessions up here where your weather seems about as stable as my mental health—”

Icewalker snorts. Conspiracy ignores her. “You guys are welcome to come to Chicago any time,” he finishes. “Might be a nice change of scenery for you.”

Solstice exchanges a glance with Bracer. “We... don’t like to—”

“You don’t wanna leave Fauna unattended, I get it,” Conspiracy says. “I haven’t even fought the guy or any of his cronies, but the Lich seems like a big deal. But if a few of you want to take a short trip, just for a break, you’re welcome to. We’d love to host you for once.”

Solstice scratches at a scab on his arm. “We’ll... we’ll think about it.”

The door to the training room swings open, and Kian walks in alongside one of The Greats—Justice, out of costume, wearing a hoodie that’s much too big for him, his long blond hair tied back. Kian’s not in costume either, his tiger print jacket and eye mask traded in for a pair of shorts, one of Rand’s t-shirts, and an old dress shirt of Rolan’s that’s had the sleeves cut off it to make a vest. Justice carries a tray of coffee cups, and Kian carries a little cardboard box, a huge smile on his face, making the corners of his eyes crinkle. 

“Dude, why didn’t you let me tag along here earlier?” Kian reaches into the little box and takes out a tiny pastry—a donut hole. “These are so good, dude!”

“We can get donut holes at home,” Conspiracy scoffs. 

“Yeah, but these are called Timbits! That’s fucking adorable, babe!” He pops it into his mouth and pauses in front of Conspiracy, holding the little box out. It has a maple leaf on the side. “Have one, dude.”

“I’ve tried them, they’re literally just donut holes.”

Icewalker perks up when Justice walks up to her with the tray of coffee. “Oh, thanks Alphonz. You’re literally my favourite person ever, thank you.” She plucks a clear cup with some fancy whipped cream drink and immediately takes a sip through the straw.

Justice smiles at her and scoots past Kian to get to Solstice. As he holds out the tray of coffee cups, the sleeve of his sweater rides up, revealing a tattoo of a swan on the back of his hand. The mark of the Simurgh survivors.

Solstice takes a cup, and then Justice holds the tray out to Conspiracy. “The, uh, one in the corner,” Justice says softly. “Black coffee. Widow told me what you like.” His voice is usually much louder, boisterous, passionate. This is one of those days, then, the ones where he doesn’t feel as connected to reality. Rand’s witnessed one or two of those days in the handful of times he’s been here. At least it’s not bad enough that the guy’s stuck in his breaker state, like he was last time they were all here. 

Conspiracy hesitates. He reaches out and takes the coffee. “Thanks.” 

He looks down at it. Slowly, he reaches up and pushes his goggles up into his hair, blinking furiously as the world is revealed without the tint of orange, and then he tugs his lower mask down. He takes a sip of coffee. Not bad. 

Bracer watches him from where he leans against the wall, cane in one hand, coffee cup in the other. He studies Rand for a second, then reaches up and tugs his own mask down to sip from his own cup. 

Rand taps his fingers on the side of his cup. Something nags at him, something that’s been bugging him for a long time, something he’s refused to think about properly for a while. He takes a deep breath. 

“Question,” he says, tucking his cane against his side, holding his cup with both hands. “For... all of you, I guess.”

Solstice hums to show he’s listening. Icewalker shoves a bookmark in the pages of her book and shuts it, turning her full attention to Rand.

“Have any of you ever... has there ever been a time where your powers just felt... stronger? Like, they worked better, like you felt more... in tune with them, or something?”

Icewalker furrows her brow. “Like... a second trigger?”

“Kind of, but—no. Just... like, your powers just naturally felt... stronger, somehow.”

Bracer shakes his head. “Nope. Mine have always stayed the same.”

Solstice scratches at his arm. “I... maybe. I don’t know. I suppose it fluctuates? My range of time I can see into, it’s never the same day to day.”

Icewalker hums. “I... guess it feels stronger when I’m fighting Leviathan. But that could just be the amount of water in the area.”

“I have.”

Rand turns to Justice. He’s standing with the mostly empty tray of cups in his hands. There’s just one left in the cardboard tray. He hasn’t touched it. 

Justice’s gaze is a million miles away. Rand’s seen him in his paladin armor, glowing like a beacon in his Breaker state, swinging at Leviathan with his broadsword, water evaporating off his form, heat radiating from his body like a generator. Here though, out of costume, in a sweater that clearly belongs to Barbarian and his hair tied back with one of Icewalker’s scrunchies, he looks... small. 

“I have felt it,” Justice says, his voice quiet. “Fighting Israfel. The Simurgh. Every single time I gaze upon that traitorous, wretched form, I...” A light appears in his eyes, bright, dangerous. The cardboard in his hands begins to char. Some of his hair slips from its ponytail. It moves as if blown by an invisible breeze, a faint glow radiating off his skin. “I feel it. The strength, coming to me, giving me—more.”

Rand swallows. He’s not sure he wants to ask more questions, but he has to. He needs to. “Do you know... why?”

Justice looks at him in the eyes, his once blue eyes now a bright fiery yellow, blinding. The air warps with heat around his form. “I’m destined to kill Israfel. Just as Min is destined to kill Jormungand. When both of his siblings are gone, then and only then can Hadhayosh fall, and the world will finally see peace.”

Rand nods slowly. For probably the first and last time in his life, he thinks he might have just met someone more delusional than him. 

He knows destiny isn’t a thing. Sure, some things are guaranteed to happen, but that’s just because of how some people are. But this guy, killing the Simurgh? Icewalker killing Leviathan? He doesn’t even know if those things can die, and these two killing them seems ridiculous regardless. 

Icewalker stands and walks to Justice, her hand reforming itself into ice that steams and bubbles as she places it on Justice’s shoulder. “Hey, lets go sit down, okay? I’ll redo your ponytail.”

The fire flickers in Justice’s eyes, fading a little. He nods, blinking furiously. Icewalker takes the cardboard tray from him and places it on a bench, then takes his hand and leads him to sit down. She tugs the scrunchie from his hair and starts gently combing through it with her fingers. 

Solstice turns to Rand and shrugs, giving him a smile, a silent apology. Rand just waves a hand. He’s intimately familiar with delusions, maybe not quite to that scale, but... he’s been through his fair share. 

Kian sits down next to Rand. “Why are you asking, dude?” he mutters around a donut hole. 

Rand looks down at his coffee cup. “In... in Lagos, when I thought you... died. My powers did something. They started giving me answers that weren’t just yes or no. When it didn’t have words, it showed me images. It—it stopped after I realized you were alive.”

Kian nods, slowly chewing on his donut hole. “I... didn’t know, dude.”

“I didn’t say anything because I didn’t know what it was.”

“This is the only time this has happened?” Solstice asks.

“No, actually. In Lausanne.” He glances past Bracer at the other bench where Justice and Icewalker sit, making sure Justice isn’t listening. “When the Simurgh turned to us, just before she screamed, I asked my powers what to do, and... it told me to run. It was the only time it gave me something other than a yes or no, until Lagos. There has to be some sort of connection between those two events, something that made my powers just—work stronger.”

“They both happened while an Endbringer was in the vicinity?” Solstice suggests, although he doesn’t sound sure. 

“That would make no sense. I’ve been closer to Endbringers before, and that hasn’t happened.”

Solstice furrows his brow. “In... in Lausanne, you were talking to me about sending my team home, staying safe, and you mentioned your hometown of Galloway. Were any of those things something you were thinking of in Lagos?”

Rand shakes his head. “No. I... fuck, I don’t know. There has to be something, though.”

Kian nudges him in the side. “You’ll figure it out, man. You’re like, smart as fuck, dude. If anyone can figure it out, it’s you.”

“Yes, you’re very capable.” Solstice smiles. “If you ever need any assistance in your theorizing and such, I am a call away.”

“Thanks.” Rand takes another sip of his coffee. He studies the red and white cup and the little maple leaf on the side of it. “God, is your whole fucking country a god damn theme park?”

Solstice chuckles, a smile spreading across his face. “It certainly feels that way sometimes.”

January 3, 2003

Rand stares down at the notebook in his lap, chewing on the end of a pen. Becky’s weight against his side is constant, grounding, and the sound of her plucking at her guitar strings is a nice backdrop to the stream of yes and no going through his head.

Her hair pressed against the side of his face, however, he could do without. 

He blows some of it out of his eye. “Dude, do you have to be right here?”

She strums a little riff on her guitar. “What, am I bothering you?”

“Your hair is. Jesus, can you tie it back, or something?”

In response, she tilts her head back into him and shakes it, shoving her curls in his face. “It’s too bodacious, Tim, it can’t be tamed.”

He jabs her in the side with his elbow. “I can’t see my notes, asshole!”

She cackles, but she sits up and turns on the couch. He lifts his notebook so she can drape her legs across his lap, leaning back to sit against the arm. She’s wearing one of Rolan’s old dress shirts, one he grew out of years ago, and an old pair of Rand’s jeans she cut into shorts, a thin cord of rope tied through the belt loops. She’s let her hair grow out pretty long. Rand has no idea how she can stand wrangling that curly mess, but it does look good on her. 

He looks down at his notes, but he can’t help but glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Her four-eyed gaze is trained on her guitar, her own fingers as they dance across the strings. The way she blinks over her two scarred eyes looked pained, uneven, unable to even close her eyelids all the way over them. Her constant buzzing shifts in pitch with every note she plays. Rand’s not even sure she realizes she’s doing it. 

He swallows. “Becky?”

She hums in response to show she’s listening. He hesitates, unsure if he should even ask. 

“Your powers,” he says finally.

A note goes sour on her guitar. She clicks twice, curious, bordering on distressed. She glances up at him. 

He looks down at his notebook, at the scrawled lines of theories, threads of paranoia induced ramblings that are mostly scribbled out after he’s come to his senses. He’s... getting better at realizing when he’s just being needlessly paranoid and when he’s actually onto something, but there are still times where he gets caught up in an idea and ends up in a spiral of delusion. 

This conclusion he’s come to, however, is real. He thinks. He’s pretty sure. If he runs it by Becky and she says it’s crazy, he’ll cut his losses. 

“I’m not asking you to use them,” he says first, because he thinks he needs to lead with that or she’s going it—panic, or something. “That’s not... like, the point. I... I’ve been thinking of how my powers got stronger in Lagos and Lausanne.”

She lowers her guitar, brow furrowed. “Yeah?”

“I think... my powers got stronger in those two instances because... in Lausanne, I was thinking about Rachel. I—I was telling Solstice he and The Greats should go home, and I was worried they would die, and that’s when my powers gave me the—the fucking loudest god damn answer they’ve ever given me for anything. I think part of it was the fear, but—in Lagos, when I thought Kian was dead...” He takes a deep breath. Fuck, this shit is hard to talk about. “I felt similar things both of those times. Fear, and—” 

He grits his teeth. It’s always hard to say out loud—grief. That he’s still mourning his sister, that when he thinks about Lagos he remembers the sheer horror and bone-crushing grief he felt that same day he got his powers, seeing Rachel at the edge of Galloway. 

He doesn’t have to say it. Becky looks him in the eyes, and he knows she understands.

“So, what does that mean?” she asks. 

He takes a deep breath. “I think our powers get stronger the closer we feel to how we felt when we triggered. I’ve—I’ve tried to replicate it, just—thinking about Lagos, and Galloway, but it doesn’t work. I think it has to happen organically. I can’t force it.”

Becky lets out a short series of clicks. “What does this have to do with my powers?”

“I... have a theory. That when you use your powers on someone, I think it might... make someone feel how they felt when they triggered.” He shakes his head. “But that’s—that’s not really the point of what I’m saying, I’m trying to—I think I might have a theory of how our powers work in general.”

“I’m listening.”

He runs a hand through his hair, trying to get everything straight in his head so he doesn’t sound fucking insane. “I think—I think our powers themselves aren’t fueled completely by our Corona Pollentia. There’s... something else to it, some other thing that uses that part of our brains to give us these abilities. I just—I don’t know what. But these feelings make us more... susceptible to it, widens that connection between us and whatever’s giving us these powers. You can widen that bridge with your powers.”

Becky stares at him. He braces for the inevitable “you’re fucking nuts” talk she’s about to give him—because yeah, it does sound fucking nuts, but he’s been thinking about this for a while and he’s hit so many roadblocks and there’s only so much deducing he can do when his powers just won’t answer some questions—but instead she just nods slowly. 

“That... makes sense,” she mutters.

Rand blinks. “Really?”

She sets her guitar aside. “Yeah, I mean... I always wondered where our powers come from, because—they couldn’t just come from our Corona Pollentia. That just doesn’t seem... right. Like, there had to be more to it, not just having a special part of our brain that gives us the ability to—to turn into webs of flesh or control water or whatever.”

“Right?” Rand flips through his notebook, searching for his extensive notes on the subject. “I’m—man, I’m fucking trying to figure out what the source of our powers is. I’m fucking trying, man, but it’s like the Endbringers, it’s immune. I can’t ask directly what’s giving us our powers, because it won’t give me answers. Even trying to find loopholes about it isn’t giving me much of anything. But I do think there’s something powering us, and I’m pretty sure whatever it is doesn’t want us to know.”

“Do you think it could be Cauldron?”

“No, it’s not. Cauldron is... an organization that sells powers, and I know damn well I’ve never taken a Cauldron vial. I think if anyone would know what’s giving the rest of us our powers, it would be them, but... I don’t trust Cauldron as far as I could throw them. I’m not about to seek them out and start asking questions.”

Becky pauses, steadily clicking. “Do you think... if I used my powers on you, could you figure it out?”

“That’s what I’m thinking. But I don’t—I don’t want to make you do that. We don’t know what it would do to me anyway. But I’d like to... maybe keep that option on the table? For sometime in the future, if we need it?”

She hesitates, then nods once, firm. “Okay. Yeah. If... if we need it, if there’s something we desperately need to know that you can’t find out normally... maybe. I’ll... think about it.”

“You don’t have to,” he says, even though—in all honesty—he really wants to see what her powers would do to him, the kind of information he could learn from it. 

“I know,” she says, her voice quiet. “But I’d be lying to myself if I said I don’t think we’ll ever need to.”

He’s not sure whether to be excited about the prospect or terrified. He rests one hand on her leg, just tapping his fingers against her shin, the other hand keeping the pages of his notebook spread in front of him. 

“What do you think gives us our powers?” she asks softly. 

He stares down at the pages, the scribbled out frantic lines, insane ramblings about Cauldron, manic theories about creatures from another world, otherworldly beings using humans for power, for information, shit that made sense in the moment but lost all meaning the moment he was lucid. 

He sighs. “I have no idea.”

August 17, 2003

Rand peels his eyes open as Rolan opens the bedroom door and steps in. “Where’d you go?” he mumbles, face half buried in a pillow. 

“Myrddin called,” Rolan says quietly. 

“Endbringer?”

“Simurgh.” Rolan sets his phone on the nightstand and crawls back into bed, curling up against Rand’s back, wrapping an arm around him. 

“Where?” Rand mumbles. 

“Australia. Rockhampton City.” 

Rand glances at the clock. It’s six in the morning. They may not be going to help with the fight, but... he should at least stay awake, wait for reports of casualties to come in, make sure he’s up in case the Chicago Protectorate is entirely wiped out and the city is left in The Hive’s less than capable hands—

Rolan grumbles against his neck. “Stop thinking.”

“Easy for you to say,” Rand mutters back.

Rolan chitters, slightly annoyed. He tightens his arm around Rand, pulling him in closer, and noses at the back of his neck, little mandibles poking out of his mouth, scrabbling at his skin as if trying to latch on, or bite his head off, or something. Gross. He’s so weird. Rand should tell him that. Instead, he just rests his hand over Rolan’s where it lays over his chest. 

“Dude, you’re not gonna make me stop thinking with that,” Rand mutters. 

Rolan lets out a specific series of clicks that Rand has become intimately familiar with. His hand moves down to rest against Rand’s stomach. 

Rand takes a shaky breath as Rolan sucks a mark into the back of his neck. “Yeah, okay, that’ll—that’ll do it.”

Rolan snorts. “You wanna go back to sleep?” he mutters. 

“Man, you started it, you can’t just blueball me here.”

Rolan lets out a soft laugh as Rand tilts his head, letting Rolan press a kiss to his shoulder. “Man, fuck you.”

“Yeah, I kinda think that’s the goal here.”

He doesn’t do a lot of thinking for the rest of the morning. 

February 18, 2004

“Chicago is lovely this time of year.”

Rand snorts, tightening his scarf around his neck against the brisk wind as he and Solstice walk down the sidewalk. “Lovely isn’t the word I’d use for it, Sol.”

Solstice shrugs, adjusting his grip on the tray of coffee cups in his hands. “It’s no worse than Fauna in March.”

“Jesus, if this is what your March looks like, I’d hate to see your January.”

Solstice chuckles. “We get a lot more wind, that’s for sure.”

“Windier than the Windy City?” Rand shakes his head. “Never let me come to Fauna in the winter.”

Solstice smiles. “Thank you for inviting us to come here. We don’t get out of Fauna much, especially not all of us.”

“Yeah, who’d you get to babysit Fauna while you’re all here?”

“The Godslayers stepped in. Thought they might return to their hometown, keep an eye on the Lich while we’re gone.”

“Don’t you ever get mad at them for leaving? Abandoning ship while your city just got worse and worse?”

Solstice shrugs. “It was their own choice. Besides, I don’t know what the PRT offered them to move to another city and establish themselves as the first Protectorate team in Canada. Could have been something they needed. Could have been something Ranz needed, at the time.”

Rand hums into his coffee cup. “How is Ranz, by the way? Do you know? I haven’t really thought about it since our first Leviathan fight.”

“Surprisingly, it’s recovered rather well over the years. Probably the best outcome a city could have had, in that situation. The city struggled for a long while, but with the support of its neighboring cities and new businesses popping up along the shoreline, it’s beginning to thrive.”

“They’re not worried about Leviathan potentially attacking again and ripping their city to shreds?”

“Well, Endbringers haven’t attacked the same places twice yet. They’re capitalizing on it, turning their tragedy into a piece of their history for visitors to learn about. Showing the public that there can be hope after disaster, that an Endbringer attacking isn’t necessarily the end.”

“Good for them. Not every city can recover after something like that.”

“It’s certainly nice to see.” Solstice takes a sip of his own coffee, balancing the tray in his other hand. Rand reaches out to help keep it steady, cane dangling from the strap on his wrist. “You know, this coffee is not nearly as good as what we have back home.”

“Yeah, it actually kinda sucks in comparison. A lot of things are better up there, actually. You’re fucking chocolate bars even taste better, what’s up with that?”

Solstice shrugs. “I think we’re simply better.”

The house comes into view, Rand’s shitty truck in the driveway. Rand trudges through the snow on the sidewalk and hobbles up the steps to the door, Solstice following right behind him. 

Rand shoves the door open. “We’re home—oh, Jesus, what are you doing?”

Rolan looks up from where Gus has him in a headlock on the floor. “Hey,” he says, breathless. “We’re training.”

“In the fucking living room?”

Becky glances over, a knife in her hand, lowered into a fighting stance with Grayson opposite her. “Hey. Wanna join?”

Strider reaches over and adjusts the height of her elbow. “Keep your arm lower, it’ll give you more movement.” He glances up at Rand and Solstice as they come in, leaning on his cane. “Hey. You get me my sandwich?”

Rand reaches into the bag slung over his shoulder and takes out a sandwich wrapped in paper. He tosses it across the room. It goes wide. Without looking up from his novel on the armchair, Ram reaches up and catches it. He tosses it to Strider, purposely aiming for his face. Strider curses at him, and Ram chuckles.

Solstice steps over Rolan to sit on the couch next to Anna with a blanket over her lap and a teacup in her hands, as if watching Barbarian pin Rolan like a pro wrestler is typical entertainment for her. “How was your walk?” she asks. 

“Good.” Rand keeps his grip tight on his cane. He could use his walker, but for as well as he knows The Greats now, that’s still... too much. Maybe another time. “Where are the others?”

“Dyeing their hair in the bathroom,” Grayson says. 

“Well they better be fucking careful with it. I’m not scrubbing red dye out of the ceramic again.” He gently smacks Rolan’s arm with his cane. “Can’t you guys do this downstairs or in the garage or something?”

“Not the garage, I’m working on my bike in there,” Becky says. She skitters back as Grayson lashes at her with his own knife. Those better be dulled. Rand doesn’t see any safeguards on them. 

Gus lets go of Rolan and clambers off him. “Sorry, Tithonus told me he used to do sports in school and I wanted to see what he remembered.”

“Not much, apparently.” Rolan holds out a hand, and Gus helps him up. “I did wrestling for half a season before quitting, no shot I can’t keep up to you.”

Gus gives him an apologetic smile. “Sorry—”

“No, I’m good.” Rolan rolls his shoulder with a wince. “Quite the grip.”

“You know,” Rand says, “if you guys want to see literally anything else in Chicago other than just our house and your hotel, we can show you around.”

Ram shrugs. “Maybe tomorrow,” he says in his slow Southern drawl. “Still a li’l jetlagged, you know?”

“No worries.” Rand reaches for the tray of coffee cups, and Solstice hands it off to him. “Make yourselves at home. Fuck knows we don’t get guests often.”

He makes his way down the hall, leaning on his cane. His back aches. He should be using his walker, he just... doesn’t want to. Not in front of anyone other than his own team. He’s not ready for that.

He pokes his head into the bathroom. Alphonz sits on the edge of the bathtub, Min standing in the tub itself, dyeing light blue streaks into his hair. Kian is mixing bleach in a bowl at the sink. 

“If you guys stain the bathroom, you’re paying for it,” Rand says, taking out some of the coffee from the tray and setting the cups on the counter. 

Min raises her hand in a mock salute, a dye brush in her blue stained fingers. “Got it!”

“We’ll be careful, dude, it’s fine,” Kian says. “Thanks for the coffee, babe.”

“No problem.” Rand turns to leave. 

“Conspiracy?”

He pauses in the doorway. He glances back. “Hm?”

Alphonz looks up at him, long blond hair covering his face in a curtain. A blue streak falls over his forehead as Min moves it to get to another lock of hair. 

“Your theories,” he says quietly. “Sol has told us about what you’re trying to figure out. The source of our powers.”

Rand leans against the doorway. “Among other things. The origins of the Endbringers, what the PRT’s goal is, the Triumvirate, the purpose of the Elementals—”

“But the source,” Alphonz says, furrowing his brow. “Have you... made progress? On that?”

Rand presses his lips into a thin line. “No. I honestly don’t think I will. I’m pretty sure it’s one of the things my powers just... won’t let me see.”

Alphonz hums, almost disappointed. “If you do figure it out, or have any more hints... could you keep us updated?”

Rand studies his face. He... honestly doesn’t like Alphonz that much. He’s loud in costume, boisterous, too much, and his devotion to religion clashes greatly with Rand’s staunch atheism—something they’ve come close to arguing over multiple times when Alphonz has tried to insist Rand look into God or angels having something to do with the Endbringers—but he knows the look on his face. Desperate, hungry for answers. The look of a person who knows their head isn’t on straight and is searching for something, anything at all that might fix it, knock some bolts around and set everything right, make everything make sense.

Rand nods. “I will.”

Alphonz nods once, firm. “Thank you.” His voice is quiet.

Rand picks up one of the cups from the counter and scoots past Kian to hold it out. “Here. Sol said you’re not a coffee guy, so I got you hot chocolate. Hope that’s okay.”

Alphonz blinks at it, confused. He reaches up and takes it, slow, hesitant. He holds it in both hands, steam wafting up into his face. He doesn’t say anything as he takes a sip.

September 2, 2005

“Have you thought about retiring?”

Rolan looks up from his desk in the corner of the living room, pushing his reading glasses up his nose. “I don’t get my pension for another ten years, Rand.”

Rand sighs, leaning heavily on his walker as he makes his way into the kitchen. He hates using it, hates feeling fucking—old, useless. It’s a bad day for his back. He’ll be forty-eight in about a month, and it’s fucking showing. “No, I mean... from, like, hero shit.”

Rolan clicks a couple times, curious. “Really? You’re—already?”

Rolan is already forty-eight. He was born early in the year, while Rand’s birthday is later. When they were younger, it always felt like Rolan was just a step ahead of Rand, a touch ahead of the curve, focusing on future plans when Rand has been caught up in the present and the past. It’s rare that Rand catches him off guard with something like this. 

Rand shrugs. “I don’t know, man. I—my body’s not getting any younger, and it’s already fucked. I don’t want to fully retire, but... fuck, man, I’m just gonna end up being a liability soon. A shotgun and a cane with knives in it isn’t going to change the fact that I don’t have physical powers that can protect me.”

They’re both silent for a moment as Rand clambers into the barstool at the kitchen counter. He’s been thinking about this since May, their most recent Endbringer attack. None of them got hurt, but there have been close calls—nothing as bad as Lagos, not yet—and Rand doesn’t know how much longer he can stand by and listen to Dragon’s automated robotic voice rattle off dead cape names while Behemoth ravages a whole city. They’re due for another Endbringer to attack sometime soon. This week. Could even be tomorrow. 

Rolan looks down at his paperwork, tapping his pen on the desk. “I mean... You could go back to being our guy in the chair.”

“Yeah, but I don’t want to stop doing field work if you guys are still out there too. They get all of us or none of us, that’s the way it’s been since we officially started, and I don’t want to change it now.”

Rolan runs a hand through his hair. His hairline is receding, and there’s more silver in the black strands than there used to be. He started greying way early. It’s a miracle his whole head isn’t white by now. 

He leans back in his desk chair. “I mean, I’ve... thought about it a little. I just—I’ve never seen it as a viable option. Villains keep popping up, the Slaughterhouse Nine have been more active in the Midwest lately, and the Endbringers aren’t going to stop, there’s just—so much to deal with.”

Rand nods. That’s exactly why he’s hesitant about the prospect too, he just... wishes he didn’t have to care about all that. He wishes he could focus all his care on the people right in front of him instead of frantically worrying about the rest of the world, where an Endbringer might strike next, what potential Class S threat like the Slaughterhouse Nine or the Trickster might crawl out of the woodworks and leave devastation in their wake. 

“Yeah,” he mutters. “Sorry, stupid thing to ask about.”

“No, no, it’s—it’s not.” Rolan turns in his desk chair to fully face him. “It’s something we should think about. I mean, we can’t fucking do this forever, we’re—we’re almost fifty—”

“You’re forty-eight, I’m still young and spry at forty-seven, thank you, grandpa.”

Rolan snorts, a smile cracking his serious face for a moment. “Says the guy with a walker.”

“Fuck you, man.”

“Seriously though,” Rolan says, his smile dropping. “You’ve got a point. We can’t keep doing this until we die. I just... don’t know when we should stop. Unless someone kills the Endbringers somehow, I don’t think there’s going to be any shortage of fights that need capes like us.”

Rand sighs. “Yeah, I—I know. Myrddin’s still doing this shit, and he’s a couple years older than we are, so I would feel bad hanging up the cape before he does, but... he’s also better at this shit than we are. And more powerful. I uh... actually mentioned this to him when I met with him for coffee last month, when you were too busy with that court case to come with.”

“What did he say?”

“Just that we should do whatever we think is best for us. Didn’t mention anything about doing what’s best for Chicago, or the country, or the world, or anything. Just said we should look out for ourselves.”

Rolan hums. He looks down at his desk. “Have you talked to Kian and Becky about this?”

“Not yet. I don’t think they’d want to retire, anyway.”

“How about... we give it a couple years? Unless you’re like, really taking a toll with all this—”

“I’m not, I’m fine, I’m just... thinking about the future.” Weird. Rand used to never think about his future, and here he is talking about retiring. He was supposed to be dead by thirty-five, not sitting in a suburban house with a mortgage and everything. 

Rolan nods, steadily clicking. “Then... we’ll give it a couple years. Come back to this in... 2007? Maybe even 2010 if we’re really unsure?”

“God, that’s such a made up year. Science fiction kinda year.”

Rolan grins and shrugs. “We’re in the future.”

“God, yeah, we are. The 2000’s. Crazy.” Kind of year that would be in Rachel’s science fiction shows, her Star Wars or Star Trek or whatever. She liked them both. Maybe he should get into watching them, see what she liked so much. 

“We can think about it, though. Mine and Kian’s pension plans are good enough to carry all four of us, and Becky’s music is still getting her some income, so once we retire from our real jobs, we should be fine. But if we retire from both, what are we even going to do with our time?”

“Fuck if I know,” Rand scoffs. “Get really into gardening? Get a dog?”

“Start a knitting club?”

“Get really into crocheting?”

“You know, I have actually considered getting into cross-stitch—”

Rand barks out a laugh. “Cross-stitch? You’re so fucking old, man!”

“You’re the one with a walker!”

July 26, 2006

“You guys weren’t in Cairo yesterday.” 

Solstice’s voice over the phone is strained as he lets out a small laugh. “Yes, my apologies. Perhaps I could have told you beforehand we wouldn’t be present the next time an Endbringer reared its head.”

“Is everything okay?” Rand asks, lowering his coffee mug from his mouth, suddenly concerned. Usually The Greats are pretty transparent with them. If there’s something Sol isn’t telling them—

Are they in trouble?

No. 

Are they in danger?

No. 

Did something big happen?

A pause. Yes. A loud, firm answer. 

Something bad?

No. Immediate. Okay, something good, then. Solstice and Flora are already married, so it’s not an engagement, probably—unless two of the other Greats are getting it on and Rand somehow didn’t pick up on it. 

Is someone getting married?

Yes. 

I mean someone in The Greats, are any of them engaged or something?

No.

“Yes, everything is fine,” Solstice says. “I promise, we’re all perfectly alright here.”

Is he telling the truth?

Yes.

What could have happened that would keep all of them from an Endbringer fight? He didn’t even see Justice, who’s always insistent on being present for every single one, no matter which of his teammates part with their home city to participate. The only thing he can think of is that someone died, but he already knows it’s something good. Did they win the lottery or something?

No.

Okay, well, he didn’t really mean to ask that, he’s just throwing things out there at random. Still, not a bad question to ask. If he won the damn lottery, the PRT probably wouldn’t see his sorry ass anywhere near an Endbringer ever again. 

Kian shuffles out of the hallway, eyes half closed, the unshaved side of his head an absolute mess. His arm is bandaged—consequence of getting just a touch too close to Behemoth’s trail of destruction yesterday and cutting his arm on a piece of glass from a broken window, something a little too deep for his powers to heal completely—and he’s wearing a pair of Rolan’s boxers and one of Becky’s shirts. Rand silently pours some coffee into the cup waiting for him on the counter and then reaches into the fridge for creamer as Solstice keeps talking. 

“Yes, we’ve found ourselves in—a bit of a family issue? It, um, popped up sort of unexpectedly a couple weeks ago, and we thought... it might be best if we sit out the next few Endbringer fights, if not... all of them altogether, from now on. It’s... complicated.”

“All of them?” Rand pours some creamer into Kian’s cup and slides it across the counter to him. He mutters a thanks and picks it up, reaching up with his other hand to absently scratch at the scar tissue on his scalp. Rand reaches out with his free hand to take Kian’s before he can scratch too much, tucking his phone between his chin and shoulder so he can pick up his own cup and take a sip. 

Are they protecting something?

Yes.

“We think it best that... the eight of us all stay a bit safer, from here on out,” Solstice continues. “The criminal activity here in Fauna is already plenty for us to handle, and it’s only getting worse. We’re thinking perhaps Min will attend Leviathan fights with one other, and of course Alphonz wants to be present to combat the Simurgh, and we’re not sending him alone, but... other than that, we’re thinking we may retire from Endbringers. I’m sorry if that’s not what you want to hear—”

“No, man, it’s—it’s fine, I’m not the PRT, I don’t give a shit what you guys do.”

Kian groggily looks up from his coffee and makes a questioning noise. Rand shakes his head, mouthing a quick I’ll tell you later. He traces his thumb along Kian’s knuckles, trying to ask questions in his head as Solstice tries to explain their situation without really explaining. 

Is it a possession? Like, some expensive thing they found?

No. 

Is it a person?

No answer. Huh. Weird, but okay. 

Is it a living thing?

No answer again. It’s like it’s confused with these questions, like it doesn’t know whatever to classify this mysterious thing as alive or not, but—what the fuck could be potentially alive and yet not? Something—in between, something... at the end of its life? Or... or maybe something at the beginning—oh holy shit.

“Yeah, it’s okay,” Rand says before Solstice can say more words he won’t process. “We get it. Just... no matter what, you guys are still welcome here in Chicago if you ever need help, if you ever need backup, or you can contact us if you need help watching over Fauna, or something. We’re always happy to lend a hand. You—you should go rest, if you’ve been busy with everything in Fauna.”

Solstice pauses. “Uh... alright. Thank you. I appreciate it, Rand.”

“Yeah, no problem. Let us know if you need anything.”

“Will do.”

Rand sets his cup down to take his phone and hang up. Kian slowly blinks at Rand over the rim of his coffee cup, asking a silent question: what was that about?

Rand picks up his coffee cup again, staring into it as he processes what he’s pretty sure this means. “I think The Greats are having a kid.”

Kian chokes on his coffee, eyes suddenly wide open. “Huh?”

Is that the case? Is Anna pregnant?

Yes. A solid, firm answer, confident. No room for nuance.

“Yeah. Shit, they’re having a kid, man.”

Kian lets out a low whistle. “Damn. You think that’s safe in their city?”

“Kid’s gonna be a second-gen cape, they’ll probably trigger from something small at a young age, get trained by the army of capes taking care of him, and be set for life.”

Kian hums into his cup. He leans against Rand’s side, the scarred half of his head pressed against Rand’s shoulder. He slowly rubs his head back and forth against him to itch at his scars. Rand reaches up and gently tangles his fingers in Kian’s hair to get him to stop. 

“I’d be a shit dad,” Kian mutters. 

Rand snorts. “Me too.” He sips his coffee. “Did you ever want to have any with Becky? Do the fuckin’ white picket fence two-and-a-half kids and a dog thing?”

“Oh, fuck no, dude. Like... I thought about it once, but it just felt bad. Like, wrong. That’s not something I would want, dude. That would fucking suck.”

“I mean, you’re already working a nine-to-five. You’re like... one tenth of the way there, kind of.”

Kian snorts. “Yeah, but I like my job. The rest of it sounds like fuckin’ torture, dude.” He furrows his brow. “I’d be down to have a dog, though.”

Rand blinks. “Really?”

“Yeah, dude. Remember Barcode? I miss him, dude. We should get a dog at some point, babe, that would be sick as hell.”

Rand thinks about it. It’s been a long time since he’s had any kind of pet or been in charge of any other living thing. Maybe he’s not ready for a dog yet, too much responsibility. Maybe something small. A plant, maybe. Low stakes.

Rand leans his head against Kian’s. “Maybe, yeah,” he mumbles.

March 7, 2008

Pain flares through Conspiracy’s face as the punch lands right against his jaw. He reels back, reaching for one of his weapons slung across his back, shotgun or cane, he doesn’t care. His hand wraps around something and he swings it over his shoulder. 

It connects with the side of the person who punched him. They wince, but they don’t go down. It was the cane—not the best blunt weapon, and he’s not even sure if the knives can pierce this guy’s thick clothes. They’re some kind of guard, clearly, someone The Folk hired to lend to someone else. Usually, The Folk are a necessary evil in Chicago, making sure other criminal groups aren’t fighting each other, but their deals back and forth with other organizations have been causing more problems than they’re worth lately. 

He glances down the street. Widow’s grappling with a second guard, a third plastered to the wall with his webbing. Tithonus and Stinger are both still in the building, presumably, considering they haven’t come out yet. 

The guard in front of Conspiracy goes in for another punch and he raises his cane to block it, pressing the button on the handle. Blades stick out of the sides, and the guy drives their fist directly into one before they can think to pull back. They shriek and stumble back, clutching their bleeding hand. 

The bad thing about The Folk is that they don’t like hiring parahumans, so capes like Myrddin and Shuffle can’t fight them without holding back significantly to avoid hurting them. The good thing about that, though, is that they’re a lot easier for Conspiracy to fight.

He slings his shotgun off his shoulder and cracks the butt of it over their head. They crumble like paper, curled around their hand to protect it. 

Widow plasters the other guard to the ground and turns to face Conspiracy. “Any word, dude?”

Conspiracy shoulders both of his weapons and raises a hand to his earpiece. “Hey T, how’s the raid going?”

The earpiece crackles. “Just fucking awesome,” Tithonus grumbles. He hears the sound of glass smashing, both in the earpiece and out of it. He looks up to see someone being thrown out a window a storey up. They hit the ground in front of Widow and immediately curl up and groan in pain. “Stinger, we’re not trying to kill them!”

“He’s fine!” Stinger’s voice yells. Conspiracy sees her poke her head out of the window. “Yeah, he’s fine, I only hit him with my stinger once!”

Tithonus grumbles something under his breath. “We should have brought some PRT with us, we’re getting outnumbered.”

“I’ll contact Revel,” Conspiracy says. 

“Anomaly too,” Tithonus says, although he doesn’t sound happy about it. “He might be able to help. Their boss escaped, he’s headed for downtown.”

“Got it.” Conspiracy takes out his phone and swiftly types out a text to Revel. “Anyone else?”

“Think we can handle the rest here. Start heading downtown, we’ll meet you there!” He curses as something else shatters, and the line cuts off.

Conspiracy starts towards Widow, taking out his cane again to use it for support. “Heading downtown,” he says. “Revel and Anomaly will be on their way. I’m telling them to get Shuffle to locate and block off their boss.”

Widow nods with a smile. “Radical, dude.” He falls into step beside Conspiracy, withdrawing his webbing from the unconscious bodies. He’s limping a little, and there’s a scratch on his cheekbone. 

His eyes aren’t visible, so it’s harder to tell, but he looks... tired. The smile on his face is strained. 

Is Kian getting tired of this?

Yes, comes the answer without a moment of hesitation.

Chapter Text

September 14, 2008

Rand lies awake, staring up at the ceiling as Rolan snores away with his head on Rand’s chest. Rand’s been sleeping in Rolan’s room more often lately. Even when Rolan needs time alone, Rand’s usually climbing into Kian’s bed, whether Becky’s there or not. She doesn’t care, anyway. It’s just—nicer having someone there. Makes actually falling asleep easier. Apparently not this time, though.

He looks down at Rolan. He’s dead to the world, buzzing and clicking in his sleep like a swarm of cicadas. Rolan hasn’t been sleeping well lately either, but he always gets like that around this time of year. The turn of fall is hard for him. It’s around September when he went out to his favourite tree in Galloway when he was fourteen. 

Rand gently runs his fingers through Rolan’s hair. Rolan chitters in his sleep, nuzzling his face into Rand’s shirt. 

There’s supposed to be another Endbringer attack in about a month, give or take. Rand could die when it happens. Rolan could die. Any one of them could. All of this could be ripped from him in a moment. 

He tries not to think about that too much. He can’t help it anyway. 

He shuts his eyes. He needs to sleep—Kian works in the morning, and Rand promised he’d drive him to work and buy him breakfast on the way, which means he needs to get up early, and—

His ringtone blasts from his phone at full volume. Rolan full-body flinches, his gentle buzzing turning into a loud angry hum. He tightens his arms around Rand and mutters something into his chest. 

Rand scrambles for his phone. The time reads three in the morning, and the ringtone is the one he assigned to Myrddin. He wouldn’t be calling this early if it wasn’t an emergency. Did the Endbringers change their attack pattern, alter their schedule? Is there a new one?

He answers the call and holds the phone up to his ear. “What’s up?”

“The Slaughterhouse Nine are in Chicago.”

Rand’s blood runs cold. His head spins as a cocktail of fear and adrenaline hit him like a truck. He opens his mouth to speak, but nothing comes out. The Nine, in Chicago? He knew they were travelling through the Midwest right now, but—here?

This is worse than an Endbringer. They’re predictable, at least. They have patterns, strategies, consistencies. They can guess where Endbringers will be next, deduce potential targets. When people die because of them, that’s like dying from a tornado or a flood—terrifying, but unavoidable, a natural consequence of a force of nature. There’s no one to blame for that, as far as Rand knows. 

The Slaughterhouse Nine? They’re a whole different beast. 

“Conspiracy?”

He swallows. “They’re... here? Where?”

“Uptown, close to Protectorate Headquarters. We’re holding them back as best we can, but we’re not—we don’t know why they’re here, what their goal is, but the Protectorate is going to try driving them out. You—you don’t have to fight with us. This isn’t something you’ve done before, it’s not something you’re prepared for.” There’s something in his voice Rand has never heard before. A shakiness, a fear. “If it suits you better, you can rush people to emergency shelters, help those who want to evacuate. It’s up to you. Either way, your help would be extremely appreciated.”

Rand takes a deep, trembling breath. “We’ll see you out there.” He hangs up.

Rolan lifts his head, slowly blinking all four of his eyes. “What’s going on?” he mutters. 

Rand rests his hand on Rolan’s back, firm, grounding, shutting his eyes and taking another deep breath. He might never get this again after tonight. He commits it to memory, how the planes of Rolan’s back feel through his shirt, the gentle vibration of the buzzing in his chest, the pressure of his arms wrapped around Rand, holding him tight. 

Rand opens his eyes and looks down at Rolan. “The Nine are in Chicago.”

Rolan’s eyes widen. His sounds get high pitched, concerned, and he rolls off Rand to sit up and look down at him. He opens his mouth to speak but all that comes out are clicks. 

Rand sits up. “Wake the other two.”

Rolan nods frantically, scrambling out of bed and beelining for the door. Rand turns on the bedside lamp and looks around at the room, at Rand’s clothes tossed on the floor, Rolan’s dress shirt and blazer hung up on the closet door for when he’s supposed to work in the morning, some of Rand’s D&D stuff in the corner so it doesn’t get mixed up with all his Thinker stuff in his other room. He’s not sure whether he’s going to die tonight or—or if another one of them will, but he tries to take a mental picture of the room anyway, just in case. 

He’s grown almost numb to Endbringers and the fear that every attack brings. This is different. 

He goes into his room and starts throwing on his costume. It’s hard to describe whether he’s thinking too much or not enough—a billion things run through his mind at once, possibilities of the others dying, possibilities of himself dying, what he would do if any of them died, but he’s not thinking about anything useful, anything that could help them live through tonight. He can’t—he can’t focus.

He finishes slinging his shotgun over his shoulder when he remembers they shouldn’t be suiting up here at home. They usually take their costumes elsewhere, somewhere more secure, usually the PRT HQ or some secluded alley where Rand can be confident no one is watching. They don’t need their neighbors knowing who they are. 

But they don’t—they don’t have time for that right now. They need to be fast. 

He leaves his room in a stupor, his heart and mind racing. Becky’s talking to the other two as she strides to the door, and Rolan takes Rand’s hand and follows her. Her voice is shaky but determined, fierce. He barely processes her words.  

Becky and Kian enter the garage—taking Becky’s bike to get there faster, good idea, speed is key here, the quicker they respond and hit the Nine with everything they’ve got, the quicker they can scare them off and get out of this alive—and Rolan leads Rand outside through the front door. Rand doesn’t even ask if anyone’s watching, that doesn’t fucking matter right now, that’s the least of their fucking concerns. 

He grabs onto Rolan’s armor and climbs onto his back, still thinking all too much and all too little at once. He holds on tight as Rolan starts leaping across rooftops, and he hears the rumble of Becky’s engine behind them. 

He shakes his head. Fuck. Fuck. He has to be on his game for this. If he’s not, their chances of dying are much higher. 

“Rand, do we have a plan?” Rolan asks. His voice is too buzzy to be heard through the wind as they move across the city, but he’s loud and clear in Rand’s earpiece. 

“I—I don’t know,” Rand says. 

There’s a pause. “Okay,” says Becky’s voice through the earpieces. “Give us—information, then. Shit you already know. The Slaughterhouse Nine members, give us the rundown.”

Rand nods. Yeah, yeah, he can—he can do that. That’s easy. “Uh... Hatchet Face. Trump-Brute with, uh, enhanced durability and strength, and the power to nullify other people’s powers. He—he hates parahumans, it’s why he joined the Nine, he wants to kill more of them despite being one himself. Especially hates other Brutes, so you need to stay away from him, Rolan.”

“Got it,” Rolan says. “Next?”

“Um, Shatterbird. Silica telekinetic. Fine control over glass, sand, and similar compounds. Her range spans multiple city blocks. She likes to make glass objects explode to announce the arrival of the Nine in a city. She’s probably done it uptown already.” He reaches up and takes off his goggles, tossing them down to the street with little care. “If you have anything glass on you, take it off now. That includes phones.”

He hears the clattering of Becky’s sunglasses over their comm line. “Keep going.”

“Uh... Chuckles. Fucking—weird guy. Super speed specifically in his legs and head, causing him to experience the world in perpetual slow motion, and super strength in his torso and arms. Weird little freak. Dresses like a clown. Not a fan.” 

“Got it,” Kian says. “Who else?”

“There’s, uh, Ghoul. Remember Purgatory, from Amity? Nobody really talks about it, but he went nuts after the Trickster killed his partner and joined the Nine shortly after. He’s a Master who can make illusions and influence people, but he’s also got Changer and Brute powers, with the ability to turn into a monster with enhanced strength and durability. He can’t do both at once, though. He has to pick between using his Master powers and using his Brute form.” 

This is—good, this is productive, relaying information like he’s supposed to. This can help them, somehow. He holds on tighter to Rolan’s armor as he makes a particularly hard landing on the street. They’re getting out of the residential areas now, into the urban areas with more apartment and office buildings. They pass by Kian’s office, where’s he’s supposed to work in a few short hours. 

“Winter,” Rand continues, just to keep himself occupied. “She emits a dampening effect that causes things to lose momentum and humans to lose their will. It dampens heat as well, hence—you know, the name. You get stuck in her effect, your thoughts slow down, and you stay there until you die from cold. She used to be a thing with one of the old members, Crimson, but he died.” 

They’re getting into the ones Rand is really afraid of now—not that the likes of Shatterbird are anything to fuck with, but the others have weaknesses to potentially exploit, whether physical or emotional. These last few are more dangerous than the rest. 

“Crawler,” he continues. “Brute-Changer. He regenerates from things that would kill anyone else and grows more monstrous every time. Destroying even his heart or his brain just slows him down. Every time he takes damage, the part that grows back is adapted to resist that kind of damage. We see him, we—we fucking run.”

“Got it.” He’s not even sure whose voice says that at this point, focused as he is. 

“Siberian is indestructible, more so then Alexandria.” Just thinking about her makes him shudder. He’s seen footage of her, a tall woman with black and white zebra-like stripes all across her body, feasting on corpses in the wake of her destruction. “She’s... fucking nuts. Don’t even look at her. She can’t be harmed or contained. Leave her to the Triumvirate and the Prime Force when they show up.”

Police sirens wail in the near distance. They’ve gotten to an area of the city where the windows in every building and car are broken, people bleeding profusely while dragging each other out of buildings. They’re getting close. 

Rand takes a deep breath. “Bonesaw. Bio Tinker. She can do surgeries beyond the scope of modern medicine, and uses it to make... minions. Sometimes with dead bodies, sometimes with living people she gets her hands on, sometimes a mix of mechanical things and living tissue. Just—don’t get captured by her.”

Rolan lands on top of a tall office building. He and Rand look down at the street below, and Rand’s heart skips a beat. There’s a figure below, a man who looks average from this distance, carrying a knife in his hand, the belt on his waist glinting with more to draw from. He looks unbothered, casual, even as another figure—Shatterbird, in a glittering dress made of glass—walks in front of him, gathering a whirlwind of shards around her, swirling like a storm. 

“Jack Slash,” Rand says. “Their leader. He’s... I don’t know what his deal is. He can sort of extend the edge of any blade he’s holding, giving him an almost infinite range, but—there’s got to be more to him than just that. My powers don’t give me much about him, almost like—I don’t know, like it’s scared of him. Avoid him.”

“Okay,” Becky’s voice says. “Then... what should we do? Should we—should we fight? Help people evacuate?”

He studies the dark city skyline. He can see flashes of light where Myrddin and Revel are fighting someone, and the horizon line changes every few seconds, a result of Shuffle swapping out buildings for different ones, probably blocking off roads, keeping someone in. He watches an entire building crumble a few blocks down—Siberian’s doing, probably, ramming her indestructible body through the foundation.

“Chuckles and Ghoul,” Rand decides. “They’re the weakest points.” Not that either of them are weak in any sense of the word, but they seem easiest to manage with their own abilities. Kian and Becky don’t have very good offensive powers, but Kian can muddy up a battlefield and make it hard to move, and Becky’s stinger is quick, both good for dealing with a speedster like Chuckles. Rolan’s brute strength may not be a match for Ghoul’s, but he’s quicker and can probably hold his own. “Becky, Kian, look for Chuckles. He’ll be easy to spot. If you find him, don’t engage if any of the other Nine are around him. Just get away and start helping civilians if you can. Rolan?”

Rolan chitters, a low vibration in his chest. “Ghoul?”

“Find him.”

Rolan backs up from the ledge of the building and goes for a running start, his legs cracking and morphing as he goes, forming more joints, and he leaps off the edge, right over Shatterbird’s swirling storm of glass. He lands on a building across the street, digging his mantis claw into the side, right through the concrete. He clambers up and over the building, leaping to another one, then another, moving from street to street. There are a few dead civilians on the roads, but not as many as Rand would have expected. He supposes the business area of Chicago wouldn’t be busy at three in the morning, but why are the Nine here? They could be attacking the suburbs, causing ten times as much bloodshed. What’s the point of being here, at this hour?

Subverting expectations, maybe. Starting somewhere less busy, less populated, and then moving to more densely populated areas while the PRT tries to stop them. An immovable force, sweeping through the whole city, just to show they can.

They pass over a mostly clear stretch of road, empty save for a monster, with dozens of eyes, black plating coating its body. Crawler. There are some capes fighting him down there, but they don’t stop to check who.

Is Ghoul nearby?

Yes.

South?

No. 

North?

No.

East?

Yes.

Rand glances up at the sky, then points eastward. “That way. Ghoul’s around here.”

Rolan changes direction. Rand keeps his eyes on the streets below, keeping watch for Siberian. he doesn’t see her, and a couple quick questions thrown into the back of his head confirms that she’s not nearby. Perfect. 

Rolan skids to a stop at the edge of a low building. “Found him.”

Rand leans forward and looks down. Below in the street are two people—one, clearly Anomaly in his dark costume, curled up on the road in what might be pain, and another, a man Rand has only seen in the news—dark hair styled into small devilish horns, a red vest and tie over a spiffy black button-up shirt. Ghoul. 

“It takes him time to change into his Brute form,” Rand says quietly. “He’s using his other powers, fucking with Anomaly.”

“Do I attack?”

“No, it’s an area effect. If we get too close, it’ll get us too.” Rand wracks his brain. They need to get Anomaly out of there so he can keep fighting, but he’s stuck in Ghoul’s bubble. “We need to draw him away.”

“How big is his range?”

“I’m not sure. I think—I think if we drop down there.” He points to the street a fair ways away from where Ghoul stands. “I think we should be safe from it there. I just—I want to be close enough that he can hear me.”

Rolan splutters. “You want to talk to him?”

“I don’t know! I just—we need Anomaly out of there! He can help fight others better than we can with his stupid fucking physics defying spheres, so if we can get him out of there so he can go fight some of the bigger threats, that’s—that should be our biggest goal right now. We’re practically useless against everyone else, but I know shit about this guy. I can get to him.”

“What if that just makes him mad?”

“Then with any luck, he’ll take down his illusion bubble and start changing into his Brute form, which takes time, so you can take him down easy when he’s halfway transformed. I’m gonna try taunting him, and the moment he starts gunning for me, you can step in. Easy.”

“I don’t like this plan.”

“Neither do I, but it’s all I’ve got. Take me down there.”

Rolan takes a deep breath. “Tim, if we die—”

“Yeah, I know. I love you too, man.”

Rolan nods. He braces his legs against the roof and launches himself off the building. 

Rand grimaces at the impact as Rolan lands. Ghoul is facing away from them, maybe half a city block away. He slowly turns his head to look over his shoulder at them. 

“Hey!” Rand yells. He hopes his voice doesn’t betray how absolutely fucking terrified he is. “Purgatory!”

Ghoul’s shoulders visibly stiffen, noticeable even from this distance. He fully turns to face them. Rand can’t see the look on his face from here. His heart feels like it’s going to beat out of his chest. 

Ghoul looks between them. “Visitors,” he says, his voice carrying over the empty street, echoing in the empty buildings with their windows all broken, glass littering the street between them. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

Rand clambers off Rolan’s back. “Just here to welcome you to the city.” He takes his cane off his back and leans on it. Not really because he needs it right now, although it doesn’t hurt to have it. He needs to seem like an easy target, something Ghoul can rip apart even half transformed. He glances at Anomaly on the ground near Ghoul, curled up and whimpering. Fucking idiot for trying to take the guy on alone.

Ghoul takes a single step towards them. Rand and Rolan take a step back. “The welcome is appreciated, but I’m afraid you got the name wrong,” he calls. He holds his hands behind his back, shoulders straight, confident, elegant in a way that makes Rand mad. Kinda reminds him of Director Hearthrow. Makes him look very punchable.

“No, I’m pretty sure I didn’t,” Rand says, taking another couple steps back for good measure. “Or do you prefer Mallard Conway?”

“Mal will do.” Ghoul casts a glance at Rolan. “I see you came prepared for battle of strength, did you?”

“I’d prefer a battle of wits, actually. I’m a lot better prepared for that.” He’s just saying shit, grasping at anything in his brain that might get Ghoul to move away from Anomaly. He doesn’t know if anything in his arsenal will work, but fuck if he won’t try.

Anomaly writhes on the ground, letting out a cry. Ghoul glances down at him as if he’s just a bug, something gross under the bottom of his shoe, before turning back to Rand and Rolan. “Really? According to many sources, you’re quite the paranoid one, aren’t you, Conspiracy? What makes you think you’d fare any better than your colleague here?”

“Hey, I didn’t say I wanted in the nightmare bubble. I just want to talk.”

Ghoul pauses. His face stretches into a smile, wide, too wide, enough so that’s uncanny. He barks out a laugh, high pitched, almost startled. “Talk? Oh, you are a crazy one, aren’t you?” He spreads his hands, his smile like a wound across his face. “Alright, then. You’re being rather gracious hosts. I suppose it would be rude of me to decline. What exactly would you like to talk about, Conspiracy?” He gestures to Rolan. “And Tithonus, of course. Can’t forget your partner.” He spits the word like a curse, something loathsome that leaves a horrid taste in his mouth. 

Rolan buzzes low in his chest, bordering on angry. Rand reaches out and brushes the back of his hand with his own, subtle enough that he hopes Ghoul won’t see it from here. Rolan shifts on his feet, restless, but he stays. 

“Actually, that’s what I wanted to touch on. Partners.” Rand backs up further, and Rolan follows. They’re not making much progress, but it’s something. “You had one, in Amity. The Whisperer. Pretty nasty what happened to him, huh?”

Ghoul’s smile freezes, and Rand watches as it twists, slowly, into a sneer, an expression that sends a chill down his spine. “What... on earth would you know about Amity?”

Rand swallows, scrambling for words. “You were heroes once. I’d recognize that shitty hairstyle anywhere. I saw you, in Ranz. Your only Endbringer fight. Reaper dragged you into the medbay unconscious. Did you know the Whisperer saw you like that? That he panicked, used his powers on someone to get you some help before anyone else?” He hopes he’s remembering that shit right, that whole day was a clusterfuck and his memory around some of it is blurry. But Ghoul wouldn’t know if this is even true though, he was unconscious, so who cares? Rand can make shit up here. 

Ghoul takes a few more steps forward, slow, deliberate. Rand and Rolan both skitter back.

“Your attempts to get a rise out of me are juvenile,” Ghoul says, his voice quieter, lower. 

But it’s working, Rand thinks. This is good, this is something. He’s fucking useless in most cases on the field, where the cape world is dictated by invincible soldiers and living weapons, but this, stalling for time, pulling at people’s strings, this is the kind of shit he’s good at. He usually only gets to use it when cape politics are on the discussion table. It’s different using it on the field, especially against someone like Ghoul.

“You Thinker type capes are all the same, I’ve found,” Ghoul muses, slowly pacing forward. Rand doesn’t know how long his range is, but he’s not risking getting stuck like Anomaly. He backs up at the same pace, Rolan stepping back with him. “You all have a... tendency, I’ve noticed, of digging for things you really know nothing about, trying to get under people’s skin, like... ants.” He’s a good few metres away from Anomaly now, not anywhere near the edge of his range, but getting further away with every word. “I think you’ll find I have rather thick skin.”

“Really? Could have fooled me.” Rand keeps his grip on his cane tight. It’s nothing against Ghoul’s Brute form, but it’s something he could use to defend himself, at least. “It’s not like it’s a secret that you’re Purgatory. You’re not exactly subtle, Vlad Plasmius.”

Rolan chitters quietly, a silent question—how long can he keep this up, how long until Ghoul bites, and Rand just gently taps the back of his hand again, quick and subtle. Wait.

Ghoul gives him a wry smile. “You find yourself humorous, don’t you?” There’s a stiffness in his voice, something bordering on angry. Rand is poking him with verbal sticks, and one of them is going to make him snap sooner or later. 

“I mean, you’re right about Thinkers. It’s habit, you know? But I’m not like a lot of other Thinkers. I think you’ll find I know a little more about Purgatory than you think I do.” There’s research he did after the Trickster showed up, the theorizing he does after every new major threat appears on the scene, locked and loaded in his head, but he can’t just start throwing out what he knows at random, like firing a gun with a blindfold. There’s some stuff, things he dug into about Ghoul’s civilian identity, the history of his powers, that have to be significant here. The civilian name of his partner, what was it? It’s on the tip of his tongue. 

“Purgatory is gone,” Ghoul says, his voice clipped, short. “There’s nothing to know. If you don’t shut your mouth, I will cut out your tongue and feed it to your partner here.” He grins a little, almost smug. “Although, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind that. I’m sure he already knows the taste of it, doesn’t he?”

Rolan buzzes louder, annoyed, but this is good, threats are good—he’s getting angry, resorting to shit he doesn’t usually say to try getting under Rand’s skin instead of the other way around. They’re close. A little further.

“Yeah, maybe he does,” Rand says, still slowly backing away. Ghoul is still pacing towards them, almost following them now, like Anomaly doesn’t even matter anymore. “Why, is that a bad thing? Way I saw the Whisperer look at you in Ranz, I’m pretty sure he knew the taste of yours before he got his throat cut.”

Ghoul’s grin sours immediately. He stops, and Rand silently curses at himself in his head, thinking they’ve lost him, that he’ll dismiss Rand’s taunts as ridiculous and turn his attention elsewhere, but then Anomaly gasps. He glances around furiously, the fear visible in his eyes even from here. He looks up at Rand, and the gaze behind his visor is muddled with terror, but he sees him. Ghoul dropped his illusion powers. 

Hope rises in Rand’s chest, despite what this means. Adrenaline floods his system, ready to move, run at the first sign of danger, and it’s then that the Whisperer’s civilian name pops into his head, finally. One more push, one last nudge—

“You know, I never thought of you as a convincing hero,” Rand says. “Something about the way you followed the Whisperer around like a lost puppy, you know, it just felt more like you were doing it for him instead of for the good of the world. I’m pretty sure the Trickster knew that. He did it on purpose. Wanted to give you a good origin story, a reason to go back to your roots instead of pretending to be the good guy.” Rand tilts his head, leaning on his cane, trying to look confident even though he feels like he wants to vibrate out of his skin. “If you were better at being what Clarence wanted you to be, maybe he’d still be here.”

Rand blinks, and then Ghoul’s features twist into something furious, grotesque, unnatural. He sprints towards them, his body warping, changing.

Rand skitters back. “Shit, shit, shit, Rolan!”

Rolan dashes forward to meet him. Ghoul veers off to the side, trying to get around him, get to Rand, but Rolan clashes with him, trying to grapple him with his mantis claw. Ghoul struggles, not even half transformed, white flesh expanding from his body, tearing through his clothes. He scrabbles at Rolan’s claw with sharp talons. He lets out a roar, a deep, monstrous sound. Rolan lets out a long stream of angry clicks in response, tightening his hold, trying to wrestle Ghoul to the ground in a way that reminds Rand of Barbarian. 

Rand skirts around the two of them, sprinting down the street towards Anomaly. “Hey!” He skids to a stop once he’s near him. “Hey, hey. You good?”

Anomaly stares up at him like he’s not sure Rand is even real. “I... yeah, yeah. I—thanks.”

Rand holds out a hand. Anomaly hesitates, but he takes it and lets Rand pull him up on shaking legs. “Myrddin and Revel are further uptown. I’m not sure who they’re fighting, but they might need a hand. If you want something easier, Stinger and Widow are looking for Chuckles. I think—” He shoots a couple questions into his head. “They’re a few streets west, and they’ve found him. If you need a way to get anywhere—”

“I’ll—” Anomaly takes a deep breath. “I’ll figure it out. Do you—does he need help here?”

Rand glances back at Rolan. Ghoul is at least halfway through his transformation now, and he and Rolan are struggling back and forth, Ghoul snapping at him with his teeth, Rolan slashing with his mantis claw. There’s not really a good way Anomaly could help in this fight. Another Brute could help, maybe, but there’s not a lot of them in the Chicago Protectorate. Unless they get backup from another city, Rolan’s on his own. 

“No, go—go help elsewhere. We’re good here.”

Anomaly nods. He runs off, and Rand watches him go. He taps his earpiece. “Rolan, if you start getting overwhelmed, break out and run. He’s not as fast as you are. If you need backup, you can lead him further uptown where the Protectorate is. I’m gonna run around, get the lay of the situation, but I’ll stay nearby. Tell me if you’re moving.”

He doesn’t get a response. Rolan’s too busy anyway. He just has to hope Rolan heard him. 

Rand runs off down an alleyway. He feels fucking awful and useless, siccing Ghoul on Rolan and not being able to help. He wishes he’d gotten some kind of superstrength, or speed at least, something that could help, something he could use to fight—

He presses his back to a wall and takes a deep breath. He sheathes his cane again. His hands are shaking. “Jesus fucking Christ,” he whispers, lowering his mask to wipes his face. He’s sweating. He’s looked Leviathan in the fucking face, and this is the scariest thing he’s ever done. 

It’s different, though. This is his home. They brought the fight to his turf, and he’s fucking useless to protect it. Endbringers, at least, have a formula. These guys are murderers, people set out not to mindlessly destroy the way a hurricane would ravage a shoreline, but to kill as many people as possible in as many gruesome ways as they can find. To stop an Endbringer, they just need to be beaten into submission. To stop people, they need to be killed. 

He takes another deep breath, trying to clear his head. Okay. What can he do here? He needs information, needs to know where he can go, where he can be useful. 

Where are Kian and Becky?

Nothing. Shit, he was hoping—maybe the stress of the situation would give his powers some kind of boost, give him something without a yes-or-no question, but it looks like it’s not enough. Okay, that’s fine, he’s good at deduction. 

Are Kian and Becky alive?

Yes. 

Are any other members of the Nine nearby?

Yes.

Fuck, is it—is it... Winter?

No.

Is it Crawler?

No. 

His heart races. He doesn’t have time to deduce who it is, he needs to figure out if he’s in danger right now. Do they—do they know I’m here?

Yes.

Something drops down right in front of him. He lets out a yelp, scrambling to the side against the wall to get away from it, reaching for his shotgun. It’s hard to see in the dim light—there aren’t many working street lamps left—but he can see the glint of a metal box about the size of a toaster, with eight spindly hydraulic legs. Each one ends in something sharp, needles and scalpels. It skitters towards him like a spider, faster than he can process. 

“Shit!” He grabs his shotgun off his back. The spiderbox reaches him and he slams the butt of the gun on it, a scalpel slicing through the sleeve of his shirt on the way down. 

He hears more metallic clinking behind him and whirls around. Two more spiderboxes scamper towards him, one of them bigger, the other with much longer legs, letting it clamber over a dumpster on its way to him. 

He turns around to run—better to chance Ghoul seeing him than to deal with these—but more of them drop down, flooding the alleyway, cutting off any avenue for escape. Each one has a small red headlight, illuminating the area just enough to see.

“Hey, hey, hey!” Rand loads his gun and fires wildly down one end of the alley. The round plows through a couple spiderboxes, reducing one to metal bits and lodging in the main body of another, making it stumble out into the street, but they seem to be endless, streaming into the alley around him, closing him in. They grab at his clothes, pinching, jabbing through the fabric, trying to get at his skin. He kicks them off as best he can, but there are too many, he’s not—he can’t—

“Hello!” A larger spiderbox skitters into the alley, and atop the back of it is a young girl, smiling wide. He can barely see her through the swarm of machines.

He doesn’t get the chance to get a good look at her before a sharp pain lances through his leg. One of the spiderboxes got its needle up his pant leg and jabbed it into his calf. He tries to move away, but his knee locks up, the muscles tensing, a cold feeling shooting through the nerves of his leg and up into his spine. 

He hears a giggle. His heart pounds with terror as the spiderboxes swarm him, wrangling him down to the ground, moving his frozen, locked up muscles like a doll. The spiderboxes move out of the way to let the largest one through, but his vision is starting to double, his head starting to spin. What the fuck was he just injected with?

The girl slides off the large spiderbox and skips up to him, the skirt of her blue dress flouncing. She looks down at him, and he blinks furiously, clearing his vision to get a good look at her. 

She’s got an apron over her dress, the pockets filled with surgical tools. Her hair is in ringlets, a ribbon tying some of it behind her head, trialing behind her. She’s got long stockings on, tucked into a pair of cute black shoes. She can’t be any older than eight, probably.

Bonesaw.

She gasps, her smile widening. “Oh, you’re Conspiracy, aren’t you? I’ve heard of you!” She leans over him and get a closer look. “You’re the paranoid one!”

He opens his mouth to speak, the muscles in his face stiffening—not nearly as much as the rest of his body, but enough that it makes it a little hard to form syllables. Still, he manages to spit out a slightly garbled “Fuck you.”

Her mouth falls open, offended. “Hey! No swearing! It’s very rude, especially to a lady!” She grumbles to herself as she stomps over to him, digging through the pockets of her apron. “Let me... Ah, this should do it.”

She plops herself down on the ground right next to him. Fear washes over him like ice water as she grabs his jaw with one hand to keep his head still. He feels something cold and metal touch the underside of his chin. 

A strangled cry is muffled behind his lips as a metal spike pierces the skin under his jaw. It digs through the flesh agonizingly slowly, poking up into his mouth, piercing through his tongue. His muscles twitch, useless, trying to thrash, get away, but he can’t fucking move as the worst pain he’s ever felt wracks his body, worse than the most agonizing of his migraines, warm blood trickling down his neck and over his shoulders. She drives the spike further in until it digs right into the roof of his mouth. The tip of the spike explodes with pain, and as it very slowly fades, it takes him a moment to realize that something in the tip expanded just inside the roof of his mouth, smaller metal spikes lodging themselves into the tissue, keeping the entire spike stuck there, making it impossible to open his mouth without ripping right through the top of it. 

“There! That should take care of that potty mouth!” She starts digging around in her apron again.

He coughs, blood trickling down his throat. He has no choice but to swallow it if he doesn’t want to inhale it in. This, probably, is the worst pain he’s ever felt, he thinks, worse than any of his migraines.

“You know, I’ve always found you Thinkers very interesting,” Bonesaw says, rummaging through her tools. “All parahumans have a Corona Pollentia, which controls how we use our powers and how we can direct them, but as far as I know, barely any parahumans other than Thinkers and the occasional Tinker gets headaches from overusing their powers. Have you ever thought about that?”

He watches her intently out of the corner of his eye, unable to move his head. She pulls out a tiny buzzsaw, like a pizza cutter but with a serrated edge. “Really makes one wonder where our powers even come from! It’s not our Corona Pollentia, I can tell you that much.”

She scoots closer and turns his head to face her, brushing his hair out of his face. “It comes from somewhere else. I know this because I’ve taken out the Pollentia of parahumans, and their powers still work, they just can’t control them! So the bridge between the source of our powers and our brain just gets a little muddled when the Pollentia is removed, but it still works. I’m incredibly eager to remove yours and study what happens to your brainwaves without it!” 

She giggles to herself, digging through her apron for a marker. She leans over his head and draws something on his forehead, a little dotted line where, presumably, she’s going to cut his fucking head open. As she does, Rand hears Rolan’s chittering out in the street get more high pitched, panicked, and Ghoul lets out a roar. He hears a sickening cracking sound. Rolan’s sounds stop. 

Is Rolan—is—is he—is Rolan—

He can’t even finish a fucking thought. Whatever he was injected with had to have fucked with his powers or his brain or something. He tries again to struggle, but his muscles don’t cooperate. He still has the shotgun in his hand. He doesn’t think he could let go of it if he tried. He just wishes he could fucking use it.

The spiderboxes skitter around, and footsteps make their way into the alley. Out of the corner of his eye, Ghoul steps into view, slowly detransforming. His clothes are ripped and tattered, but he carries himself like he’s still wearing the finest of suits. Blood coats his arms from elbow to fingertip. He strolls through the spiderboxes without fear. He stops and stands over Rand, folding his hands behind his back. He tilts his head and gives him a mockingly sympathetic look. 

“Oh, can’t talk? What a shame. I do wish you could open your mouth. I had something for you to snack on.” He brings one hand out from behind his back and tosses something onto Rand’s chest, something small and squishy. Rand looks down. 

A tongue.

He swears his heart stops, staring down at the thing. He doesn’t look at it long; Bonesaw grabs his chin and turns his head back to her, brows furrowed in annoyance. “Ugh, stay still! You’re a rather squirmy one.” She starts up her little buzzsaw. “But that’s okay! We can fix that later.”

Ghoul smiles, wide, unsettling. Rand tries not to think of the very small pinprick of weight on his chest, the wet bloody tongue laying over his shirt. It’s—just a tongue, it doesn’t mean he’s—he—

The saw makes contact with the side of his forehead, right next to his temple. He can—feel it, every sharp tooth of it as it slices through his skin, the way it jars his entire skull as it cuts through the flesh and hits bone—

A deafening shriek echoes through the streets. Something inhuman, something Rand has heard before, only once—right in his ear back then, because he was being carried by the person who made it. A buzzing, bug-like distress call, coming from the street just outside the alley. 

Ghoul’s smile falls, twisting into something angry, confused. He turns to look. “What?”

Bonesaw looks up at him, lifting her buzzsaw from Rand’s head. “Didn’t you kill him, Mr. Conway?”

“I’m certain I did.” Ghoul sends a glare down at Rand, like whatever’s happening is his fault. 

“Are you sure?”

“Yes, I’m sure!”

Rand hears another shriek in response, a little further away, but getting closer and closer. Ghoul growls, his skin turning white, slowly morphing back into his Brute form. 

“I’ll take care of it, just drag him—”

Something crashes into him, plowing right through the mechanical spiders, flying over Rand and Bonesaw and out the other end of the alley. Bonesaw yelps and ducks as Ghoul and his assailant go flying past, crashing into the ground. 

“Mr. Conway!” Bonesaw calls. “You’re interrupting my procedure with your roughhousing! Can you please take this somewhere else?”

Rand focuses all his energy on turning his head to look. When he does, he’s not even sure what he’s seeing for a moment.

A figure stands there, hunched over, spindly and unnaturally tall, far too many limbs, jointed and segmented. It uses three hands to pick up Ghoul by the front of his shirt and throws him with all its might into the street. Rand hears the impact of him crashing into the wall of a building. Atop the creature’s back, hunched over to cling to its shoulders, is another figure, a normal human. They make a sound—a bug-like buzz, and a stream of clicks, and the monster turns around. 

The front of it is horrifying. Its head is large, two antennae sticking out of thin black and white hair. Six pairs of black eyes take up the majority of its face, a pair of mandibles attached to its jaw, snapping periodically. Its neck is too long, too thin, with a joint in the middle, leading down to a torso that resembles a mantis’s more than anything else, covered in hard chitin that vaguely resembles the definition of human muscles. Six pairs of arms protrude from its torso, four of them long and thin, ending in vaguely hand-shaped segments, while the two sprouting from the middle end in long hooked claws. Six legs sprout from the bottom of its torso, segmented like a bug’s, with too many joints.

He thinks, for a moment, that this is some horrifying Bonesaw creation, but then he sees who’s on its back. A woman with curly black hair and a long leather coat, her platform boots hooked into the monster’s carapace to keep her footing, hands gripping the monster’s shoulders, trying to stay steady. Her lower mask is lost. A large gash spans her entire face, going from her left temple to her right jaw. It looks somewhat shallow, but it bleeds a lot, intersecting her lips. Her two scarred beetle black eyes look down at Rand, along with one normal human eye.

Becky. 

The monster clicks—a familiar rhythm, a question, asking what to do, and Becky answers with another series of clicks, staring directly at Bonesaw. The monster doesn’t hesitate, charging directly for the kid. 

Bonesaw shrieks as the monster grabs her, throwing her into the street opposite from Ghoul. Her spiderboxes leave Rand, skittering after their master as the creature—Rolan—throws them aside, buzzing angrily, thrashing against the machines that try and fail to break his carapace.

He hears footsteps, and then Becky appears in his vision. “Hey, hey, Rand.” She kneels down. “Did—can you move?”

He tries to move something, anything, and all he manages to do is turn his head. He groans, coughing, blood trickling from his lips. He wants more than anything to speak, but the spike in his chin keeps his jaw pinned closed. 

“Okay, okay, fuck.” Becky starts moving him, getting her arms under him to pick him up. His hand is locked around the shotgun, and she struggles to maneuver it in a way that won’t get in the way. “I’m—I’m so sorry, Rolan’s—I had to, I had no other choice, I don’t know what Ghoul did but he hurt him bad and the Queen’s Brutes could heal faster so I—I thought this could—I’m—”

Rand grunts, as loud as he can. That doesn’t matter. Becky using her powers on Rolan are the least of their problems. They’ll—they’ll work out what it’ll do to him later. 

Becky takes a shaky breath. “Kian needs help. We—we sort of took out Chuckles, but Winter found him.”

Rand grunts again to show he understands. He tries again to move his head and finds it a little easier. Maybe whatever Bonesaw put in him wasn’t that strong, something just to get him sedated before she found a better way to keep him down. Whatever the case, he hopes that means it’ll start wearing off soon. 

Becky carries him out of the alley. She clicks, and Rolan stops slashing his claws through mechanical spiders to run towards her, skittering on six legs, faster than Rand has ever seen him move. Becky holds out Rand to him, clicking out an instruction, and Rolan takes Rand’s body into two of his arms. They look thin, but they’re strong, gripping him tight. Rand doesn’t even know if he recognizes him right now, but that’s—that’s a problem for later.

Becky climbs onto Rolan’s back again, and with her direction, Rolan starts moving through the streets, skuttling like a bug, darting through alleys and across streets covered in glass, leaving Bonesaw and her freakish machines behind. Rand has a million questions, but asking them to Becky would be next to impossible. He’s not even sure he can ask himself. 

This is, without a doubt, the most terrifying situation he’s ever been in. Worse than their first Endbringer fight. Worse than Lagos. This is their home, and they’re barely strong enough to do anything. None of that will have killed Ghoul. Probably not even Bonesaw.

Rolan darts into an open street and jerks to a stop as if he hit a wall, and Rand knows why. It’s freezing here, as if all the heat in the area’s been seeped out, and with it, a chilling, dull, numb feeling in his brain, pushing out every single emotion so fast it feels like whiplash. He’s left feeling... hollow. Empty, even as he looks out over the scene in the street. 

A good chunk of it is covered in Kian’s webbing, Kian kneeling in the middle of it, his mask loose, face blank. Steam rises off the flesh, trying to generate its own heat in the freezing cold area. There’s another figure trapped under Kian’s webbing, twitching every couple seconds, letting out low, off beat sounds that resemble a laugh. Chuckles. 

In front of Kian stands a woman in white military fatigues, a strap of grenades over her shoulder, multiple guns strapped to her person. Winter. She turns around slowly, an assault rifle held in both hands.

“Wondered how long it would take you to come back for your boyfriend,” she says. Her voice isn’t smug or teasing like Ghoul’s had been, nor chipper like Bonesaw. It’s dead, flat, dull, like this is a chore, like she doesn’t care about them, like they’re just a swarm of bugs buzzing around her face.

Rand... knows what he should do. He should be trying to move, trying to get away, trying to—do anything really. But—but it feels like something is pressing down on his mind like a weighted blanket, muffling his thoughts, keeping any of it from reaching his body, like—like none of them even matter. 

Winter glances at Kian. He’s staring down at the street. His lips look like they’re turning blue. He looks half dead already, and he’s not even fighting, not standing up. There’s nothing keeping him there, nothing stopping him from standing up and walking away. That... should be a concern, shouldn’t it? 

Yes.

He flinches at the answer echoing in his head, loud, too much so. He wasn’t... trying to ask. Why is it answering him right now? He doesn’t—this doesn’t matter. 

“You know, he’s taking longer to die than most. It’s a little boring, but I’m really curious to see how long he’ll hold out.”

Isn’t her teammate trapped under Kian’s webbing? Does she just not care? She probably doesn’t. Rand can’t blame her. That clown is freaky. Not a fan. 

Rolan clicks, once, quiet. His grip on Rand loosens a little. Becky doesn’t even click back. That’s weird. Should he worry about that?

Yes.

Ow. His head already hurts from Bonesaw, thanks, he doesn’t need—that’s—it doesn’t matter. None of this—fucking matters. Does it?

YES.

Shit. He’s always listened to his powers. If... if it’s saying he should do something—but it’s so hard, he can barely make his limbs move, he can’t—

He adjusts the shotgun in his hand, slow movements, but deliberate. If—he can just press the trigger, maybe, it wouldn’t take much, just—do to something—

Kian’s eyes begin to flutter shut. 

Rand points the gun in Winter’s general direction and presses the trigger. 

BANG.

Winter jolts as a bullet slams into her shoulder. She doesn’t even cry out, just turns and glares at them, opening her mouth to shout—

Something zips into her mouth. She chokes, and Rand sees that it’s a stinger, long and sharp. He moves his head up, just enough to look at Becky. 

Her mouth is open, her stinger protruding from her throat, the other end stuck in Winter’s. Her eyes are wide, as if she’s just as surprised as Winter is, but her expression hardens. Rand watches as the stinger visibly goes down Winter’s throat, and she raises a hand to her neck as if she can claw through the skin and rip it out, backing away, but she slips on Kian’s webbing and goes down. 

The heat returns to the world and Rand inhales sharply at the sudden warmth. Rolan chitters and lopes closer to Winter, carrying Becky with him, who clicks and jabs her stinger in further. 

Winter’s body seizes, trying to reject the foreign object, but when she lifts a hand to the stinger itself in an attempt to rip it out, Rand watches as her fingers dissolve into viscera, flesh splitting between them like webs. Her eyes widen with sheer panic as her fingers slip off her knuckles and dangle, connected only by sinew, the bones dissolving into blood and tissue, turning to nothing but goo. She coughs. Blood comes up with it. 

Rand watches, disgusted and horror-struck, as her body decays before his eyes, dissolving into cotton candy-like webbing—the same shit the drones of the Queen used to make their nests back in Galloway. Blood soaks her clothes, her joints disconnecting, dissolving. Her face begins to droop, the muscle and bone melting away, bones cracking, until her entire body turns into nothing but mush hanging off Becky’s stinger, a web of sinew and viscera, her clothes slipping to the ground, empty, soaked in blood. The flesh pulses like a heartbeat, still alive, in a way, but... no longer Winter. No longer a person.

They move closer to Kian and stop right where Winter’s remains hang, some of them puddling on the ground. Becky starts to draw her stinger back in, then evidently changes her mind and shakes her stinger off to fling the viscera to the ground. She retracts her stinger back into her mouth and takes a deep breath. 

Kian blinks up at them. “H... Hey, dudes,” he whispers. He gives them a shaky smile.

He opens his mouth to say something else, but then he winces as the body under his webbing, Chuckles, rips through the flesh, scrambling upright faster than Rand can process. Chuckles looks at each of them in turn, making a low laughing sound, his head twitching, moving too quick.

Becky opens her mouth and lashes out again, her stinger just grazing Chuckles’ shoulder as he zips out of the way in a blur of speed. He looks at her for a very long moment, then down at Winter’s remains. He laughs again, and then—

He’s gone. He disappears in a blur, running down the street. Retreating.

Kian shivers. “Fuck that guy, man,” he mutters. His webbing starts to withdraw from the street, absorbing back into his body.

Becky hesitates. “Rand?” she says quietly. “I’m sorry.”

Rand grunts. He wiggles his fingers. He can properly move all of them now, but the rest of his body hasn’t quite caught up. 

Rand’s mouth is screwed shut, Rolan is a monster, Becky’s face is sliced up, and Kian probably has hypothermia. Sure, Winter is a puddle on the street, but the Nine have done way worse to way more people. 

He looks up at Becky, who’s leaning over Rolan’s shoulder to look at him. He looks at her in the eyes and jerks his head to where Becky’s bike sits on the side of the road, tipped over but otherwise unharmed. 

Becky understands. She clambers off Rolan’s back, clicking out an order for him to stay put, and walks over to her bike. She wrestles it upright and starts it, swinging her leg over the seat and driving over to Kian. She leans over and scoops up Winter on her way, the flesh clinging to her palm like it belongs there. She stops and parks. 

“Babe, that was kinda fucked up,” Kian mutters. He smiles, weak but genuine. He pushes himself to his feet on shaky legs. “Really hot, though.”

Becky cracks the barest of smiles. Kian hobbles over, slowly but surely, and sits down, Becky’s arms around him. Becky revs the bike’s engine.

“Rand, can you still ask questions?” Becky asks.

Rand grunts in what he hopes she’ll understand as a yes. “Are the Nine retreating?” she asks.

Are—are the Nine done? Are they going away?

No answer. Some of them are, then, but others are probably sticking around, wreaking more havoc. Siberian, probably—she’s usually the last to run. And Crawler, masochist that he is, searching for anything that might be capable of killing him. He half shrugs his shoulder, hoping she gets it.

She nods. “Okay. Okay, let’s... let’s go bring the PRT our trophy.”

Becky starts driving off, Winter’s remains clinging to her hand, and Rolan follows, like it’s all he knows how to do. Rand curls into his chest, despite how hard and uncomfortable his chitin is.

He thought Rolan was dead there for a second. This—this isn’t ideal, but god, it’s better than him being dead.

PRT HQ is just as ruined as any other building, the windows shattered, and part of the building has a crater in it, likely Siberian’s doing. By the time they get there, Rand can move his limbs, more or less, just really slow and weak. Better than nothing. 

There’s a handful of capes in front of the building: Anomaly, Revel, and Gauss, as well as Silhouette, his pink hair a beacon in the dark. The rest are probably chasing off after whoever remains of the Nine, likely Siberian.

They get closer to the building and the capes look up. Revel’s and Silhouette’s eyes widen at the sight of Rolan, and they all skitter back, but they pause when they see the rest of them, evidently confused. Their expressions go back to surprise when Winter’s remains make a sound, some low groaning that’s barely human. Rand is sure they must look fucking insane, Rand with blood all down his neck and chest, Becky with that gash across her face, and Rolan looking like this.

“What... on earth?” Revel whispers. 

September 15, 2008

“This is... rather unprecedented.”

Rand stares at the Chicago Protectorate around the meeting table. The back wall of the meeting room is destroyed, covered by a sheet for the time being. Some of them are injured, but for the most part, they’re fine. Director Hearthrow stands next to Myrddin, but Myrddin has given up the head of the table to Hexpert, who’s taken off her helmet and is smiling at Rand, a pair of glasses over her bright green eyes, her hands folded on the table. Silhouette and Origami stand on either side of her. Most of them are unmasked, Rand included. 

“Killing the Nine is... pretty par for the course,” Hexpert says, pushing her glasses up her nose. “They’re a Class S threat, after all, they have a kill order. Capturing one... that’s... not really something we’ve done? Or even thought about? Especially through—well, turning her into a thing—” She lets out a laugh that sounds a little nervous.

“Webbing,” Becky says, arms crossed, standing on Rand’s right where Rolan usually is. “It’s webbing. For making a nest.”

“Ah.” Hexpert nods slowly, eyes slightly wide, smile strained. Of all her years in the Prime Force, Rand would have thought that she’d have seen, or at least heard of, grosser shit than that. “Yes. That’s... yes.”

Silhouette raises a finely shaped brow. “Do you often turn your enemies into goo?”

Becky shrugs. “Haven’t done it since Galloway.”

Origami blinks. “Galloway? You—excuse me?”

Rand raises a hand. No one says another word. Kian remains silent on Rand’s left, hunched over in his seat like he’s trying to conserve his own body heat, like he can still feel the effects of Winter’s power. 

Rand lowers his hand and reaches for the mini whiteboard on the table in front of him. The gauze under his chin and on his forehead itches, but he doesn’t reach up to scratch it. Removing the metal stake in his mouth had required a long, intense surgery, and the hospital hadn’t exactly been overflowing with painkillers. He was told not to try moving his mouth too much for the next few days, which includes talking. Just as well. Fucking hurts to open his jaw anyway. 

He finishes writing on the board and slides it across the table to Hexpert. She leans over to read it aloud. “You forget we’re not PRT. We don’t have to abide by your orders.” Her smile looks more like a grimace at this point. “Well... the kill orders are made for a reason.” She passes the whiteboard down the table, back to Rand. “I understand if—if you, perhaps, didn’t have another way to take her out, but this is—”

Rand writes on the whiteboard as she speaks, only half listening. When she’s done, he slides it back across the table. It goes crooked and ends up in front of Anomaly. He passes it to Hexpert without reading it.

Hexpert looks over the board and presses her lips into a thin line. However, she clears her throat and reads it aloud. “This whole thing just goes to show the Nine aren’t special. They retreated right after we took out Winter. She’s goo, Chuckles ran away from us without bothering to fight back, and this was the Nine’s shortest stay in a city to date. They’re humiliated. It’s a suitable punishment for everything they’ve done. They deserved worse.”

“We don’t seek to punish them,” Silhouette says, his voice firm. “We seek to get rid of them. Liquefying her was inhumane and unnecessary.”

Rand just shrugs, bouncing his leg against the floor. The shotgun is on his lap, unloaded, the safety on. 

“Haven’t Protectorate members done worse?” Becky asks. “I remember Reaper once cut a guy’s limbs off and kept him alive for weeks, and then there was the time he beheaded a guy and Changeling altered the dying head’s perception of time to think it was suffering for years before it finally died, and—”

“The Godslayers,” Hexpert says, folding her hands, “were... not exactly the kindest team before they joined the Protectorate. Regardless, that is in the past, and they’re working by our rules now.” She clears her throat. “Past transgressions from other teams aside, this is... a rather strange situation you have put us in. Winter—”

“Burn her,” Becky says. “She didn’t have a lot of meat on her bones. Not enough of her to use for anything.”

Hexpert hums, still trying to smile, evidently disturbed. “Yes, of course. That—makes perfect sense.” She clears her throat. “You... mentioned Galloway, Louisiana—”

Rand raises a hand, halfway through writing a sentence on his board. Hexpert stops, waiting and watching as Rand erases what he had and stars writing something new. He finishes writing and turns the board around so everyone can read it. 

We killed the Class S threat in Galloway. We’re not talking about it.

Hexpert nods firmly. “Yes, of course. I... I understand, but...”

Rand starts writing again. He’s not a fan of being unable to speak, but he has to admit there’s something nice about having every cape in the room looking at him, waiting, like his words matter more than the rest. He wonders, idly, if they’re scared of The Hive now. 

Are they scared of us?

A pause. Yes.

He slides the board to Hexpert. She clears her throat. She does that a lot. Nervous tic? “We made an example out of her. The Nine won’t be coming back to Chicago or the surrounding area now.”

Origami narrows his eyes. “You’re missing the point. This is not how we do things.”

She sighs and passes the whiteboard back around the table. “Yes, what you have done is... different. That is not... that’s not how we like to... do things, even against Class S threats like the Nine, even though they have a kill order. The press is already talking about your cruel treatment.”

Then why didn’t you cover it up for us? Rand wonders. He’d like to ask, but he thinks he knows the answer; they’re not Protectorate. They don’t matter. The PRT doesn’t care how The Hive is perceived by the public. They wouldn’t waste their resources on them. 

“We know,” Becky says. “But Chicago’s our home. If they didn’t want us to mess them up, they shouldn’t have come here.”

“Yes, I understand.” Hexpert looks up at Becky. “There’s also the matter of... your powers. We were unaware of your Trump classification. Your ability to enhance the powers of other parahumans—”

“I knew,” Myrddin speaks up. “I’ve spoken with The Hive on this matter and relayed the information to Revel, and we decided to keep it private.”

“You what?” Director Hearthrow speaks for the first time in the entire meeting. “But—our contract, they’re meant to share their powers with us when needed—”

“There is nothing about Trump classification powers in our contract,” Myrddin interrupts before he was start going on a rant. “Besides, she has used it a total of three times in her life, if I am correct.” He glances at Rand for confirmation, and he nods. “It’s powerful, and incredibly useful, but it has extreme drawbacks. It makes one lose control over their powers for the duration of the effect and sends them into a near dissociative state, if I understand it correctly. When it wears off, it leaves some sort of lasting effect on the user. The way Stinger has described it—”

“It breaks a person,” Becky says, her voice quieter. “A little bit. I have no idea what it’s done to Tithonus yet. He’s still asleep in the hospital, so we can’t even talk to him. I’m not using my powers on anyone.”

Hearthrow steps forward. “But if you could use them on Tide against Leviathan, or Magma against Behemoth, they could kill the Endbringers, or—”

BANG.

Rand smacks the shotgun against the table, making everyone jump. Hearthrow visibly flinches, as if bracing for a shot. 

Rand holds up his board. Drop it.

Hearthrow narrows his eyes a little, but he shuts his mouth. 

“Look dude,” Kian says, “we’re just trying to figure out what to do with Winter’s gooey remains. That’s it. She did some heinous shit, we did some also heinous but arguably more radical and awesome shit, that’s the summary of the situation. Whatever you fucking do with her isn’t our concern, man.”

Rand listens to Kian talk, idly shooting a couple questions into his head. Asking about Rolan’s condition in the hospital, what Anomaly thinks of all this, how Becky’s feeling after using her powers, if Winter’s goo is still in her cell. He stops when he asks about Winter. He asks a couple more questions, just to make sure. 

Hexpert is speaking now, but Rand doesn’t listen. He writes something down and then hits his shotgun against the table again. BANG.

Everyone turns to look at him. He turns his board around.

Winter is dead.

Hexpert’s eyes widen. “Wh—what? No one should have gotten into her cell, what—”

Revel leans over to a PRT officer and mutters something to them. They rush out of the room, presumably to check on the holding cells. 

Origami narrows his eyes at Rand. “What happened?”

Rand scribbles on his board and turns it around. She’s just nest webbing with no hive, no source of food, and no queen. Probably starved.

Did they plan for this?

No answer. So they didn’t deliberately plan for it, but they definitely didn’t pay enough attention to Winter’s remains, nor did they question Becky on what to do with her or how to take care of her to keep her alive in some capacity.

And here they are scolding Rand for being inhumane. 

Kian claps his hands. “Well, the Slaughterhouse Nine is the Slaughterhouse Eight, we don’t have to agonize over killing her, and we can burn Winter’s remains and start helping the city recover. Sound like we’re done here, dudes.”

Rand stands up, as does Kian. Becky uncrosses her arms and shoves her hands in her pockets. Hexpert splutters, standing with them. “Wait, this—we can’t leave things like this, please, just sit, and we can—”

Rand tosses the whiteboard on the table. Thank you for your time. He turns and walks out of the room, slinging the shotgun over his shoulder. 

September 17, 2008

“His condition is actually rather alright,” Changeling says as he leads the three of them through the hospital. He’s not dressed as himself—instead, he’s cast an illusion as a short, blond, female nurse, but his eyes still flash the bright purple they usually are in costume. “When Widow was under the influence of your powers, Stinger, it did wear off after about six hours, but it seems to have clung to Tithonus much longer.”

Becky walks along behind him, hands shoved in her pockets. “Yeah, I figured. How’s he feeling?”

“He just woke up. Hasn’t spoken, but...” He shrugs. “Well, he did get his tongue cut out. Can’t blame him.”

Rand’s stomach drops to his knees at the reminder. “Yeah, I know.” Moving his jaw hurts, but he’s been able to speak in short sentences without agitating his stitches much. Probably shouldn’t be talking at all, but he can’t help it.

“I’m sure he’s eager to see all of you,” Changeling says. “He’s been buzzing like crazy since he woke up! Really bothering the capes in the rooms next to him.”

They slip down a hallway and pass by a bunch of doors, each of which have a sign on them that says “PRIVATE ROOM: AUTHORIZED PERSONNEL ONLY.” Changeling approaches a door with and unlocks it with a keycard. He nudges it open. 

The hospital room beyond is nice, way nicer than any hospital room Rand has ever stayed in. There’s no window, obviously, for privacy reasons. The bed looks way comfier than a normal hospital bed. 

Rolan lays under the covers, covered up to his chin, holding the blankets over his lower face the same way he used to as a kid when he woke up during sleepovers with bad dreams, the same way he still does when Rand walks into his room in the middle of the night because he heard Rolan buzzing in distress. His eyes are black, all four of them. He buzzes louder when he sees them walk in. 

Relief floods through Rand. He strides over to the bed and sits on the edge of it, one hand on Rolan’s shoulder. “Hey, hey. Rolan, hey. How are you... how are you feeling?”

Rolan clicks, slow, nervous. He hesitantly lowers the blankets from his face. He... looks normal. About as normal as he usually looks at home. He clicks at Rand. 

Rand reaches out and hesitantly runs a hand through his hair. “You, uh... Ghoul got your tongue, huh?”

Rolan grimaces. He looks over at Becky and Kian, standing behind Rand, giving him a bit of space. He opens his mouth. 

Where his tongue would be is... something vaguely resembling a tongue. First thing Rand notices is that it’s forked, splitting into two thin points. It’s segmented, split into almost joint-like pieces that move in a way that kind of imitates a normal tongue, but would definitely make speaking way harder. On either side of his teeth are mandibles that move on their own, poking out from behind his lips the moment he opens his mouth, reaching, grabbing for prey that isn’t there. 

“Damn,” Kian mutters. “The dick sucking game must go crazy.”

Becky shrieks out a startled laugh. “Kian!”

Rand snorts, tucking his head against Rolan’s shoulder. He hears Rolan start to laugh, a constant low buzz in his chest. 

“What?” Kian says. “I don’t—I don’t know what to say to this! Sucks that your tongue got cut out, but I want that thing on my cock ASAP, dude!”

Rolan moves his arm out from under the blankets to flip Kian off. His arm is different, little plates of chitin covering the meaty parts like built in armor, almost the same shade as his flesh, blending in, but Rand notices, keeping an eye out for any changes, any differences.

Changeling hides his face behind his hand, trying not to laugh. “I—I think I’ll leave you four to visit.” He turns and walks out the door. “Let me know if you need anything.” The door clicks shut behind him.

Rand lifts his head off Rolan’s shoulder. “So... think you’ll be able to talk?”

Rolan hesitates, then shrugs. “Kind... of? Haven’t tried... much.” Some of the syllables aren’t right, the N’s blurring into the consonants after them, the T’s barely even there, but it’s more or less comprehensible, at the very least. Sounds like it’s hard to speak. Rand won’t count on any long late night conversations any time soon.

“You don’t have to,” Rand says quietly. “I shouldn’t be running my mouth either.” He taps the bottom of his chin. “Got Bonesawed.”

Rolan clicks, upset. He reaches up to Rand’s forehead, thumb skimming over the gauze covering the stitches there. Rand can’t help but lean into his hand a little. He was so fucking worried. Changes from Becky’s powers aside, at least Rolan is alive. 

Kian plops down on the bed at Rolan’s feet. “You know, all things considered, that could have gone way worse. None of us died.”

“Yeah, but it was close.” Becky leans against the edge of the bed, reaching up to scratch at the cut on her face, mostly healed by now, but still an angry red scab. “I’m—I’m sorry, Rolan, I didn’t—You were—”

“S’fine,” Rolan slurs, shaking his head. “Better than being dead.”

Rand looks Rolan over. He can’t see much other than his shoulder under the covers, and even those are covered by a hospital gown. “Is there... anything else? Any other changes?”

Rolan grimaces. He shifts, sitting up, and Rand scoots back to let him. Rolan hesitates, then lifts up the end of his hospital gown.

His chest is a tapestry of scar tissue, entirely covered in plated white chitin that warps along the curvature of his fat and muscles. Curled against his sides are a pair of extra arms, thin and spindly, segmented like an insect’s, tipped with long hooked mantis claws. 

“Can’t make ‘em go away,” he mutters. “Been trying.”

Becky’s face is incomprehensible. She looks away. 

Rand doesn’t say anything. Probably shouldn’t, with his jaw like this. He leans forward and presses his forehead against Rolan’s collarbone, taking a deep breath. The mantis arms reach out and grip at his shirt, latching onto the fabric, pulling him in close. 

They’re here. They’re alive. That’s what matters. 

September 18, 2008

“—and The Hive, in the midst of the fight with the Slaughterhouse Nine, had actually managed to subdue and kill a member of the Nine themselves. Now, the description of what happened is a little gruesome, Sharon, so to any listeners out there with kids, you might want to switch the channel for a few minutes—”

Rand jabs his knuckle against the radio and it switches to a different station, something playing throwbacks. Led Zeppelin. Nice. 

Rolan clicks in the passenger seat. “Was listening to that,” he mutters. He moves his pincers, trying to hide them in his lips. Rand can still see them pretty clearly. He hopes Rolan will still be able to go into work like this.

“We know what happened, we were there,” Rand says. He glances around at the street around them. Most of the glass in this area has been swept away by street sweepers, but they’re still taking a lot of time to get to the less populated streets Shatterbird flew past. None of the traffic lights are working, slowing up traffic a considerable amount, but lots of businesses are closed to work on repairs anyway, so there aren’t nearly as many vehicles out as there otherwise would be. 

“I—I wanna know what the press is saying.” His sounds are still warped, a little hard to understand sometimes. T and TH sounds are pretty much off the table altogether, and his N’s either slur into the consonants they’re next to or don’t exist at all.

Rand huffs, but he switches the station back. 

“—some public backlash for the gruesome treatment of Winter, stating that the loss of one member may only make the remaining Nine angry and hungry for revenge. People are saying they wouldn’t be surprised if the Nine came back to Chicago specifically to target The Hive.”

“However, despite the backlash, there are many more people who are saying they’re glad The Hive had the balls to do what the Protectorate hasn’t, Dave. Killing some of the Nine would be par for the course, but liquefying one? It’s really taken the Nine down a peg in the eyes of the public.”

“Surely, the Nine will bounce back from this, and word has it they’ve already been spotted up in Madison, Wisconsin, breaking the quarantine barriers from the latest Simurgh attack in June. Recruiting, potentially, or just trying to cause chaos.”

“I don’t know who they would recruit up there, I mean, the only cape up there I can think of is Sphere, and he’s just an architect Tinker.”

“Well, you can never underestimate a parahuman, Sharon. If he got Ziz-bombed—and there’s always a possibility, especially since the Simurgh was in the city for almost twelve hours—he could turn out to be a lot more dangerous than people gave him credit for.”

“Come on, this is the guy who wanted to use his powers to make underwater cities to help deal with overpopulation, what do you think he would do?”

“You’ve got a point. Potential Ziz-bombs aside, the Nine’s attack on Chicago is their shortest stay in one area to date, and most of the city can agree that it’s thanks to The Hive, whether they approve of their methods or not. I think we can all agree that we could use something a little more upbeat to listen to after all that heavy news, so coming up next on the tracklist, we’ve got a new single from an up and coming artist, Lady Gaga, here’s Just Dance—”

Rand jabs his knuckle against the radio again and switches it to something else. “Man, I wanted to listen to that,” Rolan complains quietly. 

“Dude, really?”

“What, just because you don’t like pop doesn’t mean it’s all bad!”

Rand scoffs. He glances at Rolan out of the corner of his eye, his pitch black eyes, the soft cotton t-shirt of Rand’s he’s wearing, the scars peeking up out of the collar of his shirt. He picks at a loose string on the sweatpants Rand brought him in the hospital, buzzing quietly. 

Rand changes the station back. Rolan chitters in satisfaction as they continue driving through the streets of Chicago. 

October 13, 2008

“We’re sitting this one out.” 

Myrddin’s voice over the phone doesn’t sound surprised. “Alright. May I ask...?”

“Tithonus is trying to get back into the swing of things, and... I don’t know, we just feel like we need a break after the shit that happened last month. We’re not taking as long of a hiatus as we did when Widow got downed, but we’re taking this one off, and maybe the next.”

“Understood. Will I be seeing you for coffee this weekend?”

“Maybe next month, man. Unless you’ve got something to talk about in regards to the Protectorate.”

“Alright. I’ll let you know when we’re back.”

“Good luck.”

Rand hangs up. He tosses his phone on the counter and turns back to the coffee maker. 

“Who is it?” Becky asks from her seat at the counter, idly flicking a lighter. 

“Leviathan.” Rand takes his and Becky’s cups out of the cupboard. “Mombasa, Kenya.”

Becky hums. “How’s Rolan dealing with going back to work? He okay? He’s...” She shifts in her seat, looking down at the counter. “He’s not talking to me as much. Not with words, not like... in a human way.”

Rand shrugs. He glances at the black medical mask laying on the counter. Rolan wears it to work every day, to make sure no one sees the state of his mouth. “He’s doing okay. Struggling with talking in court a little. Sucks, because you know he loves his court cases.”

Becky lets out a couple upset clicks. “Sorry.”

“Dude, Ghoul’s the one who cut out his tongue. If you didn’t use your powers, he wouldn’t have even grown that thing back. Plus, he’d literally be dead without you.”

Becky takes a deep breath. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” She sticks a cigarette in her mouth. “By the way... after all this, I’ve given a little more thought to... my powers. What you asked me about a couple years ago.”

Rand starts pouring coffee into both of their mugs. “Yeah?”

“Yeah. If... if you want to use my powers to figure things out... just once... maybe—we could. Maybe. I...” She shrugs. “I need to think about it a little more, see how bad it’s affected Rolan before I decide if it’s okay to take that risk, but... maybe.”

Rand nods. He’s almost excited about the prospect. Scared, too, though. “Okay. Yeah, just... give it some thought.”

Becky lights her cigarette. She takes a puff and blows smoke out the corner of her mouth. A grin tugs at her lips. “So... does the dick sucking game go crazy, or what?”

Rand plops an ice cube into his coffee cup. “Rebecca Jones, that is an extremely inappropriate question, especially considering everything that’s happened to Rolan. Come on, show a little decorum.”

“You can’t think about it with getting a boner, can you?”

Rand turns around and sets her coffee cup in front of her. “Dude,” he breathes, “you have no idea how crazy it is.”

Becky barks out a laugh, overlaid with a sharp buzzing. He can’t help but grin, stifling a chuckle into his own coffee cup as he takes a sip.

April 12, 2009

Rand stares up at his ceiling and heaves a sigh. He can’t fucking sleep. He doesn’t think he’s gotten a full night’s rest since the Slaughterhouse Nine.

He sits up in bed and flicks on his bedside lamp. He stares at his bulletin boards, the notes, the pictures, the red strings connecting everything. There’s a new board, one completely dedicated to the Nine, lists of all their current and former members, updates on things they’ve done. Evidently, The Hive taking out Winter got them to prepare precautions, as predicted, because news outlets are saying they’ve all been augmented by Bonesaw now, given mesh frames inside their bodies to protect their vitals, making each of them extremely durable to the point of near invulnerability from conventional weapons.

Was that The Hive’s fault? Maybe. Does Rand regret what they did? Not at all.

He reaches up to his head and rubs at his jaw, touches the starburst scar under his chin. Bonesaw fucking sucks. She’s officially his least favourite member of the Nine. Not that he has a favourite, but still.

He remembers the fear, the sheer panic he felt when Ghoul tossed Rolan’s tongue onto his chest and grimaces. Okay, maybe Ghoul is his least favourite. But Bonesaw is a close god damn second.

He glances over the list of members. They grabbed a new one recently, the former Tinker named Sphere, some guy who wanted to use his powers for good before the Simurgh destroyed his hometown and killed his family. He’s completely changed himself with Bonesaw’s help, isolating all of his vital parts in self sustaining ecosystems that connect together in the shape of a featureless mannequin. He calls himself Mannequin—aptly named. Little on the nose.

He hears someone else’s door open in the hallway—Rolan’s, judging by the light creak from the squeaky hinges. Rand pauses, looking at his doorway, listening, waiting to see where the footsteps head. There’s a loud buzzing over them, hovering at a high, distressed frequency. The footsteps pause outside Rand’s door, hesitating.

Rand reaches for his cane and pushes himself to his feet, walking over to the door. He opens it.

Rolan stands there, wrapped up in a blanket up to his nose, his four beetle black eyes looking out at him over the fabric. He clicks, upset. Rand can hear Becky clicking in her sleep across the hall, an automatic response, trying to soothe him.

Rand steps aside. “C’mon, you big baby.”

Rolan shuffles in and sits down on Rand’s bed, pressing himself into the corner of the wall. Rand shuts the door and follows, reaching into the drawer of his nightstand for a notebook and pen as he sits next to Rolan.

He flips the notebook open. “Okay,” he says softly, scribbling down some words: Nightmare? Emergency? Memories? Can’t stop thinking? He passes the notebook to Rolan, with the pen.

Rolan glares at it for a moment. Rand knows he hates this, hates being rendered unable to speak, barely able to use his own words even in writing, like his brain just—isn’t wired for it anymore. He’s called in sick to work more in the past five months than he has in probably his entire career, just because he’ll have days where he wakes up and physically, impossibly, cannot form words no matter how hard he tries. A hard thing for him to come to terms with, when words have come so easily to him his entire life, nerd that he is. Incredibly ironic and kind of shitty that he’s unable to even say his own cape name properly anymore.

With a huff, Rolan takes the pen and circles “nightmare” and “can’t stop thinking.” He shoves it back in Rand’s direction, angry. Not at Rand, but at himself. He starts clicking, not on purpose. His eyes unfocus for a moment before he manages to force himself back.

Rand knows how he feels. Not exactly, it’s not one-to-one, but his episodes, his mania, it... it makes him feel like this. Useless. Like reality’s breaking apart around him, like he should be able to pull himself together, like he’s being babied when the others help him.

Rand writes a couple more things on the page. Galloway? The s9? Other shit? Rolan circles “Galloway.”

Rand hums. “Yeah, that one’s always gonna fuckin’ suck, huh?” he mutters.

Rolan chitters. His gaze is unfocused, only half here. Rand’s losing him.

He leans his head against Rolan’s shoulder. “It’s okay, bug brain,” he says softly. “I gotcha. You can let it happen, I don’t care.”

Rolan clicks, uncertain, an irrational fear making its way into the furrow of his brow. Rand reaches into the blankets for Rolan’s hand, finding it quick, gripping it tight. Rolan’s buzzing lowers in pitch a little, somewhat reassured. He’s losing his sense of himself, but Rand will still be here when he’s back.

Rolan’s eyes go completely unfocused. He drops the pen like he doesn’t know how to use it anymore, buzzing loud, like a swarm of cicadas. Rand sits there with him, notebook in his lap. He picks up the pen and starts doodling in the margins. Rolan remains curled up against his side, processing nothing but the light from the bedside table and Rand’s warm presence next to him.

The first time this happened, they all panicked. They didn’t know what was happening, whether Rolan would even be okay, if he was completely gone from his own mind permanently. He ended up fine within about a day, but they were all in varying stages of fear and confusion during that short span of time, having no idea what to do with him. They did manage to contact Changeling and fly him out, check out his brain. Changeling said he’d be fine, it was just something he needed to ride out, but he stayed until Rolan was okay again. For as much as Rand didn’t like the guy when he first heard about Changeling, he’s helped them a fair amount since they entered the cape scene. Rand should get him a gift basket at some point. He seems like the kind of guy who would like a fancy gift basket.

Rolan clicks, calling out for no one in particular. Becky’s clicking responds across the hall, automatic. Rand gives his hand a squeeze and keeps drawing in his notebook. He’ll call in sick for Rolan in the morning.

April 3, 2010

“I wanna retire.”

Rand looks up from his notebook. Rolan’s sitting at his desk, working on paperwork. He doesn’t need his reading glasses anymore—they’re still finding out weird permanent shit that’s happened to him since Becky used her powers on him, and this is one of them—and he looks up at the same time Rand does. He’s not the one who said it.

Becky looks over at the kitchen counter form where she sits on the couch. “Kian?” she says. She sounds just as surprised as Rand feels. 

Kian shrugs, running a hand through his hair. It’s been a few months since he’s bleached his hair. His brown roots are coming through, the darker colour making the scars on the right side of his head stand out more. The tips of his hair, usually dyed a fiery red, have faded to a soft coral. He’s not wearing a shirt, exposing the starburst scar on his torso from when he got impaled in Lagos. He tugs at the drawstring of his sweats as he sips from his coffee cup. 

He shrugs. “I don’t know, man, I’m just... tired, I guess.”

Rolan sets his pen down. “Like, you want to retire from... being a stockbroker?”

“Nah, dude, I like my job. I...” He looks down at his cup as if it’ll give him the answer to all his questions. “I kinda wanna retire from, like... cape shit. You know?”

Becky lowers her guitar. “I... are you sure?”

Kian shrugs. “I don’t know, like—If you guys still want to do it, I will too, I just... I don’t know.” He sips his coffee. “Forget it, dude, I was just thinking out loud, I don’t—”

“No.” Rolan pushes his desk chair out to face Kian. “I—I’ve thought about it a lot, actually. Rand actually brought it up a few years ago, and I—I’ve kind of been thinking about it ever since, but then the shit with the Nine happened, and I just—I didn’t know how to bring it up, but—if you want to—”

Becky turns to Rand. “You wanted to retire a while ago?”

Rand shrugs. “I thought about it, yeah. I don’t know, Beck, we’re getting old. We can’t... we can’t do this forever. We’ve had a lot of close scrapes, but our luck is going to run out eventually.”

Kian’s expression brightens. “You guys—want to?”

Rolan shrugs. “I mean... I feel like I’ve got a little bit left in me.” He looks at Becky and clicks, a question.

She plucks at the strings of her guitar, clicking as she thinks. “I’ve got some left in me, too,” she says quietly. “I don’t—I don’t think I’m ready yet.”

“Another year?” Rand suggests. “We can reevaluate then?”

Becky nods sharply. “Yeah. Yeah, that.. that sounds good.”

Kian smiles a little. “Cool, cool. Awesome.”

July 8, 2011

Conspiracy shivers as he watches Behemoth stomp around in the distance, snow sizzling and melting around him, evaporating into steam. Magma and Eidolon are fighting him head on, followed closely by the rest of the Triumvirate. The Summit Camp research centre he’d attacked is destroyed. No one had even been here aside from about twenty researchers. Why he came here, of all places, just to wreck a single research station with barely any people in it, Rand doesn’t fucking know. 

This, he thinks, is the worst attack he’s witnessed. Every other Endbringer fight had been full of casualties, crowds of people and buildings devastated, like a natural disaster had torn through. This? This was just a bunch of researchers. Twenty people. Behemoth showed up, crushed them, and walked away. It feels... targeted.

Conspiracy looks over the wreckage of the research station with a handful of other capes. He doesn’t know why he’s here. There’s no recon to run, no one to save. 

Are there any survivors?

No.

He takes a shaky breath and backs away from the ruined building. Widow is busy holding up a wall so someone else—Retribution, it looks like—can drag a dead body out of the rubble. Reaper is poking through the ruins with his giant axe, eyes glowing red with anger, likely over the fact that he’s not charging headfirst into Behemoth right now. Icewalker is here, having tagged along once she knew the location, hoping to use the snow to her advantage, but she and Justice can’t do anything but try to lift a large section of wall over at the greenhouse, looking for anyone to help. Tithonus is trying to move a large piece of rubble out of the way to examine a body, his two extra mantis arms scrabbling for holds in the rock. 

Conspiracy unsheathes his cane from his back. He presses the button for the spikes on the bottom so it doesn’t slip on the ice beneath the snow. 

Footsteps crunch in the snow. Stinger walks up next to him, hands shoved in her pockets. He wishes he wore a thick leather jacket like hers. It’s fucking freezing here. She turns to look at him, reaching up to push her mirrored sunglasses into her hair, and her scarred black eyes make contact with his. She looks tired. 

He doesn’t need to ask to know that she’s run out of energy for this.

Summit Camp will be the last Endbringer fight they witness in person.

July 14, 2011

“We’re retiring.”

Hearthrow’s eyes widen. “You’re what?”

Conspiracy shrugs. “Retiring. We’re fuckin’ old, man. Fuck, I’m surprised Myrddin is still kicking in the cape biz, old as he is. We’re tired of this shit. We’re done.”

Hearthrow splutters. “You—but, Chicago—”

“I’ve discussed this with them,” Myrddin says calmly, turning his staff in his hand at the head of the table. “They’ve done Chicago a great service, despite their sometimes less than above-board strategies. They deserve retirement. We can’t physically stop them.”

“Our contract—”

“Our lawyer can rework it,” Conspiracy says. “If you’d like to meet with him, I’m sure he’d like to discuss options. Of course, Tithonus won’t be able to attend—”

“Naturally,” Myrddin says. 

“But I can speak for him, as always.”

Revel sighs. “Well, I can’t say I won’t miss having an extra four sets of hands for when The Royals or The Folk are getting too confident. It’s been a pleasure working with you all.” She turns to them, and the corners of her eyes crinkle with crow’s feet. She’s got a few grey hairs coming in. How old is she? They should all be retiring at this point, he thinks. He’s not sure what the PRT would think of that suggestion. 

Anomaly shrugs. “Pains in my ass,” he mutters. He doesn’t say anything else. He hasn’t been as shitty to them since the Nine came through Chicago. Conspiracy would mention it, but he doesn’t care anymore. With any luck, he won’t have to even talk to Anomaly ever again.

Conspiracy stands up. “Anyway. That’s it, really. That’s all we wanted to say. We’re retiring, we can rework our contract in case you desperately need something from us, but other than that, we’re hanging up the masks. No Endbringers, nothing, unless it’s an immediate Class S threat that shows up here in the city.” He reaches up and takes off his goggles, tugging his lower face mask down. “Been a pleasure working with most of you,” Rand says. 

Myrddin stands as well. “It certainly has been. Perhaps we’ll see you around, old man?”

Rand snorts. “Yeah, whatever, grandpa.” He turns to leave, then pauses. “Oh, and, uh, Hearthrow?”

Hearthrow stiffens, already narrowing his eyes. “Yes?”

“Sincerely, from the bottom of my heart...” Rand puts a hand on the doorknob. “Fuck you and the horse you rode in on. The only person I have ever met who has a more punchable face than you is Ghoul.”

He turns and leaves, Stinger and Widow following behind him. He hears Tithonus sigh and quietly apologize, saying something about wanting to leave on amicable terms, but Rand doesn’t give a shit. They’re done.

Stinger takes off her glasses and mask. “Man,” Becky mutters. “So that’s it, huh? We’re done?”

Widow takes off his mask and shakes out his hair, the brown roots nearly as long as the blond in his hair now. “Yeah, dude,” Kian says, shoving his mask in the pocket of his tiger print jacket. “We can do whatever the fuck we want now. No worrying about Endbringers and random villains and shit. How crazy is that?”

Tithonus steps out of the meeting room and tugs his scarf down. “Thank god,” Rolan whispers. “I can’t wait until the only crises I have to deal with are traffic ticket disputes.”

“Well, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Rand says, walking down the hallway. “Rolan Deep still has to draft a new agreement between The Hive and the Protectorate.”

“Yeah, but that’s fun,” Rolan says as they follow Rand. “Staying up writing paperwork is way better than waking up at three in the morning because Revel’s having a hard time wrangling some of The Royals’ hired muscle.”

“What the hell are we gonna do now?” Becky mutters. “You two still have your jobs, but me and Rand are gonna go fucking stir crazy at home alone.”

Rolan grins at Rand. “Think it’s time to take up crocheting?”

Chapter Text

May 17, 2012

“So, how is retirement treating you?”

Rand grunts as he lifts the watering can. “Oh, you know. Too much free time. Started a new D&D campaign with the others, took up gardening. Don’t tell Rolan, but I did take up crocheting as a side hobby. If he knows, I’ll never live it down.”

Solstice laughs on the other side of the call. “Sounds like it’s been good to you.”

“Yeah, well, could be worse. It’s... really nice, actually, not having to worry about a lot of that cape shit.”

“You’re worrying about it regardless, I assume?”

Rand shrugs as he pours some water over the rosebush in his backyard. “Yeah, you know me. Keeping track of every operative cape in North America, what their powers are, where they operate, etcetera. You know.” 

Trying to figure out the point of Cauldron, also. And what the PRT is planning, what the Triumvirate and Prime Force are doing, all that. He’s been theorizing a lot less over the past year, however. It’s really lessened his migraines, given his head a break. It’s... weirdly relaxing. Not a word he thought he would ever use to describe his general experience as a human being, but it is. It’s nice.

It hits him, for the millionth time over the past year, that he didn’t think he would live to get here. He never pictured himself with greying hair, tied back with one of Kian’s scrunchies, wearing an old lounge shirt of Rolan’s he cut the sleeves off of, walking around a backyard that’s his, watering flowers that he and Becky planted with their own two hands. He thought he’d be dead by thirty-five, whether self-inflicted or by some horrible circumstance. He’s going to be fifty-five this year. 

He gets a weird feeling in his chest when he thinks about it. Not a bad feeling, just... weird. It aches, a little. 

“Well, do let me know if I can assist.”

“Yeah, yeah. What about you? How’s—how’s life treating you?” He almost said “how’s family life,” but Sol hasn’t mentioned that he and Anna had a kid. Probably wants to keep it on the down-low from as many people as possible. Rand doesn’t blame him. 

“Oh, it’s great,” Sol says, and Rand can hear the smile in his voice. “We’re doing really well, despite the Lich.”

“He’s still kicking around Fauna?”

“I don’t foresee him being taken down anytime soon, unfortunately,” Sol sighs. “We were hoping we could go on a holiday at some point, but we can’t leave Fauna alone. Not many Protectorate members want to come out here to take care of the city while we’re gone.”

Rand hums, moving on to water a patch of petunias. “I mean, I could probably convince the others to come out of retirement for a week or two to come up to Fauna again. I don’t think they’d mind babysitting a city for a bit.”

Sol laughs. “Already eager to get out of retirement? Are you that bored?”

Rand chuckles. “Eh, it gets a little dull sometimes, but... I don’t know, I kinda like it.”

“Yes, I understand. Restricting our contact with Endbringer fights was certainly a good choice for us. Alphonz and Min are even considering retiring from Endbringers altogether.”

Rand blinks. “Really? Alphonz?”

“Yes. Some additional factors in our lives have convinced him to take it easy.”

“That’s—that’s really good to hear, actually. He’s always been a bit... high strung?”

“You can say delusional, Rand.”

“Okay, yeah, delusional.” He walks along the flowerbed, pouring water over the flowers carefully planted in the dirt. “I know how it feels to be like that. It’s—it’s really good that he’s easing up. Seriously though, if you guys want a babysitter for your city, give us a call. We’d be down to keep an eye on it.”

“We likely won’t give it too much thought for another year or two, but we’ll keep it in mind.” He pauses. “Oh, it’s my turn for patrol. I have to run.”

“Talk to you later, kid. Let us know if you need us.”

“Will do.”

He hangs up. Rand takes the phone from between his chin and shoulder and shoves it into his pocket, trudging back to the hose with his empty watering can. He sets it down and picks up the hose. Their backyard is big. It’s not really something they thought much about when they got the house, but even now that Rand’s taking advantage of the flowerbeds along the edges, it still feels too big. Empty.

“Hey, Beck?”

Becky looks up from where she lays on the lawn on a towel. She’s wearing a crop top—made from one of Rand’s old shirts—and a pair of shorts—cut from one of Kian’s old pairs of sweatpants. Her mirrored sunglasses are perched on her nose, hair tied back with the scrap of Rolan’s first scarf, the sun beaming down on her as she flips through a novel. “What?”

“I kind of want a dog.”

She clicks a couple times, considering it. There’s a constant buzz coming from her chest, drawing bugs of all kinds to their backyard, pollinators buzzing through Rand’s marigolds, mosquitos hovering around her without biting, crickets chirping in the grass around her feet. “Like, what kinda dog?”

“I dunno. Just a dog.”

She grins. “You want a crusty white old person dog?”

“Fuck no, man. Like—I dunno.” He turns the hose on to refill the watering can. “Whatever.”

She shuts her book, shoving her finger between the pages to keep her place. “I’ve never had a dog,” she muses. “Kinda wanna know what it’s like.”

“Really?”

She shrugs. “We can keep an eye out?”

He can’t help the smile that tugs at his lips. “Sure. Sounds good.”

March 14, 2013

“—the unexpected retirement of Changeling and Retribution of the Ranz Protectorate. The two of them have decided to settle down in the city, but Ranz has nothing to fear; Reaper will be remaining on the Protectorate team, and some members of the Wards team of Ranz have recently reached eighteen and been promoted, meaning the city won’t have any shortage of heroes. Next in the news, the Slaughterhouse Nine appears to have replaced Chuckles, oddly enough! They’ve been seen travelling with a young woman who calls herself Cherish—”

“Dude,” Kian whines from the passenger seat of Rand’s truck. “Can we listen to literally anything else?”

“We might be retired, but I still want to keep track of the capes in the country, okay?” Rand says. “You never know when some Class S or A threat could show up in Chicago.”

Kian groans dramatically and slides down in the seat, rumpling his suit jacket. He’s taken to wearing more colourful suits to work lately. He’s wearing a pale blue one today, complete with a green tie with fun dark blue patterns on it. Clashes a little with the fiery red he’s rebleached and dyed his hair to, but Rand likes it. It’s very Kian. 

Kian reaches for the stereo and presses the button for the pop station. “You can look it up later.”

“Dude, driver picks the station!”

“The Nine aren’t gonna show up in the next three minutes, babe!” Kian says. “You can study up on ‘em later, you got plenty of time.”

He wants to argue, but Kian’s right; he does have time. More than he knows what to do with, really. 

Kian straightens his tie. “Hey, dude? I know you don’t like doing much for your birthday, but like... can we? Just this year? Just gifts, or whatever?”

Rand thinks about it, curious. “I mean, sure, but why?”

Kian shrugs, a slight smile tugging at his mouth. “No reason.”

Hm. There’s something more to it, but he doesn’t know the right questions to ask his powers to get to the bottom of it. 

“Alright, man. Do whatever you want.” He parks outside Kian’s office building. “Have a good day at work.”

“Okay, dude.” He leans over and plants a kiss on Rand’s cheek. “Don’t forget to pick me up, babe!”

“Nah, I was thinking I should just leave you there, let you walk home.”

Kian half heartedly pushes his shoulder. “Fuck you, dude.”

“Love you too, asshole.”

Kian smiles. He hops out of the truck, briefcase in hand. He turns and walks backwards into the building, blowing a kiss at Rand through the window.

Rand shakes his head and pulls back put onto the street, a smile on his face. 

October 20, 2013

The door to Rand’s room flies open and hits the wall with a bang. He jumps, scrambling upright, grabbing for his cane leaning against the wall. He presses the switch for the knives and they stick out of the edge of the cane and the end, ready to attack. 

Rolan and Kian stand in the doorway, both smiling. Rolan’s carrying a large bag of... something. Fertilizer, maybe? Kian’s got a shopping bag that Rand can’t see inside. 

He relaxes, withdrawing the blades into his cane. “Jesus, fuck, you guys. What—what is this?”

“Happy birthday, dude!” Kian walks over and plops the shopping bag on the bed. Rand looks at it, brow furrowed. 

He slowly turns to face them, swinging his legs over the edge of his bed, giving Kian a suspicious look. “What did you get me?”

Kian gestures wildly at the bag. “Look, dude!”

Hesitantly, Rand takes the edge of the bag and peers inside. There’s a couple of metal bowls, which confuses him for a second, before he takes them out and sees—

He looks up from the leash and chew toys in the bottom of the bag. “Dude, you—”

Becky pokes her head in, beaming. “Hey, Tim. Happy fifty-sixth birthday, you old bitch.” She steps fully into the room. 

In her arms is a puppy. Hard to tell what breed it is, some kind of mutt, probably, mostly brown with a white underbelly and pointy ears. It looks around, curious, wriggling in her hold like it wants out. 

She hurries over to the bed and plops the dog directly on his lap. He automatically reaches out to pet it as it sniffs around at the new area, scratching it behind the ears. 

“What the fuck, guys,” he mutters. “Wh—what kind of—”

“She’s a mutt,” Becky says. “Some Jack Russell and Boston Terrier, I think, but there’s probably more. She’s a rescue. The Nine tore through Nashville last month, and this baby’s mom was left wandering around without an owner, got pregnant by a stray, and had her babies in an alley. The mom was taken in, but the new owner couldn’t keep all the pups, so I went to go see them and pick one out.”

Rolan drops the bag in his arms, and Rand sees now that it’s a bag of dog kibble. “You’re training it,” Rolan says. “I didn’t really want one, but I can live with a dog as long as I’m not cleaning up after it.”

Rand nods quickly. “Yeah, yeah, I—yeah, I will. Holy shit, guys, I... thank you, what the fuck.”

The puppy sniffs at Rand’s hand. It licks at his fingers. His eyes sting, tears almost welling up, but he forces them down. It hits him, again, that he thought he’d be dead by now. He didn’t think he’d live to get here.

He lifts the puppy into his arms and buries his face in its short fur. He doesn’t cry. Shut the fuck up. 

June 12, 2014

“Lily! Are you getting into my carrots?”

He hears a bark, and Lily rounds the corner of the house, her face covered in soil. He sighs and straightens, his back cracking. “You know, the carrots taste a lot better when they’re not in the ground and covered in dirt.”

She stands there and stares at him with her big eyes, wagging her tail. He can’t help but smile a little. He leans down to grab a toy off the grass, some lizard shaped thing, and he throws it at her. 

She jumps, trying to catch it in the air, and misses by a mile. She runs after it as it goes soaring past her. 

He turns to look at Becky, laying on the grass with a book. “You were supposed to watch her over there.”

Becky shrugs. “If she wants to get into your carrots, who am I to stop her?”

“Dude, if she ruins my tomato plants, that means Rolan can’t make his homemade pasta sauce.”

Becky lowers her book and heaves a world-weary sigh. “Fine. I’ll watch the dog.”

“What a horrible, terrible job that is, I’m sure. You’re so hard done by.”

“I am. I am so hard done by. You have no idea.”

“Mhm.” Lily comes bounding back, toy in her mouth, and Rand leans down to take it. “Good girl,” he says, scratching her behind the ears. 

He rears his arm back and throws the toy directly at Becky. It lands on her face. She yelps and bolts upright before Lily can jump on her. “Fucker!”

He laughs as she throws the toy back at him. Lily barks and runs after it, and he picks it up before she can get to it, holding it above his head. She jumps up on her hind legs, pawing at his leg, barking, tail wagging so fast it’s a blur. 

Becky scrambles to her feet, book forgotten on the lawn, and raises her hands. He throws the toy at her and Lily bolts after it. Becky catches it, then tosses it back to Rand.

Becky’s book stays forgotten on the lawn for a while, until the automatic sprinklers turn on and she yells at Rand for distracting her while scrambling to rescue it from the wet grass. 

November 5, 2014

“I think we should get married.”

Rand chokes on his coffee, setting his cup down on the counter a little harder than necessary. “I woke up five minutes ago Rolan, what the fuck.”

Rolan scoffs as he pours coffee into his own cup. “Relax, I don’t mean, like—like a big fancy romantic ceremony, or anything. I mean from a legal standpoint.”

Rand nods, his sudden panic immediately dying down at the clarification. “Okay, god, you could have led with that.” Romance isn’t something he and Rolan do. They’re not boyfriends, but they’re not simply friends. Some weird indescribable third thing, where they have sex and tell each other everything and love each other, but not in that kind of way. It’s complicated, but it... works for them. Imagining them getting dressed up in suits and trying to say long heartfelt vows to each other and kiss in front of a bunch of people is—eugh. No thanks. “So—okay, why though? What’s your reasoning? Gimme your pitch. Sell it to me.”

Rolan drops a handful of sugar cubes into his cup and stirs it. “I know we’re retired from cape shit, so this is probably a little late, but like, there’s always a chance something could happen to one of us, right? Neither of us have any trusted next of kin or anything. I have my will leaving most of my stuff to you guys, but there’s no legal connection between any of us. In some cases, your next of kin can try to come in and claim some of that shit—but I did purposely state in my will that my relatives don’t get anything, just to cover all my bases—”

“Naturally.”

“But for some things like—like if I end up in the hospital again.” Rolan taps his spoon on the side of his cup. “If I end up deathly injured or something, my next of kin would get to decide what to do about it if I’m unresponsive. Which—which I am on a frequent basis when I’m not injured, so if I end up in a hospital and end up bug-brained for a while, I can’t make any decisions about what happens to me.”

“You do realize this has very little chance of happening anytime soon, right?”

Rolan pours a fuckton of creamer into his cup. “I’m just thinking about the future, man! Besides, if I have a spouse, I can name them as a successor holder of my tax-free savings account instead of a beneficiary, and that way you can just have the funds in the same account and none of it would get taxed.”

“I don’t speak finance, you’re losing me.”

Rolan turns around and leans against the counter, coffee cup in his hands. “You can inherit my entire estate upon my death without paying tax on it, we get tax breaks every April, and you get to benefit from my pension when I retire.”

Rand considers it. Lily barks and jumps up onto his leg, searching for attention. He leans down and scratches her behind the ears. “So basically, we get more money from the government for being married?”

“Pretty much.”

He shrugs. “Cool, I’m down.”

“Really?”

He takes a sip from his coffee. “Yeah, man. Only drawback I can see is having to call you my husband.”

Rolan snorts. “I’m not calling you that.”

Rand opens his mouth to speak, then grimaces. “I was going to call you stupid pet names to gross you out, but then I thought about it and grossed myself out.”

Rolan starts laughing, and Rand can’t help but laugh a little with him, the coffee cup in his hands warming his palms, Rolan’s buzzing a welcome sound in his ears, Lily’s fur soft beneath his fingertips.

God. Marriage was never something Rand had thought about before now. Didn’t think he’d live to the point that he’d get to do it, so he never considered it. Weird to think about. 

He stares at Rolan as the light of the sunrise cascades in through the window. Light dips into the lines on his face, casts an orange glow over the increasing number of silver hairs on his head. His mantis claws hang loose at his sides under his shirt, and the edge of it rides up as he lifts his arm to take a sip of coffee, a couple small teeth marks and bruises littered across his hip bones—Kian’s doing, for sure. Lily walks over to him, whining for attention, and Rolan leans down to pet her.

He supposes, if he had to get married to anyone, he’s glad that it’s Rolan.

June 9, 2015

“Been a while since we’ve been here,” Rand says, pushing his sunglasses into his hair.

“Yes, it’s good to have you back,” Solstice says with a smile as Rand takes a seat at the kitchen counter. “We’re very glad to see you, but still, we’re sorry for asking this of you, we just—”

“I get it, Sol,” Rand says, because he does—cape work gets fucking tiring. If he had to go back to it with no vacations, he would lose it. Lily wriggles in his lap, and he reaches into the pocket of his denim vest for a treat to keep her occupied. “You all deserve a vacation. Where are you going, anyway?”

“Miami. We thought we would go somewhere sunny, visit a beach. It’s been a while since Min has seen the ocean. She’d like to go back.”

Rand snorts. “Florida? You sure you wanna go there? That’s like, the worst state.”

Solstice cracks a smile. “Well, we’ve already booked the plane tickets and the hotel rooms. No backing out now.”

Rand hears bustling about upstairs in the training room. Gus and Rolan, probably, getting in a wrestling session before The Greats leave on their little vacation. They haven’t done that in a while. Rand knows Rolan misses the roughhousing he can do with other Brutes, especially Barbarian; he can go all out against Gus, who could literally get hit by a semi truck and walk out fine. 

Solstice checks his watch. “Well, I should go make sure I have everything. We leave for the airport in half an hour, and Min and Alphonz always run late.”

“No problem, man. Take your time, we’re not going anywhere.”

Solstice runs off down the hallway and disappears into one of the rooms. Rand looks around the living room, scritching Lily behind the ears. The Greats’ base is something Rand’s been a little jealous of. The downstairs is a flower shop, publicly run by Flora, and the two levels above it is a living space that they’ve renovated and expanded to fit all eight of them. The training room and Grayson’s workshop are on the top floor, and above that on the roof is an entire helipad. Where they got the funds for this shit, Rand has no idea, but he’s sure funding from the PRT and the Guild must have had some part to play in it. Rand would have loved something like this when they were still doing cape work. He’s sure they have an actual house elsewhere, but Rand’s never been there. They seem to spend most of their time here anyway.

He leans down and sets Lily down. “Go look around,” he says quietly. They’ll be here for a week; better get her used to the place now. She’s never spent more than a day somewhere that wasn’t home. 

She sniffs at the carpet, tail wagging, curious about her new surroundings. He hears Kian and Becky upstairs, probably talking to some of the other Greats, distracting them from finishing their packing. They should probably leave them alone—it’s not like The Greats can cancel or move their flight—but Rand just takes a sip of the coffee Sol made him and watches Lily explore. He’s sure Sol has it all figured out. 

He knows there’s a kid in the base. The Greats have done a decent job of trying to hide as much evidence as possible, but Rand sees it. The rubber guards on the edges of the tables, probably left over from when the kid was a toddler, the faint marker drawings on one of the walls, half covered up by a delicately placed painting, the photo frames on the coffee table placed face-down to hide whoever’s in the pictures, a small toy car sticking out from under the couch. The kid would be around eight now, probably. Wild that Rand’s known The Greats for longer than that. 

Rand pushes himself to his feet, leaning on his cane. He walks over to the couch and gently nudges the toy car all the way under the couch. He doesn’t want Sol to think he missed anything and start panicking about it. 

He slowly lowers himself to sit down on the couch. He’s not very familiar with the living space of The Greats’ base, having spent most of his time here in the training room sparring with Strider or Grayson, but he’s been down here once or twice when The Greats have invited him to stay for dinner. He hasn’t been back here in... a few years now. The only times he’s seen any of The Greats in person over the last while is when Grayson’s come down to Chicago with one or two of the others to do basic maintenance on Rand’s cane. It’s nice to be back, just for a visit. 

He hears something in the hallway and looks up, as does Lily. One of the doors is cracked open. Someone small peeks out of the room, barely half a face, just looking out with one eye. 

Rand freezes. He doesn’t know what to do with this. Sol clearly doesn’t want any other capes to know he has a kid. The kid looks down at Lily, glances up at Rand for half a second, then looks back down. Lily stares back at the kid. She lets out a soft woof, her tail beginning to slowly wag.

Rand clicks his tongue to get Lily’s attention. She looks back at him, eyes wide and pleading. He nods at the hallway. “Yeah, you can go,” he says softly. “Go see. Say hi.”

Lily turns back to the hall and steps closer, hesitant. The kid glances up at Rand again and opens the door a little more. It’s a bit hard to see them from this distance, but they’re clearly Solstice and Flora’s kid, evident even from here. Their skin is a touch darker than Anna’s, and they’ve got the sun-kissed freckles she gets in the summertime. Their ears stick out a little, much like Sol’s. Their dark purple hair goes down to their shoulders. Rand can’t tell if they’re a boy or a girl. He thought boy, from the toy car, but the hair makes him think girl. 

Lily trots over, tail spinning. The kid reaches down and lets her sniff their hand. They hesitate and glance up at Rand. 

Rand probably shouldn’t speak to the kid. Not sure what Sol would think of it. “She doesn’t bite,” he says. “Her name’s Lily.”

The kid looks back down at Lily and very gently pats her on the head. She follows their hand with her mouth and tries to lick their fingers more. The kid giggles and mutters a soft “ew, gross,” as she covers their palm in dog slobber.

Rand stands up and walks over to the wall, looking over some of the pictures as the kid crouches down to pet Lily. If Solstice comes into the room in a panic over Rand even catching a glimpse of his kid, he can pretend he didn’t notice. Plausible deniability. 

Another door in the hall opens and he hears light footsteps—Anna—and then he hears her speak, a quiet “Virion, honey, no, we can’t play with the puppy, let me help you finish packing.” He hears a slightly louder whiney voice say “But Mama,” and Anna shushes them. A door closes, and Lily comes trotting back, tail swishing back and forth, satisfied with her exploring. 

Rand makes his way to the stairs, whistling for Lily to follow him. Better be somewhere else by the time they have to leave. He wouldn’t want to accidentally see the kid as The Greats are leaving and have Solstice freak out about it. 

November 29, 2015

Rand pokes his head into Kian’s room. “Hey, have you seen Lily?”

Kian looks up from his guitar. His hair is growing out grey now, and he hasn’t dyed it back to blond in a few months. It doesn’t look bad, just... different. Rand likes it. “Nah, dude. Check outside?”

“Yeah, I called for her, but she’s not in the yard.”

“Did Becky take her to the store?”

“I don’t think Becky would take her to the store.”

Kian shrugs. “Then I got nothin’ dude.” He sets his guitar aside. “You think she ran out?”

“No, I don’t think she would.” He can’t help but worry about it, though, if he accidentally left the door open and she ran out or something, got lost in the streets of Chicago. 

He leaves the room and goes back out to the living room. He’s checked the garage, the backyard, the basement, everything. Where the fuck could she have gone?

He huffs in frustration, worry tying his gut into a knot. He goes to Rolan’s door—shut, for once, Rolan got bug-brained and wanted some time alone—and he opens it, hoping to ask Rolan if he knows where Lily could have possibly run off to, but he pauses the moment he opens the door. 

Rolan’s asleep on his bed, the covers tucked up to his chin, buzzing and clicking the way he always does when he gets unresponsive. Lying right on top of him is Lily, letting out light little snores. Rand watches as she wriggles in her sleep, letting out a light whine, and Rolan chitters softly and nuzzles against the top of her head. She quiets down and settles, her head tucked against his chin. 

Rand lets out a relieved sigh. He steps back and gently closes the door. 

He snorts to himself. “Didn’t want a dog, my ass,” he mutters as he turns to go back to his room. He’s got some theorizing to do before he gets started on dinner.

August 5, 2016

“You really should take better care of this thing,” Grayson mutters as he fiddles with the switch on Rand’s cane.

Rand pours coffee into a spare cup. “Sorry man, I haven’t needed to use the knives for a few years. The blades kinda got stuck.”

Grayson hums. “I’ll take care of it. I could make you a whole new one, if you wanted.”

“I mean, if you want a new project to work on, you can go ahead, but I don’t really need one.” Rand slides the coffee across the counter to him. “Go nuts, man.”

Grayson’s eyes light up with the possibility of a new project. Tinkers, man. Giving them something to work on is like giving a pumpkin full of meat to a tiger.

Alphonz leans over Grayson’s shoulder to watch as Grayson starts messing with the cane, some strands of his long blond hair falling into Grayson’s vision. Grayson huffs and gently nudges him out of the way. Rand slides Alphonz a cup of hot chocolate.

“How is retirement, Conspiracy?” Alphonz asks, his voice loud and boisterous. He’s clearly having a good day, his smile bright and wide, most of his hair neatly plaited into a braid—Min’s doing, for sure—wearing a loose shirt that’s clearly Strider’s. “Are you enjoying all the free time you’re getting? Starting any new hobbies?”

Rand shrugs. “Sorta. I’m getting pretty okay at crocheting. Don’t tell Rolan though.”

“Why not? Crocheting is a respectable, creative hobby!”

“It’s an old person hobby.” Rand pours some coffee into two more cups, adding creamer to one of them. “Be right back.”

Coffee cups in hand, he walks around the counter, past the dining table, and over to the garage door. He nudges it open.

“She’s got a lot of miles on her,” Becky’s voice says, and Rand sees her leaning over his truck, the hood open, “and she runs like absolute shit.”

Ram stares into the truck’s engine, cowboy hat tilted back so he can lean down without it falling off. “You ever thought about fixin’ ‘er up? She’s a real old model, she could be a damn good show truck if you gave her a good paint job and reworked some things.”

“As long as that rust bucket still runs,” Rand says, “I’m not retiring her from the road.” He sets the coffee cups on one of the tool shelves. “You can pry that truck from my cold dead hands.”

Becky snorts. “Yeah, he’s gonna drive this thing until the tires are falling off.”

Ram shrugs. “Your loss. She could be a beaut if you put in the effort.”

“All I need her for is to get me from point A to point B, man.” Rand walks back to the door. “Let me know if you nerds need anything.”

He shuts the garage door behind him, leaving Becky and Ram to their car talk. He doesn’t understand a damn thing about vehicles. Good for Becky that Ram is a car guy. Gives her someone to talk to about it.

Alphonz smiles at Rand, his mug of hot chocolate held in both of his hands. “Thank you for the hot chocolate, Conspiracy,” he says.

“Yeah, no problem, man.” Rand walks back to the counter, hobbling a little bit, back aching. He could grab his walker, but—they’re not on that level yet. He’s not using it around them. No one but Kian, Becky, and Rolan will ever be on that level around him. “So, how’s...” Rand leans against the counter and looks at them both, raising a brow.

Grayson looks up. “How’s... you mean, the kid?”

“I mean, yeah. Sol hasn’t told me about the kid, but like...” Rand shrugs. “Hard to keep shit from me.”

Alphonz beams. “Oh, yes! Yes, here.” He digs into his pocket and pulls out his phone. “Look, I have pictures!”

He turns his phone around to Rand, excited, and starts swiping through photos, too fast for Rand to really process most of them. In every single one is a kid with purple hair, smiling, playing with at least one of The Greats. He sees one of Min dyeing the kid’s hair, another of Ram and the kid spraying each other with water guns, and multiple of the kid on Gus’ shoulders.

“We’re not supposed to talk about him,” Grayson says, but he doesn’t sound very mad about it, too focused on fiddling with Rand’s cane.

“Oh, Solstice isn’t here, what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him,” Alphonz scoffs, taking his phone back and smiling down at the pictures. “His name is Virion. Have we told you that?”

“You haven’t, actually.” Rand takes a sip of his coffee. “Where’d the name come from?”

“Old family name of Anna’s,” Alphonz says. He doesn’t look up from his phone, like he misses the kid too much to even look away. “He’s—he’s such a good kid. He’ll be a great hero someday.”

Rand can’t help but smile, just a little. He’s probably never going to get to talk to the kid, not as long as Solstice is going to be so protective and paranoid, but that’s okay. That kid is probably loved more than any other kid on the entire planet. Good for him.

He opens his mouth to respond, but before he can get a word out, he hears a loud thump from the hallway, followed by the familiar sound of Rolan’s scared buzzing and Lily’s worried whining.

Rand sets his cup down. “Stay here,” he says.

He rushes off to the hall as fast as the pain in his back will let him, using the wall for support. He reaches Rolan’s door and shoves it open.

Rolan sits on the floor, a chair knocked over next to him. He’s staring at it like it’s going to hurt him, all four black eyes wide, clicking in distress. Lily nudges his hand with her nose, whining, trying to get him to pet her, do something other than stare into space.

Rand half closes the door behind him, walking over to Rolan as fast as he can. “Hey, hey, Rolan. Hey.” He sits on the floor next to him, reaching out, gently touching one of his mantis claw arms. “Hey, man. You’re good, you’re okay, it’s just—you just knocked over a chair.”

He knows Rolan can’t understand him, not like this, but he hopes his voice is doing something for him anyway, helping him somehow. Rolan couldn’t speak when he woke up this morning, but he was still more or less aware, still—still here. Rand hoped having Lily with him would keep him from completely reverting to this, but he should have known it wouldn’t work.

Lily whimpers and lays down, looking up at Rand like she’s asking why Rolan won’t pet her already. He picks her up and very gently places her on Rolan’s lap, hoping the weight of her might help. Rolan looks down at her like he doesn’t even know what she is. She rolls over in his lap, asking for belly rubs, her tail wagging, whining for attention.

Rand sighs. “Okay,” he says softly. “Kian’s back from work in a few hours, um—fuck, maybe I can get Becky to entertain The Greats while I—sorry, I don’t think—fuck, man.” Talk about perfect god damn timing. He runs a hand through his hair with a sigh.

He hears footsteps and whirls around. Alphonz stands in the half-open doorway, hot chocolate in his hands, peeking through the door. He tenses when Rand turns around.

Rand hesitates. No one but him, Becky, and Kian have ever seen Rolan like this. “Get—get out,” Rand says. “He—you—”

“Wait, please.” Alphonz steps in and nudges the door shut the rest of the way. “May I—may I try to help? Please?” He looks at Rand, eyes wide and pleading.

Rand glances back at Rolan. He’s still clicking, still afraid of—something, Rand’s not sure what, but anything can set him off like this. He could still be scared of the fucking chair for all Rand knows.

When Rand doesn’t say anything, Alphonz steps closer, hesitant, and then he sits down on the floor next to Rand, leaving some space between them. He reaches out with one hand, the other still holding his mug, and pets Lily where she lays on Rolan’s lap. Lily wriggles around and tries to lick at his fingers.

Rolan watches Alphonz’s hand like a hawk. Rand watches too, unsure.

A small wave of warmth wafts over Rand as Alphonz begins to glow, just a little bit, enough that his eyes turn from blue to yellow and the loose strands of hair around his face start to move a from the heat he’s generating. He keeps petting Lily, who sniffs at him like she’s not sure what to make of him.

Rolan clicks, curious at the light and warmth right in front of him, his fear forgotten. He looks down at Alphonz’s hand like a moth looking at a lightbulb, enraptured.

Alphonz smiles, just a little. “You’re alright,” he says softly. “Don’t worry, I know how this feels.” The Simurgh tattoo on the back of his hand stands out against his skin, the only part of him that doesn’t glow, aside from the few scars on his face and body from various villain fights over the years.

Rand watches as Rolan relaxes, clicking slowly and steadily. Alphonz just keeps petting Lily, who seems to really like how warm he is, because she relaxes right into Rolan’s lap and heaves a big tired sigh, content to stay right where she is.

Alphonz glances at Rand. “I won’t tell the others,” he says quietly. “If that’s what you’re worried about. Our team has its secrets too. I understand.”

Rand hesitates. He nods, short and sharp. “Okay,” he mutters. “Okay, yeah.”

Alphonz smiles. “You can go talk to Grayson. Tell him I’m in the bathroom or something.”

Rand looks between the two of them, Rolan buzzing and clicking in curiosity and contentment, leaning into Alphonz’s warmth like a cat in a sunbeam, Alphonz idly petting Lily, who seems like she’s on cloud nine, eyes half closed and tongue slightly sticking out.

Rand lets out a breath. “Okay. I... thank you.”

He gets up, using the wall for support, and leaves the room, gently shutting the door behind him.

When he goes to check on them an hour later, Rolan’s asleep on the floor, curled up in a big blanket, buzzing like a swarm of cicadas. Alphonz sits next to him, still gently glowing, feathery wings made of pure light on his back, one of them draped over Rolan’s sleeping form. Lily is on Alphonz’s lap, asleep and gently snoring.

April 2, 2017

Rolan drops his briefcase the moment he opens the door, tearing off his face mask and tossing it to the ground. “Guess who’s officially retired!”

Becky lifts a party noisemaker to her mouth and blows through it. “Congrats, grandpa!”

Rand lets Lily off his lap so she can run up to Rolan and jump up for his attention. “Now what are you gonna do. Take up knitting?”

Rolan starts taking off his suit jacket. “You literally crochet in your free time, asshole, don’t you talk.” He tosses his jacket on the armchair and kneels down to pet Lily, scratching her behind the ears. “You need another hand in the garden or anything this year?”

Rand shrugs, flipping through his D&D notebook. “Couldn’t hurt, I guess. You just better not fuck up, or like, eat my plants like a bug, or anything.”

“Maybe he can pollinate your plants,” Becky says. 

“Rolan, do not pollinate my plants.”

Rolan starts to laugh, straightening to make his way to the hall. “I’m not gonna pollinate your plants, man.”

“Good. Leave that shit for the bees.” Rand stands up, taking his cane in hand to follow after Rolan and Lily. “How was your last day?”

“It was good, actually.” Rolan nudges his door open and starts undressing, loosening his tie. “They threw me a little retirement party and everything.”

Rand leans against the doorframe. “You really liked that job, huh?”

Rolan smiles softly to himself as he unbuttons his dress shirt. “Yeah, I mean... I liked it a lot. Arguing in a courthouse has a lot more set rules than cape shit. It’s—it’s been nice.” He tosses his dress shirt aside. “But I’m ready to be done. I think I’ve been ready for a while. Talking so much, it’s... still hard. I feel like I’m going to go crazy with nothing to do, though.”

Rand steps forward, reaching to grab Rolan by the belt loop, turning him around to face Rand. “I mean, there are a few ways you can spend your time.”

Rolan snorts as Rand starts unbuckling his belt. “I literally just got home.”

“Okay, so let me help you unwind.” Rand grins as he slides Rolan’s belt out of his pants. “Unless you’re already tired. Need a Viagra to get going, grandpa?”

Rolan laughs. “Christ, Rand, you fucking suck.”

“Yeah, you wish I did.”

Rolan leans down and picks up one of Lily’s toys off the floor. “Hey, Lily! Go see Becky!” He throws the toy down the hallway. Lily barks and runs off after it. 

Rand nudges the door shut behind her and leans against it. He studies Rolan’s scars on his chest, the old claw-like slashes that are knit together with hard chitin, like built-in armor. His mantis claws unfold from his sides as he gets his undershirt over his head, clicking and sighing with relief now that he can let them stretch out free. He chitters as he steps closer to Rand, evidently tired of trying to maneuver his tongue in a human way to make human sounds. It takes effort, Rand knows. Hard thing to deal with when most of his job involved talking, but he won’t have to do it as much anymore. 

“You sure you’re gonna be okay not working?” Rand asks as he tugs Rolan closer. “You love your fucking job, man.”

Rolan shrugs, taking a moment to lean against Rand, tucking his face into Rand’s neck, gently buzzing. “I want to rest,” he mutters, his voice rough from use. “M’tired.”

Rand nods, leaning his forehead against Rolan’s shoulder. He thinks, for the millionth time, how strange it is that they’ve gotten here. Thirty years ago, he wouldn’t have even considered the possibility of even seeing Rolan again after he left Galloway for Chicago. Rand thought he was going to die in that bayou, just like his sister. 

But he’s here. He’s alive. So are Rolan and Kian and Becky. 

He takes a shaky breath, loops his arms around Rolan’s back, and takes a moment to just... be.

September 2, 2019

“Learn any new crocheting patterns lately?”

Rand snorts as he and Rolan sit down at the table across from Myrddin. “Fuck off, man.”

“He has,” Rolan says, picking up his coffee and lowering his face mask to take a sip. “He made a stuffed duck. It’s sitting on our kitchen counter.”

Myrddin cracks a smile, the corners of his eyes crinkling. “Sounds like you’re enjoying the retired life.”

Rand shrugs. “It’s okay. Kinda boring sometimes.”

“Better than fighting villains?”

Rand winds Lily’s leash around his wrist to keep her from walking around and sniffing other café patrons that have decided to sit outside. “Anything would be better than fighting villains, I think.”

Myrddin nods slowly. “It certainly sounds... peaceful.”

Rand furrows his brow. “What, are you considering retiring?”

Myrddin says nothing, just takes a sip of his own coffee.

Is he?

Yes.

“Man, you should,” Rand says the moment he’s given an answer. “It’s—it’s fucking—it’s great. You—I’m serious—”

“I have been thinking about it,” Myrddin says with a sigh, “but I know the Protectorate still—they need people like me.” He turns his cup in his hands. “The world can’t afford for me to retire.”

“It can,” Rolan says, his voice firm. “Trust me. There are plenty of capes out there who can take up the mantle. Revel would be a great leader of the Chicago Protectorate once you’re gone. Didn’t a few Wards recently graduate to Protectorate anyway?”

“Campanile recently graduated, yes,” Myrddin says. “Annex is next. He’ll be eighteen in less than a year.”

“There’s no shortage of heroes in Chicago,” Rand says.

“I’m not just thinking about Chicago,” Myrddin sighs. “It’s the world. The Endbringers. They need to be stopped, and I’m—I’m good at fighting them. Besides, I don’t really... know what I would do if I wasn’t fighting villains. I don’t have a partner, nor do I really have many... hobbies.”

Rand shrugs. “Never too late to get some hobbies, man. I only started gardening after we retired, and I’m good at it now. Join a club or something, meet people. There’s always stuff you can do, man.”

Myrddin huffs. “You make it sound easy.”

“It’s not as hard as you think,” Rolan says. “You could take some university classes. Never too old to learn things.”

He hums. “Perhaps,” he mutters. He furrows his brow. “Conspiracy, have you... figured out exactly why your powers have told you not to trust the Protectorate?”

Rand shakes his head. “Still no luck on that front. I kind of took a break from the theorizing, but I’ve been trying to get back into it. I think I need to figure this out, or it’s going to drive me crazy wondering.”

“Crazier than you already are?” Rolan mutters into his coffee.

Rand kicks him under the table. Rolan kicks him back.

“Shame,” Myrddin says. “I was curious. If you do ever figure it out, keep me in the loop? I would like to know.”

“Sure thing. I think it might take me a while, but I’ll get there.”

“Good.” He sighs. “I will have to seriously consider my path, going forward. I am... growing weary of fighting. I’ll have to think about it.”

Rolan grins. “If you do retire, Conspiracy can teach you crocheting.”

Rand snorts. “Fuck you, man.”

“It’s not a bad hobby! You’re just fucking old!”

“You’re literally older than me.”

“By less than a year!”

“Suck my dick, asshole.”

“Not in public.”

Myrddin chuckles. “Whatever I decide to do, I will keep in touch. I would miss these civilized, intellectual conversations that the two of you are so keen on having.”

January 23, 2020

“Rand?”

Rand sighs and turns around. “What?”

Rolan stands in his doorway, leaning against the frame, arms crossed. He’s wearing a bathrobe of Kian’s, one that apparently isn’t soft enough for Kian anymore and refuses to wear. Lily stands at his feet, eyes half closed, like she just woke up. She yawns and smacks her lips.  

“You’re doing it again,” Rolan says softly. 

Rand turns back to his board and sticks a note onto it with a tack. “I don’t know what the fuck you’re talking about.”

“You’ve been in here for two days. I told Beck I’d come talk to you if you didn’t come out for supper.”

Rand tries to tamp down the irritation that flares up in his chest. “Look, I’m—I’m onto something, okay?”

Rolan sighs. “Rand, you’re... You’re gonna get a headache if you keep at this.”

Bold of him to assume Rand doesn’t already have a headache. “I know, but—I’m so close, man.” He runs a hand down his face. “I just—I need more time. I can do this, I know I can.”

Rolan pushes off the doorway and walks over to Rand. “What are you trying to figure out?” He leans down and rests his chin on Rand’s head. The constant buzz in his chest is... nice. Soothing. Rand leans back a little, pressing himself into it. 

“Cauldron.”

“What do you have?”

“Well, they’re trying to provide the PRT with capes. They’re selling powers to people, and a lot of them do go to the PRT. The reason they’re doing it is because people who get their powers from these Cauldron vials are apparently less unstable than people who get their powers naturally. But how they’re doing it...” He shrugs. “I just don’t know. I keep trying to ask, work around whatever this blind spot is, but I just—I can’t. I don’t know, man.”

Rolan hums. He wraps his arms around Rand’s waist, chittering sleepily. “Hm. What have you asked?”

“What haven’t I asked?” Rand scoffs.

“Is there anything else you can focus on?”

Rand grumbles. “I mean... I stopped looking into the Prime Force after Origami died.”

“Mm, right.”

“I don’t care about the Elementals, they’re—whatever, they’re clones, they fell apart, who cares. The Triumvirate... They’re harder. They’re all Cauldron capes, and they’ve been given to the PRT by Cauldron, basically, but... there’s got to be more to them. They have to have more reach.”

Rolan hums again. Lily walks over to them and lays down at Rand’s feet, letting out a tired sigh. “You think any of them are part of the government? Like, out of costume?”

Rand pauses. “Maybe,” he mutters. “That—that could be the case.”

Are any of the Triumvirate part of the government? Out of costume?

His entire skull pounds, but his powers give him a quick Yes.

“They are.” He raises a hand to rub his temple. “Fuck, I—I need to—”

“Nope, you figured out something new, you can do the rest tomorrow.” Rolan noses at Rand’s hair. “Go to bed. It’s one in the morning.”

“That’s not even that late, you’re so old.”

“It’s so late, man.”

“You’re literally so old. You’re ancient.”

“We’re the same age.”

“You’re actually a dinosaur. A fossil.”

“I’m nine months older than you.”

Rand sighs. He lays a hand over Rolan’s arm, gives it a quick squeeze. “Okay. Fine. Tomorrow.”

Rolan clicks happily. He unwinds his arms from around Rand and takes his hand, gently tugging him away form his bulletin board, away from his theories, and out the door. Lily follows after them, walking slowly, sleepy from staying up so late.

July 6, 2021

“Do you want me to use my powers on you?”

Rand looks up. Becky’s sitting up on the grass, her book in her lap. Her salt and pepper hair hangs in coils down to her chin. She’s kept it short for about a year now, claiming it’s easier to manage. It looks good on her. 

He straightens from watering his daffodils. “I mean... I’m still open to it. Why? What brought this up?”

She shrugs, picking at the cover of her book. Lily plops herself down next to Becky, curling up against her side, tuckered out from running around and playing. “Just... thinking about it lately. Rolan ended up... fine. Kian is still how he’s always been and is okay with it. If... if you really want to risk something... fucking happening to you, then...”

“Yeah.” Rand sets his watering can down. “Like... right now?”

“No, I think...” She taps her fingers on the cover of her book, buzzing insistently. “I think if we’re going to, Rolan and Kian should also be here. Just in case something happens.”

He nods. “Okay. Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. Maybe... tomorrow?”

Becky’s buzzing gets higher. “Yeah. Tomorrow.”

July 7, 2021

“Are you sure, though?”

Rand looks over his bulletin board, the strings that go nowhere, the leads he hasn’t been able to follow up on. “Yeah. I’m—I’m sure.”

He glances back at Becky. She stands there, arms crossed. She’s wearing just her own clothes for once, nothing she’s borrowed or altered from the three of them. Like she’s withdrawing into herself, like she doesn’t want any of the others to bear the blame for what she’s about to do. 

Kian sits on Rand’s bed, Lily in his arms. Usually, she’s wagging her tail when Kian holds her, but she’s not right now. She doesn’t know what’s about to happen, but she can feel the tension in the room. 

“We don’t know what it could do to you,” Rolan says quietly from Rand’s desk chair. He’s clicking like crazy, so much so that his words are barely comprehensible, especially with his speech problems.  

“We’ll never know unless we do it,” Rand says, “and I’ll never know what any of this means if we don’t.” He gestures to his board. “I need to know what the PRT is doing, I want to know where our powers come from,  I need to know how Cauldron does what it’s doing, and I need to know where the Endbringers came from.”

“That’s a lot to figure out,” Becky says. “Do you think you’ll be able to once I do it?”

He shrugs. “Only one way to find out.”

She takes a deep breath. “Okay. Are you... ready?”

He studies her face, the hesitation in her black eyes, listens to the distressed clicking that’s mirrored by Rolan’s. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“I know, but...” She gestures to his bulletin board. “We’re never going to figure this out if I don’t. We’ve been sitting here playing house since we retired, as if the PRT hasn’t been shady as fuck from day one and there aren’t Endbringers destroying cities every few months. We need to know these things. If there’s any way my powers will give yours the boost they need to sort through all of this... I think we should do it.”

Rand nods slowly, heart beating a mile a minute. “Okay. Okay, yeah. Alright. I’m—I’m ready whenever you are.”

Becky takes another deep breath, steeling herself. She steps forward, and with one more hesitant look at Rand’s face to make sure he’s all in, she reaches out, and very slowly, very gently, touches two fingers to his temple. 

For a moment, nothing happens. Rand wonders if she’s even doing it, if she’s backing out, which would be a little disappointing because he really wants to know these things, but even then he wouldn’t blame her—

Something breaks. 

It feels like—like something in his brain snaps in half. Every single synapse fires at once, every neuron lighting up like fireworks in a single explosion of energy that makes his skull feel like it’s splitting open at the seams. A feeling, familiar, crushing, horrible, floods through him, a sudden onslaught of distress—grief. He feels—somehow, someway—like he’s—he’s losing something, something irreplaceable, something he can never get back, but he has no idea what it is.

The feeling doesn’t go away, like a hole in his heart. His vision warps, and he sees—something, a creature, near incomprehensible in scale, a being made of fractals that stretch impossibly across dimensions, glasslike scales—shards—flying off of it, a single one hovering right in front of his face, taking up his entire vision—

He’s... he’s seen this before. He’s seen it once already, when he triggered. He knows this now. He doesn’t know how he ever forgot it.

The first question he thinks to ask—not one of anything he needs to know, but one he wants to know, right now, faced with this—this being of vertigo-inducing size, monstrous, shedding shards like a snake sheds its skin. The first thing he needs to know. 

How did I forget this?

He gets no words. He sees the creature in full, gigantic, a titan against how small he is, how small their Earth is, making the—the whatever-it-is that he’s lost feel—more. Like a wide gap where something used to be.

It’s—it’s a cycle. Gaining knowledge, retaining information, hungry for answers. Multidimensional entities, spreading what they’ve learned. Turning into new entities. Continuing the cycle. Death and rebirth. 

This information will not stay with him. It tells him this, and he accepts it. He knows now. He will forget it. That’s—that’s not what he’s here for anyway. 

“Rand?”

He feels—hands. On his head. Gentle. It feels like a billion needles piercing into his skin all at once. His vocal chords vibrate—a groan. Pained. Like he doesn’t—like he’s never felt anything as intense as the rough calloused hands cupping his jaw. 

He opens his mouth to speak, but words escape him. Rand. His name. That’s—his name. He almost—he thought he forgot it, for a moment, but that’s absurd. 

“Neither of you could talk either. Maybe he’s just—he can’t.”

“Should we give him space, dude?”

No. He wants to say it. He can’t. There’s something hard against his knees. The floor. He doesn’t know when he got there.

The person in front of him—Rolan, that’s—that’s his name. Rolan sits on the floor in front of him. “Rand, hey, I’m—I’m here. You’re okay. Are you—getting anything? Anything useful?”

He tries to speak, tell them about the entities, the shards, but his mouth fails him. 

Questions. He needs—questions. 

Triumvirate. Wh—who are they?

Images. A man in a nice suburban house somewhere, somewhat handsome, with a husband and a kid, a billion pictures of his whole life flashing by faster than Rand can process, wearing a hero suit—Legend’s. Another man, middle aged, balding, sitting in a chair in a nondescript white room, getting a needle jabbed into his arm, him looking younger, in a wheelchair, sitting in a diner across from a dark skinned woman in glasses and another pale woman with dark hair, him looking older, standing in another white room, putting on a hero suit—Eidolon’s. 

Then a woman. A girl, in a hospital, sickly, dying, speaking to the same dark skinned woman. Donning a hero’s armor, growing older. Wearing a suit, business-like, professional. Rebecca Costa-Brown. Head director of the PRT, a member of the government, responsible for approving or disapproving all policies and regulations regarding parahumans. 

Alexandria.

“He’s not responding.”

“Neither did I, dude, he’s—he’ll be fine. It’ll wear off in—what was it, like a few hours? We just gotta be patient.”

“You think we can call Changeling? Get him to—to fucking—come over, fix him like he did you?”

“Chillax, Ro, he’s like... looking at us. You can see us, right Rand?”

Everything outside of him feels—wrong. Slow motion. They’re talking too slow, like they don’t—they can’t keep up with his neurons, how fast they’re bouncing back and forth. He sees all that in the time it takes one of them—the blond one, what’s his... Kian—to get halfway through his sentence.

Are they worried? 

It doesn’t need to answer. It dispels his view of the shard spinning in his vision, just enough to give him an overlay of the people in the room, looking at him. 

Their names keep escaping him. That’s—not good. He’s losing them. The hole in his chest gets bigger, worse, empty.

What else? He needs to—there were things he needs to know, reasons he did this. His entire body feels warm, like the light from the shard itself is burning his skin. 

Powers in a can. Cauldron. What—their purpose. Why—

The entities, again, filling his vision, spinning through space, shedding their shards. The cycle. Repeated over thousands of years, enacted, altered, and reenacted in other dimensions. Entities sharing their shards with sentient species, gathering information, and centuries in the future, exterminating the species and moving on, taking the information they’ve gained. 

Interrupting the cycle. That’s their purpose. 

This knowledge won’t stay, it tells him. He won’t know of the entities, the cycle, Cauldron’s goal, once he’s back to himself. That’s—fine. Fine. The cycle will complete long after he’s dead. He doesn’t—care. Someone will stop it, he’s sure, whether that’s Cauldron or some other organization. 

Will the cycle stop?

It doesn’t show him anything new, just the two entities, endlessly spinning in space, forming a helix against a void of black. 

The other three are talking. He doesn’t—he can’t... understand. The sounds they’re making. Words. He doesn’t understand them. The one in front of him says something that sounds familiar, a single syllable that feels like it’s referring to him, but he doesn’t—know. He doesn’t know.

There are other things he needs to know. What were they? The... the PRT. That’s basically just—Cauldron. Alexandria. The Director. She’s behind a lot of it. Pulling the strings. Cauldron, pulling her strings in turn, if she even has any to pull. 

His head hurts. It feels distant, like—like it’s not part of him. His vision blurs at the edges. He feels arms around him, moving him, lifting him. Trying to put him somewhere. The—the bed. They’re putting him on the bed. There’s a dog here too, some small-ish thing that whines and tries to crawl into his lap the moment he’s still. The weight is—familiar. The person who carried him sits him in their lap. They’re buzzing, like—like a bug. Comforting. 

His head feels—like it’s going to burst. Like there’s something pounding on it from the inside. 

There’s something he did this specifically to find out. Something important, something for the good of the world. 

Endbringers. Something about them. 

His vision blurs further. His head aches more. He knows, somehow, that he doesn’t have much time. One more question, that’s all he needs. He won’t push it too far—he doesn’t have to ask to know that would damage him somehow beyond repair. 

The... the Endbringers. What are they?

Something fractures in his brain, straining, connecting closer with his shard than he’s ever been, pushing, searching—

Behemoth. He sees it, in his mind. Layers upon layers of matter making up its body, getting denser, thicker, the further it gets into its body, protecting a core at its very centre. Something that connects it to—another shard, someone else’s powers, but whose—

A man, sitting at a desk, with a needle in his arm. Eidolon. His powers, his shard, gives him whatever he needs. 

“Rand!” 

He blinks. Everything feels slow. Too slow. His brain, working at a million miles an hour, feels too fast to keep up with his mouth. His vision, it’s... dark. He can’t see. He can feel, though, the body beneath him, the arms around him, the weight on his lap, the hand touching his face. 

He’s—losing himself. One more. He’ll forget so much of this the moment he’s lucid. He needs something, one thing to hold onto. 

Why?

A single sentence, a moment of clarity. He reaches up, grabs the arm connected to the hand touching his face. His words come back, his mouth working in sync with his mind for just a moment. 

“He needed worthy opponents.”

July 9, 2021

Rand wakes to a hospital room. 

He groans, peeling his eyes open. The lights above him are blinding. Too bright. 

“Rand!”

Someone blocks the light, leaning over him. He reaches up and his hand smacks against their face. “Fuck off.”

Multiple people sigh in relief. “Okay, he’s fine,” says a voice—familiar. Someone he knows. Becky? “Holy shit, man.”

He rubs his eyes and turns over, facing away from the light. “Man, what the fuck.” His voice is hoarse, like he hasn’t used it in a while. God. How long was he out?

Agony lances through his head at the question. He doesn’t get an answer right away, but he feels his powers straining for it, reaching, searching—

Two.

The only word it gives him. Two... hours? Days? Weeks? He doesn’t know. He’d assume... days, probably? Considering how long Rolan was knocked out for when this happened to him? If it turns out to be months or years, he will lose it.

He grunts, rubbing his eyes, blinking as they adjust to the light. There’s an IV in the back of one of his hands. “How—how long—”

“Couple days,” Becky says. She’s still not wearing any of her usual stuff—that is, she’s not wearing anything of Kian’s, Rolan’s, or Rand’s. She stands by the door, arms crossed, looking past Rand’s head, like she can’t meet his eyes. 

“You had us worried, dude,” Kian says. He stands at the end of Rand’s bed, holding Lily in his arms. Rolan stands next to the bed, steadily clicking. 

“You really have to stop doing this,” says a voice, and Rand leans past Kian and Rolan to see someone he doesn’t recognize. A... woman? Maybe? Hard to tell. Whoever they are, they have skin that’s almost grey, and their hair is a pale white, cascading down their back. They wear a simple cotton shirt and a long skirt. They smile at him, and Rand sees that their eyes are a pale, cloudy grey. “This is the fourth time I’ve had to give one of you a hand with this. I can’t be around to put you back to normal all the time, you know.”

Rand furrows his brow. “Uh...”

The person smiles. Then he blinks, and in front of him stands someone he vaguely recognizes, perfectly youthful, two purple horns sticking out of his head, the long skirt and plain shirt replaced by an ornate black and purple robe and a skin-tight turtleneck. He scrambles for the name in his head. Rand blinks again and the grey-skinned person appears in his place. 

“Changeling,” Rand mutters. “You’re looking... different.”

“It’s just Elena now,” Changeling says with a soft, almost nervous smile. 

Elena? He thought Changeling was a dude. That’s—okay, whatever, he doesn’t care. Congrats, whatever, he has more important things to worry about. He slowly sits up, grimacing all the while. His head hurts like a motherfucker. 

“Ch—Elena, could you—could you leave the room? For a minute? I gotta... I gotta talk to... my team.”

Elena nods once, firm. “Of course. I’ll give the four of you some privacy. Press the button next to you if you need anything.”

In a blink, they’re replaced by the illusion of a tall, handsome male nurse. They wink at him and brush past Becky to leave the room. The door shuts behind them with a click.

Kian sits down on the edge of the bed and lets Lily go. She whines and scrambles over the bed to get to Rand, trying to climb onto his shoulders, licking at his face. He pets her, partially to calm her down, partially so he has a moment to collect his thoughts. “Hey, hey, I’m okay, baby. I’m good, I’m okay. See, I’m right here.”

Lily whines, shoving her face against his, trying to get even closer. He snorts and scratches her behind the ears, her favourite spot. She relaxes a little, stilling to sit on his lap with her head lowered, letting Rand scratch her ears, running his fingertips through the very short but soft fur. 

“So,” Rolan says, sitting on the other side of the bed. “Did... did you learn anything?”

Rand buries his face in Lily’s fur as he thinks about it. He remembers... some things. There’s one thing that escapes him completely, some nugget of information that he doesn’t know.

“I... I was shown what gives us our powers,” Rand mutters. “I know that. But then I was told I would forget it, and I... was okay with that? For some reason? Like it didn’t matter as much as everything else, even though I’ve been trying to fucking figure that out for decades.”

“Did you learn about Cauldron?” Kian asks quietly. “I—I only learned so much when I bought the damn canister, dude, I wanna know why they’re doing what they’re doing. And how.”

Rand shakes his head. “That’s—I can’t. I don’t know that either. It was... related to whatever gives us our powers. I can only assume whatever it is doesn’t want us to know for some reason.”

“Is it a person?” Rolan asks. 

“No. At least, I don’t think so. I feel like I would know if it was. But it—it let me see the truth for—for a bit. Until I passed out.”

“Did you dream about anything?” Becky asks, her voice quiet. 

Rand thinks about it. He remembers... vague things. Shapes, colours, infinite and expanding, like glass shards spinning in his vision, but the more he tries to recall it, the further away it gets. “Yeah. I don’t know what, though.”

“Then... was there something you did learn?” Rolan asks. ”Anything you could hold onto?” 

Is there anyone listening in?

His head pounds. It doesn’t give him a word, like it’s too tired for that, but he gets a general feeling, a negative that feels like a roiling in his gut. Weird. He’s never... felt that before. It’s always been words. When his head hurts like this, it’s always just given him nothing. 

Is... is there anything recording this conversation?

Another negative. 

Will anyone know about this if I don’t want them to?

Negative. He grimaces. He needs to stop. If it keeps giving him negatives, he’s going to throw up. 

“The PRT,” he says quietly. “It’s... headed by Alexandria. Out of costume. Rebecca Costa-Brown.”

Becky’s eyes widen. “What?”

Rand nods slowly as the information comes back to him. “She’s heading the PRT. I already knew Alexandria was part of Cauldron, but I didn’t know her civilian identity was... the head director.”

“Does anyone else know?” Kian asks. 

His powers give him a negative without him having to ask himself. He grunts, placing a hand over his stomach. Eugh. 

“No. Please—stop asking questions.”

They all shut up. Rolan even stops clicking. Rand maneuvers Lily in his lap so he can shove his face in her fur and block out the bright lights of the hospital room. He takes a deep breath as she starts wriggling, trying to lick his face. 

“Director Costa-Brown is Alexandria,” he says quietly. “That’s... the biggest thing I got, I think. The other two... Legend is just some house husband. Eidolon just works some desk job in Cauldron. He’s too weak to actually fight anything anymore without getting artificial boosts from Cauldron. He—”

Rand jolts as the rest of it comes flooding back. He snaps his head up to look at the others. “Did I say anything? When I was out of it?”

They all exchange a glance. “You did,” Becky says. “All you said was ‘he needed worthy opponents.’ Then you passed out.”

Rand takes another shaky breath, holding Lily close to his chest. He can’t... he’s not sure if he believes the information he’s been given. No, that—he does believe it. He just doesn’t want it. He doesn’t want to be responsible for this knowledge.

“Eidolon’s powers give him whatever he needs,” Rand says slowly, piecing it all together in his brain. “Before he got powers, he was just some sad guy in a wheelchair. He feels useless. He needed... to be needed. He needed worthy opponents. His powers... made the Endbringers.”

The three of them all stare at him in various stages of disbelief. He shoves his face back in Lily’s fur. 

“What the fuck,” Kian whispers. 

“He doesn’t know,” Rand says quietly. “No one knows. He doesn’t control what powers he’s given when he switches them out. He doesn’t control what they do. They gave him opponents to fight, and he’s... he’s fueling them with his powers, it’s why he’s so weak, why he doesn’t show up to many fights anymore. He can’t fight them as well as he used to. In trying to make himself useful, he made himself useless.”

Becky and Rolan both start clicking, back and forth, both distressed. “So... how do we get rid of them?” Becky asks. “Do we... kill Eidolon?” She whispers it, like that’s an unimaginable thing to consider. It really is, truly—Eidolon, despite his weakness, is the sixth most powerful being on the planet, behind only the other two Triumvirate members and the Endbringers—his own creations. 

“I don’t think that would get rid of them,” Rand says. “His—whatever the source of his powers is, that would still be around, it just wouldn’t have an outlet. But it would probably keep there from being more Endbringers.”

Rolan clicks louder. “More?”

“I think...” Rand reaches up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “If someone else kills these ones, his powers would make new ones, new... new opponents for him to fight. He needs to be the one to kill them, but even if he does, he would need new ones to fight anyway.”

“So it’s a loop,” Becky mutters. “Get rid of these ones, new ones will pop up.”

“Eidolon needs to be depowered,” Rand says, voice shaking, lowering his hand and looking up at the others. “Or he needs to die.”

They all sit there, processing what Rand’s told them. Rand scritches Lily behind the ears. She just licks at his chin, unaware of the weight of the knowledge Rand has given to the others. 

He shoves his covers aside and moves to stand. “This—this information cannot leave this room,” he says firmly, pushing himself up on shaky legs. Kian reaches out a hand to steady him. “We’re—the PRT and Cauldron are too powerful to go against right now. We would need undeniable, solid proof of Alexandria’s identity before we do anything, no one will take the—the ravings of a retired madman as fact. And the Endbringers—they just need to be kept in check, made to do as little damage as possible until we can figure out a way to take Eidolon out of the picture.”

“That’s insane,” Becky says, rushing forward to steady Rand with Kian. “We can’t—we’re just a bunch of fucking geezers, Tim, we can’t take Eidolon out—”

“We have to try,” Rand says firmly, looking her in the eyes. “We—we have to figure out a way. Somehow. Eventually. We—we’ve got time, we can figure things out with time, we just... We have to.”

Rolan clicks louder, distressed, worried. Kian reaches over to grab his hand and give it a squeeze. 

Becky studies Rand’s face. He’s never been more serious about anything in his life, he thinks. 

Becky nods. “Okay. Yeah, we... eventually. We’ll... figure it out. We’ll find a way.”

Is it possible?

No words, still, his head pounding too hard to give him anything that makes sense. But there’s a flutter in his gut, like butterflies. Affirmative. 

It’s possible. They just need to figure out how.

Rand grimaces and sits back down. There’s time. They have nothing but time. For now... 

For now, he needs to rest.

October 16, 2022

“—following the devastating death of The Greats, the PRT has taken a page from Amity’s book. Much like when the Trickster settled in Amity and killed its heroes, Fauna itself has been quarantined off in order to contain the Lich, who killed all eight of The Greats in a horrible attack just yesterday—”

Rand jabs his thumb against the radio button. Rolan sits in the passenger seat. He holds the bag of groceries in his lap a little tighter. 

“Shit,” Rand mutters. “Shit.”

They had a kid. The Greats had a kid. 

He could ask if the kid died in the attack too, but he’s afraid to know the answer. 

Rolan takes a shaky breath. He doesn’t even say anything, just stares down at the groceries in his lap.

Rand pulls into the driveway and parks. He doesn’t move to exit the truck. His back aches. It’s hurt pretty much perpetually for the past year and change. Not just his lower back, like it used to be; it’s his entire spine, lancing through his nerves, leading up into his skull. Somehow, the pain just makes this whole—this whole situation worse.

The Greats, dead. All eight of them. Rand has had dinner at their house multiple times. One of them made him a cane, for fuck’s sake. 

Rolan sniffles and wipes his eyes. He doesn’t say anything, just clicks in a way Rand recognizes as distressed. Grieving. His eyes are black, unfocused. He’s—retreating into himself, his instincts taking over. His fingers lose their grip on the bag of groceries, unable to use them in a human way anymore. He clicks, upset, confused, almost scared.

The four of them don’t exactly have a lot of company outside of each other. Rand used to call Solstice once, maybe twice a year, just to check in, see how things were doing. Rolan used to wrestle with Barbarian, keep himself on his toes in case they ever need to come out of retirement. Kian, Becky, and Icewalker used to talk about hair and makeup stuff whenever they were around each other. Surface level things, but it was... a basis, small things that led to deeper conversations. It was an alliance. Camaraderie. 

God. They barely lived past forty, didn’t they?

Rand shuts the car off. “C’mon,” he says quietly to an unresponsive Rolan, reaching over to grab the bag of groceries. “We should get this inside.”

He leaves the truck, shoving the keys in his pocket, grabbing his cane and hobbling over to Rolan’s side of the vehicle. He opens the door, and with some effort, manages to reach over and unbuckle his seatbelt. He takes Rolan’s hand and leads him out of the truck. This is—easy, this is good, something he can do.

Rand nudges the door shut and leads Rolan up the steps to the house. He doesn’t care if their fucking neighbors see; they’ve probably seen weirder shit, they probably know already at this point, but who gives a shit right now?

He opens the door, mouth open, ready to relay the news, but he doesn’t have to. Evidently. Becky sits at the kitchen counter, her phone in front of her, displaying some social media post. She’s got her head down and is letting out a constant stream of clicks that match Rolan’s. Kian sits on the armchair in the living room, curled in a ball, his fleshy webbing covering the entire chair and some change, surrounding the floor in a metre-wide radius around him. Lily looks up at him, whining, worried.

Rand lets out a shaky breath. He drops the groceries on the floor and nudges the door shut. He leads Rolan to the couch, grabbing a blanket off the back of it. He whistles for Lily and she perks up, tail starting to swish back and forth, hoping for attention.

He sits down and pulls Rolan down next to him, draping the blanket over both of their laps. He pats his knee and Lily comes running over, excited, jumping up onto him and licking at his face.

“Shh, shh, chill, calm down baby,” he says softly, gently pushing her down. He pats his lap and she lays down, tail still slowly wagging, happy that someone’s paying her the attention she deserves. He guides Rolan’s hand to Lily’s back. Rolan just clicks, upset.

Rand’s eyes sting. Fuck. Fuck. His—stupid fucking powers are probably getting some kind of boost from this shit. He could be using that figure out more things, try to remember what he forgot when Becky used her powers on him.

Fuck that. Fuck this.

He leans his head against Rolan’s shoulder. He doesn’t cry. Shut the fuck up.

May 15, 2024

Rand wakes slowly, blinking in the light coming through the blinds. There’s a warmth all around him, clinging to his clothes, his skin. He turns to look at Kian, dead asleep, snoring away, fleshy sinew stretching from his body to Rand’s, holding him tight. 

Rand nudges him. “Kian, man. Lemme go.”

Kian grumbles in his sleep. He slowly cracks an eye open. “Morning,” he mutters. He starts to withdraw the fleshy goo from Rand’s body, absorbing it back into his skin. 

Rand sits up with a grunt. He scrambles for his walker leaning against the wall and unfolds it. 

Kian starts snoring again, his webbing spreading across the bed again as he slips back into sleep. He’ll be up in a few minutes. He can never sleep long if he doesn’t have someone else there. 

Rand nudges the door open and hobbles out, grimacing. He used to feel weird about using the walker, but he doesn’t give a shit anymore. He’s already old. He doesn’t care if he looks like it. 

He reaches the kitchen and leans against the wall. “Morning.”

Becky slides a cup of coffee down the counter towards him. She’s just wearing some of her own clothes, nothing that belongs to the rest of them. “Mornin’ Tim.”

He picks it up and takes a sip. “Thanks. Sleep well?”

She leans against the counter, steadily clicking. “No.”

“You could have joined me and Kian.”

She makes a face. “No, I think I just—I needed to be alone for a night.” She sips at her own coffee. “How about you? Migraine? Back?”

“Both.”

She grabs a bottle of ibuprofen and slides it towards him. He mutters a thanks and tosses a couple pills into his mouth, swallowing them dry. It’s gonna take a while to kick in. 

There’s something in her eyes. Regret. Guilt. She looks away from him and takes a sip of her coffee.

Did she use Kian’s creamer?

No.

She’s having one of those days, then.

He sighs. “Beck—”

“I’m sorry,” she mutters into her mug. “I know, I—you asked for me to do it, but I should have—”

“Stop,” Rand says, voice firm, ignoring how his head pounds even as he speaks. “I asked you to, and we learned things from it. We’ve been over this.”

She takes a deep breath and nods slowly. “Yeah. Yeah, okay.” Her voice is quiet.

He glances around. His denim jacket is draped over the back of one of the chairs at the counter. Rolan’s worn it once or twice, and Rand’s given it to Kian to wear a couple times, but it’s the one thing of Rand’s Becky has never touched. 

He grabs it and tosses it at her. “Here.”

She startles as it hits her in the face, nearly dropping her cup. “Hey!” She pulls it off her head and looks down at it, a million expressions passing across her face when she realizes what it is. She looks up at him, unsure.

He turns and starts walking into the living room, leaving his walker so he doesn’t have to struggle with trying to use that and carry his coffee at the same time. He’s not sure where he left his cane. “Either put that on or go change, you look cold.”

He hisses through his teeth and leans against the armchair as he enters the living room. Rolan’s sitting on the couch, wrapped up in a blanket, Lily on his lap, staring at the TV screen with all four black eyes. His hair is almost entirely silver now, Rand notices. It looks good on him. 

Rand hobbles over to the couch and slumps onto it, letting out a grunt. Lily perks up, clambering off Rolan’s lap and walking across the cushions to Rand, tail wagging. Rolan buzzes out a complaint as she leaves him and settles on Rand’s lap instead. 

The news is on TV. A Leviathan battle in Brockton Bay. Rand idly sips from his coffee as he reads the headlines scrolling across the screen. Armsmaster’s been put on house arrest for breaking the unspoken rules and getting a bunch of villains killed in some wild plan to kill the Endbringer. He also lost an arm, which Rand feels only a little bad about. He’s never been a huge Armsmaster fan. Always found him arrogant.

“Armsmaster aside,” says the reporter on screen, “Tide, with the help of the Wards team of New Haven, have been able to claim a victory against this Endbringer for today, damaging Leviathan enough to drive him away. This is one of the New Haven Wards’ first Endbringer battles, and after the impressive display of their strategy and prowess today, the public is placing their hope in this new generation of heroes—”

Rand tunes out the voice as footage of the fight itself appears on screen, filmed through some cape’s bodycam—Armsmaster’s, most likely, judging by the Halberd that keeps swinging into view. The Wards from New Haven are prominent in every shot on the front lines. Failsafe, a red blur as he flies around, tanking waves of water and shoving other capes out of the line of danger with seconds to spare. Wraith, glowing like a supernova, brighter than even Retribution’s powers, crackling white-blue fire rolling off his form. Imprint, tagging Tide with a bare hand, glove tucked in his back pocket, and controlling the water with him, like he’s done this before. 

They’re powerful. Rand’s almost intimidated. 

Becky shuffles into the living room. She’s carrying Rand’s walker with her, his jacket pulled on over her shirt. She leans the walker against the side of the couch for him, then settles in the armchair, pulling her legs up to curl herself into a ball against the back cushion, tugging Rand’s jacket around her, buzzing quietly. 

Footsteps move down the hall, and Kian enters the room in a jaguar print bathrobe, his hair a mess, the ends freshly dyed a light purple-ish pink. He yawns and rubs his eyes as he shuffles over to the armchair and leans down to wrap his arms around Becky, burying his face in her hair, muttering a quiet “good morning.”

Rolan scoots across the couch to Rand, chittering in annoyance, like he’s grumbling to himself over Lily leaving him for Rand. He settles leaning against Rand’s shoulder, almost completely enveloped in his blanket. Rand leans his head against Rolan’s. He glances over at Kian and Becky, watching as Becky hesitantly takes Kian’s hand and squeezes it as webbing spreads outward from his flesh to cling to her, covering Rand’s jacket. 

Rand sets his coffee cup down on the side table to pet Lily. He reaches over to Rolan with his free hand, snaking into the mess of blankets to grasp for his hand or something to just hold onto. One of Rolan’s mantis claws finds his fingers, hooks digging into his skin, holding him. He looks back to the TV, the multiple Wards teams on screen, facing off against an Endbringer just as well as their grown mentors. He watches as Imprint rises up on a wave and leaps up, Failsafe ducking down to smack his hand against his. Imprint darts into the air with his newfound flight, borrowed from Failsafe, zipping off at an inhuman speed towards Leviathan, where Wraith has surrounded the Endbringer with a bright blueish ring of fire, glowing like a miniature sun. 

There’s so much they have to do. There’s so much they need to figure out, ways to get rid of the Endbringers, expose Cauldron and the PRT for what it is. 

For now, though, he thinks the world is in pretty good hands.