Chapter Text
It was a glorious night to be a hero.
Subaru perched on top of a building, looking like a gargoyle in the uncertain light, and gazed down on the glittering city below him. It was perfect weather to be out on patrol: not a cloud in the sky, the full moon shining like a spotlight above him, and just enough chill in the air to make him not mind doing heavy work in full armor. Subaru liked his costume, but sometimes wearing a heavy black power suit in strong sunshine could really wear on a guy.
Some distance away, Thomas perched on a different corner of the building, watching the street from the other side. After a few minutes, he stood up and made a slight gesture, just the merest tilt of his head and a wave of the hand. Subaru automatically understood this as, "All's well here, let's keep moving," and nodded back. The two of them started to run across the rooftops in easy synchronization.
Subaru grinned behind his mask. We're really getting the hang of this buddy thing, aren't we?
Ahead of him, there was a wide gap between one building and the next, making way for multiple lanes of busy street and a decorative median full of statues. Thomas picked up his pace, reached the edge of the roof, and jumped. His power bore him aloft, and for a moment, he drifted easily through the night sky, light as thistledown, graceful as a deer. The trailing banners of his costume fluttered behind him, and the light of the stars shimmered on his silvery armor. Subaru admired him as he drifted across the face of the full moon.
So cool! he thought.
Thomas landed neatly on the other side and turned to look back at his partner.
"Well, come on!" he called. "Let's see you do it!"
Subaru grinned. He'd been practicing this trick for days now, and he really thought he was getting the hang of it, but if Thomas wanted to see him show off...
He got a running start, bounded off the roof, and continued running, apparently on thin air. By daylight, the trick was almost invisible. At night, it was just possible to see the brief pink flashes of force fields coming suddenly into being, and then blinking out again when he was done using them as stepping stones. The trick, he had learned, was not to lose his rhythm. As long as he kept everything in sync, he could stay aloft until he was too tired to run anymore. If anything threw off his pace... well, that was a problem he was still working on.
But this time, at least, he made it safely to the other side and struck a triumphant pose.
"See?" he said. "I knew I could do it."
"I wouldn't have told you to do it if I didn't think you could," said Thomas mildly.
Subaru grinned anyway. That was high praise, coming from Thomas.
They set off again, patrolling the city, watching for any sign that things were not as they should be. There had been some signs of restlessness ever since the last attack by Ouroboros, but Subaru hoped that eventually everything would settle down and stay peaceful for a while.
Though maybe not too peaceful. A hero had to work.
He and his partner paused a moment, both to catch their breath and take in the scene around them. After all, they couldn't expect to see everything if they were focused on running. Subaru settled down into his gargoyle pose again, scanning the activity on the street below automatically while he let his mind wander. For a while, he was preoccupied with important things like whether Thomas would want to come with him to check out that new ramen place, how his latest press photos would come out, and what he should make for dinner next week.
A thought nudged him, and he looked around, suddenly on alert. He had just seen something, but what had he seen? The street below him looked as quiet and peaceful as ever, and yet suddenly all his senses were on high alert. He probed the sensation.
"I think we need to go that way for a while," he said, pointing.
Thomas looked at him, the line of his body suggesting irritation.
"That's not our beat. We're supposed to be patrolling from Elysium Square to Long Street."
"I know," said Subaru, squirming with embarrassment. "But my instincts are telling me there's something going on that way and we should look into it."
"Instincts," Thomas repeated dubiously.
"What I mean is," said Subaru, "I'm sure I just saw something, but I don't know exactly what I saw. It just flashed past me, and my gut told me it was wrong."
"Hm," said Thomas. He stood up. "All right, we'll go a few blocks that way, and if we don't find whatever it is, we'll come back, and I'll blame you for making me run an extra mile for no reason."
Subaru grinned behind his mask and sprinted off.
I knew he trusted me.
A few blocks later, Thomas stopped suddenly. Subaru, preoccupied with trying to see everything at once, had to scrabble to keep himself from running into him. Thomas ignored his clumsy skidding and pointed at something on the street.
"Is that what we're looking for?" he asked.
Subaru looked, and immediately realized that Thomas was right.
"Yeah, that's it!" he said. "You're pretty smart, you know that?"
Thomas nodded thoughtfully. "You're not so bad yourself. Just one quick glance and you knew something was wrong."
Subaru felt proud of that. It had been pure instinct, or at least, experience honed so well that it was the next best thing. The object that had attracted their attention was a moving van. Nothing special, one might say: just a big boxy vehicle with "Hefty's Hauling" painted on the side in cheerful red letters.
But Thomas was ticking things off on his fingers.
"A moving van, out late at night when all the moving services are closed for the day," he said. "The logo looks freshly painted, as though it's covering up something else. There's no phone number or e-mail anywhere on the truck - nothing that someone could use to contact the company if they wanted to hire them. And there's a scrap of a tarpaulin or something hanging out the back door, just enough to hide the license plate. And I've never heard of that moving service before. Let me check something..." He tapped the call button to get in touch with Hero TV. "Hello? Yes, could someone look something up for me? I just want to know if there's a business anywhere nearby called Hefty's Hauling." He waited a moment before thanking whoever he was speaking to and cutting the connection. To Subaru, he said, "They say there's no such place, as far as they can tell."
"And you noticed all that in only a few seconds," said Subaru, somewhat enviously. "I didn't think any of that stuff. I just looked and thought there was something weird about it."
"Well, you noticed it and I missed it the first time around," said Thomas. "Shall we see where they're going?"
"Let's," said Subaru, grinning.
So they followed the ersatz moving van away from the heart of the city and towards a seedier part of town, down on the lowest level. It was darker there, with less moonlight and fewer street lights. The truck traveled faster as it left the more congested parts of the city behind, and Subaru found himself having to work to keep pace with it.
If this just turns out to be some guys starting a moving business and burning the midnight oil, I'm going to feel really stupid.
But the van didn't stop at anything resembling a moving business. It parked in back of a warehouse, where the door to a loading dock had already been pried open, and now stood warped and mangled. It looked as though these people were up to no good, and that they had already made at least one trip. Subaru and Thomas perched on a nearby roof, and watched as the drivers let themselves into the building.
"Let's go have a closer look while they're busy," said Thomas.
Subaru agreed, and they dropped down to street level. Thomas and Subaru together managed to get the doors of the moving van open and had a look inside. It was full of cardboard boxes. Subaru flipped one open and had a peek inside.
"It's full of bricks," he said. "Are they stealing bricks?"
"I don't think stealing is what they're doing," said Thomas thoughtfully. "More... trading."
"Huh?"
But before Thomas could elucidate, three men came out of the warehouse, their arms full of cloth sacks. They stopped short as they recognized two licensed heroes standing in front of them.
"Hi, guys!" said Subaru cheerfully. "Nice night for a burglary, huh?"
It didn't take long to get the thieves secured and shipped off to the police. The two heroes lingered a while, making sure their burglars didn't have any confederates hanging around nearby. Thomas wandered over to a crate that had been prized open and pointed inside.
"See," he said. "I can show you what they were doing."
Subaru came to stand next to his partner and peered into the box. It seemed to be a shipping crate for luxury watches.
"Man, those are nice," said Subaru. "Very classy. I wouldn't mind having one of those to wear to events and stuff."
"You'd break it," said Thomas offhandedly. "Anyway, look."
He picked up one of the boxes and opened it carefully. Someone had taped it shut so neatly that only the most careful observer would have realized that it had been opened at all, but once the flaps were open, Subaru could see that a box that should have contained a dozen watches was instead full of bricks and other junk.
"Okay, that's weird," said Subaru. "Stealing pricey watches, I can understand, but why bother to fill up the boxes with junk?"
"To make it less obvious something has been stolen," said Thomas. "They take all the loot, they swap it with something that weighs more or less the same, and they seal up all the boxes and crates. Everything gets shipped off, and maybe the boxes don't get opened again for days or even weeks. By the time someone notices that the watches are gone, the thieves are long gone as well, and they've probably already offloaded the loot."
"Well, that's sneaky," said Subaru disapprovingly. "Man, I wish we'd gotten here sooner."
Thomas patted his shoulder. "We wouldn't have gotten here at all if you hadn't noticed that truck. As it is, they only managed to get away with one or two truckloads instead of cleaning out the whole warehouse. And since we caught them in the act, we know to be on the lookout for someone trying to fence stolen watches, so the owner might get his stolen goods back. So I think we did pretty well tonight."
Subaru grinned at that. He wasn't the type to let anything get him down for long.
"Yeah, we did pretty good," he agreed.
It was, he thought again, a good night to be a hero.
Carlotta breezed into the office, looking cheerful.
"Lighten up, boys," she said. "I've got presents for you."
Thomas did not exactly look happy about this, but at least he sat up and looked more alert. Subaru looked as eager as one might expect upon hearing he had a gift in store.
"What kind of presents?" he asked. Then his expression shifted. "That isn't your cute way of saying you've got some kind of job in mind for us, is it?"
Carlotta pressed a hand to her heart in mock-amazement. "What do you take me for? Would I do that sort of thing to you?"
"Yes," said Thomas honestly.
"Well, all right, I might," she said, unoffended. "But I really do have presents. Here you go."
She opened her attaché case and took out two small boxes, one black and one white, and handed them to her charges. Thomas took the white one, weighing it in his hands.
"Huh," he said. "What's this for?"
"They're thank-you gifts from that man who owned the warehouse you caught those burglars in the other day," she said. "Apparently he thought you deserved a reward for stopping them from clearing out his stock."
Thomas didn't comment on that. On the one hand, he was truly glad that he'd been of some help in preventing further theft. On the other hand, the stolen goods still hadn't turned up. The police had interviewed the burglars, but they had been merely hired muscle. Their job was to collect the watches and deliver them to a drop-off point, where someone else would pick them up. By the time the police had arrived, the stolen watches were gone, and so were the people who had collected them, and there were no more leads to follow.
Even worse, there had been further reports of similar robberies all around the city. The heroes had managed to catch a few burglars in the act, now that they knew what they were looking for, but it was a big city and they had a lot of ground to cover. These thieves, it seemed, would steal anything - jewelry, electronics, drugs - anything as long as it was small and being shipped in quantities. All of them claimed to have been hired for the job and none of them seemed to know who their employer was. All the heroes could do was keep their eyes peeled and hope for a break.
If it isn't one thing, it's another, Thomas thought.
But at least for now, people were being grateful instead of blaming the heroes for not stopping this already. He opened his box.
It contained a watch. It was a handsome timepiece, on a strap of soft white leather with a subtle fernlike pattern embossed into it. Tiny diamonds were embedded around the face at the twelve, six, three, and nine positions. When Thomas turned it over, he found that the words, "To He Is Thomas, with gratitude," were inscribed into the metal.
"Wow, this is really nice," said Subaru. His own watch was identical to Thomas's, save that the strap was black instead of white. "Too good for me. I'm afraid if I wore it to work I'd break it."
"Save it for formal occasions," Carlotta suggested. "It won't hurt to let the world think you have a little class."
Subaru grinned. "Even if it isn't true?"
Thomas was startled into laughing. "Maybe a little practice will do you good. Fake it till you make it, isn't that what they say?"
Subaru laughed too. Things like that didn't offend him, not anymore, not when they were coming from Thomas.
"When do I go to formal occasions?" Subaru asked. "My idea of fancy is when I sit down at a restaurant instead of getting takeout."
"Well, you're going to have to be formal soon," said Carlotta. "You've got an event coming up."
"First the carrot and then the stick," Thomas murmured, but too quietly to be heard.
"What kind of event?" Subaru asked.
Carlotta took out two folded programs and handed them to each of her charges.
"You know that new hotel down by the ocean?" she said. "The big one with the fountains outside”"
Thomas nodded. "I know it. Ruby stayed there the last time she and her parents came to visit."
Carlotta nodded. "Well, they're going to be hosting some kind of convention - a big superhero fan fest - and you're going to go."
"A what?" Thomas repeated.
"Hey, sounds cool!" said Subaru.
Thomas made a face. "It sounds like a waste of time. Haven't we got more important things to do?" He flipped through the pamphlet, scowling. "All right, I know we have to do the commercials and handshake events, but to spend a whole weekend hanging around posing for pictures..."
"He might have a point," said Subaru, frowning a little as the idea sunk in. "What about all these robberies? What about the Bright Obsession show?"
The Bright Obsession show had been on everyone's mind lately. A famous jewelry designer by the name of Santini was preparing to release a new collection and auction off several one-of-a-kind pieces. There was going to be a grand gala where all the best and brightest of Stern Bild and the surrounding cities would be out in their finery, dining and dancing and admiring the gemstones. It was the sort of event that attracted trouble, and all the heroes had been wondering, privately or publicly, if all the little thefts they had been seeing lately were building up to a strike against the collection event. If this fan convention interfered with protecting the jewels...
"I don't think you need to worry," said Carlotta. "The gala isn't until Tuesday, and the convention runs from Friday to Sunday. By the time the big jewelry show is happening, the convention will be over and done with."
"I guess that's not so bad, then," said Subaru.
"But we still have our regular duties," Thomas pointed out. "We can't spend all weekend at the hotel, can we?"
"Don't worry about that either," said Carlotta. "The organizers are aware of that and they planned everything accordingly. Each duo has to do a Q&A session, and one photo op per day. The sessions are staggered so there will always be a few people free at any given moment. The only time all of you are expected to be in the same place at the same time is on Sunday night when the big closing dance happens, and even then, it's not like you'll be locked into the hotel. You can leave any time something bad happens."
Thomas turned that over in his head. It sounded like the people arranging this were being sensible about matters, but still...
"Anyway," she went on, "it's not just you and your friends who've been invited. There are going to be heroes from cities up and down the coast. I think a few of your old teammates are going to be there, Subaru. And I know a couple of the heroes from the city where Ruby is living now are going to be there, Thomas, so you can scope them out in person and reassure yourself that your sister is in good hands."
"Hmm," said Thomas.
Carlotta, sensing weakness, pressed on. "In the meantime, you'll all have VIP passes to the event and everything in the hotel. You can use the pool and the spa, have free meals at the hotel restaurants and snack bar, and discounts on anything sold in the hotel gift shop and on official convention merchandise."
Thomas shrugged. "Well, I'm still not crazy about the idea, but it sounds like there's no getting out of it so I might as well do it."
"Yeah, it sounds like a blast!" Subaru agreed.
"Great," said Carlotta. "Then your next step is to head downstairs for a costume fitting. You two are going to need formal suits to wear, and I do not trust either of you to choose something suitable to the occasion."
"Aww, man!" Subaru groaned. "Give a guy break!"
"Go, go, go!" she said, shooing them towards the door. "You're on a schedule! The sooner you get it done, the sooner you can go back to whatever it is you think you should be doing."
Thomas gave in with reasonably good grace. Being fitted for a nice set of clothes was hardly the most unpleasant thing he'd been asked to do as part of his hero career. It would almost be worth the bother, he thought, to see someone stuff Subaru into some decent clothes for a change.
"Come on, partner," he said, giving Subaru a gentle shove. "Might as well get it over with."
As they headed for their costume fitting, Thomas reflected on the upcoming convention. It seemed like a waste of a weekend to him, time he might better spend on something useful, like patrolling the city or catching up with Ruby. Even grocery shopping with Subaru would probably be more satisfying, because at least he would undertake it in the knowledge that it would result in a good dinner later.
I'll put up with it, he thought, but I don't expect to have any fun.