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Chapter Text

September 2009

“Taylor, can I talk to you about something?”

I felt my whole body tense when Dad asked the question. He looked uncomfortable, breaking the silence that had overtaken the dinner table ever since Mom died with a stunted voice, and I just knew he was going to ask about Emma.

School had only been back in session for a week, but it’d been a lot longer since Emma had last been over or since Dad had last seen her. I’d hoped he wouldn’t ask, and I’d hoped even harder since school started and Emma made it clear we weren’t friends anymore.

I’d told Dad that first day of class—about the bullying, not that Emma was the instigator—but I was really regretting it now. It’d escalated since then, and I really, really didn’t want Dad to get involved, but I knew that was the direction this conversation was going.

I was so certain that Dad was going to ask about Emma and the bullying that I’m pretty sure my jaw actually dropped when he asked, “How would you feel about me dating again?”

It was so unexpected that it felt like my brain and every thought running through my head came to a screeching halt, like it couldn’t even process what he’d just said. Dad? Dating? It felt like those two words shouldn’t even be in the same sentence, let alone coming out of either of our mouths. It was weird to think about, but the more pressing feeling was one more like hurt. What about Mom? It hadn’t been that long, had it? How long was a normal amount of time to start dating again after losing your wife?

I didn’t know. I didn’t have any friends who’d lost a parent before. Or, well, I didn’t have any friends, period. The closest thing I had was my history with Emma, and I supposed there was a little to go off from there, but not much. Mr. Barnes had some stories from work as a divorce lawyer, but he never got into much detail, and I usually didn’t care enough to listen past what would be considered polite. 

With divorce, it seemed pretty hit or miss. Either people started dating again right away, or they never dated again. Was it the same with death? It felt like it shouldn’t, but I really didn’t know. It felt like long enough had passed that it didn’t feel totally inappropriate to entertain the idea of Dad dating, but her death was still fresh enough that it felt a little like a betrayal once I’d thought about it after a few moments. I couldn’t stop thinking about Mom once I’d started. That probably meant it was too soon, right?

“Are- Are you just thinking about it?” I asked once I found my voice. It was a real possibility that Kurt and Lacey had just encouraged Dad to go speed dating or something. I didn’t think Dad would talk to me about that, though. It had to be something more concrete. “Or did you meet someone?”

I thought it was a good question. It made me feel like I knew more about relationships than I actually did. More importantly, it would give me more information to work with before giving Dad an answer to his question.

“Um, the latter,” Dad told me, and I wasn’t sure if that was better or worse. Worse, probably. It meant he was thinking about a real person, not just the abstract idea of replacing Mom. “We saw each other a lot when you were at summer camp, and things have been going well. I think we might really have something, but I don’t want to… I don’t know, do anything you aren’t okay with.”

In other words, he was willing to break up with her if I asked. Okay. I didn’t know how to feel about that. I guess it was nice to know I had the power here, but the fact that Dad was willing to give me that power made me feel guilty about using it.

“What’s she like?” I asked, still not answering the question.

“He,” Dad corrected, and that was even more surprising than the whole dating thing.

“He?” I echoed. The idea had never even crossed my mind.

“He,” Dad confirmed, looking a little more nervous, but there was something stronger brimming underneath it. Happiness? No, definitely not. Pride? Probably not, but maybe. Relief? I could see it. “You know your mother ran with Lustrum’s gang.”

People had said that to me enough that I knew what the euphemism meant. It still didn’t explain Dad, though. Was he just reminding me that Mom liked women? Or that she might’ve liked women. I guess no one explicitly told me one thing or the other. I didn’t see much point in Dad mentioning it right now.

“What’s he like then?” I asked, deciding it was better to circle back than keep asking Dad about his sexuality. It didn’t sound like this was something new for him, but he seemed uncomfortable talking about it, and I didn’t really want to think about it. It didn’t really matter in the end. Man or woman, the important part was that it was my dad who was dating them.

Okay, now that I’d sat with it for a few seconds, maybe it mattered a little bit. I’d stopped thinking about Mom so much when Dad said the person he liked was a guy. It made it a little easier to separate “Dad is dating someone” from “Dad is replacing Mom.” Was that homophobic? I should look it up later, especially if Dad dating men was going to be a thing.

Dad said the man’s name was Ken. Dad met him through work, because of course he did. Where else did Dad go? He met him at a DWA negotiation, Ken having a similar role in one of the other groups that occupied the space around the docks. If I’d ever thought about it before, that was probably the kind of guy I’d say I could see Dad dating. Someone like him, maybe a little more rugged.

“He’s um, Asian,” Dad told me when I didn’t say anything for a little too long after he’d finished telling me about Ken. His voice went a little nervous again, and I wasn’t sure why. Ken being Asian wasn’t any worse than finding out Dad was dating again or that Dad was gay. Or bisexual, I guess. Queer.

“Okay?” I responded, not knowing what Dad wanted me to say. Did he think I was racist or something? “You know I’m not part of the Empire or anything like that.”

“I know,” Dad said, and he almost sounded a little amused. “It’s just… You know most Asian people in Brockton Bay run with the ABB? Especially the men, and especially around the docks.”

I hadn’t known that. Should I have? It made sense. There were a lot of posters at school with resources to help Asian kids who were having trouble with the ABB, but I’d never seen anyone looking at them. I figured they just knew the school sucked and wouldn’t help them.

“So, he’s a gang member?” I asked. I didn’t like the idea of Dad dating someone like that.

“Well… He’s never told me he is or he isn’t, but I haven’t asked either,” Dad said, and what kind of answer was that? “The ABB has a lot of legitimate businesses around the docks, but I really doubt there’s a lot of people who are just part of one or the other.”

Wasn’t the ABB a gang? Was that how gangs worked? I’d seen stuff about protection payment on PHO and in Mafia movies, not that I’d really watched any. Was that what Dad meant? But why would Ken be negotiating with the DWA if he was just a business worker in ABB territory?

“Like I said, pretty much every Asian person in Brockton Bay is connected to the ABB,” Dad went on. He paused briefly, subtly ducking his head a bit to meet my eyes. “They don’t have much of a choice.”

Oh. Oh. That made a little more sense. I think I saw something about that on PHO? About how Lung consolidated all the Asian gangs in Brockton Bay, regardless of where they came from or what language they spoke. Part of that involved… I didn’t know what the word was, uniting? Uniting sounded too positive for a super villain, too heroic. Including? Maybe that was better? It sounded too weak for Lung, though. But he’d transformed Brockton Bay’s Asian population to something that could stand up against Empire 88, so that was something. That had to include people who weren’t gangsters, right?

There were still parts of Dad’s story that weren’t really making sense. There was still that thing about Ken being involved in a negotiation with the DWA. That had to mean he was pretty involved, right? But the way Dad said it made it sound like he had to.

I hadn’t said anything yet, but some of what I was thinking must have shown on my face. Dad gave me a sympathetic sort of smile and told me, “I hate to say you’ll understand when you’re older, but Brockton Bay racial politics might be too much for you at this point in your life. I mean, you just started high school.”

He was probably right, as much as I hated to admit it. Dad was a grown man, and he’d dealt with the ABB, the Empire, and the Merchants for far longer and far more than I ever had or ever would. I just had to trust that Dad knew what he was doing, even if I didn’t want to.

“But you like him? He makes you happy?” I finally asked. Dad nodded wordlessly, and that was enough for me. For now at least. We’d see how I felt if and when I met him.

October 2009

I think Dad might have looked up how to introduce your kid to your new partner on the computer because the way he did it really wasn’t what I was expecting.

I was expecting Ken to come over for dinner, probably at home, but maybe at a restaurant. We’d all kind of sit together awkwardly, and Ken would ask me about school, and I would tell him it was fine, but not be able to say much because I was so stressed about Dad reading into something I said. Ken would try for a bit, but then he’d see how awkward and weird I was, and he’d give up after awhile, and we’d just kind of eat in silence. Maybe do a board game after dinner, and then he’d go home, and Dad wouldn’t bring him around anymore unless he married him, which I couldn’t really see happening.

That was not what happened. Instead, I met him standing in the doorway the Friday before Halloween, both of us in some of the worst Halloween costumes I’d ever seen.

Seriously. I wasn’t planning on doing anything for Halloween this year, too old for trick-or-treating, and the Trio’s bullying getting bad enough that I didn’t even look at any of the flyers advertising the school’s Halloween party. But Dad said Kurt and Lacey invited him, Ken, and a couple of Ken’s friends to their Halloween party this year, and I was invited like I always was. Some years I went, and some years I didn’t, but when I’d gone before, Emma had always come with me, or at the very least Mom had been there for me to hide behind. What was I supposed to do without either of them there? Just sit in the corner and hope no one talked to me?

But Dad said this was a good time to meet Ken because there wasn’t pressure for us to talk a lot one-on-one. He seemed excited about it in that quiet sort of way he did, so I didn’t have the heart to say no. And because I couldn’t think of a good excuse to get out of it.

So, about thirty minutes before Ken was supposed to pick us up, I’d dug a pair of cat ears out of the basement and drawn whiskers on my face with a thick, dried-out marker. Definitely the worst Halloween costume I’d ever worn. Even Dad’s was better. He looked kind of lame in a cloak with plastic vampire fangs, but at least it was an actual costume. I hoped Ken didn’t show up as a vampire hunter or something. I knew I was kind of dorky, and I got it from Dad, but I don’t think I would be able to handle it if his boyfriend was dorky too.

Ken definitely wasn’t dorky.

I was kind of hovering behind Dad when he opened the door, so I got a good look at him right away and had a moment to take it all in while Dad talked to him. Ken was really not the kind of guy I was expecting Dad to be dating.

The first thing I noticed was that he was Asian, which I already knew, but it was still the first thing I noticed. The second thing I noticed was how big he was.

Dad was tall, but no one would ever call him big. Dad was thin like I was. He was a little wiry just from spending time on the docks, but no one would ever call him muscular. But Ken was muscular. He wasn’t, like, a bodybuilder with bulging muscles or anything, but one look at him and it was immediately obvious how much more space he took up than Dad. Sure, his arms were kind of big, but his shoulders and chest? I was sure he could knock Dad over if he just puffed his chest out a bit.

Okay, he wasn’t huge. I was probably overreacting a bit. He looked like kind of a normal guy in pretty good shape. I still wasn’t expecting it, though. I was expecting someone more like Dad, someone a little more puny and maybe a little nerdy. Dad was definitely shooting up with Ken.

Once Dad moved out of the way a bit, my mind focused enough to remember we were going to a Halloween party. Ken had these sprawling tattoos on his arms that I thought were fake at first, but then I realized there weren’t any sleeves poking out from his white and blue t-shirt. Those were most definitely real. Not part of his Halloween costume then. What was he supposed to be?

“Taylor,” Dad said, drawing my attention. He was sort of Ken’s height, I realized. Dad was leaning on him a bit, which looked a little silly, but neither of them seemed to notice. “This is my boyfriend. Kenta, this is my daughter Taylor.”

Kenta? His name was Kenta? Was I supposed to call him Ken or Kenta? Should I call him mister? Was that weird? Oh, he was looking at me. I was regretting the cat ears now. They probably made me look pretty kiddy.

“Your father said you liked tea,” Kenta said, voice so hurried I almost couldn’t understand him through his thick accent. Another thing I wasn’t expecting. He held out his hands, almost like he was shoving the box he was holding toward me. “I got you some.”

Slowly, I lifted my hands to take the box, and I couldn’t help but feel a little endeared. He was nervous too, way more than I was. I could work with that.

“Thank you, um, Kenta,” I responded, taking a shot in the dark. Dad called him Kenta, so didn’t that mean that was his name? Even though he’d called him Ken all the time up until now. Wait, I should say something now, shouldn’t I? About the gift. About the tea. What was a nice way to ask if it was a gross kind? “Where did you get it?”

“Docks,” Kenta said, and Dad elbowed him not so subtly. Kenta didn’t even glance at him, but he kept talking like this was a regular occurrence, only stumbling over his words for a moment. “The Asian market imports a lot of tea from China.”

How was that different from the stuff I bought at the store? I looked at the box and rotated it in my hands. The writing was in some language I was pretty sure was Chinese, but I didn’t really know what that was supposed to mean. Still, I was looking forward to trying it. “Thanks.”

I wanted to slap myself. I’d already thanked him. I tried not to wince as I looked up, hoping I seemed normal, when Kenta’s costume finally clicked in my mind. His shirt. I’d mentally waved it off as just a t-shirt, and it kind of was, but I knew that design. White and blue. Legend’s colors. It didn’t make for a great t-shirt, but it was an iconic design. I couldn’t believe it’d taken me so long to recognize it.

Did Kenta like capes? I should’ve dressed as a cape. That’d give me something to talk about. Then again, I was already worried about seeming nerdy. But I’d kind of expected Kenta to be nerdy too before I saw his muscles and tattoos. People who had muscles and tattoos could still be nerdy, right? He didn’t look nerdy, but I could hope.

I was getting ahead of myself. It was kind of a crappy costume. He literally was just wearing a t-shirt. His pants didn’t even match Legend’s colors. He probably just picked some random costume from the store, sort of like how I’d grabbed the first thing that resembled a costume from the basement when I’d remembered I should dress up.

But Legend seemed kind of specific. He was one of the most popular and famous heroes in the world, but some inkling in my brain was telling me that it mattered that Kenta had picked Legend over someone like Eidolon, Armsmaster, or Dauntless. What was it? I didn’t know that much about Legend. I usually stuck to the Brockton Bay forums on PHO.

Wait. We’d talked about Legend in US history last year. It was like a day of class, but I’d been excited to talk about capes at school. The Triumvirate had a huge impact on the world, of course, but Legend had affected the country in a way that a lot of heroes hadn’t. Had Kenta picked the Legend shirt because he was gay? Or, more eloquently, because his fame and actions had advanced queer rights in the US? I could see it, but I could see it just as easily as Kenta liking Legend because he was a popular hero, and I could see that just as easily as him grabbing a random shirt off a rack that sort of resembled a Halloween costume.

“Why don’t you put that in the kitchen, and we can head over to Kurt and Lacey’s?” Dad suggested, and I remembered I was holding the box still. I scurried off, putting the box in the cabinet with the rest of my tea, and followed Dad and Kenta out to the car. Or, to Kenta’s car, rather.

I didn’t know anything about cars, and I didn’t really care about what kind of car he was driving. I was a little more focused on the fact that there was already someone in Kenta’s passenger seat. Dad had said some of Kenta’s friends had been invited, but I didn’t really think that meant we would be driving one of them. 

Kenta got in the driver’s seat, and Dad got in the back with me, which I was grateful for. I half-expected Dad to go sit in the front with Kenta and for that other guy to come in the back to sit with me. Or worse, Dad and Kenta sat in the back, and I’d be in the passenger seat pretending I couldn’t see them in the mirrors. I didn’t really want to sit with Dad, but this was a lot better than the alternatives.

“This is Lee,” Kenta told me when we all got in the car. Lee gave me a curt nod, briefly making eye contact with me through one of the mirrors. He had one of those lame t-shirt costumes like Kenta, but I couldn’t really see it from where I was sitting, and I didn’t recognize the color scheme at first glance. I thought maybe I should say something or ask how he and Kenta knew each other, but I didn’t really want to, so I didn’t.

We stayed quiet for most of the car ride, but Lee messed with the radio most of the time, changing the channel whenever a commercial or talk show came on, so there was enough noise that it didn’t really feel awkward. There’d be plenty of time for that later.

The night was kind of whatever. Dad seemed to have a good time catching up with his buddies, and Kenta seemed to fit in well enough. There were a few other Asian people there that I thought might’ve been Kenta’s friends, but there were a few Asian people in the DWA, so maybe I was just making assumptions.

I mostly sat on the couch with my book, trying to ignore the handful of younger kids who’d come to the party with their parents. Lee sat on the other side of the couch after awhile. He was doing something on his cell phone, and he looked pretty focused, but I couldn’t help but feel like he was expecting me to say something. I resisted the urge for awhile, but I really wasn’t that strong-willed and I caved a lot sooner than I would’ve liked.

“Why aren’t you with the rest of them?” I asked, and I wanted to cringe. I’d hate it if someone asked me something like that. Lee didn’t seem all that bothered, though.

“I don’t really work with the DWA that much,” Lee answered, and that kind of made sense, but it also made me wonder why he was here if he didn’t know anyone other than Kenta, “and they’re drinking.”

That last part was a little unexpected. “You don’t drink?”

Lee shrugged. “Not really. I don’t handle it super well. I’m designated driver.”

“Does Kenta drink?” I asked, and that was probably a weird thing to ask, but I was curious. Dad did a bit, not as much as the other dockworkers, but I knew he snuck beers that he thought I didn’t know about. I didn’t know how I felt about mixing a boyfriend into all that.

“His Asian glow is pretty bad. He gets embarrassed about it,” Lee answered casually, and I really had no idea what that meant. Lee said it like something I should know, but I didn’t, and I didn’t want to ask. He sort of shook his head when he said it, though, so it sounded like the answer was no? “He still will sometimes. He gets over it pretty fast when- uh, I mean, it’s sometimes a little worse when, um, in casual settings.”

The way Lee stumbled through those last few sentences told me he really didn’t want to be talking about drinking with a fifteen-year-old, so I stopped bothering him. Lee got up a couple times to get more food, nursing a small plate of cheese cubes most of the night, but eventually joined some of the other grown-ups in something or another, leaving me alone on the couch the way I wanted it to be.

We left fairly early compared to the others, Lee dropping me and Dad off at our house around eleven. I squirrled off inside so I didn’t have to watch to see if Dad and Kenta would kiss each other goodbye. I’d sat in the passenger seat on the way back, and my earlier fear about having to look at them in the back through rearview mirrors had come true. Neither was drunk, just a little red-faced, but they were acting warmer than they had before, and I didn’t really want to see that.

I made a cup of that new tea when I got home and looked up what Asian glow was on my computer. I don’t know why Lee thought I’d know what that was. It seemed kind of specific.

The tea was good, but I hadn’t realized it was caffeinated until I’d been on the computer long enough to hear Dad turning in. I ended up staying up long enough on PHO to get live updates on a sudden middle-of-the-night showdown between Lung, Oni Lee, and some E88 capes. I ended up ruining my sleep schedule a bit, but it was totally worth it to watch the online chatter about the fight. All in all, not a bad night.

November 2009

We did end up having the awkward dinner and board games eventually. It wasn’t awful, but I didn’t look forward to the days I knew he was coming over. School kept getting worse, and having someone over inevitably meant being asked how school was going, which kind of tainted the visits. I thought about asking if he was a fan of Legend, but Kenta dressed like a normal person after Halloween, no more superhero shirts, so I never worked up the courage.

Kurt and Lacey invited us over for Thanksgiving this year, which I was kind of looking forward to because the holiday meant an escape from school, and the food meant the attention wouldn’t be on me. Dad and I spent the afternoon peeling and mashing potatoes to bring over and making pumpkin pie from store-bought crusts and canned pie filling. We didn’t talk much, but it didn’t feel weird. We skipped Thanksgiving last year, Mom’s death being a little too fresh, but this felt kind of like returning to normal.

Ken picked us up like he had for the Halloween party, but his friend Lee hadn’t come along this time, so I sat in the back with the potatoes, the pies, and some bowl-like thing with a cord attached that had been in the car when I got in. Whatever Kenta was bringing, I assumed, but I felt kind of weird about asking, so I didn’t.

There were a good number of people already at Kurt and Lacey’s house when we arrived. Lacey’s mother, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew were there, the nephew thankfully being a little older than me and thus pretty uninterested in making small talk. One of Kurt’s cousins was there, which I thought was a little odd. A couple more DWA guys arrived, one with his girlfriend, when we were putting our food in the kitchen. I recognized them, and they seemed happy to see me, but mostly stayed out of the kitchen, so I was spared any awkward greetings.

I basically just followed Lacey’s instructions until we were ready to eat, helping out with little tasks like setting the table, tossing the salad, and moving dishes around as she saw fit. I found out that the bowl-like thing from the car had to be plugged in, and it was filled with rice, which I thought was kind of a weird thing to bring to Thanksgiving. Maybe Kenta had never celebrated Thanksgiving before?

I took the thought back when we all sat down at the table, and I finally took a bite of the tiny clump of rice I’d put on my plate to be polite. I felt my eyes widen a bit when the first forkful entered my mouth. I liked rice fine, but I wouldn’t say I thought rice was particularly good, before now at least. This stuff was good!

I thought about saying something, but Lacey’s mom beat me to it.

“Why, Ken,” she said, holding up her hand in front of her full mouth politely, “this is about the best rice I’ve had. What’s your secret?”

Kenta looked a little embarrassed but accepted the praise with grace. “Thank you, ma’am. It’s nothing special.”

Dad clapped his hand on Kenta’s forearm, looking a little proud. “It’s the rice cooker. The first time we cooked together, I thought Kenta was going to have an aneurysm when he saw me put rice on the stove!”

Kenta made a noise of agreement. “White rice is essential to meals in Japan and China. In both languages, there is no distinction between the words for rice and a meal. It’s important to have at large meals like these because the rice absorbs the grease and juice from the meat, making it more flavorful and helping settle the stomach.”

That was probably the most I’ve ever heard Kenta say at once. The most eloquent too, like he’d had the line prepared. Maybe he had? Lacey’s mom nodded along, but she looked a little lost. I think maybe she was having a hard time understanding his accent? I followed his advice, though, pushing the rice on my plate so it was closer to the turkey and the gravy on the mashed potatoes. 

“So, which are you from? China or Japan?” one of the DWA guys asked, and I felt my head snap up at the question. Even I knew you weren’t supposed to ask stuff like that, even if I’d been wondering ever since Dad told me he was dating an Asian person. Kenta didn’t look offended, though, so maybe I was wrong?

“My mother was from China, but my father was Japanese, and I was born in Japan,” Kenta answered easily. I expected that to be the end of it, and I was pretty surprised when he kept talking and what he said next. “My mother and I were in Kyushu when it sank, and we fled to the CUI. I, um, was arrested pretty early on, though, and we got separated. I escaped and came to the States in 2002.”

That… um, wow. Neither Dad nor Kenta had told me all that, though I hadn’t asked. Kyushu and the harshness of the CUI, particularly because of the Yàngbǎn, were pretty famous. But surviving both? The sinking of an island and capture by the CUI? It almost didn’t sound real.

“Prison?” someone echoed. The DWA guy’s girlfriend, I was pretty sure. I assumed she didn’t know what happened in Kyushu or who the Yàngbǎn were, because the prison part was such a minor part of what he’d said that my brain hadn’t even registered it.

“The CUI does not take kindly to people like me,” Kenta answered, and I wasn’t sure if he meant gay people, Japanese people, refugees, or something else.

“Did you see Leviathan?” I asked because that was what everyone really should have been focused on. Even if they didn’t know anything about the CUI, everyone could recognize the Endbringer’s names.

Kenta made a noise of acknowledgement. “I was in the water most of the time, so I saw quite a bit. It was Alexandria who got me out, actually. I mostly saw Legend and Eidolon’s blasts and a few of the other capes when they fell in the water, but I got a good look when Lung joined.”

“Lung?” about half the table echoed in unison. Kenta looked a little startled, and it was Lacey’s nephew who clarified. “I didn’t know Lung was there.”

Kenta blinked a few times. “It was where he got the name Man-Dragon.”

I’d never heard Lung called that before. Hell, I didn’t know a thing about Lung, just that he led the ABB and lived in Brockton Bay. “The PHO page for Lung just redirects to the page for the ABB. There’s not a lot of coverage about Endbringer battles, so I guess people just never found out about it.”

Kenta shook his head. “Endbringer censorship is less strict outside the West. My friend Lee has a newspaper clipping with a picture of them fighting. I could ask him to find it if you were interested.”

Oh no. I’d shown interest in something. I tried not to look around. These were the kinds of people who’d latched onto the one thing they knew about a kid. Kurt and Lacey knew I liked books ever since I was little, and now they asked me what I was reading every time I saw them. I hoped Kenta wouldn’t start asking me what I thought about all the different Endbringer battles every time I saw him.

“Maybe a weekend activity,” Dad suggested, and I realized it wasn’t Kenta who’d lock onto my brief expression of interest but Dad.

December 2009

I eagerly counted down the days until winter break in my class planner. It “mysteriously” went missing with about three days left, but even that wasn’t enough to dim my excitement. 

Being at home alone wasn’t exactly exciting. I planned on spending it reading and pursuing PHO, maybe cooking some meals that took a little longer, and I was happy with that plan. Evidently, Dad felt bad about having to work and leaving me at home all day because he scheduled for me to spend a day with Kenta about a week into my break.

I felt pretty awkward about it. I’d met him a good number of times by now, but we’d never spent any time together one-on-one. But Dad had apparently remembered just about every detail of every positive interaction we’d had and practically planned a whole day for us.

“We’re going to the Chinese grocery first to get you more tea,” Kenta told me when I’d climbed into the front seat of his car, “and then we’re going to go by Lee’s to look at his box of newspapers. We can find somewhere to get lunch if you get hungry, or I can bring you home if you don’t like anything near Lee’s apartment, and we can stop somewhere to get your Dad a Christmas present if you want.”

With everything at school, I’d kind of forgotten about Christmas. “Are you getting him anything?”

“Beer,” Kenta answered bluntly. My distaste must have shown on my face because he quickly amended. “He once told me that all the good German beer is in Empire bars and shops, so he doesn’t drink it. I thought one nice pack couldn’t hurt. I got him a nice jacket too.”

Those were actually pretty thoughtful gifts. Better than what I could come up with. Should I get Kenta something too? It seemed like the thing to do, but I really didn’t know what he liked or didn’t like yet. I could put some thought into it later, or maybe keep an eye out for what he looked at in the shop.

“I’ll get something on my own later,” I told him, and we were off.

Brockton Bay didn’t really have ethnic districts like other major cities had, so there was no Chinatown or Japantown or anything like that, but I’d known there was a pretty big Asian population bordering the docks. I guess I’d never actually been there before, though, because the street Kenta parked on looked totally alien to me.

It was all a bit rundown. A lot of places in Brockton Bay were, but the shops looked run down in a way that the others I’d been to didn’t. Not worse necessarily, but I couldn’t really pinpoint what it was. The aesthetic overall was a little different, too. It was a little more cramped, most of the buildings’ doors had red or green overhangings, and there were a lot more signs on all the windows, all the same laminated printer paper with a bunch of writing I couldn’t read. Pretty different from what I was used to.

Kenta led me into a shop with crates of oranges outside and a bunch of white and red cat statues in the window. I’d seen them at Chinese restaurants before, not that Mom and Dad had taken me to Chinese restaurants all that often, but I’d never seen more than one at a time. There had to be dozens here.

Kenta greeted the woman behind the counter in what I assumed to be Mandarin. They exchanged a few lines, and I waited beside Kenta politely until he walked into the store. I half-expected him to repeat what she’d said in English, but he didn’t, and I was left feeling a little off.

The store was even more cramped inside than it looked outside. I really thought Kenta was going to knock over something with his big shoulders as we walked down an aisle, but he seemed perfectly at ease just walking around, even though there was so much stuff. The store wasn’t even that big. How did they get all this stuff in here?

A lot of the shelves had what looked like snacks to me, but there was a whole section with just tea, which was pretty cool. Some of the boxes had labels in both English and what I, again, assumed to be Mandarin, but Kenta was looking in the section without any English writing, so I stared in the direction he was looking and pretended like I could tell how one box was different from another.

I heard someone yell from the other side of the store, and Kenta yelled back without even looking up. Like before, the exchange was a few lines, and Kenta didn’t translate. I wanted to ignore it again, but my curiosity was becoming a need, and I couldn’t keep the question back. “What’d they say?”

“The fish vendor said you looked too skinny and he had a good deal on sea bass,” Kenta told me, and that gave me more questions than answers. “I told him I didn’t have time to cook a fish today. He said he had shrimp, and I told him I’d come look at the bass some other time.”

Huh. Was that rude? That felt rude. It was weird he’d called me skinny, and it was even weirder that he was yelling at Kenta across the store to buy fish… Wait. Fish? “They have fish here?”

Kenta looked a little surprised by the question and leaned back a bit, putting his back against the racks dividing the aisle. “The tanks are in the back. You can’t smell them?”

Tanks? That made sense. I had smelled something a little off, but I’d sort of assumed that was just how a Chinese shop would smell. Was it racist for me to think that? They did just have tanks of fish here, though, so maybe the thought wasn’t totally unfounded? “Are they alive?”

“Barely,” Kenta responded dryly. There was more there, but I didn’t know about fish or tanks to know what. “You can go look if you want. It is not uncommon for American children to look at the tanks, so the butcher would not try to make you buy anything if you went over there.”

I glanced past Kenta toward the back of the store, realizing he’d leaned back to give me a better view. My vision wasn’t that good, even with glasses. I’d thought there were just boxes back there at first, but I could make out the movement of water now. I didn’t really want to get a better look than that, and I was kind of worried there would be a fishy smell. “I’ll stick to the tea.”

Kenta paid for the tea even though I’d brought cash. He talked to the woman at the cash register a bit and ended up getting a couple of half-filled bags of vegetables as well. Why they were selling fish, tea, vegetables, snack bags, and cat statues all in one place, I did not know. I didn’t think I’d trust the food here, but I really liked the tea Kenta had gotten me before, so I tried not to complain, even if I was only complaining in my head.

But with that out of the way, we could finally get to the part of the day that I was really looking forward to: Lee’s newspaper clippings.

“You just have a key to Lee’s apartment?” I asked when I realized Lee wasn’t even there.

Kenta shrugged and unlocked the door. “Your dad has a key to Kurt and Lacey’s house, doesn’t he?”

That was a good point. Was Lee Kenta’s Kurt and Lacey? I’d only met the guy once, but he had been invited to be a little bit of a buffer between me and Dad’s new boyfriend, so I guess he had to be pretty good friends with Kenta to do that. It was still a little weird being in his apartment, especially since I hadn’t even seen where Kenta lived yet.

I didn’t really have any expectations going in. I don’t think I’d ever been in an apartment before now. Emma, Kurt and Lacey, my grandparents, and some more distant family were really the only people I’d ever visited, and they all had houses. It was nice enough, though. It looked clean enough and sort of organized, but it was clear it was lived in. I tried not to look around too much and just followed Kenta as he led me to the living room, where a cardboard box awaited us atop the coffee table.

“Did you and Lee know each other in Japan?” I asked, hoping Lee was Japanese. I thought he was, but I wasn’t sure.

Kenta shook his head. “He lived in Shikoku. It was damaged by Leviathan’s attack, and he came to the States once his family could afford to send him. I think they moved to Honshu a few years ago.”

I didn’t know where either of those places meant or what Kenta meant by Lee’s family affording to send him to the US, but Kenta was getting the box open, so I was pretty quickly distracted.

There were a couple binders in the box, but it was mostly just loose pieces of newspaper, both full newspapers and smaller clippings. The ones on top, I recognized from some Brockton Bay papers, but I wasn’t very interested in those. I could probably look any of those up online anytime I wanted. I was interested in the ones not even PHO had gotten ahold of.

Kenta leafed through one of the binders and set it aside pretty quickly before looking at the other one. He closed it after a few moments, seeming satisfied, and passed it over to me. “It’s this one. I’m going to see if I can find anything else in the box.”

It was a plain white binder with a piece of printer paper slid into the cover pocket. Something was written in permanent marker, but I couldn’t read it, which I realized very quickly was going to become a recurring theme. The binder had some of those plastic page-sized pockets in it, newspaper clippings shoved in them a little haphazardly, and I couldn’t read a word on them either.

I felt a little bit like a kid flipping through a book until I found the pictures, but I didn’t want to ask Kenta to read every line for me, so I did the best I could. The first couple pictures I found were just of debris, and I had no idea if they were even of Kyushu. Kenta had said Lee lived somewhere else, so he might’ve just saved articles about his hometown.

I found a picture of a cape maybe four pictures in. I didn’t recognize her, but at least I was getting somewhere? She was probably a Japanese cape. Most of the people who’d fought Leviathan in Kyushu were. I found some distant, blurry pictures of what I was pretty sure was the Triumvirate next, but only a couple. There was one clear shot of Eidolon in the sky, and that was about it.

The pictures of Lung came a little suddenly, but it was clear it was him immediately. I’d seen some pictures and videos from when Lung had fought the Protectorate here in Brockton Bay, and I thought those had been pretty intense. Lung had pretty solidly won against the whole Protectorate, which the PHO forums had a lot to say about. But now that I was seeing a picture of him standing face to face with Leviathan, any opinions I had about the Lung v. Protectorate battle were dead. It was a wonder Brockton Bay was still standing after that.

I’d read that Leviathan was around thirty feet tall, and Lung was about equal height to him in this picture, as far as I could tell. It was taken from a distance, ruined buildings and water surrounding them, but it was still a pretty good photo. Leviathan was lunging for Lung, his water echo trailing behind him, and Lung was reared back, four wings and four arms spread like he was ready to catch the attack. The positions really showed how massive they both were.

I’d heard rumors that Lung could grow wings. I hadn’t really believed them. I could sort of picture a photo I’d seen of skeletal growths on his back, but I thought a parahuman taking after a dragon was a little too unrealistic. We didn’t know where powers came from, but we did know where dragons came from, and it was the human imagination. There was no way a guy could just grow into a made-up monster.

There was nothing unrealistic about it, though. I was looking at a picture of it.

“That was the article that first used the name Man-Dragon,” Kenta told me, looking over my shoulder a bit. I glanced at him and saw that his eyes were flickering a bit, skimming the page. “That article is explaining that he isn’t an Endbringer.”

“Did people think that?” I asked, suddenly curious. That kind of stuff wasn’t one of my main interests, but it was still kind of neat. Pretty much everyone older than me had lived through a lot of parahuman history, I realized. They probably remembered all the theories people had when a lot of these kinds of things were pretty new. I could ask Dad about that kind of stuff, and he’d probably have a lot to say I couldn’t find on PHO.

Kenta made a noncommittal kind of noise. “I’m not sure. I couldn’t find my mother for a few days after the attack, and then we were focused on getting off the island, so I never talked to anyone about it.”

Right. Dad might have lived through parahuman history, but Kenta really lived through parahuman history. He’d seen all these amazing things—the Triumvirate, Leviathan, Lung, maybe even the Yàngbǎn—but it wasn’t exactly a privilege. When Mom died, it felt like my whole world had come apart. But if I’d been in that car crash with her? If I couldn’t find her afterward? If I didn’t know if she’d lived or died? I couldn’t imagine how that would have felt, and what Kenta had experienced had been exponentially worse than that.

I didn’t know how to say all that, though. Instead, I told him, “That must have been scary.”

Kenta shrugged. “It was, and it wasn’t. There’s something… oddly calming about seeing such a force.”

I kept quiet and watched him as he seemed to collect his thoughts. The moment felt deeply personal in a way that went past us as Dad’s boyfriend and daughter. I wanted to hear what he had to say.

“Levithan cannot die,” Kenta said definitively. It was probably true, a lot of people thought it was, but he said it like he really knew it. “He is a natural disaster. When I fell into the water, I surrendered to that idea. I was ready to die knowing I’d witnessed something so past the peak of humanity.”

That… I didn’t know what to say to that. “You said Alexandria saved you.”

“And I am grateful for it,” Kenta agreed easily, turning his head, and I realized he hadn’t been looking at me before now. “I did not wish to die. There is something humbling about accepting one’s fate, though.”

I didn’t really understand what he meant. That sounded terrible. I hadn’t thought about it all that much, but drowning sounded like one of the scariest ways to die. But all the buildup a Leviathan battle had before that point? That just made it so much worse, and even that wasn’t as bad as the aftermath. Kenta and his mom had to leave the whole country for crying out loud!

“Was your mom okay?” I asked, thoughts trailing back to the comparison between Kenta’s mom and mine. “I mean, was she in the water with you?”

“No. She’d been at home. She got on her neighbor's roof, and they washed a few miles away. The Sentai Elite relief team found them after a few days, and we found each other at the escape boats,” Kenta explained. He paused. “We were only together for about four months before I was taken by the CUI.”

“Have- Have you seen her since then?” I asked carefully. Kenta’s gaze had drifted away from me again. He shook his head ever so slightly and refused to meet my eyes. I swallowed thickly and decided I wouldn’t ask about the CUI even though I was really curious if he’d ever met any of the Yàngbǎn.

“Does this interest you?” Kenta asked, gesturing loosely to the binders, box, and newspaper clippings around them. “History?”

“Um, I guess?” I answered, a little thrown by the change of topic. I hesitated, wondering if I wanted to give the question a real answer. Kenta had shared something really personal with me, though, so I thought it was only fair I open up a bit. “Has, um, my dad told you about my mom at all?”

Kenta nodded, and I wasn’t sure if I found that surprising or not. “A bit. He told me that they met in college, and that she’d died in a car accident.”

Okay, so not a lot of details about Mom herself. That was probably normal? “Well, um, she was an English professor. She was always trying to get me to read, and we’d always talk about books and stuff. When the portal to Earth Aleph opened up and we established the cultural exchange cable… You know, we got a lot of new media. Or, like, the same media, but from a world without parahumans. Or, with fewer parahumans, I guess. But they don’t have Endbringers, and Mom said that changed their books and movies a lot.”

“I haven’t heard that,” Kenta admitted, and I pretended not to be surprised. How did he not know that? It was basically the only thing any Star Wars forum talked about these days, and the same could be said about pretty much any fandom or piece of mainstream media.

Then again, I doubted Dad knew what a forum or fandom was. I was pretty sure Kenta was a bit younger than Dad, but not by any significant amount, and his English could be pretty rough sometimes, so I guess it was pretty reasonable that he wouldn’t be analyzing Earth Aleph literature.

Kenta showed me a few other clippings he’d found in the box that Lee hadn’t put in the binder, and he translated a few headlines he thought would interest me. I wished I had a cell phone so I could take some pictures to post on PHO. This stuff would really get a good discussion going. 

The historical aspects were pretty cool, but I was mostly interested in Lung’s involvement. He was a local cape, even if he was a villain, and PHO recognized him as the powerhouse he was, even if we didn’t know much about him. Being able to share that he was in Japan, that he’d fought an Endbringer? That was really something. 

Maybe I’d still make a post about it, but the moderators were pretty strict about having evidence for making claims like that. Maybe I could say I saw the newspaper clippings and ask if anyone else had copies? But they probably would have posted them already if they had them. Whatever. It wasn’t really important. If Dad ever let me get a cell phone, I could ask Kenta if I could see the newspaper clippings again, so I could take pictures to post, assuming they were still together by then.

Assuming they were still together by then. The thought made me mentally jolt a bit. Where had that come from? Or, well, I knew where it’d come from. I’d sort of been thinking in those terms the past couple months. But the jolt. I felt kind of… bad. Did I want Kenta to stick around? Had we bonded? I hadn’t been rooting for them to break up or anything, but I’d be lying if I hadn’t wished for it a little bit. I still felt a little awkward around Kenta, but he’d been nice to me today, going out of his way to ask his friend to dig up some newspaper clippings for me. That had to count for something.

Kenta got a call on his cell phone a few minutes later, and it turned out it was just Dad calling from the DWA office to see if we wanted to meet up for lunch. The idea of eating alone with Kenta, no newspapers to focus our conversation on, made me cringe, so I agreed easily, and Kenta told me we’d go somewhere “you white people” would like. I wasn’t sure if he was kidding or not. I liked the place he brought me to, though, even if it had a bunch of tanks in it like the grocery store.

Dad was smiling when he walked up to the table we’d been sitting at, like he was happy to see his daughter and his boyfriend getting along. He probably was. Dad had never been an anxious person, but I knew he worried. Probably just seeing us sitting together was enough to ease his mind a little.

I got up and hugged him before he sat down, and Kenta half-rose to kiss Dad’s cheek, which just made Dad’s smile get even bigger. It was kind of cute, and I was grateful he hadn’t kissed him on the mouth. I didn’t think I’d hate it or anything, but I didn’t think I was ready for that, even after all the progress we’d made today.

“How was it?” Dad asked once he’d sat down. He glanced between me and Kenta. “You two have a good time?”

“Yeah,” I answered, and I was a little surprised that it was true. It’d been a while since I had a good day. Maybe this whole Dad and Kenta thing could be good.

Chapter Text

August 2009

Lung met Danny Hebert long before Kenta did.

It was 2003. His defeat of the Protectorate was still fairly fresh, and the ABB was becoming a known power in Brockton Bay. A couple more skirmishes with the Empire would secure their position, and Lung had no doubts about his success.

Fighting was something he could do, and he could do it well. He was a little less adept at the nitty-gritty, the management of people, money, and property, but he could deal with it.

Oni Lee was his greatest ally here, not because he was particularly sharp but because he respected Lung even before he took over his gang and because he’d come to the States almost right after Kyushu, so his English was a little bit better than Lung’s. Lung knew enough to follow along—and enough to know that Lee was kind of a bad negotiator—but not enough to get involved until someone else laid the groundwork.

There was a Korean man who was a part of the DWA. Lung had called upon him the day prior, asking him to explain what exactly the dockworkers did. It was a lot of manual labor, it seemed, a lot of loading and unloading, but also more complex organization and machinery maintenance. Everyone in Brockton Bay relied on the docks, though, which meant everyone had to negotiate with the DWA, and that meant everyone had to negotiate with Danny Hebert.

Lung hadn’t spared him much thought the first time he met him. He understood the power held in the shipping industry and that the Asian gangs previously controlled the surrounding area. He knew he eventually wanted to legitimately control the area, and that meant having some kind of agreement to keep the dockworkers from fighting his men or snitching them out to the authorities.

Oni Lee led the conversation, Lung hanging back for the most part. Oni Lee was mostly threatening them, but Danny Hebert didn’t even flinch. Years later, Lung couldn’t remember the details of their deal, just that the only time he’d spoken was to agree to it, but it was the beginning of a long, mostly prosperous relationship between their two organizations.

Lung did achieve his goals in transforming Brockton Bay’s Asian population into a single, united front and establishing legitimate control of the docks and their connection to global trade. The DWA was always a small part of that, but Lung always had people to delegate negotiations to, so he didn’t interact with them much. It wasn’t until 2009 that he ever really had any problems big enough that they reached him.

Lung didn’t actually need to get involved, but Kenta was getting kind of tired of managing his casinos, and his trade relations always had the potential to be a little more interesting. So, he went down to the union building and got sat down in front of Danny Hebert.

He was enamored within the hour.

Danny was a thin man. Tall, balding a bit, just a little wiry, maybe a little sullen. But he had a presence to him that Kenta thought Lung might still have even if he was smaller. He just seemed to take up space. When he’d met him before, Kenta had noted how he refused to back down. Kenta could still see that in him, but now, he saw more than a solid, defensive wall.

Danny could bark, and he could bark something fierce.

“We’re not just going to break an existing contract because the ABB doesn’t like it!”

It was more complicated than that, and both sides knew it. Medhall mostly traded with Europe, but they had some new manufacturing connections in the East, and they were stepping on the ABB’s toes a bit. It wasn’t causing problems yet, but Kenta could see it happening, and he didn’t like Kaiser calling upon his allies without his permission.

The DWA didn’t care about territory arguments, though, especially the more hypothetical ones. Kenta knew that they were being pretty reasonable, that they were just trying to keep the docks running smoothly, but the ABB were their biggest partners, even more so than the city, and Kenta didn’t appreciate that they were willing to risk it all to honor a contract with Medhall.

But Danny Hebert stood his ground. He explained himself even when he was yelling, and he slowed down when Kenta didn’t say anything because he’d gotten lost and everyone was talking too fast for him to get caught up. It was a kindness, but not a weakness. His fire was always intense, but Danny never let it burn anyone when he didn’t want it to.

It was a challenge, and Kenta liked a challenge. He hadn’t had a good one since he fought Leviathan, even the Protectorate failed to test him, but Danny always rose to the occasion. It was a very different type of battleground, but it caught Kenta’s interest enough that he came back to the negotiation table instead of finding someone else to deal with it.

After their third meeting up and making no progress, Danny asked Kenta if he wanted to get a beer. Kenta agreed.

“When you said you knew a place, I didn’t think you were going to take me to a drug store,” Danny told him, taking a swig from a brown bottle.

Kenta hadn’t meant to take him here, but he panicked a little trying to think of a place to take him. He’d been thinking about how he didn’t have any antihistamines on him, then realized Danny couldn’t read half the labels on the bottles in the store, and considered buying a bottled tea that sort of looked like a beer bottle. It was a little out of the spirit of the meeting, though, and he was feeling off enough that he thought the alcohol’s effects would be welcome, so he decided against it and just bought a six-pack of Japanese beer to share.

They sat on the street outside, Danny on the curb with his feet in the street, and Kenta half-lying in the asphalt, using the curb to prop himself up. It was night, but he felt kind of hot. He tried wearing a nice shirt to the negotiation, and it felt stifling, especially since he usually went shirtless as Lung. He wanted to fidget with the buttons, but he thought it might make him look nervous, which he realized he kind of was after he brought Danny to the drugstore.

He didn’t know why. He was Lung, the Man-Dragon, the undisputed leader of the ABB. He hadn’t felt like this since he was in school. It made him feel kind of silly. He didn’t even know Danny, and he knew even if he wanted it to, nothing would come of this.

Kenta made a noncommittal noise and shrugged. “It’s a warm night. Didn’t think you’d mind being outside.”

“I don’t. I was still expecting a bar,” Danny responded, taking another sip of his beer. Kenta wondered if he wanted to leave. “I could use some recommendations.”

Kenta thought about the small Japanese bars Lee took him to sometimes, and the rare gay bars he visited on nights he gave into his loneliness. He couldn’t picture Danny in any of them. “I don’t think you’d like the bars I go to.”

“You don’t know me.”

“I know you like beer,” Kenta said, holding up his own bottle and taking a sip. It was a light beer, which Kenta couldn’t imagine was Danny’s preference, but the other man hadn’t complained. “Most of the good bars with good beer are run by the Empire.”

“I know. I’m not a Nazi. That’s why I’m looking for new bars,” Danny responded, and Kenta turned to look at him. It took Danny a moment to notice, meeting his gaze with a look of surprise. “Did you think I was a Nazi?”

Kenta felt the urge to fidget again, but he resisted. He was Lung, he reminded himself. He was strong. Men like him didn’t fidget. “You’re taking Medhall’s side in the negotiation.”

“I’m not taking sides. The DWA is a neutral party,” Danny responded easily. There was a hint of that heat again, but just barely. Neither was looking to start an argument right now, and they both knew it. “And just because Medhall has ties to Germany, doesn’t mean they’re Nazis.”

Kenta blinked at him. Did he not know? “You know Medhall is a front for Empire 88, right?”

Danny looked startled, and Kenta thought he was going to drop his beer. “What?”

He really didn’t know. Kenta slid forward a bit so he had room to sit up. “I thought you knew.”

“No! How would I know that? How do you know that?”

“The ABB negotiates with more than just the DWA.” And Lung was usually more involved in those ones. He used delegates most of the time, but he’d met Kaiser more than once when they weren’t fighting. “It’s kind of obvious once you know.”

“Because they only did business with Europe until now?”

“Because all their employees are white.”

“Are they?”

Kenta shrugged. He hadn’t actually checked or anything, but it made sense. “Empire members have to work somewhere.”

“Damn.” Danny shook his head and looked away. “I’ll talk with the DWA tomorrow. Have someone look into it, make a plan for what we’ll do with their contracts moving forward. We can’t just stop working with them, but… Well, if you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.”

“How…” What was the word? He didn’t know. “...political of you.”

Danny chuckled a little weakly. “Not really. My wife was pretty radical when we were in college. She ran with Lustrum’s gang for awhile.”

Lustrum’s gang? Kenta had heard- wait. He said wife. Kenta felt his stomach clench even though he had no right or reason to be reacting any kind of way to learning that Danny was married. He was just some guy. It didn’t matter. “You’re married?”

Danny sobered up a bit. “She, um, died.”

Oh. That didn’t make Kenta feel good, but it made some of the bad feeling go away. He wasn’t a good man, but he wasn’t evil. Losing a wife must be a terrible thing. “I’m sorry to hear that.”

“It… It is what it is,” Danny responded, lifting his beer to his lips again. “C'est la vie.”

Kenta didn’t know what that meant. It sounded French? Latin? He knew too many languages to care for the ones he didn’t.

“What about you?” Danny asked. “You married?”

Kenta almost laughed, but he caught it in time, so it came out as more of a scoff instead. “No.”

“Girlfriend?”

Kenta thought about the women Lee had been trying to set him up with lately. The women he’d tried to set him up with in the past, both romantically and not. “No.”

Danny didn’t press, but the questioning, however brief, left Kenta feeling even more nervous the rest of the night.

June 2009

The negotiations over the whole Medhall thing went on a little longer, but they were resolved a lot more smoothly after Kenta and Danny had their night out.

Danny invited him out after a few more of the meetings, sometimes with other DWA and ABB members. Kenta enjoyed it, but the outings failed to tame the crush he was finally ready to admit to himself that he had on Danny.

He tried not to let it affect him too much when they finalized the details of the contract. He could draw it out if he wanted to, but neither the ABB nor the DWA would benefit from such a thing, and it would be selfish to hurt their organizations just because he wanted to keep seeing Danny. Kenta just had to nip this thing in the bud before it got any worse.

He still let himself mope around the old ferry station, though, leaning on the rail to look out at the ocean. He hadn’t meant to try to run into Danny, but he was happy when he did.

“Kenta,” Danny called, and Kenta felt his heart do a little something. All the other DWA people called him Ken, which was what Kenta asked and expected them to, but at some point, he’d become Kenta to Danny. He didn’t know what it meant, but he liked to hear his name in the other man’s mouth.

“Danny,” Kenta greeted, trying not to look too happy to see him. “What are you doing out here? I thought you’d be home by now.”

Danny joined him, leaning an arm on the same rail Kenta was draped over. “Taylor went to summer camp yesterday. The house just felt so empty without her last night.”

Taylor? Oh right. His daughter. Danny had mentioned her before. “I could go for a beer if you’d like to chat.”

Danny laughed. “We should probably get some real food in us if we’re going to be drinking.”

“Right.” Dinner was a step up from drinks, right? Kenta preferred it, at least. “Got a place in mind?”

Danny took him to a place overlooking the beach called Fugly Bob’s and then acted surprised when Kenta read through the menu. It was a little insulting, but Kenta was trying to keep his inner Lung away from Danny, so he tried not to show it.

“You’ve never been here before?” Danny asked once they’d sat down at the bar and put in their orders.

Kenta shook his head. “I don’t eat a lot of American food.”

“Huh.” Danny looked a little contemplative. “Any reason why?”

Kenta shrugged. “I didn’t know any English when I came to this country. It was easier to stay in the Asian areas. Never broke the habit.”

Danny looked a little surprised. “Really? I know you’re not really supposed to say this, but I think your English is pretty good.”

Kenta raised his eyebrows a bit, but he took the compliment. Their food came, and the conversation centered around the food for a bit, before drifting back to beer.

“I’m just going to have the one,” Danny told him, tapping the neck of his bottle. “I don’t need a designated driver or anything if you want to get one.”

“Oh.” Kenta hadn’t really noticed that Danny ordered a beer. He probably would have, too, if he had, but he really wasn’t in the mood, so he was kind of glad he hadn’t. “I don’t really like drinking.”

Not as Kenta anyway. Lung wore a mask, and he drank nicer things than Kenta did. 

“Really? Why didn’t you say something before?” Danny asked. “I mean, us dockworkers like our beer, but I wouldn’t have minded if you wanted to do something else.”

Kenta doubted that. Most of their outings had been to bars and the like. Drinking was a specific kind of social experience. There weren’t a ton of other places they could have gone. What else would they have done? “I don’t hate it or anything. I get- sorry, I don’t remember the word. I get really red?”

Danny’s expression shifted fractionally, not judgmentally, but Kenta could tell he wasn’t getting it. “I get red too. It’s not really a big deal.”

“No.” Kenta shook his head. “It’s an Asian thing. Genetic. A lot of Asian people get really red when they drink, but some people get it worse. My mother would get hives.”

Danny made a face. “Gee. That sounds terrible. Sorry if I ever made you feel like you had to drink.”

Kenta shrugged. His wasn’t that bad, and a quick transformation usually helped his body process the alcohol a little better, but he needed Danny to get the point. “Don’t worry. There’s medicine that helps with it. I got some at the drug store the first time we went out.”

Danny’s face flashed with amusement. “That makes a lot of sense actually. This whole time, I just thought you liked hanging around places like that.”

Kenta snorted. “I promise I have better taste than that.”

“Well, like I said, I’m going to have an empty nest for a few weeks longer,” Danny told him, and Kenta felt something akin to hope bubble up in his heart. “I’ll give you the number to my home phone. If you’re willing to entertain an old white guy, give me a call. I probably should’ve gotten to know the area better a long time ago.”

Danny wrote his number on a napkin, and it felt a little like a romance from a movie, a romance Kenta had never gotten to have himself. He knew it was just his wishful thinking, but it kept him smiling the rest of the night.

June 2009

The leader of the gang that ran the city’s prostitution should indulge from time to time.

Lee told Kenta that sometimes, as well as some of the other ABB men who were comfortable enough with their boss to say such things. It was mostly Lee that pushed for it. He went through phases. There would be maybe a week or two where Kenta would reject the efforts until Lee grew bored of it or Kenta got uncomfortable enough to pretend he’d slept with whatever woman Lee had been pushing him to hook up with. Kenta was pretty sure half the prostitutes in the city knew he was gay by now, with how often he’d paid them extra not to touch him as they lay in bed together.

Lee was in one of his phases again, telling Kenta there was this new young thing that he thought he’d like. The past couple weeks he’d spent going out with Danny hadn’t really involved anything resembling a date, but it was close enough that Kenta was having a hard time repressing… Well, everything he’d been repressing.

“I’ll pay you double your rate if you retrieve Oni Lee and bring him here,” Kenta told the girl, trying his best to hide how uncomfortable he was behind his Lung persona. “Tell him we need to talk.”

The girl nodded a little meekly and scurried off before Kenta could even hand her the cash. Whatever. He’d make Lee pay for it. He deserved it after all the trouble he put Kenta through.

Lee arrived within the hour, teleporting right into Kenta’s apartment like he usually did. Kenta hoped he would have the decency to knock and come through the door, but apparently Lee was feeling petulant today. Whatever. “Quit that or you’re going to make me transform.”

Lee closed his mouth, deciding not to say whatever he was going to say, and straightened his back. Good. He was getting the idea that Kenta wasn’t in the mood for him messing around. “You’re that mad, huh?”

Mad probably wasn’t the right word, but Kenta would let Lee believe that. “You know I don’t like it when you send me women.”

Lee relaxed a bit but didn’t falter. “Come on. The guys all agree that you could stand to get laid, and what kind of gang leader doesn’t have a woman? You don’t have to marry her or anything, but you’ve got a whole city of prostitutes. At least use them to heighten your image. What kind of gangbanger doesn’t like being surrounded by beautiful women?”

Kenta swallowed, deciding there was no better time to say it. “One who doesn’t like beautiful women.”

Lee turned, giving him an odd look out of the corner of his eye. Kenta met his gaze. No matter how vulnerable he was feeling in this moment, he was still Lung, and this was still his subordinate. Those aspects of them came before whatever kind of friendship they had.

“You like ugly women?” Lee ventured, and Kenta wanted to sigh.

“I don’t like any women, Lee,” Kenta said a little dryly. “I’m gay.”

“Oh. Oh! That makes a lot of sense, actually,” Lee replied, scratching the back of his head. At least now he had the decency to look a little sheepish. Kenta would take it, even if it meant Lee wasn’t being very professional.

“I assume you’re smart enough not to spread this around?”

“Yeah, yeah. So is this something new, or…?”

Kenta had kind of hoped that Lee would just back off and they’d never speak of it again. He’d been too lenient with his subordinates, apparently. Some little part of him was glad that Lee was taking it well, though. “No. I’ve known since I was in school. I just got tired of your meddling.”

Lee looked at him for a moment before speaking. “No, there’s something else. Are you seeing someone?”

“No,” Kenta responded and immediately knew he’d said it a little too quickly. 

Lee latched on. “You are! Who?”

“I’m not,” Kenta repeated, voice going firm before he let himself give in a bit. If he couldn’t talk to Lee about this, who else could he talk to? “I don’t think he likes men.”

A mix of emotions flashed across Lee’s face before settling on what Kenta thought was curiosity. “I can find out.”

“What? No.” Kenta shook his head. “Don’t do that.”

“I’m going to anyway.”

Kenta knew he would unless he really pulled rank, and even then, he wasn’t sure Lee would listen. “I know. Don’t scare Danny too much, and leave his daughter out of it.”

Lee mock saluted him, and then he was teleporting away. The fact he’d gone immediately really didn’t make Kenta feel any better.

Lee sent him a text the following night. He said Danny was bisexual, which Kenta didn’t really think Lee had any way of knowing or finding out, but it was something, and something was enough for Kenta.

He had a plan. Well, it’d been more of a fantasy until now, but Kenta sort of had an idea. He waited for Danny to call him up to enact it.

“I know a bar with German beer that isn’t run by the Empire,” Kenta told him, ignoring the thrum of nerves in his stomach.

“Sign me up,” Danny answered, and Kenta could hear the grin in his voice. He knew he’d agree, but the confirmation made Kenta both feel better and worse.

He picked him up from the docks when Danny got off work, and Danny tried to keep his gaze ahead instead of on Danny as they approached the place Kenta had chosen.

He felt his heart freeze when Danny stopped walking. He turned, seeing Danny looking up at the big neon sign above the door. There were some smaller signs depicting dancing men and women, but the colored lights alone were probably enough to tell Danny what kind of bar this was. “Danny?”

“I… I don’t know if this is the kind of place for me.”

Kenta’s heart sank, and embarrassment welled up in its place. He fought off the urge to duck his head. “I’m sorry if I misread anything. If you don’t want to see me-”

“What? No.” Danny shook his head, and Kenta suddenly realized Danny was holding his hands. “I meant I’m too old to go to a bar like this.”

Oh. Danny wasn’t that much older than Kenta, so he hadn’t really thought about it, but he could see where he was coming from. This wasn’t one of the ones Kenta went to when he wanted to hide behind blaring music and dancers, though. “This one isn’t that popular. It’s pretty quiet.”

Danny laughed at that. Kenta decided to take a risk and leaned forward and kissed him.

It was quick, and it was chaste, but Danny didn’t pull away, and he didn’t look shocked or disgusted when Kenta studied his face for a reaction. A little stupified, maybe, but not in a bad way. “I like men, if that’s what you’re asking.”

Kenta felt the tension wash out of his body.

“I- well, I hadn’t really thought about it that much until yesterday. I mean, I like being around you, and anyone with eyes knows you’re attractive, but I hadn’t really thought about it,” Danny went on, and Kenta waited, tired of letting his hopes rise and fall. Danny would say whatever it was he wanted to say eventually. “Some of the Asian guys in the docks were asking how I felt about men, and I thought maybe you had something to do with it.”

A hot flash of embarrassment spread through Kenta’s face and chest. “I, um, told my friend to get him to stop trying to set me up with women. I think he took it as a sign he should be trying to set me up with you.”

“Well, it worked,” Danny told him, smiling. “Or, um, I’m willing to try things. You know I lost my wife, and I never really planned on dating again. I don’t want to get your hopes up if it doesn’t work out.”

Kenta shook his head. “Nothing has to change yet. We can go at your pace.”

Kenta meant it, and he was pleasantly surprised when Danny kissed him twice more before their date was over.

September 2009

Kenta thought it was going well, even after Taylor returned from summer camp and Danny spent fewer nights out. They did things during the day sometimes, and Danny called him in the evenings fairly often on the days they didn’t see each other. It was still pretty slow, but Kenta didn’t think that was a bad sign.

In September, Danny said they should talk about things. Kenta wasn’t sure if that was good or bad.

“I asked Taylor if it was okay with her if I was dating,” Danny told him. They were in Danny’s DWA office, Kenta having brought sandwiches for his lunch break. “She had some questions, but she was fine with it. I’d like us to take the next steps in our relationship, but I think we should be on the same page before we commit to anything.”

Kenta nodded along. “There were some things I wanted to talk to you about as well.”

“My wedding ring?” Danny asked, and Kenta didn’t know if he was kidding. He didn’t say anything, and Danny smiled a little wryly. “I don’t think I’m ready to stop wearing it. Eventually, but not yet.”

“I don’t care about that.” That sounded rude. Back up. “I know she was important to you. I know I’m not replacing her or anything like that. I don’t mind if you wear your wedding ring.”

“Oh.” Danny was smiling, but he looked a little embarrassed. Kenta did that sometimes, working up these little things in his head. Danny wasn’t as good at hiding it, though. “Was it, um, Taylor then?”

Kenta nodded. “I know she’s always going to be your priority. I thought… I thought you should know what I am before you decide if you want me meeting her or not.”

Danny’s brow furrowed a bit. “Should I be worried?”

Yes, but Kenta liked Danny too much to say that. “I’m a parahuman.”

Danny stared at him, then seemed to relax a bit. Kenta thought maybe Danny was going to laugh at him, to say he thought he was kidding, but he was actually relieved. “I thought you were going to say something worse.”

Kenta didn’t know what he meant by that. What was worse than a parahuman? “Parahumans are dangerous. I wouldn’t be offended if you wanted Taylor to stay away from me.”

Danny’s pupils focused a bit. Good, he was taking this seriously. “What’s your power?”

“Regeneration.” Not the whole truth. Close enough. Maybe one day, but not yet. “Not a lot of people know. It’s easy to hide.”

“How is regeneration dangerous?”

Kenta swallowed. The other things he wanted to tell Danny… He’d gone into this knowing he didn’t want to tell him about Lung, but there was a lot more he was realizing he wanted to keep to himself for now. He still needed to make Danny understand, though. “Being a parahuman… I don’t know how to say it. It changes your life. I was in the Yàngbǎn before I came to the States.”

Kenta saw the recognition on Danny’s face. “You were? Why did you leave?”

“I wasn’t there by choice,” Kenta told him, and Danny’s face fell a bit. Kenta tried not to watch his face too closely as he continued. “I told you I was in Kyushu when Leviathan came. I could have gone to another island after, but a member of Sentai Elite, um, saw my power during the fight, so I went to the CUI to try to hide. Parahumans are hunted there, but I thought…”

Kenta trailed off, wondering what to say, how much he should tell Danny. Danny mistook the silence for something it wasn’t. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

Kenta shook his head. “I was in a CUI prison until I agreed to be part of the Yàngbǎn. Many of the Yàngbǎn aren’t there consentually, but it’s hard to… It’s hard to think there. Even if I would have had allies if I were to try to escape, it was impossible to plan.”

He was pretty sure others had broken free of Null’s power during his escape. The might of the Yàngbǎn was enough to make him grow quite a bit, just enough to fly out of there. He hadn’t brought anyone with him, though.

“I’m sorry,” Danny told him. “I know that doesn’t mean much, but I hear you.”

Kenta hummed in acknowledgement. “It’s in the past. But my life has always been a violent one. I don’t know if I’m boyfriend material, let alone…”

“Parent material?” Danny said because Kenta had been too afraid to say it. He leaned forward a bit. “I’m not really worried. We’ll figure it out when we get there, yeah?”

Kenta wasn’t all that confident, but Danny was right. They did figure it out. Taylor was a fan of parahumans, which wasn’t the ideal thing for Kenta to bond over her with, but they found ways to do it without Kenta revealing his own parahuman status. The Legend Halloween costume was a dud, but stories from the Leviathan battle were something, and that eventually led to the outing where they looked at Lee’s newspaper clipping collection, which laid the groundwork for something more.

Kenta never thought he’d enjoy being around kids, and his relationship with Taylor was pretty awkward, but 2010 ended up being a pretty good year for him. 

The ABB and its more legitimate businesses were prospering thanks to a stronger relationship with the DWA and its influence on its overseas partners. 

He showed Danny and Taylor around the Asian sections of Brockton Bay, sometimes separate and sometimes together, and they, in turn, introduced him to many of the American inventions that he’d missed out on.

His friendship with Lee got a little better. Kenta’s secret had never really weighed him down, but it was nice to have a friend in the know, and his trust for Oni Lee grew a bit once Lee proved he wasn’t going around spilling Kenta’s private business. 

Taylor went to summer camp again, and Danny invited Kenta to stay over while she was away, which was rather nice. When she returned, they took a little trip to Boston together, and they spent many days at Brockton Bay community center pools when Taylor found out he didn’t know how to swim. A little embarrassing to be taught by a fourteen-year-old, but Kenta came out better for it.

The holidays were a lot less awkward than they’d been the year before, and Taylor didn’t really question Kenta’s presence at the house at random hours throughout the day between chunks of ABB business over her winter break.

It was good. Kenta’s relationship with Danny was going strong, and Taylor was still a little quiet around him, but her presence made him feel like he was part of a family again. But having good things made it hurt more when they came crashing down.

January 2011

Lung and Oni Lee were in the middle of a skirmish with some merchants that’d encroached on their territory when Kenta’s cell phone rang. He had to wait until his transformation died down to check who it was.

“It’s probably just spam,” Lee complained when Kenta insisted they wait on a roof for his normal fingers and mouth to come back. “I never answer my phone. Unless it’s you, of course.”

“Good save,” Kenta responded a little sarcastically as he tapped to his recent calls. He frowned a little when he saw the caller ID. “It’s Taylor’s school.”

Lee’s expression shifted. “You think she’s okay?”

“She’s been getting bullied,” Kenta told him. It’d been happening before he’d met her, apparently, but Danny told him she’d clam up if he asked her about it, so he never did. He didn’t know what he’d say if he had. “Maybe they need me to pick her up.”

He listened to the voicemail. They told him to call them as soon as he could. Lee didn’t complain when he did right then and there.

“Mr. Hebert?” the voice on the other end of the line said.

“Smith,” Kenta corrected. “I’m Danny Hebert’s boyfriend. He doesn’t have a cell phone. Is Taylor okay?”

“There’s been an accident,” the person on the other end told him, and Kenta’s heart pounded so hard he thought he might be transforming again. “She was sent to Brockton General Hospital.”

“I’m going there now. I’ll call you back,” Kenta said and hung up the phone. He looked expectantly at Lee. “You get that?”

Lee nodded. “Are we going as Kenta and Lee or Lung and Oni Lee?”

Kenta thought about it. “Kenta and Oni Lee. I need you to go find Danny afterward.”

Lee nodded and put his mask back on, teleporting the both of them. Somehow, he managed to get Kenta in proper clothes in the middle of it all, and Kenta was running into the hospital within seconds. He wasn’t directed right to Taylor like he was expecting though.

“What do you mean I can’t see her?”

The person at the desk babbled something about how he wasn’t her legal guardian, so they couldn’t confirm or deny whether she was even at the hospital. Kenta was seriously considering trying to trigger his transformation to scare it out of her when Assault, Battery, and a handful of PRT soldiers stepped out of the elevator and into the lobby.

Somehow, Kenta knew they were here about Taylor.

He ran right up to them despite the protests from the woman at the desk. “Are you here about a girl from Winslow?”

“Yes,” Battery answered, stopping in front of him. “Are you her father?”

“Yes,” Kenta lied. The woman from the desk called out that he wasn’t, that little traitor. Battery gave him a look, and Kenta was too worked up to challenge her on it. “I’m her dad’s boyfriend. Please, he doesn’t have a cell phone, so the school called me. I asked my friend to look for him, but I don’t know when he’ll find him. I don’t know what happened.”

Battery’s face flashed with sympathy, but it was Assault who answered. “Technically, we’re not bound by the same privacy laws as the hospital. If we’re walking together and someone were to say something…”

Kenta hit the button on the elevator, making it open again, and followed Assault and Battery through the hospital to Taylor’s room. The hospital staff still wouldn’t let him in, and Kenta knew it would be worse for Taylor if he tried to fight them about it with two members of the Protectorate right there, but they were talking, so that had to be enough for now.

They told him something about a locker, that she’d been locked in it for her whole P.E. period, but they were beating around the bush a bit. They were avoiding something. Kenta could tell they were trying to imply it, but while he could understand the individual words, he had no idea what they were actually saying.

It made him feel a little pathetic to ask for clarification, but English was his third language, and he could stomach the embarrassment if it meant getting to Taylor faster. “Just say it.”

“There are these boxes in girls’ bathrooms for people to put their, um, used products in when they’re on their periods,” Battery started, and Kenta could tell she was still avoiding the meat of the issue.

Assault noticed too because he said it a little more bluntly. “They filled her locker with weeks of rotted pads and tampons and then shoved her in it.”

Kenta was sure the horror showed on his face. That was… He didn’t even have the words. “Who?”

“Pardon?”

“Who did it?”

Battery cringed a bit. “We don’t know.”

“How do they not know?” Kenta demanded. Battery opened her mouth, but Kenta wasn’t finished. He’d been in a CUI prison for years, and even they didn’t do anything so heinous. “That has to be a human rights violation.”

“I’m with you,” Battery agreed without missing a beat, “but Assault and I aren’t involved in the investigation, so we haven’t heard anything. The PRT checks in on people who have experienced, um, traumatic events to see if they triggered, but she’s unresponsive, so they don’t think she did.”

Triggered? Kenta hadn’t even considered it. This wasn’t anything like his own trigger, but he didn’t doubt it was enough to make Taylor trigger if she was capable of it. “You’re leaving then?”

Battery started to nod, then stopped herself. She glanced at Assault, then looked back at Kenta. “We can wait with you if you’d like. Share any updates we get, unless someone tells us we can’t. You said you were waiting for your boyfriend?”

Kenta nodded. “Danny. His wife died because she was using her cell phone while driving, so he doesn’t have one. I asked my friend to look for him, but I don’t know how long it’ll take.”

Kenta couldn’t remember if he’d told them that already or not. He was oversharing a bit, he knew, but he was rattled in a way he hadn’t been since he couldn’t find his mother after Leviathan. Assault and Battery didn’t seem to mind, though, nodding sympathetically.

Another thought struck him. “When I said my friend was looking for Danny, I actually meant Oni Lee. Please don’t arrest him if he shows up.”

Assault and Battery froze at that. Assault responded first. “You shouldn’t be hanging around people like that.”

“I know.” Kenta remembered the lies Danny told Taylor about him. He didn’t care for them, but they were good cover. “I don’t have much of a choice. I’m a gay Asian man in Brockton Bay. I need the ABB’s protection.”

The two winced, and Kenta knew they understood. He still wasn’t sure how they’d react to Oni Lee if they saw him, but Oni Lee had the reputation he did for a reason. He probably couldn’t take the whole Protectorate like Lung did, but Assault and Battery wouldn’t be a problem if they decided to attack him.

Danny arrived sooner than Kenta expected, but later than he would have liked. Lee wasn’t with him when he arrived, just some hospital staff, which was probably a good thing. Danny ran right into Kenta’s arms, letting his boyfriend pull him into a tight hug. “Where is she? Is she okay? What happened?”

Kenta didn’t have the answers to his questions, but the hospital staff were a lot more cooperative than they were when it was just Kenta. Taylor had some kind of psychiatric episode, it sounded like. Kenta had a hard time following along with that part, but he knew Danny could repeat it for him later if it was important. They’d cleaned her up and given her some treatment that Kenta couldn’t understand the purpose of, and she was just resting now.

They could have told him that. Kenta was more than a little annoyed that they hadn’t, but he didn’t say anything because they let him into the hospital room with Danny. Assault and Battery left around them, but Kenta was a little too distracted to give them a proper goodbye, even though they deserved it. How ironic was it that the Protectorate members were the only people who’d been helpful through this whole thing?

Taylor looked so tiny lying in the hospital bed, so vulnerable in the unnaturally white sheets. She was tall for her age, so Kenta had never really seen her that way. But now? There was no way he couldn’t.

Who could shove a kid in a filthy locker? Who could let her just stew in other people’s waste for hours? And Taylor of all people. Kenta knew he was biased, but he wasn’t so biased that he’d say Taylor was a ray of sunshine or anything like that. She was an awkward girl. Bookish, not very conventionally attractive, and kind of withdrawn. It was hard to get to know her, but Kenta knew she had a kind heart, like Danny did. She loved the people in her life, even if she shied away from them. She was smart, always reading and using computers. She was just a teenage girl. Not the kind of person who should be getting picked on, let alone to this degree.

Kenta stayed with Danny in the hospital room overnight and left to talk to the school on his behalf when Danny couldn’t bring himself to leave Taylor’s side. The school didn’t have anything useful to say. They wanted to talk to Danny, not him, even though he was listed as Taylor emergency contact, which he hadn’t known before he’d gotten the call.

The principal had some kind of agreement she wanted Danny to sign, something that would give him the money to pay for Taylor’s hospital bills but would also prevent him from suing the school. The principal gave him a copy of the forms, telling him to get Danny to sign it. Kenta relished the look on her face when he informed her he would not be doing that and that he would be suing the school for all they were worth.

Danny Hebert had a DWA salary. “Ken Smith” had the salary of a shady ABB business and property manager. But Kenta? But Lung? He had a dragon’s riches, and dozens of lawyers in his territory that would probably have done the job for free if he merely growled in their direction. He wouldn’t, of course. Not when it came to Danny and Taylor. They deserved the best money could buy.

He still brought the contract back to the hospital because he thought Danny might want to look at it. He’d make him promise not to sign it, but it was still worth reading over.

It wasn’t until the next day that Kenta convinced Danny to go home, shower, and let Kurt and Lacey take care of him for a few hours. He kind of regretted it, though, because it was during those few hours that Kenta was alone with Taylor that Panacea showed up.

He hadn’t recognized her at first. She wasn’t wearing her costume, and New Wave didn’t typically mess with the ABB, save for the rare occasion Glory Girl ended up near the docks. Panacea was still a known cape, just as much a part of Brockton Bay’s cape presence as Lung or Hookwolf. Her ability was a powerful one, maybe even rivaling his own.

“Are you her father?” Panacea asked from the doorway. She sounded kind of bored, but Kenta thought she must just be tired.

“No,” Kenta answered, even though he wanted to lie and say he was. So many problems came up in the past couple days just because he wasn’t related to Taylor. “I can get her father though. He doesn’t have a cell phone, but-”

“I don’t really care.” Panacea walked in, taking a glance at the chart attached to the foot of Taylor’s hospital bed. She dropped it after a moment, letting it hang by the plastic tie attaching it to the metal frame, and looked in Kenta’s direction. “She can’t consent. Do you give me permission to heal her?”

“Yes,” Kenta said instantly, even though he knew Danny really, really should be here, at least for Taylor’s sake. He didn’t think Danny would be too upset, though, as long as his daughter was okay. “She was shoved in a locker filled with rotted mens- um, pads and tampons. The hospital gave her something to prevent infection, but she won’t wake up, and they don’t know why.”

That snapped Panacea out of her distant sort of demeanor. “Damn. Winslow? Sorry, that was rude.”

“You’re not wrong, though,” Kenta replied and watched as Panacea put her hand on Taylor’s forearm. He wanted to keep his eyes on Taylor, but he made himself watch Panacea, watching for the minute ways her eyes flickered up and down Taylor’s body, hoping it would give him some kind of insight about what was happening to her.

“Huh.”

“What?” That didn’t sound good. “Is something wrong?”

“No,” Panacea said a little hesitantly. She kept her hand on Taylor, but it didn’t look like she was doing anything. “She’s not really injured. I healed some minor scrapes and a few little things, but it’s… How do I say it? She’s… adjusting. It’s a brain thing, and I can’t do brain things.”

Kenta took a stab in the dark. He was pretty sure he was right, but it still felt a little like grasping at straws. “Thinker?”

Panacea’s head jerked up, meeting Kenta’s eyes. She wanted to ask, he knew, but she didn’t. “Yeah. Are you familiar?”

“A bit.” There had been Thinkers in Yàngbǎn. There hadn’t been much time for chatting, and the culture in the CUI mimicked the West in that it was abnormal to talk about trigger events, but he knew enough. Enough that he could have connected the dots before now. “The PRT thought she might’ve had a trigger event, but they decided she hadn’t. But it makes sense from what I know.”

“Sometimes Thinkers’ brains need time to adjust to whatever change occurred. It might be higher processing power, more sensory input, or maybe the power is focused on something specific, and the brain just has to remap itself a bit. Might be something else entirely.” She glanced at Taylor one more time, then looked back at Kenta. “I won’t tell the hospital staff. You can if you want, but they won’t really be able to do anything, and it’ll probably be better for her long-term if the PRT doesn’t know. Gives her the option of a secret identity. A real secret identity.”

Kenta was a little surprised she was considering such a thing, let alone suggesting it. Wasn’t New Wave’s whole thing having public identities?

“I’ll tell the staff to transfer her to a psych ward. I think it’ll be another couple days before she wakes up, but it might be longer, and she probably won’t be all the way there when she wakes up,” Panacea went on, voice regaining some of that dullness she’d entered with. “Any questions?”

A million, but Kenta couldn’t think of any to ask, so he just shook his head. “No. Thank you, though. Is there anything I can do to repay you?”

Panacea was already out the door before he finished his sentence.

Kenta thought about calling Kurt or Lacey to tell Danny he wanted to talk to him, but as he was scrolling through his contacts, he thought that might give Danny a heart attack. He texted instead.

Danny was back at the hospital about half an hour later, which Kenta hadn’t really wanted, but he knew Danny would be more upset than it was worth if he’d made him wait.

“Is Taylor okay?” Danny asked upon bursting into the room. Kenta didn’t humor him by reacting.

“I said she was fine in the text,” Kenta told him. He slid over on the cushioned bench built into the wall parallel to the bed, making a little more room for Danny. They’d both grown to hate the hospital chairs. “There are a few… updates. And we have a couple things to discuss. Which do you want to hear first?”

“Um, the updates? What happened?”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Kenta warned. “Panacea came by.”

Kenta watched Danny’s expression lighten, then fall again almost immediately. He had warned him. “What did she say?”

“Taylor’s not hurt. Let me finish,” Kenta instructed when Danny opened his mouth to argue. “She said she fixed some little things, but I don’t know what they were. She said it was a brain thing, and she can’t heal brains.”

Danny’s brows knitted together. “I thought you said she wasn’t injured. Did she hit her head?”

“Brain isn’t the right word. More of a mental thing. She’s going to recommend the hospital move her to the psych ward. She said she’ll probably wake up in a couple days, and then be a little out of it for a little longer, and then she’ll probably be fine. She just needs to adjust.”

Danny’s worry was now just confusion. “I’ve never heard of something like that. Did she say why? Maybe we can look it up on the computer.”

Maybe, but Kenta doubted it. Parahumans were pretty secretive, and for good reason. He looked up, seeing that the door to the hospital room was open. Wordlessly, he got up to close it. When he turned back around, Danny was wringing his hands, the pad of one thumb over the knuckle of the thumb on his opposite hand. He looked almost sunken in on himself, and Kenta felt a stab of guilt for making his boyfriend feel any worse than he already did.

“Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you,” Kenta said, sitting back down and taking Danny’s hand so he stopped rubbing it. “Panacea didn’t want to tell the hospital staff, and I agree with her decision.”

“Why wouldn’t we tell the hospital staff?”

Oh, naive Danny. Normally, Kenta wouldn’t call him that. He had to be pretty astute to be a negotiator, but he was also a trusting man. Maybe he’d learn one day, but Kenta kind of didn’t want him to.

Kenta took a deep breath and let the words fall out of his mouth. “Do you know what a trigger event is?”

“No. What is it?”

“It’s how a parahuman gets their abilities,” Kenta told him, and he saw something click in Danny’s mind. “Basically, someone experiences something so traumatic that something in them reacts in an unnatural way, and they get powers.”

“Oh.” Danny’s gaze drifted a bit, settling back on Taylor. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“I don’t think it’s common knowledge. There’s an unspoken rule that we don’t talk about it.”

Danny’s gaze remained on Taylor. “I guess I shouldn’t ask her about what happened then.”

“Probably not,” Kenta agreed. “If she decides she wants to tell us about it, I might tell her about my trigger event, but I don’t think I want to involve either of you in that part of my life. We’ll see if she needs it, I suppose.”

Kenta felt Danny look back at him. “I wanted to ask, back when you told me you had powers. I’m glad I didn’t, since you said you’re not supposed to ask and all, but…”

“It might help you understand what Taylor’s going through better?” Kenta asked, and Danny nodded. 

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t mind. I thought I should tell you eventually, but I wasn’t really sure how to do it. There are parts I don’t think I’ll ever tell anyone.”

“That’s okay. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Kenta leaned back a bit, still holding Danny’s hand, and looked sort of blankly across the room. “Mine was pretty different from Taylor’s. Taylor’s probably a Thinker. That’s a mental power. Her mind’s figuring itself out, that’s why she’s unconscious. I don’t really know what Thinker triggers usually look like. I’m technically a Brute, though. We usually trigger from getting hurt.”

“Did you trigger during the Leviathan attack?” Danny asked, and Kenta shook his head.

“Worse.”

“Worse than an Endbringer?”

Probably not. It was probably inappropriate to call a parahuman worse than an Endbringer, but Kenta didn’t really care. His trigger event made him feel far worse than the Leviathan attack had. “I fought the bogeyman.”

Danny made a choked noise, and Kenta realized he’d stopped himself from laughing. “Sorry. That was insensitive. But the bogeyman?”

“That’s not her name. It's what capes call her, though. I didn’t know it when I met her, but I know it was her.” It was what Accord called her when he used information to trade instead of money, which Kenta didn’t really like, but he wouldn’t say the information wasn’t valuable. Coil called her by her real name, though, and Kenta never dared to repeat it. “We do not speak of her. We do not even say her name. That is why we call her the bogeyman.”

Danny nodded, looking a little scared and a little curious. Good. Kenta hated to scare him, but he had to understand.

“I was with eight others. Two of them had powers already. That night, we just wanted to steal a little money, but we were hoping the Yakuza would notice us and invite us to join. It was dumb, but we were just boys.” Kenta couldn’t even remember how old he was back then. He remembered Daiichi as being a lot older than him, but they’d all gone to school together, so that couldn’t be true. “I think I was Taylor’s age, maybe a little bit younger.”

The look on Danny’s face became pained, and Kenta understood it. He’d felt so grown up back then, not even telling his mother what had happened, even when she found him crying in his bed that night. He’d felt so tough for keeping it all in, but also ashamed that he had eventually broken. He’d forgotten about that part. He really had been just a boy.

Had Taylor hidden in her room and cried without him or Danny knowing? The events leading up to her trigger seemed a little more spread out. It was no bogeyman, but it was still a trigger event. Her school life had been traumatic, and Kenta hadn’t known. She was just a girl.

“She pushed my face into a pile of cocaine until I had a heart attack,” Kenta said quickly, suddenly not wanting to talk about it anymore. He’d still finish the story for Danny, but talking about it had left him feeling disturbed in a way that he never had before. “My trigger saved me. I played dead until I thought it was safe, but it was too late by then. She killed all the other boys.”

Except one, the one that Kenta had snuck kisses with behind the trees in the school yard. He’d held his hand until he died. The memory made Kenta’s eyes prickle. Maybe he’d tell Danny another time, but talking about his trigger had been a lot harder than he’d thought it would be. He hadn’t realized that he’d been so young.

“My god.” Danny shook his head. “I don’t even know what to say.”

Kenta didn’t either. He cleared his throat and kept talking. “It affected my mind. I don’t know how, but I can tell it did. Acc- Um, a Thinker I know once told me that a trigger involving drugs usually does.”

Danny blinked at him a couple of times. “Does it bother you?”

Kenta thought about it. Did it? Maybe. He couldn’t really tell. He was pretty sure it was the reason he was a gangbanger. If his trigger event hadn’t happened, Daiichi’s gang would have fallen apart eventually. It was a little dumb to think a group of teenage boys could join the Yakuza by committing petty crimes. His mother had insisted he go to school, and he had, but he never really had a mind for it. Was that him or his trigger? He didn’t know, and he probably never would. He couldn’t imagine fourteen-year-old Kenta having the heart or the stomach to lead the ABB, though.

“Not really. Maybe now than before. I don’t want you or Taylor to be affected by it,” Kenta added. He paused, an idea coming to him. “I think I’m more violent. Or, I notice it more when I’m fighting, so I try not to.”

It wasn’t really true, but it wasn’t a lie either. Kenta wasn’t sure if Danny knew he was Lung or not. Danny never indicated it in any way, but Kenta’s lies were kind of thin. The ABB only had two parahumans, and Danny had met Oni Lee in costume. He’d told him he had regeneration powers, which was true, but also pretty far from what Lung was known for. He really had no idea, but he knew he didn’t want Danny to see him transform, and that meant Danny could never see him fight.

Danny didn’t show any signs that he didn’t believe him, just nodding along. “Do you think this will affect Taylor’s mind?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know a lot about Thinkers.”

“Weren’t you in the Yàngbǎn? Don’t they share powers?”

Wait, that was right. He had been a Thinker for a bit. “Null’s powers make it hard to notice those kinds of things. Twenty-three was a Thinker, I think. It was more of a danger sense, though. I’m not really sure, and we don’t know what kind of Thinker Taylor is, or if she’s even a Thinker at all.”

Danny let out a long breath. “You’re right. I want to… I don’t know. Now that I know what’s wrong, I feel like I can start planning ahead, but that’s not really true, is it? I feel a little better, though, even if I have more questions now than I did before. Thank you, Kenta.”

Kenta made a sound of acknowledgement, and Danny planted a kiss on the corner of his mouth. They remained in that cramped little hospital room bench side by side, until the hospital staff came to move Taylor to the psych ward. 

They didn’t separate for long until it was time to bring Taylor home.

Chapter Text

January 2011

Kenta basically moved in without anyone saying anything right after I got back from the hospital. I didn’t even notice at first, but once I did, I wasn’t sure how to feel about it.

On one hand, I liked Kenta. He’d been there for Dad when I was in the hospital too, and him moving in was probably a good sign for their relationship.

On the other hand, he was around a lot more than Dad, at least in a way I noticed. He worked kind of weird hours, more signs that he was active in the ABB, not that it really mattered at this point. It was kind of nice to have someone around again, and we’d find our routines with each other in the coming weeks, but it was kind of embarrassing at first. 

I’d basically had a medical crisis, not that Dad or Kenta knew what had actually happened, and I definitely wasn’t 100% leaving the hospital. Kenta had to carry me up the stairs, which was helpful if you looked at it objectively, but horribly embarrassing for me. It was bad enough Dad seeing me like this.

The only other bad part about having Kenta around when I was recovering was that he kept feeding me a bunch of bad-tasting tea, which was crazy because he was the one who introduced me to a whole new world of tea. He said his mother insisted the stuff was good for all kinds of healing, so I didn’t really have the heart to turn it away, even if it tasted really gross.

It was generally pretty good to have him around, though. He kept Dad from worrying too much and stuck around the house when Dad went out, which I was pretty sure Kenta was encouraging him to do, another plus. He left me alone a lot, but still cooked with and for me, put up with whatever TV shows I wanted to watch, and generally kept me company without being overbearing.

He had a good balance. It was almost like having another parent around, even if he was really nothing like either of my parents.

I was grateful when he started venturing away from the house for longer periods of time, though. I was pretty sure I could hide my powers from Dad, but I wasn’t so sure I could hide them from Kenta.

Yeah, I had powers. Bug control. Not exactly the most heroic power, but finally all my hours spent on PHO were going to good use. Even still recovering from the locker, the hospital, and whatever effect getting my powers had on me, there was no question about it. I was going to be a superhero!

Maybe I’d join the Wards. Maybe I’d go solo. Maybe I’d tip the balances and help the Protectorate take out some gang capes. Maybe I’d sting Emma with a dozen bees.

I was dragged out of my fantasies a little bit when Dad and Kenta started talking about school again.

“We can’t afford to sue the school,” I said, trying to focus on Dad but accidentally letting my gaze drift to Kenta. Dad would have taken what the school offered, even if it was just the school’s way to try to weasel out of actually taking responsibility. Dad wasn’t the kind of parent who was brutally honest about our finances, but I knew we lost a salary when Mom died. We could use the money. We needed the money. Honestly, I was surprised he hadn’t agreed to the school’s offer.

“I can afford it,” Kenta said a little bluntly. I didn’t miss the way Dad elbowed him. I’d seen them do the same thing when Dad had first introduced me to him. Kenta kept talking like Dad hadn’t just corrected him. “The stereotypes about Asian parents sending their children to law school are true. I have many resources to lean on.”

None of that was helping my suspicions about Kenta’s ABB involvement.

Dad wanted to know more about the bullying, and it was harder to say no with Kenta right there, but I stood strong. Even after everything that happened, I didn’t want him to know about Emma. Plus, her dad was a lawyer, and that could send this whole thing crashing down.

But even without the names of my bullies, I still had the emails, and it wasn’t like the school didn’t know I was being bullied. Kenta’s lawyer friend planned on presenting it as negligence, failure to provide a safe environment, reckless endangerment, and a failure to supervise. Dad thought it was ridiculous that no one had noticed that the bullies had set up the locker the way they had, and Kenta was pissed that no one had noticed I was missing for the whole class period. I didn’t like that they were so worked up, but it was kind of cool to see them like this. It was like they were their own little team.

I’d seen Dad’s temper before, but he did a good job keeping it in check. Did he let it out at negotiations? From what Dad had told me, he and Kenta had never been on the same side of the table, which was probably a good thing given how well they were working together on the lawsuit and taking care of me. I tried not to think too much about why Dad and Kenta liked each other, which was pretty hard considering how different they looked, but I guess I could see it if it was this side of each other that they’d first encountered.

I let Dad and Kenta do their thing. From what they told me, they had a good chance of coming out successful, even if the school dragged it out, which was good. Again, we could use the money, and I could use the win. But more importantly for me, it kept them distracted, letting me practice using my bugs without worry.

February 2011

Kenta had taken me and Dad to the Asian areas around the docks plenty of times, but he hadn’t taken us to the Chinese New Year celebration last year. I was excited to see it this time.

“Lunar New Year,” Kenta corrected both me and Dad more than once. “It’s Chinese when you celebrate it the Chinese way. Brockton Bay mixes all Asian groups.”

I didn’t really understand why the distinction was important, especially when Kenta was Chinese, but Kenta was the expert, not me, so I listened and tried to correct myself.

I couldn’t tell if we were on a street I’d been on before. It all looked so different, everything more red than not and street vendors blocking the view of a lot of the infrastructure. Plus, it was really busy, and not just in terms of how many people there were. It was loud with the noises of firecrackers, drummers behind lion dancers, and the sizzle of people cooking. The air was filled with the smells of meat and gunpowder. Even the view of the sky was blocked with red lanterns and banners strung overhead, dancing cloth dragons on sticks poking out from the crowd between them.

There were a lot of bugs too. I tried to move them all to the edges of my range, keeping just enough around to help ground me in all this stimulation.

Kenta seemed right at home, though. A lot of people stopped to talk to him, and Kenta responded in what I assumed was Mandarin or Japanese. More than once, he put his arm around Dad, and the other person reacted with a look of surprise. I’d never really asked, but I’m pretty sure Kenta hadn’t told his community about us, and that was why he hadn’t invited us to the New Year celebration last year. I wondered what changed his mind about telling people. Just time? He and Dad had been together for over a year and a half at this point. Or had my hospitalization had anything to do with it?

I hadn’t noticed that Dad and I were the only white people here until I saw a group of maybe six Caucasian men pushing their way through the crowd. And I meant pushing. The street was crowded, but people seemed to have a rhythm, navigating around each other seamlessly. These people were disrupting it, shoving and pushing people forcefully.

It didn’t occur to me that they weren’t here to celebrate the holiday until one of them reached up and tore down a string of overhead lanterns. These were members of Empire 88.

I felt the bugs I’d shoved to the edge of my range start buzzing with agitation when I realized. There were gangsters here. Or, well, there were probably a lot of gangsters here. I didn’t know how true that thing Dad said about most Asian people in Brockton Bay being part of the ABB was, but I assumed it was at least kind of accurate. It was different with the Empire, though. It was obvious they were here to cause trouble.

Should I do something? I was going to be a superhero, but I didn’t have a costume, and even if I could get away from Dad and Kenta, what was I supposed to do? I was a fifteen-year-old girl. I could have my bugs bite the Empire guys, I guess, but I didn’t think that would actually do much.

I was so focused on my bugs that I didn’t notice a pair of E88 thugs walk right up to me and Dad.

“What’s an Aryan like you doing with these chinks?” one of them called out. Dad, embarrassingly, looked over his shoulder like he hadn’t realized they were talking to him. If we were anywhere else, it might’ve made sense. Neither Dad nor I met what would actually be considered “Aryan,” but neither did these guys, so I don’t know what that was about. One of them guffawed at Dad’s reaction. The other just narrowed his eyes. “You’re not a race traitor, are you?”

I couldn’t believe these guys actually talked like that, but they were rough enough that I hardly had a second to think about it before the guy made a grab for Dad’s arm. He made contact, but Kenta was shoving his way between them before I could even think to sic my bugs on him. Kenta’s back was to me, so I couldn’t see his face, but I imagined he looked pretty pissed right now. “Don’t touch him.”

The E88 guy’s nostrils flared, a sharp, dark look appearing in his eyes. He looked at Kenta for a moment, then at Dad, then at me, before refocusing on Dad. He shook his head in what I thought was mock sadness. “A race traitor and a queer.”

Kenta and the E88 guy were suddenly grappling. The other E88 guy put his hands on Kenta’s shoulder, trying to pull him off, but another Asian man joined in, and it pretty quickly turned into a real fight. I hadn’t realized I’d frozen until Dad put his arms around me protectively. I’d seen fights before at school, but I’d never been so close, except when I was the one getting hit, and it was nothing like this. I was suddenly very aware of how much smaller I was than a lot of the people around me.

An explosion from the next street over knocked nearly everyone who was fighting to the ground.

Kenta shouted something in Japanese, and I thought he was shouting at us, but I couldn’t really tell. I wasn’t even sure if it was him, actually. His voice sounded pretty different. Some Asian woman started tugging on Dad’s hand, drawing us away from the fight. I glanced back at Kenta, thinking about calling out, but Dad’s hold on me was firm enough that my feet just naturally followed his guidance.

The woman led us into one of the shops, and once we were out of the crowd, my brain kick-started. I saw a stairwell, and I seized the opportunity, running up it even though Dad called after me not to. I wouldn’t be able to explain it to him, but at least I could help if I could see what was happening.

Dad joined me on the roof, holding me again. He said something to me, but I was too distracted by my bugs and what I saw on the next street over.

Right there was Hookwolf, Stormtiger, Oni Lee, and a bunch of masked gangbangers. My bugs weren’t going to do shit against them.

Oni Lee let another bomb go off, and a chunk of ice appeared in the street, enveloping the legs of a couple of the E88 members. A woman came up behind him with what I thought was maybe an axe, brutally shattering the men’s legs. The ABB had another cape, it seemed. A Tinker, maybe? That would explain Oni Lee’s ice bombs. I’d never heard of him using anything like that.

Hookwolf wasn’t really affected by the ice bombs, though, using his metal to protect himself. Stormtiger caught on quickly, too, using his aerokinetic blasts to launch the Oni Lee copies into the sky when he tried to get the drop on him. The clones were doing pretty well against the grunts, successfully freezing them or landing regular hits on them, but he probably would have done better against the parahumans with his regular bombs. I wondered why he wasn’t using them. To protect the crowd, maybe? That wasn’t Oni Lee’s style as far as I knew.

And then Lung appeared, and I understood why Oni Lee hadn’t seemed to care all that much about Hookwolf and Stormtiger. Why use bombs when you had Lung as backup?

I’d seen the pictures of him from when he fought the Protectorate and the newspaper clippings of him fighting Leviathan. Lung looked nothing like he did in those photos, but he was still recognizable. I couldn’t tell how big he was, given how far Dad and I were from the fight, but I could tell he was a lot bigger than a regular person was. He wasn’t that far into his transformation, but I could see the scales littered across his body, the silvery color matching his iconic mask.

He engulfed Stormtiget in flames, overwhelming his aerokinetic ability, but abandoned the attack pretty quickly, letting Oni Lee and the Tinker woman take over. He lunged for Hookwolf instead, quickly becoming a mess of rippling fire and twisting metal. It became pretty hard to tell what was going on, but I thought Lung was winning.

I didn’t think there was anything I could do to help. Lung’s fire kept my bugs from touching Hookwolf, assuming there were gaps in the metal he was surrounding himself with, and Stormtiger’s air blasts could get rid of my bugs pretty easily. I focused on the other E88 grunts, like the ones that Kenta had been fighting. Oni Lee and that Tinker woman had taken care of most of the ones that had arrived with Hookwolf and Stormtiger, but there were still Empire men on the neighboring streets. I let my swarm feast on them, making them cry out loud enough that I could hear some of them from the rooftop and sending most of them running.

Hookwolf was in his metal wolf form by now, and a much larger Lung had him pinned on his side. I wondered if his fire could get hot enough to melt the metal, and how the Manton Effect would play out between the two of them. It didn’t seem to matter, though, because it was pretty clear who’d won. 

It was only with a clever maneuver from Stormtiger that Hookwolf managed to get out from under Lung to run away, snatching up the fallen E88 men on his way. I didn’t know if Lung would have killed any of them, but with the way Oni Lee sent more suicide bomber clones after the fleeing E88 capes, I couldn’t confidently say he wouldn’t.

I wasn’t a great judge of height, but I could say he was maybe seven or eight feet tall, almost completely covered in scales. The Tinker woman was still beside him, and he totally towered over her. Lung reared up and roared, his flames roaring around him, melting the remaining ice. The Tinker woman stepped out in front of him, almost showmanlike, and called out with a technologically modified voice. “Your great leader, Lung the Man-Dragon!”

The crowd cheered, or at least what was left of it on the street. Most of them had run away, trying to find shelter at the edges of the street or inside the shops. Some kids around my age on one of the roofs overlooking the fight threw some firecrackers down, the little bundles of gunpowder, not the big bands of those paper tubes, to add to the noise. 

As terrifying and brutal as the fight had been, Lung, Oni-Lee, and that Tinker woman had protected the people on the streets. I never thought I’d see the day anyone in Brockton Bay would cheer for Lung and Oni-Lee, but I had, and I could kind of see why.

Dad and I stayed up on the roof for a little bit longer and headed back down sometime after Oni Lee returned to teleport Lung and the Tinker woman away. It took us awhile longer to find Kenta, Dad spotting him before I did and running us down the street to embrace him.

Dad kissed him almost aggressively. “You idiot. You shouldn’t have fought for me.”

Kenta made a noncommittal noise and kissed him again, gentler than Dad had. He loosened the embrace and glanced over at me. “Did either of you get caught in any of the explosions?”

I shook my head. “It looked like they were all those ice bombs. I don’t think anyone but the Empire guys got hit with them.”

“Looked?” Kenta echoed, and I realized my mistake.

“Taylor brought us up to the roof,” Dad explained, and there was a little bit of pointedness to it that told me he’d talk to me about it later. That was fine. Better he think I was just a cape-fanatic without a sense for danger than know I’d been trying to join the fight. From their reactions today, I didn’t think either Dad nor Kenta would take me fighting crime all that well.

February 2011

I went back to school soon enough after the Lunar New Year battle that I thought kids at school would be talking about the fight. Weirdly, they weren’t, but it sort of made sense once I’d thought about it. I hadn’t seen any news trucks or any ambulances or anything. The people who’d been there that day were probably the only ones who knew about it.

Even weirder, a lot of Asian kids were hanging around me that first day back. An Asian boy a year above me even stood next to me when Emma and her posse started walking toward me, making her change her mind.

It was weird enough that I’d worked up the courage to ask the pair of Asian girls who’d followed me out of class after lunch what was going on.

“You know Mr. Kenta?” one of them asked, which wasn’t at all what I was expecting.

“Yeah. He’s dating my dad,” I told them, feeling a little weird about it. Dad hadn’t needed to tell me to be careful about mentioning he was dating a man, but he and Kenta had seemed pretty public yesterday. I assumed some of the Asian kids at school had seen them, but this wasn’t really the reaction I thought they’d have. I knew more about Asian culture than I did a year ago, but I didn’t know a lot about this kind of stuff. I was pretty sure Asian countries were pretty homophobic, and I didn’t know how much that had changed for people since they came to the US.

The girls just nodded like I’d answered my own question. I thought it was a little suspicious and went into the bathroom to eat my lunch like I normally did. They were sitting on the ground by the lockers outside when I left, which was even weirder. Just a lot about today was weird.

It went back to normal a bit after school when there were no more kids lingering around me. I’d been walking past the football field on my way to the bus stop when Sophia spotted me, and a group of boys started running at me.

I didn’t know what I would have done if I didn’t have my bugs. I probably couldn’t even have outrun Greg if he’d decided to chase me, let alone the track team. I didn’t want to use my bugs on them directly, but I had to make a few flies fly into the noses of a few boys when they got too close. I mostly just used them to try to find a route with some corner I could lose them behind.

I missed by bus, and I was too anxious to wait for the next one, so I ended up just walking home. Kenta was there when I arrived, which still threw me off a bit each time, even though it was the new normal. He’d been practically standing behind the door when I opened it, making me jump in surprise.

“Are you okay?” he asked immediately. He looked worried, and I felt a little bad. I probably could have gone to the principal’s office to use the phone to call home to let him know I was going to be late, or even called his cell phone to ask him to pick me up when I realized I’d just missed the bus. Maybe next time. Because there was definitely going to be a next time, knowing the Trio. Hospitalizing me hadn’t been enough, apparently.

I wondered what I should tell him. I didn’t think he had anything to do with the way the Asian kids had sort of been protecting me, at least not on purpose, but I still wasn’t sure I wanted him to know about it. I couldn’t just say nothing, though.

“Some boys chased me after school,” I told him, ducking my head a bit so he couldn’t see my face. I could feel his eyes on me, though, the few seconds of silence from him saying everything I could’ve seen on his face if I looked up.

“I’m going to teach you how to fight,” he declared, and my head snapped up. I hadn’t been expecting that.

“I was thinking about asking Dad if I could start running,” I responded, then immediately slapped myself. I needed to know how to fight if I was going to be a superhero! I’d just been thinking about getting away from the bullies on the way home, getting distracted from my plan, but this was a good opportunity.

I hadn’t actually known Kenta knew how to fight. Lunar New Year was the first and only time he’d shown any signs of it. I always thought his muscles were just from going to the gym and maybe from doing some work on the docks. Was he some kind of martial artist? Was it racist to think he was? What even was the name of the fighting style in Japan? Or China, I guess. I didn’t know either.

“Fight or flight,” Kenta said, and it didn’t really sound like he had a point, like he was just saying the words. He brought it somewhere, though. “Both are good. We can discuss it with your father. I don’t think it would be difficult to get him to agree.”

I doubted that. “Dad doesn’t even like me walking home. He says the area’s too dangerous for me to be out on my own.”

“I meant in comparison to fighting,” Kenta told me patiently. “I think that will be harder to convince him about.”

Oh. Yeah, that made sense. I could see fighting being the opening pitch, and then running being the compromise, but I would still really like to learn how to fight. “Do you have a plan?”

Kenta seemed to think for a moment. “I have been teaching the girl staying at my apartment how to fight. She could use a sparring partner, and you could use a friend. Your dad might agree if he were to meet her.”

There was a girl staying at Kenta’s apartment? Wait, was she coming over? Did I have to get my costume parts out of the basement?

March 2011

Kenta couldn’t really ignore the bullying anymore after the locker incident. He’d lucked out a bit that Bakuda had been recruited around the same time, or he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to convince Danny to let Taylor learn to fight, especially since they were pretty sure she had powers and just wasn’t telling them.

“Be nice to them,” Kenta hissed at Bakuda as he saw Danny and Taylor enter the gym, looking around a little until their eyes fell on him and Bakuda. Kenta forced a more friendly expression on his face and waved them over.

Bakuda just blew air out of her mouth, making her hair move away from her face. She didn’t say anything as Kenta stepped forward to greet Danny and Taylor.

They were in a fairly big gym, and not one in ABB territory. There was a wide variety of people, ones who didn’t know who he or Bakuda were, but they mostly left them alone. They’d taken over the corner where the wrestling mats were, something Kenta didn’t think most gym goers would be interested in.

“This is Alice,” Kenta said, gesturing loosely in Bakuda’s direction. 

Danny reached out to shake her hand. “It’s nice to meet you. Thank you for this. How do you know Kenta?”

“I dropped out last semester, so I’m crashing at his apartment until my parents think I have my shit together,” Bakuda said bluntly. Danny blinked a few times. Kenta had told him all that, of course, but he clearly hadn’t expected Bakuda to just say it.

“She started training here only a couple of weeks ago, so it shouldn’t take Taylor too long to catch up,” Kenta told them, even though it wasn’t really true. Bakuda was a little older than Taylor, and while she didn’t have a fighting background, she’d done sports until she’d gone to college. She actually had muscle and coordination. Taylor… didn’t. And neither did Danny. “Alice, show Taylor how to warm up, then show her that first thing I taught you.”

“How get your arm away when someone grabs you?”

“Yes,” Kenta answered, and Bakuda looked a bit displeased, but she followed his orders. Better to have Taylor use to practice with her, so he never accidentally triggered his transformation when he was around her. It’d happened more than a few times when he’d started training Bakuda, which was fine, but there was no way he was risking it with Taylor.

“That seems important for girls to know,” Danny commented, watching as Bakuda started running Taylor through her stretch routine. Already, Kenta could tell she was going to have a hard time with it. 

Kenta made a noise of agreement. “Do you want to learn?”

“What?” Danny sounded surprised.

“I’m sure you don’t want to learn the things Taylor would be interested in, and I don’t really want to fight you,” Kenta told him, making his voice go a little lower for that last part. Danny nodded along, clearly remembering the not-quite lie Kenta had told him when they’d talked about his trigger. “There are simple things you could learn, though. How to block a hit, how to escape if someone grabs you, how to fall, that kind of thing.”

“How to fall?”

Kenta nodded. “So you don’t hit your head. Or hurt yourself. My father had a book that recommended it was one of the best things to start with when teaching children to fight.”

He didn’t have it anymore, of course, but his father’s books were some of the few things of his that Kenta and his mother kept when Father was arrested and Mother had to sell most of his things to keep them afloat. She hadn’t been able to find anyone to buy the books, and a younger Kenta liked looking at his father’s annotations, the little notes about the things he thought he should try to teach Kenta.

He hated his father now, but he wished he still had the books. They would probably help him train Taylor and Bakuda.

“Okay,” Danny said, and Kenta had sort of forgotten he’d asked him anything. “This seems like more of an after-school thing for Taylor, but I know I should learn this stuff too. If you don’t mind teaching me, I’d like to learn.”

Kenta wondered if Danny was worried about the Empire. He hadn’t said anything about it after Kenta had stopped that man from attacking him during the Lunar New Year Celebration, but there was no way he hadn’t thought about it. Kenta had, but probably not as much as he should have, also having to think about the Empire’s attack on the ABB. It would be good for Danny to learn how to protect himself, even if it was just for Kenta’s peace of mind.

He had Danny do some stretches like Bakuda was doing with Taylor, and took some extra time to show him some warm-ups, the ones his mother had him do with her as a child. He hadn’t liked them at the time, but he was glad he remembered them because Danny probably needed them. Taylor was getting the hang of the trick Bakuda was showing her by the time they were done, and the two of them rejoined Danny and Kenta to learn how to fall.

Kenta would have preferred to show them how to block hits, maybe, but he’d found falling entertaining as a child, spending many hours practicing in his room when his mother was busy. It was more exciting than learning how to block punches, which meant this was probably good for a first lesson to keep them from getting discouraged too early. And falling wasn’t really fighting, so there was little risk of triggering his transformation.

Danny and Taylor laughed a bit during the exercise, which Bakuda didn’t really appreciate. It did look a little silly, even if they should be taking it seriously, but Kenta didn’t have the heart to tell them to focus. He had a strange feeling in his chest as he watched them, something akin to longing. 

He never thought the Heberts would remind him of his own family most when they were flailing around a sweaty gym. No, not his own family. His old family. Danny and Taylor were his family now.

April 2011

Kenta had been doing some work with one of his casinos when he got a call on his personal cell phone. He’d been in good spirits, celebrating the casino’s recent success after he’d appointed a new manager at the start of the year. But the good feeling came crashing down when he saw it was from Winslow.

He feared the worst. Taylor hadn’t told him or Danny about much of the bullying since she’d gone back to school, but it wasn’t like she had for her first year and a half of high school either. He hoped it wasn’t another locker incident.

“What happened?” he demanded, walking out of the room where the casino staff were gathered. It was a bit rude, but he was Lung. They understood he had other business.

He was surprised to hear Taylor’s voice on the other end of the line. “Hi, Kenta. It’s me. Um, could you pick me up from school?”

The request was even more surprising than getting a call from Taylor at all. He was already in the lobby, ready to walk out the door. “Why? I mean, yes, of course. But what happened?”

“Some of the, um, bullies poured juice on me from the bathroom stall. My clothes are soaked, and my backpack’s ruined.”

Kenta turned around, heading for the custodial closet. He leafed through it as quickly as he could, taking some trash bags and anything he thought could be used as a towel. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“If, um, it’s okay, two girls helped me, and they got drenched too,” Taylor added. Kenta nearly stopped in surprise. As far as he knew, no one had ever tried helping her before. He decided to grab more towels. “Could you give them a ride too?”

He heard some voices protesting in the background. Kenta wouldn’t have it. “Of course. Do any of you need new clothes? I’m not at home, but I could get you something if you need it.”

“It’s fine,” Taylor said, which meant it probably wasn’t, but Kenta was still a little relieved. He could buy some t-shirts from the casino, no problem, but then Taylor would probably ask why he was at the casino, and Kenta didn’t really want to explain that. As far as she could tell, she didn’t have the stomach for a lot of the things that Kenta probably wouldn’t even consider crimes.

He put the garbage bags over the seats and floor of his car a little haphazardly, tossed the pile of towels in the passenger seat, and took off for Winslow.

Kenta was very familiar with Winslow’s office at this point. He found Taylor sitting on a plastic chair inside, absolutely dripping with colored liquids. He was surprised to see two Asian girls sitting beside her. They weren’t soaked like Taylor was, but it was clear they’d been splashed with whatever Taylor had poured over her. 

He was even more surprised that one of the girls was his new casino man’s daughter. Had he asked her to watch out for Taylor? It was a little inappropriate, but Kenta would still be sending him his thanks. He’d ask Bakuda to figure it out if he remembered. She could use some practice on the business side of things.

“Are you okay?” Kenta asked as he approached them. His eyes roamed over Taylor, briefly flickering to the other two. He couldn’t see any injuries, but he wasn’t all that good at spotting such things, given his regeneration and all.

“We’re fine. Just sticky,” Taylor told him. Kenta suddenly remembered he was holding the towels and shoved one into her hands. She grimaced. “Thanks.”

“Thank you, Mr. Kenta,” the other two girls chorused as he handed them the towels. They looked a little nervous, and Kenta didn’t doubt they knew exactly who he was.

“You need to sign for them,” a woman’s voice called out. Kenta turned, not having seen anyone at the office’s front desk. Had she just been sitting there while the girls had been dripping? Surely there was at least a roll of paper towels somewhere for her to offer them?

“I’m this one’s guardian,” Kenta told her, pointing at Taylor. He moved his finger to the casino man’s daughter. “I work with this one’s father.”

The woman didn’t even blink. Apparently, unlike the hospital, Winslow didn’t care whether he was a child’s parent or not. “You still need to sign.”

Kenta was feeling petty, and he didn’t want to, but he did anyway, scoring a scribble on the page the woman had put on her desk, and stalking out the office door, the three girls trailing after him like ducklings.

“Do you want me to call your parents?” Kenta asked when they’d reached the parking lot. He looked at the casino man’s daughter. “I was just with your father. He isn’t busy.”

She shook her head. “I don’t want to bother him. I know today is important to him.”

Kenta sort of wanted to argue, but the girl had protected Taylor, or at least tried to, so he’d respect her wishes. He handed her his phone. A father should know what happened to his daughter, and this would help him save face for abruptly leaving the casino. “Text him and tell him I am taking you home. He’s in my contacts.”

She wiped her fingers on a dry corner of the towel quickly before taking the phone. Considerate, but not really necessary.

Kenta could tell Taylor was watching her, a hint of surprise on her face, but she didn’t ask any of the questions that she was surely wondering.

“Would I know your parents?” Kenta asked the other girl as he unlocked the car. The two Asian girls took the backseat while Taylor took the front. The girl shook her head.

“I live with my grandmother,” she told him. In Mandarin, she added, “We don’t want any trouble, Mr. Man-Dragon.”

“You do not need to worry. You have done my family a great service,” he responded in Mandarin as well. He looked at her through the mirror as he released the emergency brake. “I will send your grandmother a gift to show my thanks. She raised you well.”

“Thank you, Mr. Man-Dragon.”

Kenta let his eyes flicker over to Taylor as he started the car and pulled out of the parking lot. She had that look on her face that she always had whenever she couldn’t understand what he was saying. A thought occurred to him. Still in Mandarin, he asked, “What are the names of the bullies who did this?”

“Emma Barnes, Sophia Hess, and Madison Clements. They’re the main girls who bully her,” the casino girl answered, and Kenta realized he hadn’t really thought this through. Taylor obviously could understand the names being said, even if she couldn’t understand the rest of it.

Taylor jerked at the names, looking over her shoulder at the girls, then up at Kenta. He didn’t turn to meet her gaze, keeping his eyes on the road. In English, he told them, “Thank you. And thank you for looking out for Taylor.”

The girls mumbled something he couldn’t quite catch, but he had all he needed now.

Kenta thought Taylor wouldn’t want to talk to him when they got home, but apparently, the barrier holding her back was pretty thin, because she ended up telling him everything, even showing her written account of everything the Trio, as she called them, had done to her in the past year.

“Emma was my best friend as long as I can remember,” Taylor told him, sounding miserable. Kenta had known this, Danny mentioning the Barnes more than a handful of times, but he’d never really put any thought into it. He didn’t think he would’ve been able to connect the dots on his own, but it sort of made sense now that he thought about it. Wouldn’t Taylor’s best friend stand up for her if she were getting bullied? Unless she was the bully. It wasn’t obvious, but it all added up.

“Why didn’t you tell your dad?” Kenta asked, trying to sound patient. “He could have talked to her parents.”

Taylor shook her head. “Mr. Barnes would take Emma’s side. And he’s a lawyer.”

Kenta didn’t really know what she meant by that. It was good to know, though. “You know I’m going to have to tell your dad, right?”

She nodded. “I know. He’s going to want to do something about it.”

“I do too,” Kenta reminded her. She didn’t say anything. “We won the negligence lawsuit. We can-”

“Suing the school wouldn’t do anything,” Taylor interrupted. “Or suing their parents. They’d just keep doing it.”

Kenta didn’t agree. Even if Taylor was right, it couldn’t hurt. He didn’t say that, though. Bakuda had been telling him girls didn’t like it when men talked over them. He was pretty sure it was her subtle way of saying she didn’t like it when he ordered her around, but she sort of had a point here. Even though he didn’t really want to, he asked, “What do you think is best then?”

“I want to go to Arcadia,” she said, which Kenta wasn’t expecting. Was that another high school? It was probably another high school. “Dad tried to transfer me in my freshman year, but it’s a really good school, so the waitlist is really long.”

He was sure it wouldn’t be if he threw some money at it. He would, now that he knew, but he would try doing this the right way first, for Taylor’s sake. And for revenge’s sake, but mostly for Taylor’s sake. “Your dad is a good negotiator. He can use that.”

Taylor nodded, still not looking particularly appeased. “Will you be there when Dad comes home? I don’t know if I’ll be able to tell him if you’re not there.”

Kenta hadn’t planned on leaving. “Of course.”

“It’s good to see you, Danny,” Alan Barnes said, shaking Danny’s hand as they lingered outside the school’s conference room. “I wish it were under better circumstances.”

“Likewise,” Danny said, voice a little drier. He was unhappy to see the other man. Kenta hovered at his side, silently showing his support. Alan eyed him, looking a little wary. Kenta wondered if he had Empire inclinations.

“And this is…?” Alan started, and Kenta could tell he was looking at his tattoos.

Danny put an arm around Kenta’s waist. “Ken. My boyfriend.”

Alan looked faintly surprised. “I didn’t know you… swung that way.”

Kenta half expected that old line about Lustrum’s gang, but Danny just shrugged. “It never came up.

The group was waved into the conference room. Danny, Taylor, and Kenta sat across from Principal Blackwell, the men on either side of Taylor. Alan, Emma, Sophia, Sophia’s mother, Madison, and Madison’s parents took the edges of the table. Alan and Emma positioned themselves a little more centrally. Kenta had the feeling that the Trio and their parents had agreed to let Alan do most of the talking.

Kenta knew he’d have a hard time following along, but he tried his best to capture the important snippets of the conversation.

Blackwell started by explaining what they were all doing there, which none of them really needed. Danny, Taylor, and Kenta were accusing Emma, Sophia, and Madison of a year-and-a-half-long bullying campaign. Blackwell didn’t explicitly say that this wasn’t a legal matter, that this was merely an internal discussion, but Kenta thought she implied it pretty heavily.

“Is this a continuation of the negligence suit, Mr. Smith?” Blackwell asked, giving what Kenta could only call a thinly veiled dirty look.

“Not yet,” Kenta answered, letting himself smile a little menacingly. He never got to do that as Lung, his mask always hiding his face. She looked a little spooked for a moment, but it was quickly hidden again by her usual blank, blasé expression. “Taylor will explain.”

And explain she did. Taylor read out her log until Blackwell interrupted her. Danny and Taylor argued a bit, and Kenta thought they made some good points. The issue of evidence came up quite a bit in the lawsuit, but Taylor was right about the sheer number of incidents having to mean something. Alan interrupted, insisting that she was making baseless accusations without evidence, and Taylor pulled out the emails, but again Blackwell said there wasn’t enough evidence. The emails were sent from throwaway accounts, not school-issued ones, so there was no real way to prove who sent them, which Kenta knew just wasn’t true.

Still, Kenta decided that it was his time to step in. “You keep saying there is no evidence. The only reason we are having this conversation is because two of Taylor’s classmates told me the names of her bullies. These three, specifically.”

He saw flickers of movement in the corners of his eyes throughout the room. Clearly, some people hadn’t known that. Blackwell didn’t back down, though. “My secretary says you also claimed to work with girls’ fathers.”

“One of the girl’s fathers. And I didn’t know that before I came to pick Taylor up.”

“There is still reason to believe you have prior-”

“Two other students witnessed and were affected by these girls’ bullying,” Kenta reemphasized. “That is evidence. A court wouldn’t throw it out just because of a loose connection.”

“We’re not in court. We’re in a school, and we’re here as parents,” Alan said, as if he wasn’t here as a lawyer too. “We’re here to get to the bottom of this, and frankly, I agree with Principal Blackwell. None of your evidence is anything you couldn’t have made up.”

Taylor gaped at him. “Why would I make any of this up?”

“Attention?” Alan suggested, and Kenta wanted to throttle him. Alan held up his hands, looking at the rest of the parents. “Now, I know how that sounds. But Emma and Taylor were best friends for years. Nothing changed in my home, but it sounds like quite a bit changed in the Hebert household.”

“How dare you-” Danny started, but Taylor beat him to it.

“I was in the hospital for two weeks because I was shoved into a locker full of rotted tampons and left there for two hours!” Taylor snapped, getting to her feet. She was facing away from Kenta, but he could tell she was glaring daggers at Alan. “Do you think I did that to myself because I was jealous of my stepdad?”

It was really not the time, but Kenta felt his heart do a little thing. That was the first time Taylor had called him anything close to her stepdad.

“There’s no evidence-”

“There’s no evidence that Emma, Sophia, and Madison put me in the locker. Yeah. Whatever,” Taylor interrupted, sitting back down. “It’s still evidence that I’m not just doing this for attention. And there are other students who are willing to say those three have been doing the things I say they have. And- and if you don’t believe them because Kenta knows one of their dads, ask someone else! Greg’s seen Madison take my assignments in World Issues! The teachers all know I’m getting bullied! I wrote their names down in my log. Just ask them!”

“We’ll conduct an investigation, but I can’t promise anything,” Blackwell told her. Kenta wanted to roll his eyes. He’d seen what kind of resources Winslow had to conduct an “investigation.” At most, Blackwell would ask the teachers if they knew anything. “What is it exactly you want out of this meeting, Miss Hebert?”

Taylor explained herself well. She wanted the Trio punished, which the three girls protested thoroughly. Blackwell and their parents backed them up, even though the suggested punishments were hardly punishments. Really, the worst thing Taylor was asking for was that the girls get restricted from extracurriculars. But more importantly, this was when Taylor got to ask to be transferred.

Blackwell shut it down immediately. She said she didn’t have that power. Excuses.

“It’s an incredibly reasonable compromise,” Danny pointed out. “Taylor gets a fresh start. You get us out of your hair. Win-win.”

Blackwell looked a little contemplative. She said she would try, but reiterated that principals didn’t really have that kind of power.

Everyone left that room far more sour than they had entered.

“We could’ve talked before you got the school involved, Danny,” Alan said, shaking his head, as the group split in the parking lot, all heading to their respective cars. 

“Your daughter made that impossible,” Danny shot back, but Alan and Emma were already walking away.

“He’s going to sue us for defamation,” Taylor groaned when they were out of earshot.

“He said worse,” Kenta responded, even though he didn’t think that was how a defamation lawsuit worked. He should call his lawyers again.

“You did really good, kiddo,” Danny told her as they all climbed into the car, Kenta taking the back seat so Taylor could be in the front with Danny. “At least now there’s record the school knows who’s responsible, and that they’re doing nothing. We can work with this. We did something.”

“It doesn’t feel like it,” Taylor responded and started fiddling with the car radio. Danny said something, but Kenta kind of tuned it out, instead pulling his phone out of his pocket. This part seemed like a more private moment between father and daughter. He could at least pretend he wasn’t listening.

He opened his phone to a missed call from Bakuda and two from Oni-Lee, plus half a dozen texts from either. He wanted to swear aloud. Really? The one time he’s in a meeting in his civilian life? Ugh. He didn’t want to deal with this right now.

At least he could get his anger with Winslow and the Barnes out tonight by beating up the Undersiders for robbing his casino.

Chapter Text

April 2011

Dad and Kenta talked about calling the lawyer from the negligence suit again for a while after we got home, but Kenta had to leave around when it got dark. He said Lee and Alice had tried calling him when we were in the meeting, that there was something he had to deal with. That was a little vague, and I wondered if Lee and Alice were part of the ABB, too. I hated thinking about Kenta like that, but it was really weird that he was free during the day and busy at night so often.

It was convenient for me, though, because Dad went to bed early. That meant I was free to sneak out in my costume.

I’d been thinking about it before we had the meeting, but Blackwell’s stubbornness kind of cemented it. I’d wanted to sic my swarm on something so bad the whole time that we’d been talking, and the rats under the floor in a neighboring classroom hadn’t been enough. I needed to fight something, and I didn’t care if it was the Empire, the Merchants, the ABB, or just a common crook. Even if I didn’t find anything and I just spent the night running around the docks, at least I’d be doing something to move forward in my goal of becoming a hero.

Tonight would be my debut. 

I regretted it what felt like almost immediately. I’d wondered if the ABB was up to something tonight, but I hadn’t really thought through what that might’ve meant. Lung, Oni Lee, that new Tinker Bakuda, and a handful of armed ABB grunts were some of the first people I even saw that night. I was on the rooftops, though, and they were on the ground, so I was pretty sure I could get away 

“I’m going to wring those kids out by their fucking necks,” Lung snarled loud enough that I could hear him from my vantage point, and I knew I couldn’t just run away. He was going to kill kids?

The fight really did not go like how I imagined it would. When I distracted myself by using my swarm to tear up a rat, it was satisfying, concentrating all my pent-up anger on one little point. It wasn’t really like that with people, though. It wasn’t like that back when I’d seen Lung, Oni Lee, and Bakuda fighting the Empire, and it wasn’t like that now.

Fighting people was terrifying. With a rat, I knew it couldn’t fight back. With people, with parahumans, there was the constant, overwhelming knowledge that I was in danger.

My swarm took care of the non-capes pretty easily, their bites and stings making them run out of and away from my swarm. It was a tiny victory, and I really meant tiny. Even just fighting one cape would be daunting on my first night out, but three? But Oni Lee and Lung? Impossible.

They said they were going to kill kids, I reminded myself. Even if I died tonight, I’d be saving someone. Hopefully.

I had distance at my advantage. I could see all three of them standing there on the street, even if all three had ways to keep my bugs away from them. Oni Lee kept teleporting, Bakuda kept tossing these bombs that didn’t kill my bugs but made them impossible to use if they got caught in the blast, and Lung had his flames. But none of their powers could actually get the bugs off of them. Bakuda couldn’t set a bomb off on her body, Lung couldn’t really blast himself with his fire, and my bugs followed Oni Lee every time he teleported. That meant I had a little bit of an advantage. I just had to be strategic.

Following Oni Lee’s teleportations was the most challenging part, but the bugs on him practically served as a homing beacon to send more after him, piling more and more into his clothes until the teleportation wasn’t really a problem. I did something similar with Bakuda and Lung, sending ants crawling up their legs and into their pants. It was gross, but I was sure having ants biting your genitals would be enough to throw anyone off, even some of the top supervillains of the city.

“Why the fuck are there so many ants?” Bakuda screamed, that voice modifier I’d heard at the Lunar New Year celebration making her voice go pretty high-pitched. Through my bugs, I could feel her slapping her thighs and groin, but she wasn’t actually killing any of the ants.

“It has to be a cape,” Lung replied, moving his arms toward himself in a sweeping motion to try to cover himself in flames. I could feel the heat through my bugs, but most of the ones I had under his clothes survived. I was sure he was going to burn through them soon.

“Where?” Oni Lee demanded, appearing back on the street near Lung and Bakuda. “I don’t see anything.”

“Fucking look!”

“You fucking look!” Oni Lee snapped back, appearing on Lung’s other side.

“I’m trying to listen,” Lung roared, “so shut the fuck up!”

Listen? Shit. Lung was pretty scaly now and looking a lot bigger. Did he get new powers when he got bigger? Enhanced hearing? I forced myself to stay still. Wait, no. Then I was trapped. I should be trying to get down from here and running. Find a phone and call the PRT hotline. Not sitting here.

I started moving as slowly as I could toward the fire escape, using my bugs to keep track of what the ABB capes were doing. I thought I was doing pretty good, but actually climbing onto the fire escape was too much. I completely missed the big jet of flame coming my way until it was practically on top of me.

“Over there!” Lung shouted, voice coming out as an almost inhuman roar, and I could sense the three capes turning towards me. Shit, shit, shit. I needed to get down from there. There were specks of orange all around me, debris on the fire escape having caught fire. They weren’t massive, but they were big enough that I knew it was going to hurt to run through them. I sensed Oni Lee teleport Bakuda above me onto the roof, though, so I knew I had to.

I tried not to put my hands on the rails, but Bakuda was shaking the fire escape, so I did what I had to. Ignoring the searing shot of pain, I steadied myself on a rail and threw myself through a flame to get myself onto the next level down. 

I was getting ready to do a similar maneuver when I sensed Bakuda backing up. I barely threw my body onto the rail when the explosion went off, sending me and the whole fire escape crashing to the ground.

I tried to remember my lessons with Kenta and Alice about falling, but there wasn’t much I could do once the thought occurred to me. Pain shot through my body as I hit the ground. I was fine, I knew. I’d fallen less than a story, probably. My body didn’t know that, though. Jolts of pain shot up my back from the spot I’d made contact with the ground, but the pain quickly took a backseat in my mind because Lung was standing over me.

This was the first time I’d seen him up close. I was pretty sure he’d gotten around to the size he’d been when he fought Hookwolf, and it looked a lot scarier up close. He was maybe eight feet tall, shoulders three feet across. He’d burned his clothes off, so he was naked except for his metal mask, but scales were covering most of his body, keeping me from seeing much other than some bare skin on his neck, arms, and shins. In the flickering light of the flames, I could make out some of the details of his tattoos. He was far too close if I was able to tell that, though.

Dad had let me go running after he saw how well I was doing sparring with Alice, but he still insisted I carry pepper spray. Kenta bought me pepper gel instead, saying it was easier to aim and harder to hit yourself with. I was grateful for it because the pepper gel stream went directly into Lung’s eyes.

He cried out, stumbling back. He ripped his metal mask off, tossing it to the side, and pawed at his face. The flames around me surged, lighting up the figure looming over me. The tattoos became a little more clear to me, one of the few things I could see as my eyes adjusted to the sudden burst of flickering light, and I abruptly realized I recognized them.

“Kenta?”

Lung froze.

It was Oni Lee who responded, though, appearing maybe fifteen feet behind Lung. “Taylor?”

I thought I got it wrong for a moment, that Kenta was actually Oni Lee, but then it clicked. 

Kenta said Oni Lee and Bakuda had tried calling him today.

The name Lee was part of Oni Lee.

Alice had moved into Kenta’s apartment around the same time Bakuda showed up in the ABB.

Holy shit. I’d just been casually hanging out with arguably the most dangerous capes in the city. Hell, I was living with arguably the most dangerous cape in the city.

I sensed movement, and I braced, but it was Lung turning around, not moving forward. He was running right at Oni Lee, still rubbing at his face. Flames flowed off of him, catching on every little thing, lighting the whole area up. Through my bugs, I felt Oni Lee stiffen. He put his hands up like he was going to catch him, and then they were gone, teleporting out of my range.

“Did you just fucking leave me?” Bakuda screamed from above me. “You fucking assholes!”

An explosion rocked the building behind me, and I sensed Bakuda running off, presumably after Oni Lee and Lung. After Lee and Kenta.

Another big piece of the fire escape fell, slamming into the ground behind me. I had to get out of here. But with rising flames in front of me and the building crumbling behind me, I didn’t have a lot of options.

I was so focused on trying to find a path out that I didn’t notice the darkness rolling in.

I’d thought it was part of the night sky, and then I thought it was smoke, and it wasn’t until I couldn’t see the light from the flames anymore that I realized something was wrong. I called upon my bugs, trying to figure out what it was, and then I was completely engulfed, getting blinded in the process. 

There were hands around my waist mere moments later, and I felt myself being dragged by something far larger than myself. 

Mere seconds later, I was dropped on the pavement, landing awkwardly on my hands and knees.

My vision came back as quickly as it’d disappeared, and I found myself surrounded by three massive, drooling, fleshy beasts.

“What the fuck?” I yelped, scrambling back, even though it just made me get a little closer to the animal behind me. I heard laughter, and I realized there were people riding the creatures.

“Knock it off,” an echoing voice grumbled. I blinked a few times, eyes once again adjusting to a sudden shift in light. It was a guy in a dark costume with a skull mask talking to a guy in a white, frillier costume sitting on the animal behind him. Beside them, a girl in a plastic dog mask and another girl in a purple costume sat atop the other two creatures.

“Don’t worry,” the girl in the purple costume said, smiling, “they don’t bite.”

“Yes, they do,” the girl in the dog mask snapped before I could even try to let the purple girl’s words make me feel any better.

“Quit scaring her,” the boy in the black responded, and it sounded like an order. Was he their leader? He seemed like he might be the leader. “She just saved our hides, or did you forget we came here to get the jump on Lung?”

These were the kids Lung was going to kill? Teenaged capes? That made a lot more sense, actually. Still didn’t completely add up, but it made more sense. “Who are you?”

“The Undersiders,” the girl in purple said cheerfully. The beast she was riding took a step back, and she dismounted, making me feel a little less trapped between them. “Villain team of the week. You’re a kindred spirit, yeah?”

Villain team? Kindred spirit? Wait, did they think I was a villain? “Uhh…”

“What are we still doing here?” the girl in the dog mask growled. “We should be going after Lung!”

“This girl just saved us. The least we could do is talk to her,” the boy in black said. He pointed at each of the Undersiders. “I’m Grue. This is Regent, Tattletale, and Bitch.”

I hadn’t heard of any of them. And I thought I was a whiz at PHO. “Hi?”

“That’s your cue to say your name,” Regent said a little snarkily.

“I don’t have one yet,” I answered, and I wanted to slap myself. Literally any of the terrible names I’d come up with would’ve been a better answer than that. Who cared what a group of villains called me? It wasn’t like they had the power to make it official. “Tonight is my first night out.”

“And you fought Lung? Damn.”

“And she beat Lung,” Grue corrected, sounding impressed. “You’ve got to have some power. We heard them shouting from our base.”

“Uhh…”

“She didn't beat him. He ran.” Tattletale was looking at me with an intense sort of focus. “Her power… bugs. Bug control. Lots of them. Scared him? No. Hurt him, but not enough. He retaliated. Something else happened.”

“Um, what?” What was happening? How was she getting all this? Had she been watching the fight? Had she heard me say Kenta’s name? Had she heard Lee say mine? Shoot.

“She’s psychic,” Regent said helpfully, and I didn’t believe it. Psychics weren’t real. Everyone who knew anything about capes knew that. But it was a better explanation than anything I could guess. Regent wiggled his fingers at me menacingly. “She’s reading your mind.”

“It wasn’t your power. You had leverage? No, you had some kind of connection,” Tattletale went on, still laser-focused on me. Even though she wasn’t on the dog anymore, I was still on the ground, and she was practically standing over me. Somehow, it was almost scarier than when Lung had been the one doing it. “Ex-ABB? Related? No, you’re white. You recognized him?”

She was close enough that I didn’t see reason not to say it. I was still freaked out enough that I didn’t think I could keep it in much longer. “Lung’s my stepdad.”

“Yikes. And you didn’t know until tonight?” Grue asked, sounding genuinely sympathetic. I looked in his direction and nodded. His head tilted ever so slightly. “You need a place to stay?”

“What?”

“You safe at home?” Grue clarified. I stared at him. “...You do know what the ABB does, right?”

“Theft, peddling, murder, that’s just the little guys,” Regent listed off. “Lung’s got his claws in the bigger stuff. You know, protection rackets, corrupting businesses, prostitution rings, sexual slavery, that kind of stuff.”

Shit. I knew abstractly the ABB did that kind of stuff, and I knew abstractly that Kenta probably did some sort of illegal business, but it was a lot worse and a lot more real when Regent said it. “Shit.”

“Is your mom safe?” Grue asked in that genuine way he’d talked before. He actually sounded worried. “I know the dogs are scary, but they’re fast. We can go get her if she needs help.”

“My mom’s dead,” I said automatically. All four of the capes stiffened around me, even Bitch, who’d seemed pissed at me until now. It took me a second to realize why. I waved my hands rapidly. “Sorry, sorry. She died a while ago. K- Lung’s with my dad. He’s at home. He’s fine.”

That got another reaction out of them. It was Bitch who spoke first. “Lung’s gay?”

“He could be bi,” Tattletale pointed out, and I didn’t know why that mattered.

“I didn’t think the guy who ran the city’s prostitution industry would be into dudes,” Regent said, and I felt a little grossed out. That… Well, obviously, there were some major problems with a guy who treated women like that, but that was also pretty unfair to… Wait. I was pretty sure Kenta was gay, not bi. I wasn’t certain, but I remembered Lee making a joke about how Kenta didn’t like it when he tried setting him up with women.

Had he meant he’d tried getting Kenta to sleep with prostitutes? Ugh, I had to totally change the way she thought about everything I knew about Kenta and his friends now.

I shook myself. That sort of thing was the least of my worries. “Do you have any idea about where he went?”

“What?”

“You want to go after him?”

“I can’t just go home.” What was I supposed to do? Wake Dad up, tell him his boyfriend was a supervillain, and not even be able to tell him where he was? “I need to know what happens.”

“Tattletale?” Grue asked, looking in the girl’s direction.

“I could probably figure out where he went in a few minutes. Give her a ride on the dog, get her wherever she needs to be before it turns back,” Tattletale answered, and I only understood about half of what she said. Dog? Were these things dogs? Bitch growled, and a couple ideas connected in my mind, far from creating a full picture, but giving me enough to run with. She must be a Master. This must be her power.

“If Bitch says it's okay for you to take the dog,” Grue said, seeming to understand what Bitch meant when she growled at Tattletale.

“If Bitch says it’s okay for me to take the dog,” Tattletale amended. She smiled up at the other girl. “Please?”

“No,” Bitch snapped. She turned her gaze on me. “What do you even want with Lung?”

I didn’t know. “Um, I just kind of want to know where he is. Oni Lee just teleported him away really abruptly. It all feels kind of… unfinished.”

She nodded like she understood that. “You want to finish the fight.”

Not really. Actually, definitely not. “Sure.”

Bitch looked at Tattletale. “You can take Judas. But don’t wait around. Send him home when he starts shrinking. I don’t care if you’re on him or not. Just do it.”

“Aye aye.”

“Call if you need anything,” Grue said, steering the dog to start to turn. “I’d rather not fight Lung tonight, but we were ready to, and we still will be if you need it.”

“Got it,” Tattletale responded, and the other Undersiders left, leaving me still wondering what was going on. Tattletale offered me a hand, helping me up. She smiled again. “So, what should I call you? Bug Girl?”

“Please no.”

“Just Bug then?” Tattletale asked, and she pulled a cellphone out of her pocket. She was tapping at the screen instantly.

“Sure.” It wasn’t great, but it was fine for tonight. “Sorry, what’s happening?”

“We’re going to Medhall,” Tattletale said, grinning as she slid her phone back in her pocket. That was fast. Maybe she really was psychic. “Your stepdad’s wrecking the place, and the Protectorate’s probably about to try to kick his ass again. They won’t, but it’ll be fun to watch, won’t it?”

Riding the dog was terrible.

It took what felt like a hundred muscles I’d never used before to keep myself from falling off. I’d never ridden a horse before, but I was pretty sure I could with ease after this. Nothing about riding the dog was smooth. It wasn’t running, it was bounding, jostling me and Tattletale all the while.

My legs were so sore by the time we stopped that I wasn’t sure I’d be able to get off, let alone fight.

“Yeah, I’m not touching that,” Tattletale said. I peered over her shoulder, trying to see what she was reacting to. I could really only see fire and the rough outlines of people fighting. “Lung, Oni Lee, and Bakuda versus Hookwolf, Krieg, Fenja, Menja, Alabaster, Stormtiger, Cricket, and Rune, versus Armsmaster, Miss Militia, Assault, Dauntless, Battery, Velocity, and Triumph.”

Holy shit. That was the whole Protectorate, and probably half of the E88 capes. “I don’t think I can fight all those people.”

“Not all of them are still standing.”

“What?”

“This isn’t the beginning of the fight.”

Shit. Well, it was better than… I didn’t even know. How many capes was I going to be fighting? The Empire capes, obviously. Probably not the Protectorate, but I wasn’t sure if I wanted to help or prevent them from doing anything to the ABB capes. Lung, Oni Lee, and Bakuda themselves, though? I really had no idea what was going to happen when I saw them.

Now that we weren’t running anymore, I could hear the explosions. Oni Lee’s suicide bombings, no doubt, combined with his recent boost from Bakuda’s Tinker tech. I was certain they’d held back that day I’d seen them fight Hookwolf. Out here, in the middle of the night with no civilians around, I doubted they cared about collateral damage.

Tattletale had the dog climb up onto a building across the street from the Medhall building, which was thankfully a good distance from the fight and the worst of the fires. We were downtown now, not by the docks, and the streets were much wider. Less risk of me being caught unawares, like I had with Lung.

“Menja, Cricket, Triumph, and Battery are already down,” Tattletale told me as I slid off the dog. I followed her gaze, surprised she’d gathered so much information so quickly. Maybe she really was psychic, or maybe my eyesight was worse than I thought it was. “Alabaster’s been hit a lot, but he’s fine, and Velocity isn’t helping all that much. If you want to go after someone with your bugs, Bakuda, Miss Militia, Velocity, Fenja, or Rune are probably your best targets.”

Okay, I probably wasn’t going after Bakuda, Miss Militia, or Velocity, which meant Fenja and Rune. “Thanks.”

She might’ve waved, but I was looking at the fight, so I couldn’t see. I heard the dog’s heavy footsteps as it ran off. It would’ve been nice to have her input, but she’d already done a lot bringing me here, so I wouldn’t complain. Besides, I already had my own information-gathering power.

I sent my bugs down to the battlefield. I’d gathered quite a bit before heading out tonight, then lost a bunch to Lung’s fire and Bakuda’s weird bombs. I’d had time to collect plenty more riding the dog, though, the high speed letting me build up a full swarm. I spread them out, trying to tag each person with at least a few bugs while I used my eyes to get a sense of what was happening.

There were a lot of little fights, all constantly being disrupted by Bakuda and Oni Lee’s tag teaming. Or, well, Oni Lee’s use of Bakuda’s bombs. Bakuda was fighting Rune hand-to-hand, which I thought looked pretty even.

Oni Lee was trying to bomb Stormtiger and Alabaster, I thought. Velocity was trying to catch him to no avail. Assault and Dauntless were up against Krieg and Fenja, and I thought maybe Battery and Triumph had been fighting alongside them before whatever had taken them out happened. They were lying on the side of the road, Assault and Dauntless somewhat hovering near them as if they were protecting them.

It was a lot going on at once, but my power never had problems with that. Still, most of those fights were distractions. I put my bugs on them and focused on the main fight, a plan brewing in my mind.

At the center of it all, Lung had Hookwolf pinned, sort of like he had before. Only, Hookwolf’s allies were too busy to get him free, and Lung was a lot bigger than he’d been before. I thought Hookwolf sort of looked like he was in a defensive position, more a hunk of metal than anything, and Lung was really pouring the heat down on him. Miss Militia and Armsmaster were trying to attack him, but their weapons did little against Lung’s scales, and he had the skeletal beginnings of wings that he was using to bat them away.

Lung seemed to be doing just fine, but holding down a struggling Hookwolf while fending off Armsmaster and Miss Militia? It was a lot, even if he looked to be about fifteen feet tall by now.

Still, I made my decision. I’d be fighting the Empire. Calling upon my bugs, I swarmed them.

“These fucking things again!” Stormtiger cried out, the first to notice them. I had my bugs go after Rune and Fenja pretty hard, Bakuda needing the help against Rune, and Fenja having the most exposed skin for my bugs to bite with her enhanced size and all. The other E88 members made noises of alarm as my bugs bit and stung them, making the Protectorate members nearly stumble in surprise in surprise, but they rolled with it well.

Most of my attention was focused on Lung, though. Or rather, Lung and Hookwolf.

There was no way my bugs could do anything against Lung at this point. He was all scales now, even his face not even human anymore. My bugs couldn’t bite through all that. Hookwolf though? He was covered in metal, but my scouts knew there was soft flesh beneath.

I’d thought about this on the way over, what I could have done differently if I’d been prepared for a fight against Lung. It’d been an idle thought. I’d known I wouldn’t be able to use the strategy against him, but I now knew I could use it against Hookwolf.

I flooded the gaps in Hookwolf’s armor with flying bugs, wasps chief among them, having them swerve to avoid the licks of flame flowing off Lung’s arms as he shifted his grip. I had them start biting immediately.

“Ow! Fuck!” Hookwolf roared as the wasps and hornets plunged their venom into him. I saw him start struggling even harder, Lung adjusting his grip to keep him down. I gathered more bugs, using some of my flyers to carry some of my spiders over, and doubled down on my attack.

Lung suddenly let Hookwolf go.

I nearly stopped my swarm in surprise, but Hookwolf fell kind of heavily, and I took advantage of the opportunity to get more bugs under his metal. The sudden loss of the weight on top of him made him surge upward, but the effects of Lung’s heat on his joints made him fail, at least as far as I could tell. I couldn’t see that far, and I couldn’t have too many scouts around Lung’s fire, but I could feel some kind of resistance when Hookwolf tried to move. Had Lung done that on purpose? I’d seen Lung pin Hookwolf like that twice now. Had he planned that move in advance?

I clustered my scouts, coating Hookwolf and Lung now that Lung wasn’t focusing his fire anymore. Lung swatted at them, almost like a cat, and took a few steps back. He looked around, tilting his head oddly, and then he started running.

He plowed right through Miss Militia and Armsmaster, taking them by surprise. I sent my scouting swarm after him, trying to figure out what he was running from, but it just made him veer and start running down the street.

I’m pretty sure Armsmaster and Miss Militia were talking, but I couldn’t hear them. I could hear Lung, though, his catlike mouth yowling something incomprehensible. Oni Lee appeared on his shoulders a moment later, perched like a bird, and the pair vanished into dust within seconds.

“Did you just fucking leave me again?” Bakuda screamed, loud enough for me to hear, and then she was throwing bombs again. Rune, still the closest person to her, used her power on the ground to throw herself out of the bomb’s range. It was another one of those warping ones, the ones that made my bugs feel all weird. “You dicks!”

Oni Lee reappeared within another few seconds, and then Bakuda was gone too.

The energy of the fight shifted very rapidly. I could kind of hear orders being shouted, but I didn't know what they were. Krieg, Stormtiger, Alabaster, and Fenja were running, or at least trying to. The Protectorate was trying to stop them. Armsmaster went up to Hookwolf, pulling out some kind of Tinker tool with a bright orange tip that told me it might’ve been a souped-up welding torch. Was he trying to finish what Lung had been doing and fuse the moving parts of Hookwolf’s armor so he couldn’t get up? It was a smart move.

Fenja grabbed Menja, growing taller so she could hoist her over her shoulder. Dauntless kept attacking, but Fenja started running instead of fighting back. Velocity managed to knock over Alabaster, but then Stormtiger got a lucky hit on him with his air blasts, and I knew the rest of the E88 would be getting away.

The Protectorate reconvened around Hookwolf, Armsmaster barking instructions as he continued working on Hookwolf. The group split up, restraining Cricket and Rune and retrieving Battery, Triumph, and Velocity.

I was surprised when Assault activated his power, kicking off the ground, and landed behind me on the rooftops, startling me so bad I nearly screamed. “You’re controlling the bugs, yeah?”

I tried not to flinch and failed. “Yeah.”

“Hero or villain?”

“Hero.” I swallowed. Did I really look like a villain? Tattletale had assumed I was too. Then again, I hadn’t been very heroic tonight, accepting help from the Undersiders and refusing to attack the ABB capes once I’d learned who they were. “Trying to be, at least.”

Assault nodded like he understood, which was crazy because he was Assault. He was part of the Protectorate, always had been. What did he know about this kind of thing? “I hear you. Armsmaster wants to talk to you. We’re missing a lot of information, and the way Lung reacted to your powers is the best lead we’ve got.”

“Um…” I looked over the edge of the building where Armsmaster was backing off from Hookwolf, letting Miss Militia and Dauntless take a stab at moving him. They did little more than just rock him. They’d need help from the PRT. 

Assault’s face softened a bit. “You don’t have to. I mean, Armsmaster would be kind of annoyed, but that’s not your problem.”

I shook my head. I didn’t want to alienate the Protectorate on my first night out, even if I hadn’t been expecting to be in the position to do such a thing in the first place. “It’s fine. It’s just- It’s my first night out in costume. I’m still wrapping my head around it all.”

I didn’t really understand what Assault’s expression meant, but he seemed to take the news in stride. He walked with me to the fire escape, climbing down with me even though he probably would’ve been fine just jumping off the side of the building, and led me up to the Protectorate.

The Protectorate. My heart was pounding. They were all here… Wait, no. Velocity had left, presumably to look for the escaped supervillains. But this was most of them. More than the number that usually went to press conferences, even. And they were all looking at me.

“New hero!” Assault called out cheerfully, so I didn’t have to. “First night out.”

I saw Miss Militia’s eyebrows raise over her bandana. “Impressive. What should we call you?”

“Um, Bug. For now,” I said, not wanting to repeat my mistake from earlier. “I don’t have a name yet.”

Her expression flattened, but not in a bad way. “Really new then.”

“Lung had a reaction to your power,” Armsmaster said, and he was suddenly standing over me. “What can you tell us about it?”

“Uh…” I urged my brain to kick into the right gear. I was embarrassing myself. “I don’t know. I mean, my power is to control bugs. I didn’t- I didn’t plan on fighting Lung or anything. I thought maybe I’d find some regular criminals around the docks, and then I overheard Lung talking with Oni Lee and Bakuda about killing some kids, but it turns out it was just the Undersiders. They’re, um-”

“We’re familiar with the Undersiders,” Armsmaster interrupted, and I would have said he sounded tired if his voice wasn’t so toneless.

“O-Okay.” Why had I assumed they hadn’t? Just because I hadn’t? These guys were professionals. Of course, they knew about the Undersiders. “Well, um, there’s not a lot to it. I attacked them with my bugs, and I did pretty well, but, you know, Lung gets bigger. I think his hearing gets better when he gets bigger. He found me and I pepper spr- er, sprayed him with pepper gel, and then he ran off to Oni Lee and he teleported them away.”

The Protectorate members shifted a little bit, glancing between each other. Assault was the first to react. “Well, I guess we found Lung’s one true weakness: pepper.”

A giggle escaped me, even though I hadn’t wanted to let it. It hadn’t even been that good of a joke. He’d basically just said I hadn’t told them anything useful.

“What else can you do with your power?” Armsmaster asked, but Miss Militia started speaking before I could answer.

“This isn’t really the time for a recruitment attempt,” Miss Milita told him. She looked at me. “We appreciate you following Lung to the new location. Are you up to keep fighting?”

“Um, no. I’m fine,” I added quickly, not wanting to alarm them, “but, um…”

“It’s a lot?” Dauntless offered.

“Yeah,” I said, accepting his words gratefully. He was right. It was a lot. Not for the reasons he thought, but he was still right. “I mean, I can come if you need the help, but I just kind of want to go home and think about everything.”

Some sympathetic noises sounded off from around the group. I half-expected them to offer me a ride home, but they didn’t, which I was kind of glad about. I wanted nothing more than to just stop all cape stuff for the night right here and now, but accepting a ride meant showing them where I lived, which meant revealing my identity, and I wanted that even less than I wanted to walk home. Alone. By myself. At night.

I really was not looking forward to it.

I ended up running part of the way home because walking was just taking too long. It was kind of uncomfortable in my costume, and I would have been thrilled to peel it off when I got home if I wasn’t so bone tired. It was around 3 am when I got home, far later than I’d stayed up in a long time, and I could tell.

But, as much as I wanted to, I didn’t go right to bed. No, once I’d changed out of my costume, I sat down on my doorstep. If Kenta came home, I wanted to be the first to know. If he didn’t, I didn’t want Dad to find out on his own.

It was probably an hour later that Kenta’s car pulled up in the driveway. Even through everything I was feeling, I was a little annoyed. He had a teleporter. Why was he driving? And what took him so long?

I tensed the muscles in my thighs, ready to stand up, but Kenta didn’t get out of the car. It was turned off, but he just sort of left it double-parked behind Dad’s car in the driveway. I stared at him, not really able to see him through the windshield in the dark. After maybe a minute, the passenger door opened, and I got a glimpse of his hand, low, like he was reaching over from the driver’s seat to open it. I kept staring.

“We’re going to wake up your dad if we talk in the house,” his voice called out, a little hushed, and I got it. I felt a twinge of apprehension in my stomach as I got up and started making my way over, uneasy about getting in the car with Kenta, but some part of me also thought it was a bit silly. This was Kenta. I’d been in his car a million times. But this was also Lung. I’d been in close quarters with him once, and we’d been fighting.

The feeling kind of faded when I slid into the passenger seat. Once I was there, he was just Kenta.

It still felt weird, though. We just kind of sat there, staring at each other. I was having a hard time reconciling the Kenta I’d known and the Lung I’d seen tonight.

Kenta broke the silence. “You snuck out.”

I felt a hot ball of anger flash in my stomach. “You can’t say shit!”

“You weren’t saying anything!” Kenta said defensively, and he sounded a little more like Lung than Kenta. Not because he was yelling or anything, because he wasn’t, but because that was how Lung had spoken to Oni Lee and Bakuda. Kenta didn’t talk like that.

“Well, I am now!”

“Say it then!”

I went quiet again, thinking, and so did Kenta. He waited for me to find the words. “You’re Lung.”

“Yes,” he said, not a hint of denial in his voice.

“Does Dad know?”

“Maybe?” It came out as a statement, but it felt like a question. I stared at him. He amended. “Probably.”

“Probably?”

“I never said so in so many words, but my identity isn’t really a secret,” he explained, and he seemed to pick up that I didn’t know what he meant. “Your school friends recognized me as Lung.”

What friends? I didn’t have- oh. The girls who’d helped me during the juice incident? Did that mean all those Asian kids were hanging around me because they knew my stepdad was Lung? Didn’t love that. I shook my head. That wasn’t important right now. Dad was. “What did you tell him?”

“That I’m a parahuman,” Kenta told me, which is more than I was expecting, “and that I was in the Yàngbǎn.”

Kenta had been in the Yàngbǎn? Lung had been in the Yàngbǎn? I didn’t know a lot about it, no one did, but I knew they shared powers. How did that even work with his whole dragon thing?

“We talked about it quite a bit after your trigger event,” he went on, and I felt my mind hone back in.

“My what?”

“When you got your powers,” Kenta explained, and a cold feeling set into my bones.

“You knew?!” Dad knew?!

Kenta looked at me as if it’d been obvious. “I had one too. They were different, but I still had one.”

He’d had a trigger event? It wasn’t hard to figure out what the phrase meant now that I’d heard it. The day I’d gotten my powers had been the worst day of my life. Well, no, probably not worse than the day Mom died, but saying I triggered felt like an accurate word. And the same thing had happened to Kenta? Or a similar thing?

“Also, the PRT thought you might have triggered,” Kenta went on, as if he shouldn’t have started with that. “They did a check-in on you, but you were unconscious, so they thought you hadn’t. Panacea determined it was a Thinker coma, but she didn’t tell anyone.”

The PRT had checked on me? Panacea had? That felt like something Dad and Kenta should have told me. “What does Dad think of it?”

“That you have powers?” he clarified. I nodded. He shrugged. “He’s upset you were in that situation.”

Yeah, obviously. “Not me getting powers. Me having powers. Why didn’t he say anything?”

“We weren’t certain, and we thought you had a Thinker power, so you might’ve not even known. We decided to let you tell us on your own. We didn’t think you were going to sneak out in a costume,” Kenta told me, that last comment a little biting. I felt a tiny stab of guilt even though I didn’t want to. I was still mad at him, and he still wasn’t in any position to try anything close to scolding me. “We talked about whether you’d want to be in the Wards, or if you wanted to join the ABB, but we never really got anywhere. We figured we would just wait and see.”

Join the ABB? Absolutely not. “Does Dad know what you do?”

“What do I do?”

“ABB stuff.” I thought back to what the Undersiders said about the ABB. “Stealing. Protection rackets. Drugs. Killing people. Prostitution, sexual slavery.”

“The ABB doesn’t do sex trafficking, and I don’t facilitate the use of drugs. If anyone’s selling, they’re doing that on their own,” Kenta responded flatly, as if that was the problem. “But the other stuff, he’s aware. We don’t talk about it, but he’s aware.”

My mind went back to Regent’s little joke. “And the prostitutes?”

Kenta looked a little confused. “Prostitution is a legitimate form of work in many countries. It’s not my fault the West doesn’t see it that way.”

I stared at him, waiting for him to get it. When he did, he at least had the audacity to look embarrassed.

“I’m not cheating on your father!” he said, almost exclaiming, voice going a little high, not quite cracking, but coming close. He cleared his throat, coughing. “You know I don’t like women that way. Your father is the only person I’ve been with in the States.”

Okay, I didn’t need to know that.

“Actually,” he went on, smiling a little to himself, “when I was first taking over the city’s prostitution business, Oni Lee sent me one of the top women. I thought I had the will to just pretend, but she could tell I didn’t want to and put a stop to it. I was very grateful, and she manages all of the prostitution rings for the ABB now, actually.”

Okay, I really didn’t need to know that. Gross. What was the point of that story? It was a weird thing to say to your boyfriend’s daughter. “And Dad’s just okay with it?”

“We met in a negotiation between the DWA and the ABB. He knows I live the life I do,” Kenta told me patiently. “We would not have made it this far if he didn’t. He’s made his peace with it.”

That was weird to think about. Dad, one of the people who’d taught me not to lie, cheat, steal, or do drugs, was just okay with a guy who did all those things. Well, except for drugs, apparently, but I wasn’t really sure I believed that. Then again, I knew Kenta didn’t really drink, so I guess I could see it. I couldn’t really imagine him accepting the prostitution, even if Kenta was telling the truth, and it was just prostitution and not sex slavery. I didn’t really believe that either.

“Does he know about Lee and Alice?”

“Lee, almost certainly. Alice? Probably not. I doubt he knows who Bakuda is.”

Right. Dad wasn’t really into cape stuff. I’d only seen her name on PHO, not in any of the local news sites.

I thought about what Dad had said when he’d first told me he was dating Kenta. I’d trusted his judgement on the ABB then. He had experience with gangs. But cape stuff? I didn’t think I trusted him in the same way. Still, he knew about Kenta, to some degree at least, and that had to count for something, right?

“I don’t want to join the ABB,” I declared, not really knowing what else to say. I was feeling a little better, but it was all still a little off. I wasn’t going to rat Kenta out to the Protectorate, but I hadn’t really been planning on doing that in the first place. I didn’t know what I’d been planning on doing before talking to Kenta, but I felt a shift within myself that told me I wasn’t going to do it, whatever it was.

“You don’t have to,” Kenta said easily. “It was just an idea. Your dad didn’t really like it either, and frankly, I have mixed feelings about it. It’s a dangerous life.”

Okay, gee. I was a little insulted, even though he’d just agreed with me. “I don’t know if I want to join the Wards either.”

“It’s your choice, but I think it would be the best decision for you,” Kenta responded in a way that sounded like he was pretending to be nonchalant. I could tell just from his tone that he and Dad wanted me to join the Wards, which was a little surprising considering he was a supervillain. “It would offer you a different type of protection than I can and a different type of career than you would have as a rogue. More secure. More resources. Better resources, even, than what the ABB could offer. And you’d have allies.”

All good points. I’d been intimidated when I’d met the Protectorate, but they’d seemed nice. They worked together. I thought I might like being part of something like that.

“Wards go to Arcadia too,” Kenta added. I felt myself involuntarily perk up. He kept talking, not looking at me, but I could tell he’d noticed. “I was planning to bribe someone in the district, but I imagine you would prefer a legitimate transfer.”

I’d be okay with a bribe, but yeah. I wanted to go to Arcadia. My decision was made.

“Taylor! Kenta! Breakfast!”

Dad’s voice sounded kind of distant in that way sounds did when you were waking up from a deep sleep. I groaned, rolled over, and squinted at the glowing red digits on my alarm clock. It was barely nine o’clock. Hours later than I normally woke up. And I felt like a truck had hit me. But Dad would worry if I didn’t come downstairs for breakfast.

I ran into Kenta in the hall. We looked at each other and shared a moment of solidarity. He looked tired too, though not as exhausted as I felt, and I knew we weren’t going to do anything about what we’d talked about last night. A truce, temporarily at least. Lazy Saturday it was.

Neither of us said anything, but we silently agreed to share the bathroom, leaving the bathroom door open as we took turns brushing our teeth and washing our faces. He’d lived here long enough that we weren’t above squabbling over the bathroom in the morning, but neither of us was feeling human enough to fight today, at least not yet. Splashing cold water on my face helped a bit with that.

Dad was putting breakfast on the table when we ambled down the stairs and into the kitchen. He smiled at us, greeting us with a “good morning” in botched Mandarin. Kenta repeated the phrase and leaned over to kiss him on the cheek. I didn’t say anything.

“Stay up too late reading, kiddo?” he asked as he finished plating my food. We weren’t big breakfast people, each of us usually scrounging around on our own every morning, but eggs were pretty standard for the weekend, and Dad had made pancakes today, too. I wondered why.

“Um, yeah,” I responded, taking the easy answer.

“No run today?” he asked, and shit. Yeah. I missed my run. First one since I’d started. I’d always told myself I had to, or I could stop too easily. Was it suspicious that I hadn’t run? I thought so, but Dad was acting pretty normal. “I don’t blame you. Yesterday was pretty rough.”

I looked at Kenta, alarmed. Had he told him?

“I will check for messages from the lawyer after breakfast,” Kenta responded, looking at me more than Dad with a pointedness that told me he knew I needed the reminder. Right. After the whole fight last night, I’d forgotten we’d also met with Blackwell, the Trio, and their parents earlier that day. Whoops. “I sent him a brief message yesterday afternoon, but I would not blame him if he is out of office until Monday.”

Ugh. On top of all this cape stuff, I also had to deal with school stuff.

We ate breakfast mostly in silence, Dad and Kenta talking about some mundane things like whether they should take any meat out of the freezer for the week and what time they should close the windows. It wasn’t unusual, but I’d never thought about how domestic it was.

It was really weird to think Lung was the same guy who kissed my dad good morning, and I fought with over using the bathroom at least a few times a week.

I helped Dad do the dishes after breakfast, and Kenta stepped into the backyard to make some calls. I wondered if he was actually calling the lawyer like he implied he could, or if he was checking in with Oni Lee and Bakuda about last night. Hell, he could even be calling the PRT line and asking about making me a Ward for all I knew.

He was still on the phone when Dad and I finished the dishes, and I headed to the living room to sit on the floor in front of the couch to stretch. Even if I hadn’t run, I knew I should stretch at the very least, and my whole body was kind of sore from last night, especially my legs. Dad wandered in after a few minutes and asked to join me.

“You like your training with Alice?” Dad asked after a bit, and I thought about how much Bakuda had been screaming at Lung and Oni Lee last night. That was totally unlike the Alice I knew. Then again, the Kenta I knew was really nothing like Lung either.

“Uh-huh.” I hadn’t actually fought anyone hand-to-hand last night, but I’d climbed down a couple of fire escapes and hadn’t fallen off until Bakuda blew it up. That was something, right? Kind of? Almost? “I feel like my balance has gotten a lot better.”

Dad nodded along and stood up to do his standing stretches. His routine was a little shorter than mine, though it wasn’t like my stretches were anything complicated. Even after all these months, I was still pretty inflexible. I could touch my toes on one side if I tried really hard, but Alice could wrap her fingers around the bottoms of her feet no problem since the first day we’d met, so I knew I had a ways to go. Still, the stretches felt good after everything I’d put my muscles through last night. My thighs still hurt the most from riding that dog thing.

I was kind of taking my time, so Dad finished a while before me. He sat on the couch, fiddling with some stuff on the side table, before asking if I minded if he put on the news. I agreed, not putting any thought into what might be on the news today.

“Medhall headquarters destroyed in a cape battle,” Dad said aloud, reading the banner on the bottom of the screen. My head snapped up, and I saw the little icon on the screen as Dad turned the volume up.

I abandoned my stretches, pulling my legs into a criss-cross and looking up at the TV. I didn’t really want the reminder of last night, but I really wanted to know what happened.

There wasn’t really anything new. The newscaster said Lung had been rampaging around downtown, Oni Lee and Bakuda close behind. There’d been some fires, but the Medhall lobby got the most direct damage. Some Empire 88 capes showed up, but the newscaster didn’t name them, nor did she name the Protectorate members when she started talking about their role in the fight.

“We successfully arrested Hookwolf, Cricket, and Rune, and disuaded the ABB from causing more property damage last night,” Miss Militia was saying when the footage cut to an interview with her. I was pretty sure she was standing outside the PRT Headquarters. The background looked like the generic sort of background whenever the Protectorate or a Ward got interviewed. The corners of her eyes crinkled as she smiled at the camera. “Today is a good day for Brockton Bay.”

“That’s pretty cool, huh?” Dad asked, poking me with his foot. I heard the back door open as Kenta came back into the house.

“Yeah,” I told him. This felt like something I’d normally be excited about, but I just felt kind of numb.

“What’s happening?” Kenta asked, and I turned a bit to see him lean over the back of the couch, draping his arms over Dad’s shoulders. Dad rubbed his palm over one of the tattoos on his forearm. I couldn’t help but think about how they looked in the fire.

“Some Empire capes got arrested,” Dad told him, “and the Medhall building got trashed.”

Kenta made a sort of surprised noise, but I thought it was pretty half-hearted. “Think that’ll make more or less work for you?”

Dad snorted. “Less work for everyone else, maybe, more for me.”

I peered at them. “What?”

“We met because a Medhall contract was causing my business some trouble,” Kenta told me. I understood the words, but I couldn’t figure out the subtext. Why would Medhall be causing the ABB trouble? I knew it was kind of a stereotype, but weren’t a lot of Asian people doctors? Did Kenta not want Asian people working for a pharmaceutical company he didn’t own?

“Medhall employs a lot of people with Empire inclinations,” Dad told me, voice careful. Again, I couldn’t figure out the subtext, if there even was any, but the words themselves said enough. Medhall was Empire? Or had a lot of Empire workers, rather. I hadn’t known that. Never even thought about it. Was that why Lung was there last night? I should’ve asked why he was downtown, especially since I knew he’d been planning on fighting the Undersiders last night, and they hadn’t been downtown when he’d gone there.

“It may stir up some tensions in the city,” Kenta said, and I felt his eyes on me. “Taylor and Alice could use some more self-defense practice. We’ll go see her at the gym tomorrow.”

The way he was looking at me told me that was a lie. We were going to sign me up as a Ward tomorrow.

Chapter Text

April 2011

Kenta, unlike the Empire and Coil, didn’t have spies in the PRT to help him out, but he had enough experience in cape and business affairs to know what to say and how to throw his weight around in order to get what he wanted.

He still had to call the general PRT line.

“I need to speak to Assault. We’ve met before,” Kenta told the operator. “Tell him this is about the bugs, and he’ll know what I’m talking about.”

The operator babbled something about not having the ability to contact him directly, but she would talk to her supervisor and try to have someone call him back. Kenta told her he’d call back in a few hours if she did not.

He wandered around the house a bit, watched the news with Danny and Taylor a bit, and made a few other calls. Taylor dozed off on the couch at some point, and Kenta got some time alone to talk with Danny. He was thinking about calling Bakuda to get an update on who she’d gotten to sort everything out with the casino when he got a call from a number he didn’t recognize.

He answered it. “Is this Assault?”

“Yup,” the voice on the other end said. “You don’t sound like the bug girl.”

Kenta ignored the comment. “Is this a secure line?”

“I’m on a PRT-issued phone,” came the response. “Who is this?”

“The bug girl’s legal guardian,” Kenta answered, the words feeling foreign in his mouth. “She’s interested in joining the Wards.”

“Oh shit.” Kenta heard some scrambling on the other end of the line, like Assault was rummaging through his desk for a pen and paper. “Okay. I know how to do this. Uhh… Let me get Battery.”

It was a little bit of a hassle, but they got there in the end. There was a lot of concern for privacy, but also a lot of concern for verifying that this was a genuine inquiry. Kenta was issued a new email address from the PRT to receive a variety of forms and instructions. He had to wait around quite a bit as Assault and Battery talked to different directors and Wards liaisons. They got there in the end, though. He and Taylor were going to the PRT building tomorrow.

He thought about joining Taylor on her morning run to explain the details, but Taylor could run circles around him at this point, so he just stuffed her costume into a grocery bag and squirreled it into his car while he was waiting for her to come back and decided to talk to her during the drive over.

“There’s a discreet entrance,” Kenta told her as they drove, “for Wards and Protectorate members. They want us to put on masks before we get out of the car.”

“You’re not going to wear your Lung mask, are you?” Taylor asked, and Kenta was pretty sure she was kidding, but not enough to joke back. Lee had said something similar when they were deciding Halloween costumes that first night he’d met Taylor.

“I got one of your dad’s scarves out of the closet,” Kenta told her. It was the only thing he could find that sort of resembled something that could cover his face.

Taylor raised an eyebrow. “You’re going to be hot.”

Kenta was already hot. He was wearing a long-sleeved button-down that covered his tattoos. He hadn’t even remembered he owned this shirt until he’d gone looking for the scarf. “I’m sure they have other masks there.”

They did, even though Kenta was pretty sure the tiny domino mask wasn’t actually doing anything to hide his face.

“Hey, it’s good to see you,” Assault greeted, Battery at his side, after the PRT staff member opened the door for them. He grinned at Taylor, offering a hand to shake. She froze a little bit, but accepted his hand pretty smoothly. Assault clapped Kenta on the shoulder next. “Didn’t think I’d see you again!”

Kenta hummed and shook his hand, trying not to think about how the other man kicked him in the chest two nights ago. He’d been kind to both him and Taylor off the battlefield, so Kenta thought that should count for something.

“Assault and I met your stepdad when the PRT thought you might’ve triggered,” Battery told Taylor as she waved her and Kenta after her. “Wasn’t expecting bug powers!”

“I don’t think anyone would’ve expected bug powers,” Taylor answered a little sullenly. She seemed to catch herself and straightened her back. “I think I can do a lot of good with them, though.”

Kenta thought it was a corny line, but Assault and Battery took it in stride. “That’s the spirit!”

The rest of their morning was spent signing NDAs, getting lectured by a lot of PRT drones, reading contracts, and meeting people that Kenta was sure he was going to forget. Assault and Battery weren’t even there for most of it, but it was more than Kenta expected. They were vouching for Taylor, apparently, having been the ones to follow up on her trigger event and talk to her that night on the field. They came back when Taylor had to do the actual paperwork, though.

“I don’t know what to call myself,” Taylor said as Kenta put all of her legal documents back in the Ziploc bags he’d brought them in. She had a birth certificate and a passport, but no driver’s license. She was old enough to start working on that, right? Something to talk to Danny about when they got home. “I’ve been thinking about it for months, but a lot of the good names are taken, and it’s hard to think of anything good that’s related to bugs.”

“Bug… Boss. Insectoid? Creepy Crawly? Ladybug?” Battery said aloud. She frowned. “You’re right. It is hard.”

“Buzzkill? Mite? Swarm? Mandible?” Assault offered. “Queen Bee? Ooh, Pestilence?”

Taylor looked to Kenta. “Any ideas?”

Kenta thought about ants pumping his genitals full of venom. He’d made Lee trigger another transformation after he’d calmed down from the first one to get his enhanced regeneration to kick back in. He was fine now, but it’d felt pretty awful. Lee and Bakuda were still complaining about how itchy it was. “Something about ants? Or wasps?”

“Image will probably have something to say about avoiding the less pretty bugs,” Battery told them, sounding a little glum.

“If you want to have something clever, now’s the time,” Assault added, grinning a bit. “We all remember Clockblocker.”

Kenta didn’t know who that was or what that meant, but it got a nod and a laugh from Taylor.

They decided on Swarm for now. Kenta thought it suited her powers, and Assault said it gave her room for bargaining later. If Image liked the theme, they could probably tone it down to something like Hive or Colony. Someone else could hammer out the details later. For now, they just had to write the name on a dozen different forms.

It turned out Kenta had a lot more forms to fill out than Taylor did. There was a whole onboarding thing she had to do later, all digital. Aegis came to the room their little group had holed up in, making use of the time they’d have to be at the base by collecting Taylor to meet the rest of the Wards. Taylor seemed excited in that muted way she did, so Kenta wished her well and stayed in the room to read and sign all the stuff Taylor wasn’t legally allowed to sign herself. Or rather, he read a bunch of stuff, signed a few things, and wrote questions down about other things on a pad of paper. He should’ve brought Danny. He was better at this kind of stuff.

“So?” Assault asked, leaning over the table a bit. Assault and Battery didn’t seem all that rushed. “Legal guardian now? I heard someone say stepdad, but that might’ve been Battery making assumptions.”

“Not married,” Kenta answered before Assault could get ahead of himself. Danny had stopped wearing his old wedding ring a while ago. Kenta thought he hadn’t cared about that kind of thing, but some part of him was pleased by it. “Danny and I talked about it after the whole thing at the hospital. It’s easier this way, me being Taylor’s legal guardian too.”

Assault hummed in acknowledgement. “How’s he taking the whole powers thing?”

By asking a million questions about the other parahumans he’d known in the Yàngbǎn. Kenta thought he’d forgotten most of it, but old memories kept getting dug up the more Danny poked. “Pretty well, I think. He’s been trying to learn more about parahumans, but there’s not a lot of good ways to do it. He read that book New Wave put out last year, but he’s not a parahuman, so I don’t think a lot of it was very relevant to him.”

“I think there’s a page for parahuman parents on PHO? That’s Parahumans Online,” Battery told him. Kenta nodded along, recognizing the name. Taylor had said Lung didn’t have a page on that website, so it couldn’t be that good. “I don’t know how many people use it, but we have Wards all over the country, so I imagine there are at least a few people on it.”

Kenta hummed and nodded. “I’ll tell Danny about it. I think he’d like that sort of thing?”

“What about you?” 

“What about me?”

“How are you holding up with the whole powers thing?” Battery asked, and Kenta wondered if either of them suspected anything about him. Probably not, even though someone in the PRT surely knew he was Lung. Like he’d told Taylor, his identity wasn’t really a secret. He didn’t own any of his businesses under his real legal identity, but his immigration had been a little haphazard, given the fact that the Yàngbǎn had been pursuing him when he’d escaped the CUI. The PRT had been marginally involved in the process. There was no way he wasn’t on a suspect list. At the very least, Assault and Battery were probably wondering how deep his ties to the ABB were. Had he said anything the last time he’d seen them? He couldn’t remember, but he was visibly and audibly very Asian, so it was safe to assume that they thought it was safe to assume.

“Yesterday she told me to stop walking around the backyard in my sandals because she had black widows buried in holes all over it,” Kenta said carefully, trying to make it come off like something of a joke. He got a spluttering laugh from Assault and a look of horror from Battery.

“Oh, that’s gold!” Assault said, shaking his head and clapping his thigh. He pretended to wipe a tear off his mask. “We’ll get someone to get her some tanks to take home, or to move here if you don’t want a bunch of spiders around your house.”

Kenta would have liked to say it was fine, but he really didn’t want a bunch of spiders around the house. He’d looked it up on his phone after Taylor had told him, and it was unlikely for a black widow to kill a healthy adult. He had a low level of regeneration even when he wasn’t transformed, so he’d probably be fine, but the memory of a hundred ants trying to castrate him was pretty fresh.

“It’s an adjustment,” Kenta told them, circling back to the original question. “Danny and I agreed we’d let her tell us if she had powers, but I found out by accident, and she was a little upset about it. I worried too, of course, but I think we’ll come out better from it.”

He hoped so at least. The problem was more that he was a supervillain than that he’d found out Taylor had powers, but it was close enough that Kenta felt confident using it as a cover story. Taylor had acted pretty normal yesterday, so he hoped… He didn’t know. That she’d forgiven him? That she wasn’t holding a grudge? 

Truth be told, Kenta wasn’t sure what the problem was. He wasn’t hurting her father, he wasn’t cheating on them, and he wasn’t destroying his body with drugs, so he didn’t really understand what she was upset about. He knew that was a him problem, though, not a her problem. That he’d grown up in poverty in Japan, and she was a middle-class American. That he’d gotten desensitized to death and violence after picking apart dozens of gangs and watching Oni Lee blow people up. That his trigger had remolded his mind, and so had Null’s power, and sometimes he wasn’t sure what was them and what was him anymore. Not to mention, he’d barely spent any time as a civilian since Kyushu. These sorts of things would be hard for him to understand even if he’d had a social life for the past decade.

Maybe he’d ask Lee or Bakuda, but Kenta wasn’t sure they’d be able to help. They were as fucked up as he was. It was why he kept them around.

Assault and Battery probably had some good advice, though. It was a bad idea, but he was pretty sure he could figure out how to ask without revealing anything.

Taylor burst back into the room before he could try.

“Sophia is a Ward!”

I’d been to the PRT HQ and Wards base years ago on a tour, but it was totally different going in with a mask and everything. All the meetings I had to go to and all the paperwork I had to sign were kind of boring, but I tried not to let it wear me down too much. I knew it was part of the process.

Still, I practically leapt at the opportunity to go with Aegis to meet the Wards.

“We’re a masks-off squad,” Aegis told me as he made our way down the hallway. “That won’t be a problem? You signed all your NDAs?”

I shook my head, then paused and nodded, not sure how I was supposed to respond to two questions with opposite answers. “Um, no and yes. It’s not a problem, and I signed all my NDAs. I, uh, wasn’t expecting this all to be so fast.”

“You don’t have to unmask right away. Or at all, if you don’t want to,” Aegis said. “Everyone does it a little differently. Browbeat, he joined about a month ago? He waited a few days, didn’t do it all at once. Probationary Wards aren’t allowed to hide their identities, though, so it’s a little bit less awkward if we just do it all at once.”

What was a probationary Ward? Was I a probationary Ward since I’d just joined? That didn’t sound right, and Aegis had just said I didn’t have to unmask if I didn’t want to. Who could it be? “I don’t mind. Or, um, I guess we’ll see.”

These were superheroes, I reminded myself, but I still wasn’t really used to being around other people my age. The Wards were a little bit larger than life, but Aegis was a very real boy walking next to me. It was easy to get caught up in the fantasy of it all, but I knew myself, and I knew there was a real possibility I’d freeze up once I was in a room full of teenagers.

The door had some kind of alarm system to let the people inside know to put their masks on. Aegis explained it to me while we waited, but he also said everyone was probably waiting for me. They’d been told they’d be getting a new Ward last night, so they’d been prepared.

I felt a prickle of anxiety when he said that. I’d be the center of attention.

The feeling washed away when the doors opened and I saw the Wards in all their glory. Or rather, in their costumes. These were the people I’d seen on the news and talked about on PHO! And they were just here.

“Hey, everyone,” Aegis greeted casually, stepping forward. I trailed after him, trying not to stand too close but also trying not to look like I was hanging back too much. “This is Swarm! Permanent name pending.”

“Um, hi,” I said, lifting a hand in a half wave. Everyone was looking at me. God, this was so awkward.

“Hi!” Vista was suddenly right in front of me. “Wow, you already have a costume. I like it! It looks really cool.”

What was that supposed to mean? Vista was, what, twelve? What did it mean when a twelve-year-old said something was cool? Both Tattletale and Assault had thought it looked like a villain’s costume. I’d known it was too edgy. Why hadn’t I tried painting it before coming here? Wait, Vista was waiting for an answer. “Thanks. I made it myself.”

I could see the surprise on her face, even behind the visor. “Cool!”

“You made it?” Kid Win perked up a bit. “Cloth Tinker?”

I shook my head. “Master. I control bugs. I had black widows make it.”

“Oh, sick!” Clockblocker looked excited, his whole body somehow saying it even though his costume completely covered everything, hiding his expression. Shadow Stalker gave him a hard look, and he shrank back a bit, looking embarrassed. “I’m Clockblocker, by the way. I guess we should introduce ourselves, huh?”

“I’m Vista!”

“Hi, I’m Gallant. Nice to meet you.”

“Call me Browbeat.”

“I’m Kid Win.”

“Shadow Stalker,” Shadow Stalker said a little coolly. I couldn’t really read her expression through her mask. She sounded… intrigued? “You fought the Empire and the ABB on Friday?”

“Um, yes?”

She nodded almost approvingly. “Cool.”

“Wait, really?” Vista looked between me and Shadow Stalker.

“They told us that in the briefing,” Gallant told her, and Vista puffed out her cheeks in response.

“I know! It’s different hearing it from her, though!” Vista insisted. She looked back at me. “The Protectorate doesn’t really let us fight anyone other than Über and Leet and the Undersiders. But you fought a bunch of them!”

“I didn’t mean to,” I told her quickly, and I explained the thing about hearing Lung say he was going to kill kids, and that it turned out he was just mad at the Undersiders for robbing his casino. Wait, that meant Kenta had a casino? Were we rich? He’d mentioned bribing the school district. That was a thing people with money did, right? I mentally shook my head. Something for later. “My powers let me stay pretty far from the action. The closest I got was when I sprayed Lung with pepper gel.”

“Sick,” Shadow Stalker said, sounding impressed.

Aegis crossed his arms, and when he spoke, it sounded like he was frowning. “That’s pretty close.”

“Don’t worry. I don’t plan on getting that close again. Friday was way too much action for a first night.” What was I supposed to do if I was supposed to fight the ABB again? I couldn’t just pretend that I wasn’t fighting Kenta, Lee, and Alice, and they’d figured out my identity, too. Hadn’t Vista said something about the Protectorate not letting them fight a lot of capes?

“That was your first night?”

“Damn.”

“And with bug powers!”

I’d meant to steer the conversation in a different direction, but I’d seemed to just have gotten them more interested.

“Settle down,” Aegis said, sounding a little amused. “Don’t go thinking we’ll start having fights like those. And it sounds like Swarm could tell you that you don’t want to.”

I nodded, eagerly taking the opportunity out. “I don’t think I could’ve taken out even one of them with my powers.”

“Hey, bugs are… cool,” Clockblocker tried and failed.

“A lot of potential,” Kid Win added with a nod, barely salvaging him.

“Can we unmask now?” Vista asked, squirming a bit. “If you want to. I feel like we’re going to keep just saying ‘oh, bugs’ forever if we don’t.”

I smiled a little at that. “Yeah, go ahead.”

Vista’s visor didn’t cover that much of her face, so the reveal wasn’t all that dramatic, but I was glad she’d been the first one to break the ice. Missy was her name, which I found kind of fitting.

Aegis was next, a Puerto Rican boy with long hair, which I hadn’t been expecting. He was surprisingly attractive, too, and so was Browbeat. Clockblocker was a redhead, and Gallant had dyed blond hair, which was another surprise. I thought it’d be the last one, given Kid Win’s visor didn’t cover much of his face either. Then Shadow Stalker took off her mask.

“Sophia?” I cried out before she could even say her name.

“What?” She stared at me, and I saw the moment her eyes locked on my hair. “Wait, Hebert? Don’t tell me you got fucking powers.”

I was already running out of the room before the other Wards started asking if we knew each other.

“Sophia is a Ward!”

Kenta was on his feet the moment Taylor was through the door. “What?”

“You signed an NDA,” Assault groaned into his hands. “You can’t be telling-”

“Sophia was the one who put Taylor in that locker,” Kenta growled, cutting him off. Something in the back of his mind was reminding him that this was Taylor’s business, that he shouldn’t be telling people, but he didn’t really care right now. Taylor had come to him, and now he was going to deal with it. “She caused her trigger event.”

Kenta saw the color drain from Assault’s face. “What?”

Kenta turned so he was standing over them, channeling his inner Lung the best he could without lighting anything on fire. “Is this why those girls never got in trouble? Did the PRT know? Were they covering it up?”

“We didn’t know,” Battery said, and Kenta wasn’t sure if he believed her. “Are you sure it was Sh- that it was Sophia?”

“I’m calling your Dad,” Kenta told Taylor, pulling out his cell phone. “Where did you put your diary and the emails? I’m going to have him bring it over.”

Panic seized Taylor’s face. “Don’t call him!”

Kenta blinked, pausing. “What?”

“I don’t- I don’t want him finding out like this!”

It took Kenta a moment to realize what she meant. He lowered his cell phone for a moment to properly look at her. “Do you really think I would sign you up for the Wards without talking to your father?”

Kenta knew saying that was a mistake the moment the words left his mouth, but he found he didn’t really care that it was making Taylor upset. “You told him?!”

“Jesus Christ,” Assault said, burying his face into his hands. Battery didn’t look much better. He rubbed his hands under his visor, stretching out his face. “Call your boyfriend. We’re going to have to go talk to the Director, aren’t we?”

Kenta was pretty sure Danny had been hovering near the home phone with how quickly he picked up, even though he’d assured him that everything would be fine. Danny sounded surprised when Kenta told him to gather up all the papers they’d been preparing for the lawyer, but he didn’t question him, and he was at the PRT HQ a lot faster than Kenta thought he would be.

Director Piggot didn’t look at all like what Kenta had imagined. He’d heard of her, of course, but for some reason, he’d thought she was Black. Piggot wasn’t the whitest woman he’d ever seen, but her bleached blonde bob and general obesity were really throwing Kenta off.

She seemed no-nonsense right off the bat, though, so Kenta could deal.

“Tell me everything,” she ordered, and Danny immediately started scrambling with the papers.

“We’ve been compiling evidence to, uh, go over with a lawyer,” Danny said, putting Taylor’s log on the desk, and then a manila folder that Kenta knew not only had printouts of the emails Taylor had received but also copies of the various email exchanges Kenta and Danny had with the school and from the negligence lawsuit. “We hadn’t been expecting to show someone so soon.”

“I don’t care if it’s perfect,” Piggot responded flatly. “We’ll get into it. Just tell me what happened.”

Taylor and Danny hesitated a fraction of a second too long. Kenta took over.

“Taylor has been the target of a year and a half long bullying campaign. This is a log of most of the incidents,” Kenta said, slapping a hand down on Taylor’s diary for emphasis. He’d taken pictures of Taylor’s notebook and printed them out, which made it look a bit bigger than it had when the pages were bound, not that it’d exactly been small to start with. “Assault and Battery are familiar with the worst instance of it. When I asked two of Taylor’s classmates who the bullies were, they told me three names. Sophia Hess was one of them.”

“Assault and I went to the school and visited the hospital with a PRT squad after the incident,” Battery said, biting out that last word. She was visibly cringing. “It was… it was quite bad. If there’s anything written about it…”

It was better to read than to talk about it in front of Taylor. They all heard the unspoken message. It certainly wouldn’t be the worst thing any of them had ever heard, but they were called trigger events for a reason.

Piggot jammed a button on the landline sitting on her desk. “Get me Shadow Stalker’s case manager. Have her wait outside until I’m ready for her.”

Kenta glanced at Danny and saw his own surprise reflected on his face. Piggot was taking them seriously? She was taking action? Kenta almost didn’t trust it.

Piggot skimmed the paperwork from the negligence lawsuit, then started leafing through the pages. Taylor started guiding her at some point, and Kenta forced himself to listen. He’d read it all when Taylor first told him of the diary’s existence, but it was different hearing her say it. Sophia had physically attacked her more than once, stolen and destroyed her assignments, insulted her, convinced boys to chase after her…

Piggot locked onto the strangest thing. “She’s on the track team?”

Taylor seemed just as thrown off as Kenta felt. “Yes? Yes.”

Piggot hit the button again. “Send a squad to put her in a containment cell. Don’t let her know what’s happening, if you can manage it.”

“Shit,” Assault swore under his breath.

“I’m sorry, what?” Danny looked around a little wildly before his eyes settled on Kenta. Kenta shrugged a bit, wordlessly telling him he didn’t know either. Danny turned back to Piggot. “Why is that where you draw the line?”

“Parahumans can’t participate in sports unless they’re in a league that explicitly allows it,” Piggot answered, and Kenta thought it was pretty stupid that was what she was responding to. Maybe he was just being a protective parent, but Kenta didn’t care about sports laws in the slightest. Thankfully, she kept talking. “It’s pretty obvious Hess violated her probation, but this is something tangible we can pin her down with.”

Probation? There was so much happening so fast that Kenta’s mind struggled to remember what the difference was between probation and parole was. Both of them had something to do with jail, though, and that meant something. Kenta’s eyes met Danny’s again, and he watched as a thought struck him. “Sophia’s lawyer wouldn’t be Alan Barnes, would it?”

If they were in a cartoon, Kenta thought Piggot would be popping a vein right now. “Why?”

Taylor tapped a line on the pile of papers on Piggot’s desk. Kenta couldn’t read upside down, but he knew she was pointing to Emma’s name.

Piggot sighed, and then she was yelling.

“Get in here now!” she barked, and then a woman who Kenta assumed was Sophia’s case manager. “What the hell is this?”

Kenta knew he probably shouldn’t be here for this, and there was probably going to be another flurry of paperwork ahead of him, but damn was it satisfying.

I was a little bewildered by it all. One moment, it felt like my whole future was crashing down. Then, it felt like the past year and a half was getting… I don’t know, stitched up? There wasn’t really a good metaphor for it. 

Piggot was like a storm. I’d met her really briefly when Kenta had been talking to someone else, but she was totally different that second time I was in her office, when Kenta was ready to fight everyone in the PRT office for… I didn’t even know what. Letting this happen? Something.

I still didn’t really understand what was happening. I took the opportunity to ask when I got it. “Why?”

“Why what? Why am I helping you?” Piggot asked, and I nodded. She leveled her gaze at me, the rolls under her chin pushing out a bit. “I’m going to be blunt. I don’t like parahumans. Hate them even.”

Weird thing to tell a parahuman, but okay.

“It’s no secret. The PRT shouldn’t have given me this position. Everyone knows it,” Piggot went on, and I wondered where she was going with this. She gestured at herself. It took me more than a second to realize she was gesturing to her body. “I wasn’t always like this. I was a soldier once. Parahumans changed that, but that’s not why I hate them.”

“Why then?”

“Parahumans believe they are above discipline, decency, and the law,” Piggot said plainly. “They create a cycle of worsening themselves and the regular humans around them.”

I hoped she wasn’t going to go off on some abstract tangent about why parahumans were poisoning humanity or something. Thankfully, she didn’t

“A parahuman caused the worst day of my life, and I didn’t trigger. The same happened to you, but you did, and it was one of ours who did it,” Piggot went on, and I wondered what she was talking about. “I knew she was cruel. The PRT knew what she was capable of. Unfortunately, she’s protected by the same privacy laws that protect you, so I can’t tell you the details, but she should be in jail. But Image loves a reformation story, and we got caught up in it enough that we didn’t see that one of our own was enabling one of the parahumans we’re supposed to keep in check.”

I wondered what Sophia had done. An actual crime, it sounded like. As bad as the locker incident was, it was just bullying in the grand scheme of things, no matter how worked up Kenta and Assault got about it. Sophia had done something jailworthy, something that made Mr. Barnes go to bat for her in court. And they let someone who’d done some heinous thing just run around a public school? Just because she was a Ward?

Kenta had asked if the PRT had been doing a cover-up for Sophia. It was impossible to really get evidence of that in just a few hours, but the signs were pointing towards yes. A lot wasn’t lining up between PRT records and the ones Dad had brought.

I wondered if Piggot would be bringing down the hammer this hard if she didn’t dislike Sophia before we’d met. I didn’t think so, but I’d still take it.

The rest of the afternoon was a flurry. A lot was happening, but I wasn’t actually doing much. It was a lot of Dad and Kenta telling a lot of people the same things, people I didn’t recognize running in and out of Piggot’s office, Aegis and Armsmaster generally looking a little panicked as they were shuffled around, and me listening for some kind of clue about what Sophia had done before the locker incident. 

I wasn’t the only one she’d hurt, apparently. I had a hard time wrapping my head around it. She’d been on thin ice, really thin ice, and even a fraction of what she’d done to me should have been enough to shatter that thin layer of ice, only someone had been covering for her. And Winslow. Piggot and the Protectorate hadn’t known, or at least they said they hadn’t. I wanted to believe them, but I really didn’t. My trust had been toyed with too many times.

When I was sent back to the Wards base with Aegis again, I didn’t really want to go. I’d been hesitant about being a Ward to begin with, but the whole Shadow Stalker thing was just icing on the cake. I knew I didn’t really have a choice, though. Piggot had come down hard on Shadow Stalker. I’d already filled out the paperwork and learned the Wards’ identities. I couldn’t just leave now without risking something similar happening to me.

“Um, hi again,” I said, feeling pretty awkward standing in front of the Wards after I’d run off the last time I’d been here. They all had their masks back on, which I didn’t think was a good sign. Slowly, I took mine off. “I’m Taylor. Sorry for… earlier.”

“What happened?” Clockblocker exploded, looking at Aegis more than me. “Swarm freaked out, and then some PRT guys were in here asking for Shadow Stalker, and then she, I don’t know, ran? What’s going on?”

“Shadow Stalker violated her probation,” Aegis answered. He spoke carefully, like how Dad did when he was telling me about work stuff that he probably shouldn’t be.

“Old news,” Vista responded, surprising me. She put her hands on her hips. “We already knew that she sucks.”

I didn’t miss how none of the other Wards leaped to defend her. I felt a little bit of my nervousness wash away. Of course, Sophia had probably mistreated these guys, too. Just because she was a superhero didn’t mean her personality went away.

“She wasn’t that bad,” Browbeat said a little weakly, but I could tell his heart wasn’t in it.

“You barely knew her,” Vista said flippantly. No one really reacted to the way she’d said it, but it didn’t really match the version of Vista that existed in my head. Either Vista hated Sophia too, or she just had a lot of anger pent up in that little body of hers. Or both. “And she bullied you, like, all the time.”

The Wards knew Sophia was a bully? She bullied them? Wow. I didn’t know what to think about that. They seemed so much larger than life on TV. It was weird learning that they… weren’t.

“You knew her in your civilian lives,” Gallant said, looking right at me. I still didn’t really understand how his power worked, only having gotten a brief explanation, but I knew enough that I knew he was actually looking into me, at what I was feeling. “She hurt you, too.”

I thought about what Kenta had said. Sophia had caused my trigger event. Just that sentence had carried a lot of weight with Assault, and Battery and Piggot had pretty strong reactions to it, too. I didn’t really want to tell these people I’d just met all that, though. I looked at Aegis, wondering what I could say. “Um…”

“She’s got a case for assault, harassment, and stalking at least,” Aegis said, taking my cue. Clockblocker winced, and the rest of the Wards exchanged glances. “The PRT’s starting an investigation.”

“Geez.”

“And the PRT just didn’t know?”

“Damn.”

“I wish I could’ve joined the team on a better foot,” I said, making myself speak a little louder than I wanted to. Please don’t hate me, I said in my mind.

The Wards didn’t seem mad, though. A little disoriented, maybe. They’d seen the same side of Sophia that I had, I reminded myself. It wasn’t a great start, but it was one, and it looked like things were going to be looking up, and that was all that mattered. 

May 2011

Kenta thought having Taylor join the Wards would have her out of his hair for a bit. Not that he wanted her gone or anything, he just had plans to enact. As Lung, not Kenta, but the whole Sophia thing was making more work for him in his civilian life that he really didn’t want right now.

He was glad that the PRT wasn’t interfering with his campaign against Winslow anymore, and that Director Piggot wasn’t just going to look the other way. Sophia was already on her way to juvie, and she’d been dumb enough to text Emma about bullying Taylor on her PRT-issued phone, so there was a good chance she was going to get what was coming to her as well. Not juvie, probably, but something, and that was better than nothing.

Taylor would be going to Arcadia, too. An immediate transfer, no floundering about how it was nearly the end of the school year. And Kenta didn’t even have to bribe or threaten anyone.

It all still took quite a bit of time. Enough that Kenta missed more than one Empire attack on his territory, but Bakuda and Oni Lee were a pretty effective team, so it wasn’t really a problem.

He still made sure to be involved in at least one fight himself before calling a meeting between all the city’s gangs, excluding the Empire, of course.

They met on neutral ground, a crappy diner on the border between the docks and downtown, as was tradition. He, Oni Lee, and Bakuda were there first, of course, Kenta taking his place at the head of the table, his lieutenants flanking him like twin guardian lions. They watched as the other gangs trickled in.

Faultline’s Crew came first, not caring that another gang might find the move weak. Faultline took a spot at the main table across from Lung. Gregor, Newter, Labyrinth, and Spitfire claimed one of the booths along the wall.

Coil was next, arriving with some mercenaries and parahumans that Kenta didn’t recognize. He took a spot nearest to Lung, which Kenta thought was a little presumptuous for someone who might not even be a parahuman, but Coil was a good ally to have, so he said nothing.

Über & Leet were next, which Kenta found a little surprising. They gave Lung polite greetings and sat at one of the booths when Bakuda gave them a shooing motion. Kenta resisted the urge to look at her. Had she invited them? Did she know them? Was she trying to recruit them? The ABB didn’t really need more capes. Kenta normally wouldn’t say no to another Tinker, but he knew of Leet’s reputation, and he didn’t want it tarnishing the ABB’s.

The Merchants crawled in next. Kenta let himself make a face under his mask as Skidmark sat at the table, and Squealer and Mush took over a booth. He did not like them, but he knew they were a near-guaranteed ally tonight.

The Travelers were close behind, and Kenta had needed to ask Taylor how to use PHO to look up who they were. A roaming gang, one that Kenta didn’t know well but had been in Brockton Bay for enough time that it felt appropriate to invite them. Trickster took a spot at the table while Ballistic, Sundancer, and a gorilla-like thing that was probably Genesis sat at a booth.

The Undersiders were last. Grue, Tattletale, Regent, Bitch, and three dogs entered and paused near the door. Kenta could feel their eyes on him. He grunted and gestured to the remaining empty seat. “Your past slight will be ignored in favor of peace and in recognition of your kindness to the Swarm.”

He didn’t like that he had to say it aloud in front of everyone, but he wanted to speed things along. Grue took the spot at the table, and the rest of the Undersiders claimed one of the booths like the other gangs had, all moving a little slowly like they were trying to figure out what was happening. Good. Lung was still kind of pissed at them, even if Taylor seemed to like them. Let them squirm.

“This is about the Empire, right?” Skidmark asked, looking around. Lung growled, warning him of his rudeness, but Skidmark didn’t seem to notice. “We all going to fight them or what?”

“The conflict with the Empire seems to be limited to the ABB,” Coil said in that slow, annoying way that he spoke. He looked around the table. “I don’t know if I want to invest my resources in one side or the other yet.”

Kenta had an argument prepared for that. “I defeated Hookwolf and wounded one of the giants badly enough that she has not resurfaced. Bakuda defeated Rune, the Protectorate arrested them and Cricket, and Oni Lee has done great damage to the Empire’s resources. The Empire has suffered great losses, and the ABB has only gotten stronger.”

“Purity has been seen in Brockton Bay again,” Coil pointed out, as if the ABB hadn’t already fought her, “and you are skirting on the edges of breaking the unwritten rules by attacking Medhall. The Empire actually respects our code, and you are proving that you do not.”

Lung hadn’t intended to attack Medhall. It had been a split-second decision on Oni Lee’s part when Lung asked him to teleport him, and it became clear his transformation had progressed enough that he was going to destroy whatever lay nearby, whether he wanted to or not. Medhall had been determined to be a suitable target. Kenta wasn’t going to tell Coil all that, though.

“Bullshit!” Skidmark called out. In a moment of shocking coherence, he said, “The Empire makes a big deal out of following the rules so the Asians and the Blacks look worse, and you forget they’re Nazis!”

Kenta probably could have said the same thing a lot more eloquently, but Skidmark was right. He looked at Coil. “As much as I hate to agree with a Merchant, he has a point. The ABB is not uncivilized. We contribute much to Brockton Bay in the ways of economics, entertainment, culture, and skilled labor. The Empire is in the business of hate and not much else.”

“Yeah, we’re not really into Nazis,” Trickster said, leaning back in his chair a bit. Kenta saw his eyes flicker from Lung, to Coil, then back at Lung. “The Travelers are willing to help if it gets us some goodwill from the ABB. We plan on sticking around a bit, and we haven’t had the chance to make the rounds at the docks.”

Respectful, even if the way he said it wasn’t. “Merchants? I imagine you feel the same?”

“Yeah, yeah. Fuck Nazis.”

“The Undersiders are willing to help as well,” Grue spoke up. He gestured loosely over his shoulder at his teammates. “One of my teammates had a vendetta against Hookwolf. With him gone, we’ve got to channel that anger somewhere, and I really think this could be the chance to wipe the Empire out.”

Lung grunted in acknowledgement and turned his gaze to Faultline and Coil. Fautline stared right back. “My crew are mercenaries. We don’t do anything without pay.”

“I would be willing to foot the bill,” Coil offered before Lung could gripe with her about it. He tilted his head. Coil had been his main opposition until now. Had he caved to peer pressure? It was unlike him. Had he just been playing devil’s advocate before? Testing where the other gangs stood? “I imagine my organization would financially benefit from the fall of Medhall than any of yours.”

What was he talking about? Grue voiced the question. “What’s Medhall got to do with anything?”

“I happen to know one CEO Max Anders is, in fact, Kaiser,” Coil said, folding his hands and leaning forward on the table. “I happen to know quite a bit more about the identities of Empire 88’s members, but I imagine releasing that little tidbit at the right moment will tip the scales in our favor quite a bit, no?”

I was glad I wasn’t at Winslow when the city broke out into gang wars. Dad and Kenta took turns driving me to school, worrying about my safety on the bus. Neither of them asked me about my role in all this, not with Dad knowing I was a Ward and not with Kenta knowing it was because of me that he’d ended up fighting E88 the night that kicked all of this off. I was grateful for it, even if it felt like they were dancing around the topic.

It wasn’t really my fault. I hadn’t made Lung, Oni Lee, and Bakuda go downtown, and I had nothing to do with the fight with the Empire that followed. It still felt like it, though. I’d been a part of it, and now I wasn’t. The Protectorate wasn’t letting the Wards fight or patrol in battlezones, even the Wards who weren’t brand-spanking new to being a cape. The Protectorate wasn’t actually doing much either, though.

“They’re just letting them all fight each other, and then the Protectorate’s going to swoop in and take them all out,” Dennis said when the topic came up at the lunch table. He was an avid PHO user, too, and some of his friends were pretty big capeheads as well. We Wards weren’t really supposed to hang out with each other too much out of costume since it put our identities at risk, but I had nearly an identical schedule to Chris, and he hung out with Dennis a lot, so it was hard not to hang around them. At least Gallant and Aegis were at their own table, and Browbeat and Vista went to other schools.

It was probably some kind of risk that Glory Girl and Panacea sat with us Wards, though.

Glory Girl was one of the popular kids, and she was dating Gallant, apparently, so they had their whole setup at another table. But Panacea chose to have lunch at the cape nerd table, which I’d found weird at first, until I realized this was the place she probably had to pretend to be normal the least.

“Any superhero secrets you can share?” one of the non-capes asked Panacea. She shrugged.

“Nothing that’s not on the news. They only call me in to heal,” she told us. I knew the names she was about to list. “Stormtiger, Othala, and Squealer are the only ones I’ve seen.”

I wanted to ask Kenta about that last one badly. Squealer was a Merchant, not an Empire cape. I hadn’t seen it, but Vista said some flying squid thing had dropped her off on top of a PRT van when a team had gone to intervene in a fight against Krieg, Purity, and some of their underlings. They’d just abandoned her, it seemed, which was weird because the gangs actually seemed to be working together, breaking up their usual teams to create more cohesive units based on their powers.

I hadn’t seen any pictures of Lung on PHO. Plenty of anecdotes about seeing Oni Lee, and plenty of evidence of Bakuda’s bombs at work, but nothing about Lung himself. 

I wondered what he was waiting for. I was not expecting to get my answer so soon.

I heard some commotion around the lunch room, starting at one table but quickly spreading. I caught snippets, but didn’t really make sense of anything until my tablemates started pulling out their phones. I watched them for a moment before remembering the PRT had given me a phone too. I began tapping at the screen, trying to get to a news page online, but Dennis beat me to it. 

“Holy shit,” Dennis said aloud. He didn’t look up from his screen. “Medhall’s E88?”

“A bunch of names were leaked,” Chris said, equally focused on his screen. He was swiping and typing a lot faster than anyone else at the table. Tinker advantage? “The CEO’s Kaiser. Max Anders.”

Holy shit was right. I gave up on my searching, putting my phone down to look over Chris’s shoulder at his screen. “Who leaked it? Does it say?”

“I think a bunch of news sites got it all at once,” Chris told me. He was on the plain white page that showed all the search results, swiping through headlines rapidly. “All the top pages were posted within a few minutes of each other.”

“The rival gangs probably did it,” I heard a kid at another table say. I wasn’t sure if they were responding to my question or another conversation at their own table.

“I couldn’t see the ABB or the Merchants being able to pull off something like that,” Dennis speculated, finally looking up from his phone. Chris was skimming an article faster than I could read, so I stopped looking at his screen to listen to what Dennis had to say. “I bet it was Coil. He’s spooky enough for something like that. But I could see it being the Travelers, too. They were just in Boston, and we know they worked with the Ambassadors, so maybe Accord told them something.”

“Who?” one of our tablemates asked, and I didn’t know who they were asking about. It didn’t really matter, though. Coil, the Travelers, the Ambassadors, and Accord were all names a high schooler definitely shouldn’t be dropping in a lunchroom conversation.

Dennis didn’t seem to think so, though. He just scoffed and said, “The Brockton Bay PHO forum literally has quick links to all the local gangs. Their names are all right under the banner!”

I felt a buzz in my pocket, and I watched over Chris’s shoulder as he opened his messages. It was a text sent to all of us Wards. Instructions. Not to leave, but to sit tight. It would be too suspicious to pull any of them out of school right now, and it was probably too dangerous to even send the Protectorate after any E88 capes at the moment, not when the gangs were probably about to launch a raid of their own. They were going to gather information, then send us all out when the Wards were suited up and ready to go.

So much for not sending Wards out. This was an all-hands-on-deck situation, apparently.

It was hard to sit through the rest of the day in class, though the teachers really weren’t all that strict about keeping us on task. Everyone was checking their phones constantly. There was some kind of battle downtown, but I wasn’t good enough at using PHO on my phone enough yet to get any good details about it, assuming there were any.

By the time a discreet PRT van pulled up to the school to pick us all up, I’d already imagined an elaborate battle where all the remaining villains in Brockton Bay were duking it out in the middle of the street.

It turned out I was kind of right. We’d been able to suit up in the van, and Armsmaster was barking orders at us immediately upon our arrival at the PRT HQ, telling each of us who we’d be teaming up with and what we were going to be doing.

We were boarding the vans and preparing to head out when Kaiser suddenly appeared out of nowhere in the driveway. It startled me so bad that I jolted back, my foot missing the step to get into the van and sending me falling flat on my ass. 

I felt Kaiser’s heavy metal armor hitting the concrete before I mentally registered that he was face down and that Oni Lee was crouched on his back.

Oni Lee vanished, and then one of the giants, either Fenja or Menja, was there. She was slumped on the ground, too, just as unconscious as Kaiser was. He disappeared again, and then Trickster was there, arms around a limp Purity. He vanished after a few seconds as well, and within a minute, the rest of the Empire was dumped on our doorstep, all unconscious or close to it.

Armsmaster reacted before they were finished, ordering the PRT agents to start hosing down the villains with containment foam. I wondered if Trickster or Oni Lee got caught up in any of that.

I felt a finger tap on my shoulder, and I whipped around to see Oni Lee’s mask about half a foot from my face.

“Lung sends his regards,” Oni Lee said loud enough for the Wards, Protectorate capes, and PRT agents around me all to hear it, before vanishing.

It was a message for them, something intimidating and not explicitly for me, but all I could imagine was how pleased Kenta would look with himself when I got home, like a puppy who’d just left a gift on his family’s doorstep. 

I was reminded of how the city’s Asians had cheered for Lung when he’d fought Hookwolf that first time, and those photos of Lung fighting Leviathan in Kyushu. They were both heroic images, and it was the same man in those images who’d fought and defeated the Empire today. Not the Protectorate or the Wards. It’d been Lung leading Brockton Bay’s gangs.

Today would be remembered as a good day for Brockton Bay. My stepdad probably wouldn’t be remembered as the one who made it possible, but I knew, and that would be enough.

Chapter Text

May 2011

Filling in holes in the yard with Danny on the weekend felt pretty mundane after managing several gangs and taking down Kaiser, but there was nowhere Kenta would rather be.

Taylor was off with the Wards, cleaning up some of the aftermath from Kenta’s war effort, but that was fine. He’d spared her the actual fights, leaving her safe in the Wards’ base, and now Brockton Bay was a safer place for her to use her powers and for him and Danny to keep living their lives.

They weren’t the only reason he’d done this, but it was the reason Kenta kept reminding himself of through it all. And now he was getting his reward.

“Do you think Taylor dug all these holes, or do you think the spiders did?” Danny asked, pausing and straightening his back to wipe his forehead with his forearm. He was wearing gardening gloves, which Kenta hadn’t really thought were necessary, but his own hands were caked with dirt, so he got it now.

“I never saw her in the backyard, so maybe the spiders?” Kenta ventured, pausing his own shoveling to stand next to Danny and assess the state of the yard around them. Most of the yard was just plain dirt, baking into a tough, cakey substance under the summer sun. It hadn’t been so hard to dig the time of year when Taylor had gotten her powers, so Kenta assumed she’d had a much easier time carving out all these holes for her spiders than Danny and Kenta were having filling them.

Danny started to answer, but was interrupted by a loud squawk as a large black bird suddenly shot out of the neighbor’s tree. A few moments later, shadows passed overhead as a flock of birds flew in the same direction, several squirrels and rats running along the fence at the same time, like they were mirroring the mass overhead. A dog started barking after them.

“That is concerning,” Kenta said, turning to watch the rodents run. He hoped the rats hadn’t come from their property.

“Kenta, your hand,” Danny said, and Kenta looked down. Scales. Scales were growing on his hand.

He wiped the back of his hand against his shirt, rubbing off the dirt. He knew it wouldn’t make them go away, but it still confirmed what he was seeing. “Something’s wrong.”

But what though? He wasn’t in a fight. He wasn’t reacting to the animals. They hadn’t really startled him, and that wasn’t how his power worked. He was probably reacting to whatever they were reacting to, some inhuman part of them in tune with the world, the same way animals were. Knowing that didn’t really help him, though. This was something pretty unprecedented for him.

Danny nodded along. “You might be having an allergic reaction to the weeds.”

Kenta felt his train of thought freeze, and he turned to gape at Danny. “What?”

Danny looked as calm as ever. “I think we’ve got some ointment in the medicine cabinet that might help.”

Kenta just stared. Did Danny really not know he was Lung? He’d made a point of not telling him directly, but he hadn’t exactly been hiding it either. He was almost certain Danny had figured it out. Was Danny just playing along? But he seemed genuinely unperturbed. 

He shook his head. He couldn’t deal with this right now. He walked up to the fence, planting his hands atop it, pulling himself up by planting the flat bottoms of his toes firmly on the wood. He looked around, seeing a few cats and some more rodents running among the tops of neighboring fences. The neighbor's dog was still barking, and he could see its tail bobbing as it frantically ran around.

His scales weren’t spreading fast, but a good patch on the back of both his hands had spread to his forearms. He could feel a heat under his skin, like his body was getting ready for something. But what? He couldn’t see any threats, even if he sensed one was there. It was a sort of familiar feeling, just not one he could make sense of. Either his body was pinging the animals as a threat, or there was something so massive coming that his body knew to start preparing even if he didn’t.

Shit. He’d only ever fought one being that made his powers do something they shouldn’t, and it was big enough that he could see it having this kind of effect on him, even after all this time.

He pulled out his phone and dialed Taylor, silently praying for her to pick up.

She answered after a few rings. “Um, hi? Is everything-”

“Levithan is coming,” Kenta interrupted. In his peripheral vision, he saw Danny’s eyes go wide.

“Are you sure?” she asked after a beat, voice surprisingly steady.

He wasn’t, but he wasn’t going to risk being wrong. “Yes. Try to warn someone who can do something about it.”

He hung up even though he wanted to… He didn’t know? Assure her? She’d asked him enough questions about Leviathan that she knew what was coming. Time was of the essence, though, and he had other responsibilities. 

“Kenta, what’s happening?” Danny asked, looking and sounding alarmed.

Kenta’s scales, still moving more slowly than they normally did, were climbing up his forearms, starting to cover his tattoos. “Grab anything important from the house. Just a bag, as quickly as you can. We’re going to get to a shelter.”

“Kenta, you’re scaring me,” Danny said, eyes flickering from Kenta’s arms to his face.

Kenta’s heart cracked a little bit, but now wasn’t the time. He needed to call Lee, to tell him to evacuate their people and secure their assets. He couldn’t ignore the way Danny was looking at him, though. “Do you trust me?”

Danny nodded, slowly at first, then faster, hesitating a bit but not in a way that mattered. “Yeah. Yeah, I do. Jesus, okay. Let’s go.”

I did really like being a Ward, all things considered. Even after the whole Sophia fiasco. The PRT was being cooperative with that, as far as I could tell.

Being a Ward was exciting. I was basically talking to and hanging out with superheroes all the time, both Wards and Protectorate members. I had multiple teams of people trying to think of creative ways to use my powers, and the resources needed to get the bugs needed to execute those visions. I got to fight capes, make a real difference, even though they’d only let me fight Über and Leet so far.

Being a Ward was also really boring. A lot of it was memorizing manuals, operating the console for other Wards on patrol, and training, which had been cool at first, but some of the novelty was wearing off.

Today was a training day, but not a combat session. Velocity was with us today, drilling all of us Wards on different procedures. Fire escape, rapid overseas deployment, getting from Arcadia to the base, that kind of thing. I’d assumed that this was a routine thing, but the way Vista, Kid Win, and Clockblocker were dragging their feet told me it wasn’t. I wondered if something was spooking the PRT, or if they’d just gotten bored with all the Empire capes in custody.

A phone rang. Gallant reacted, stopping for only a moment, but it was enough to throw everyone off. I felt the vibration in my pocket, and I flushed with embarrassment. I fished my phone from my pocket, ready to turn it off, but a glance at the caller ID made me second-guess myself. “Sorry, I have to take this.”

The Wards around me groaned. Velocity, who’d been running around us with his power, stopped, crossing his arms. He didn’t look mad, but he didn’t really look very sympathetic either. I tried not to care, telling myself that Kenta wouldn’t be calling without a good reason, but it was hard not to care about what a bunch of superheroes thought of me.

“Um, hi?” I asked, answering the phone. “Is everything-”

“Leviathan is coming,” Kenta said, cutting me off, voice deadly serious.

I felt my stomach drop. Shit. I’d been so caught up in becoming a Ward, going to a new school, and everything with Sophia that I hadn’t been keeping up on the Endbringer clock. Were we overdue? Was that why we were doing these drills? Was the Protectorate preparing us for the chance we’d be involved in an upcoming fight?

Fuck, was I going to fight an Endbringer? Brockton Bay was a big enough city to have shelters, but we didn’t do drills or anything. Maybe once a year, a teacher would point out the locations on a map of the city, and the PRT would send out an automated email with a link to their website’s page on the evacuation procedure for an Endbringer’s arrival. I’d checked the website back when I’d been asking Kenta about Kyushu and thought a little about what kind of stuff I’d grab if I had to flee the house suddenly, but I hadn’t prepared anything. 

Even if I had, none of that even mattered now. I was on the other end of it. Or, not the other end of it really, because that would be the Endbringer’s side of things, but I was on the cape side of things. It was totally different.

Was I ready for that reality? Probably not. Definitely not. I had bug powers. They’d been surprisingly effective against the Empire and the ABB, but Lung’s scales were a total shutdown to my swarm. Leviathan would be that dialed to a thousand. I’d be useless.

I still had to do something, right? It was… Well, not my responsibility. Capes always had the choice to opt out, even Protectorate and Wards members. But I was still a cape, and it felt like I should do something.

“Are you sure?” I asked, surprised by how calm I sounded.

“Yes. Try to warn someone who can do something about it,” Kenta told me, and then the line went dead. He’d hung up. I wanted to talk to him more, but I didn’t blame him for leaving. He had Dad and the ABB to think about, too.

I looked up and saw my teammates and Velocity looking expectantly at me. They were waiting for me to give the okay to resume the drill. We were standing in two very different worlds right now, I realized. My mouth went dry when I realized I was about to shatter theirs and pull them into mine.

“Swarm?” Velocity asked when he realized I wasn’t on the phone anymore.

“Leviathan is coming,” I said, the words making my mouth feel a little numb.

“Are you sure? Fuck,” he interrupted himself, not waiting for an answer. He shouted at one of the nearby PRT vans. “Get them to the Protectorate Headquarters asap!”

And then he was running, gone within seconds, leaving us Wards sort of just standing in a loose circle.

“You heard him,” Aegis said, snapping us out of our stupor. He waved his hands, ushering us. “Move!”

We all piled into the back of a PRT van, which was cramped and we weren’t really supposed to do, but I doubted any of us were thinking clearly. We threw ourselves in haphazardly, only a few of us actually ending up in seats. I ended up squashed against Kid Win with Vista under my arm and Clockblocker half on my lap. I swore I could feel all of their hearts beating.

“Are you sure Leviathan’s coming?” Browbeat asked, the first of us to speak, probably voicing the rest of the Wards’ thoughts. “I mean, who called you? Velocity didn’t know, so…”

Oh yeah. That was probably really suspicious. I was surprised that Velocity had just taken my word for it. That must mean the Protectorate had known something and wasn’t telling us. That was kind of rude of them. Maybe we could’ve prepared to evacuate people sooner. The ABB had sway in the docks, in what would become the danger zone, so hopefully a warning from Kenta could be enough.

Wait. Ugh, how was I supposed to explain who my source was?

I decided to just barrel through it. “Um, Lung?”

“Lung?” practically everyone’s voice echoed in unison. I couldn’t actually tell if it was everyone or not, but it may as well have been.

“I know it sounds bad,” I pleaded, “but I accidentally met him in his civilian identity. I trust him.”

On this and everything else, but I didn’t say that part.

“You know him?” Aegis demanded. “Is your identity compromised?” 

“Uh…” I’d never really thought about it like that. Kenta and I had sort of an unspoken agreement about not sharing ABB and Wards’ business, but I supposed I didn’t actually have a reason for believing that, given that we’ve never talked about that kind of thing so formally. But I couldn’t see him betraying my trust, even if he sort of did with the whole being Lung thing. We weren’t back to the point we once were, but he was still Kenta, still Dad’s boyfriend, still the guy who lived in my house, and still the parental figure who’d been going to bat for me against Winslow. He was all those things to me before he was a supervillain.

“We can talk about that another time. That’s not super important right now, is it?” Gallant asked, and Aegis shook his head. He looked back at me. “I’m still wondering how he knew. Browbeat had a point. Velocity hadn’t known, which means the Protectorate didn’t know, and this doesn’t really seem like it’s up Lung’s usual alley.”

How did Kenta know? I hadn’t thought to ask. I shrugged. “I don’t know. He fought Leviathan in Kyushu. Maybe there are some signs we don’t know about?”

“He did?” Clockblocker asked, and I remembered he was a PHO-head too. “It doesn’t say anything about it on- Well, he doesn’t have a wiki page, but I’ve never seen anything about that online.”

I shrugged. “My stepdad was living in Kyushu when it sank. He, uh, saw him. And his friend has some pictures from it. I saw them.”

That sounded sort of credible, right? I didn’t think my teammates were feeling very trusting of me, right now. I could feel Kid Win, Clockblocker, and Vista squirming against me, but that might’ve just been because we’d been in her long enough for our sitting positions to get uncomfortable.

“Um, Kyushu sank, right?” Browbeat asked after another stretch of silence. I nodded.

“He couldn’t find his mom for a few days, and they had to move to the CUI after that,” I told them, the words just kind of slipping out. It was Kenta’s business, not mine, but the memories of that random little day in the winter break of my freshman year were flooding my mind. I’d read about Endbringers, sure, and learned about them in school, but there was something different about sitting next to a man as he quietly told you about facing down the destruction of his home on an incomprehensible scale.

And now that destruction was coming here.

The rest of the Wards seemed to notice at the same time as I did.

“Oh fuck,” Clockblocker moaned, and I thought he was just panicking, but he didn’t follow the expletive up with anything. He thrashed against mine and Kid Win’s laps as he tried to get upright enough to fish his phone out of his pocket. “My dad’s in the hospital. I don’t think they can move him.”

I didn’t know how to react to that. I didn’t know a lot about the other Wards’ families, but Clockblocker’s statement made it all feel very real. Just in the trunk of this van, there were seven people: Clockclocker, Aegis, Browbeat, Gallant, Kid Win, Stalker, Vista, and me. My family would probably be safe. I didn’t doubt Kenta would be getting Dad to a shelter, maybe even staying there with him. I didn’t doubt he’d call Lee either, and make sure everything and everyone else that mattered to us was safe.

The other six Wards in the car didn’t have any of those assurances. Velocity was probably back at the Protectorate HQ by now, and maybe the PRT had sent out some kind of warning, but we didn’t know anything yet, or if those warnings would be early enough to actually do anything to help the people we wanted them to. All the other Wards had their phones out, presumably calling and texting their own loved ones, even Aegis. Aegis had always seemed the most cape-like to me, always very professional, always taking his role as the team leader very seriously, but right now, he felt like just another kid.

I pawed for my own phone, my elbow digging into Vista as I searched for it, but I just held it in my hand. Who could I call? Who could I warn? Kenta had most certainly already taken care of contacting anyone linked to the ABB, and Dad probably called a bunch of people at the DWA. Was there anyone that was just me? Emma, maybe, but I didn’t know her number, and even now I wasn’t sure I’d want to talk to her. The girls who helped me at school, back when the Trio dumped that juice on me? They were Asian, though, so whatever warnings the ABB got would probably extend to them.

I ended up pulling up PHO. I’d made a new account for Swarm, but I hadn’t posted yet. What better time than now?

I spammed messages on the Brockton Bay forum until the PRT truck came to a halt, hoping that no bots automatically took the posts down. I probably could have been smarter about it, but I didn’t really think about that until after I’d started.

Browbeat kicked the door of the trunk open before a PRT agent could open it for us, and we all ran inside. Someone directed us to Armsmaster’s lab, and we found ourselves piling in alongside the Protectorate.

I’d never been in here before, not being a Tinker myself and not spending a lot of time at the Protectorate HQ instead of the PRT building. It was really just a big empty room with about a dozen work stations placed around it, about three-quarters of the stations with a mess of metal on top of them. Armsmaster’s Tinker projects, probably. I expected him to be more organized.

There were a bunch of screens along the far wall, about three big ones overhead, and several smaller ones beneath them. The Protectorate members were clustered around them with Armsmaster sitting at what looked like a computer module. They all reacted to the arrival of the Wards.

“Swarm,” a voice I didn’t recognize said. I looked around and saw the face of a woman I didn’t know displayed on one of the screens. “You said Leviathan was coming here. Why?”

Aegis started talking before I could collect my thoughts, explaining roughly what I’d told him and that I’d learned from Lung. The woman on the screen was Dragon, I realized about midway through the conversation. Armsmaster reacted to that bit about Lung, but Dragon took it in stride.

“Armsmaster and I have been tracking the currents. We suspected that Leviathan would appear somewhere on the East Coast. The data is close enough that I’m willing to risk taking Lung’s word,” Dragon told us. “I’ve already contacted our allies and deployed my suit. The armbands will be at your base within two minutes.”

I didn’t know what that meant, but Velocity took charge of us Wards again and started ushering us to go intercept the delivery. It was some kind of tracking system to manage everyone in a battle like this. We were supposed to hand them out and make sure everyone got one.

It felt a little like when at summer camp, the staff appointed kids to do simple tasks like setting tables or carrying the compass. Important to some degree because it meant the important people could focus on bigger things, but it still felt a little like busywork to keep the kids occupied. It did mean that we were at the main rendezvous point right from the start, though.

The Triumvirate was there already, along with New Wave. The Travlers and the Undersiders arrived shortly after, minus Bitch and her dogs, but there was no sign of any of the other Brockton Bay gangs. I wondered if they were already out there evacuating people or if they’d turned tail and fled to the shelters. There wasn’t a lot of power among Brockton Bay’s villains, save for the ABB, now that E88 was gone, so it wasn’t a huge loss, but we probably could have used the numbers. Capes were arriving on airships, though, so that problem was sorting itself out pretty quickly.

I was still happy to see Oni Lee teleport in with Bakuda in tow. I was a little surprised to see Kenta wasn’t with them, and even more surprised to see Über and Leet with them.

I ran up to them, breaking from my spot hovering near the other Wards. Oni Lee was gone before I was close enough to properly talk to them, and I mentally noted to hold onto an extra arm band in case I ran into him later. I decided to focus on Bakuda. “Bakuda!”

She turned at her name. “Bug girl.”

She knew who I was. We’d seen each other since our in-costume confrontation, even if it hadn’t been as often as we used to. She’d laughed about the irony of it all and cursed me out for the bug bites on her- well, I didn’t want to think about where I’d bitten her. I’d apologized profusely, but she was over it after a couple practice rounds of sparring. Right now, though? We weren’t Alice and Taylor. We were Bakuda and Swarm, and she played the role well.

“Get me and Leet a lab,” she demanded, jabbing a thumb over her shoulder at Leet. I glanced at him, then back at Bakuda. I guess they knew each other? I hadn’t heard anything about Über and Leet working with the ABB. “I’ve got some new ideas for some bombs. Big ones.”

“Um…” Could I give her a lab? I’d just been in Armsmaster’s lab, but I didn’t think he’d appreciate two villains running amok in there, especially two known for causing explosions, even during a truce. “Kid Win! Get over here!”

I made it his problem. He seemed a little relieved at being given the task, and I wondered if he’d been thinking about sitting out of the fight. They went off to find someone to get permission to use the lab from, and I gave Über an armband. He was loaded up with weapons, presumably Leet’s tech, so the armband looked a bit silly next to it all.

“Are you going to be filming?” I asked, knowing I didn’t need to make small talk, but feeling awkward about it after I’d just ignored him so much.

“No,” he answered, and his voice sounded different than it did from when I’d fought him or seen him on his livestreams. It wasn’t a voice modifier, not like Bakuda had, more of a tone thing. I couldn’t place it. “Feels kind of inappropriate, doesn’t it?”

I shrugged. I could see both sides. There was virtually no footage of an Endbringer fight, and I was sure there was a reason for that other than the fact that it was hard to film in the middle of a battle. Maybe it would be a little less scary if people knew what an Endbringer was actually like, though. Or the opposite could happen, I guess. I didn’t actually know what an Endbringer fight was like.

Legend started talking, giving a quick speech thanking us all for coming, reminding us of the truce, telling us our chances of survival were low, and explaining the rough strategy for the upcoming fight. I’d undoubtedly be on search and rescue, maybe even away from the battlefield, depending on what things looked like when we actually got out there. My powers were good for finding people, so maybe I’d be good for helping evacuate civilians from the surrounding area.

I’d pair really well with Oni Lee for that, actually. I think Trickster sort of had similar powers from what I’d seen and read, so maybe I’d approach him if I saw him out there. We didn’t know each other, but I’d seen him when he and Oni Lee dumped the Empire on the PRT’s doorstep, so maybe there’d be a little bit of recognition. 

Rain began pattering on the windows before Legend had finished talking, and we knew it was time.

Whatever plans I had for finding civilians or working with Trickster were thrown out the window almost immediately. There was no time or room for any of that. The moment we were on the battlefield, we were in survival mode. 

We were sent out in waves, the capes that wouldn’t be able to attack or defend sent out last. I found myself clustered with Browbeat and the Undersiders. Leviathan raked through the initial attack, so we were deployed to collect and drag any fallen capes to safety, or relative safety at least. We were mostly just making sure they didn’t drown.

Tattletale squirrled off somewhere almost immediately, saying something about getting a vantage point. I tried to stick close to Browbeat, and Grue and Regent followed us when they realized my bugs could give them some direction, grabbing people and getting them back to the fight or directing them to healing points. The armbands were doing a good job of directing us, but my bugs were still helpful. It was disorienting, the armband emotionlessly beeping out directions, periodically interrupted with distracting messages about various capes dying and going down. It was hard to follow them when there were people and debris everywhere, and the rain was beating down on us.

It got even harder when the water began to rise.

The tide had crept forward long before Leviathan surfaced, but Leviathan was rapidly generating water, his water echo dropping exponentially buckets around him every time he moved. The ocean swelled, and big waves started crashing onto the shore.

I’d thought we had our hands full just picking up the capes who’d been hurt by Leviathan’s attack, but the waves started taking out the grounded capes rather quickly. The defending capes, I realized, when I saw Aegis among them. They were trying to protect the ranged attackers who couldn’t fly.

It was a little dumb that waves of all things were taking them out. The best comparison I could think of was that it was as if the rain was taking them out, at least if we were looking on the scale of a battle against an Endbringer. They were sort of big, sure, but I’d definitely seen waves of that size on a regular day with sort of rough weather. It was ridiculous that they were giving us this much trouble.

I realized it was kind of mean to think about it like that and pushed the thought out of my head, rushing forward to drag people back before the next round of waves came.

I lost track of Browbeat during this, sending him and Grue after a bigger-looking guy that Regent and I definitely had no hope of moving, even together. I’d put on a little muscle between the running and combat training after I got my powers, but it'd only been a few months, and I doubted I had the body type to ever hold much muscle. I thought Regent was the same, though I wasn’t really looking. Still, we’d both struggle to move even an unarmored person on our own, so we ended up sticking together for a good chunk of time.

The waves would roll forward, then suck back, timing our chances to run in and pull people out. There was a line of bodies left about halfway up the beach, and my bugs could sense another group trying to move them deeper inland. I couldn’t count them all, even with my power. If I focused, I probably could, but I didn’t want to.

Regent and I repeated the process of dashing in, then retreating with a body between waves maybe three times, before I saw someone, a cape with a shotgun, attempting CPR incorrectly, and I had to stop to help.

“What happened?” I asked the cape who was pounding on the guy’s chest, placing myself on the opposite side of the body. It was a big guy, a lot bigger than I’d expect for a cape. 

“I don’t know,” the shotgun cape answered honestly, leaning back and getting up so I could take over. I realized immediately that the other cape hadn’t been doing CPR incorrectly because he didn’t know the proper technique, but because this guy’s chest wouldn’t budge when I pushed down on it. It looked like the shotgun cape had managed to get the big guy’s armor off, leaving just the comparatively thin cloth of underarmor, but it still felt like pushing on a tree trunk. “Honestly, I don’t even know if he needs CPR. He’s got some kind of defensive power. This could be normal for him.”

I didn’t really know what exactly the shotgun cape was referring to, if he’d noticed the big guy wasn’t breathing, or if he just defaulted to CPR when in doubt, but Regent had answers for me that I didn’t. “Something’s wrong inside. I don’t think his brain’s getting blood. Keep trying.”

“Put your hands over mine,” I told him, knowing I wasn’t strong enough to break this guy’s ribs myself. Regent hesitated but did what I asked him to, putting his hands over mine and putting his weight behind my movements. My fingers tingled a bit in a way that I was pretty sure wasn’t my circulation getting cut off by him pressing down on my hands. His power, perhaps? I didn’t know what it was, PHO not having any information when I’d looked up the Undersiders after saving them from Lung. It had to be something to do with the body, so maybe?

We kept it up through another round of rescue and retreat, keeping up our efforts to get the bug guy’s heart started. In the First Aid class I’d taken after deciding I was going to be a hero, the instructor had told us that we should aim to swap with someone every two minutes. Doing CPR was hard, and I’d known that just from doing it on the mannequin to get my certification. My abs had been sore the next day in a way they never had before, which I’d found embarrassing at the time. It was so much worse here, though. I was in the rain, there were capes constantly running past me, and there was no way I could tell if I was thrusting down deep enough with each compression, even though both Regent and I were putting both of our full body weights into each one.

“Tidal wave!” someone screamed, and my head snapped up, almost bumping into Regent’s. “Get to a forcefield or high ground!”

“We need to move,” Regent told me, but he didn’t stop the compressions. He must’ve taken a First Aid class, too, I realized. He’d understood not to stop even though there were a few moments where I’d expected him to, now being one of them.

“A few more seconds could save him,” I told him. How fast were tidal waves anyway?

I felt more than saw Regent shake his head. “I don’t see any force fields near us. We need your bugs.”

Shit. I hated to leave the big guy, but Regent and I were going to die unless I found us somewhere for us to take shelter. I got to my feet quickly, ignoring the way the muscles in my abdomen protested, and kept a firm grip on Regent’s hand in the process. I spread my bugs out, but ended up looking with my eyes more than my powers when I realized I didn’t even know what we were looking for.

I saw a cloud of Grue’s darkness billowing about fifteen feet in the air. I started running towards it, hoping it was some kind of beacon for someone with forcefield powers and not a distress signal. 

Other people started running too. Regent and I were sort of near the back of the group, but I was a runner, and I was sure I could catch up.

Regent wasn’t a runner, I realized pretty quickly. I could feel a tug on my arm as he lagged behind. I wondered if I should let go of his hand, if I should just try to save myself even though he’d waited for me earlier, but when I looked over my shoulder to check and see how much he was struggling, I realized it didn’t even matter. The shadow of the tidal wave was upon us, and the water came crashing down not even a blink later.

We were too slow.

I closed my eyes.

“Swarm deceased, CD-5,” the armband blared out. “Regent deceased, CD-5.”

We were dead.

Hold on. No, we weren’t. I wouldn’t be able to hear the armband say that if we we dead.

I opened my eyes and saw the semi-familiar red of Oni Lee’s demon mask.

“Be more careful,” Oni Lee growled at me, taking his hand off the spot he’d grabbed my shoulder. “Lung would kill me if anything happened to you.”

Regent’s hand tightened around mine, his palm and thumb wrapped around my fingers, totally crushing them. I realized he was only alive because I’d grabbed his hand, and he knew it too.

I didn’t know or particularly like Regent, but I was shaken enough that his grip was more comforting than painful, even though it did actually hurt quite a bit.

“Um, armband?” I said, blindly fumbling for the button to activate the microphone. “Override the, uh- Um, this is Swarm. Regent and I are alive. Oni Lee is on the battlefield. He saved us.”

Oni Lee moved back a fraction, and I realized he’d shifted his weight from his toes to his heels. Was he annoyed? It was hard to tell with the mask, but I thought he was annoyed. “I don’t want the Protectorate knowing I’m here! I’m trying to save all my stuff!”

I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking. I felt Regent’s grip loosen a bit as he perked up. “Hey, you know where the Undersiders’ apartment is, right? Because you guys were going to kill us. Would you mind snagging my PlayStation? The Number Man’s got my money, so I could pay you a pretty penny if I survive this. Bonus points if you save the games too.”

I was pretty sure he wasn’t joking either. I didn’t give Oni Lee the chance to respond. I didn’t think Lee was that callous, but I also hadn’t known Lee was Oni Lee until recently, so there was a very real possibility he was that kind of person. “I saved an armband for you. We could really use your powers in this fight.”

I flailed my free hand around my waist a bit, trying to remember where I’d put the band. I’d hooked it onto the belt I attached my costume’s pouch to. I freed it, but Oni Lee waved it away when I tried to give it to him. “Nuh-uh. I’m not a hero.”

“Neither is Regent,” I pointed out. Regent made a squawking noise like he was offended, but I was pretty sure he wasn’t actually. I didn’t really care either way. “We wouldn’t have been on the beach saving people if we had someone like you just able to teleport people out.”

Speaking of the beach, where were we? I broke my gaze from Oni Lee, realizing that we were standing on a building. I looked over my shoulder and saw capes still fighting Leviathan in the distance, but we were far enough that I could only faintly hear the sounds of battle. We were about on the edge of surviving buildings, though, water covering the ground from the ocean past the building we were standing on. I couldn’t see where any capes on the ground could have been standing, and I hoped the tidal wave hadn’t taken us all out.

“Swarm, Regent, and Oni Lee, standby,” the armband told us. Oni Lee sighed and took the armband from me, clasping it to his own arm. “Miss Militia and Genesis en route.”

Miss Militia? What could she want with us? Maybe she had some kind of strategy.

“How does this thing work?” Oni Lee asked, fiddling with his arm band. I started to explain the basic functions, but Oni Lee cut me off with a shake of his head. “No, I mean, how do I make it not say I’m dead anytime one of my copies is taken out?”

That I didn’t know, but Miss Militia was here on some flying animal thing that was either Genesis or some kind of construct, so it didn’t really matter.

“I’m glad you’re here, Oni Lee,” Miss Miltia said, dismounting from the flying creature to stand on the roof we were on. “We’ve got a proposition for you.”

Oni Lee stared at her and didn’t say anything. I answered for him. “He’s listening.”

“It’s a two-part plan,” Miss Militia began, “using Clockblocker’s power and Bakuda’s.”

Miss Militia, despite her accent, was a good speaker. She explained the plan pretty concisely. Bakuda and Kid Win were wrapping up their bombs, but the battle was still going rather poorly. The plan was to have Oni Lee teleport Clockblocker close enough to freeze Levianthan, then attach the bombs to him and set them to go off when Clockblocker’s power wore off.

“He’d freeze Oni Lee in there with him,” I pointed out, not liking that I was the one seeing the fatal flaws in this plan, “and he can’t freeze himself, so he’d drown in Leviathan’s water echo.”

“My power duplicates your bugs,” Oni Lee pointed out, “so it can probably duplicate Clockblocker and his power too. If we’re only there for a second, there’ll still be a version of him there for another ten.”

Miss Militia, Regent, and I froze as we considered his words. That was true. We could abuse the hell out of that if we really wanted to. It wouldn’t stop Leviathan, we’d have to wait for him to unfreeze to attack him, and there was still a decent chance of something going wrong, but it would buy us a lot of time.

“Get on it,” Miss Militia ordered, and Oni Lee looked at me. I nodded as subtly as I could, not wanting Miss Militia to think he was actually listening to me, and he teleported away. I hoped he went to find Clockblocker and not leaving to save Regent’s PlayStation. Then again, he had virtually unlimited, instantaneous teleportation across the whole city. He could probably do a lot on his own and still help the Protectorate.

Oni Lee’s power was actually pretty insane, now that I was thinking about it. Most powers had some major limits. Even Lung did, and he was on a whole different level than most capes. Oni Lee probably could have been a lot more than just a gang lieutenant if he wanted to. I wondered why he didn’t.

“I wish I could offer you a lift,” Miss Militia told us apologetically, “but Genesis doesn’t have room for more.”

So that was Genesis? I wondered what her power was because I was pretty sure she wasn’t actually that bird thing Miss Militia was using to ride.

“We’re both kind of useless in a fight,” Regent said dryly. “I’m fine with staying here.”

“You’re sitting ducks,” Miss Miltia pointed out. “Use your armbands to get a flyer to move you somewhere safer.”

It was easier said than done, apparently. A lot of the flyers were occupied, and neither of us was all that valuable to the fight. Regent had some kind of nervous system Master ability, which I thought might have some medical applications that could benefit the healer’s corner, but he didn’t react when I suggested it.

We mostly just kind of sat there.

I wasn’t sure how long we’d been fighting. Half an hour? An hour? Longer? It was impossible to tell, especially now that we weren’t moving. We’d been frantic, desperate in the wake of something so massively powerful that it could and almost did kill us without even trying or knowing. We’d been running, then we’d been doing CPR, then we were running again, and now we were just sort of here. Not doing anything.

The battle was visible in the distance, out of the range of my bugs. My eyesight wasn’t that good, even with the prescription lenses built into my goggles. The rain wasn’t helping either. I couldn’t really tell what was happening. I thought maybe Regent could with how focused he was, but he could be zoning out for all I knew. I didn’t really know him, but he seemed like the type.

“So, are you a hero or a villain?” Regent asked, breaking the silence.

“Um, hero,” I answered. It was the honest answer. Regent made a noise, and I couldn’t understand what he meant by it. “I don’t know why Tattletale thought I was a villain, so I just kind of went along with it.”

I hadn’t felt much like a hero that night either, my allegiances being thrown into a gray area moments before I’d met the Undersiders. I wanted to be a hero at the time, though, and that part hadn’t changed.

“She definitely knew. She was probably just fucking with you,” Regent answered a little bluntly, “or fucking with us so we wouldn’t beat the shit out of you.”

Huh. That… made sense. Tattletale had been right about nearly everything else. Why wouldn’t it be right about that?

I suppressed a shiver. I didn’t envy Regent. I’d hate to be on a team with someone like that.

“Your family situation work out alright?” Regent asked, an air of disinterest around him. I wondered if that was real or if he was just pretending. I didn’t look too closely. 

“Yeah. I still have some mixed feelings about it, but Lung was the one who signed me up for the Wards,” I told him, abruptly realizing I hadn’t really talked to anyone like this. Because who could I talk to? Kenta himself? Absolutely not. Bakuda, maybe, but she was Lung’s lieutenant first and foremost. Anyone else was too much of a risk, both for me and Kenta. 

The words just kind of bubbled up on their own.

“On one hand, I know the version of him that’s my stepdad. Lung’s more… I don’t know. More of an idea? He’s a permanent feature of Brockton Bay. My brain can’t really make my stepdad and Lung the same person. I can kind of try to frame it as my stepdad doing all the things Lung has done, but it’s not like all of that is online or anything. I just kind of know that he’s a gang leader and that he does bad things, but I don’t know what that actually means, and it’s really hard to picture the guy I live with like that.”

I didn’t really want to talk about this with Regent. I didn’t know him, didn’t even like him. But he was there, and he was an option.

Regent shut me down before I could get too far. “I don’t really care. I was just kind of curious. I don’t want to listen to you talk about how you feel.”

I felt a flash of annoyance. After all, he was the one who asked. But his dismissal was probably a good thing. I couldn’t risk slipping up and clueing him in on anything that could lead to Swarm or Lung’s secret identities. Actually, thinking about it, it probably wouldn’t be hard for Tattletale to figure out. She’d figured out Lung and I were family in just a few seconds, and she’d worked with the ABB during the E88 takedown. She might’ve been able to glean it off Lung back then.

I focused my attention back on the battle just in time to watch Leviathan freeze.

“Clockblocker deceased, BW-8,” the armband said. “Oni Lee deceased, BW-8.”

My stomach clenched even though I knew it was just a redundancy from Oni Lee’s power. It was still scary to hear. I hadn’t really been listening before, but I was pretty sure no one I knew had gone down. This was Lee and Dennis, though. Kenta’s closest friend and one of my teammates, one of the few who’d made some effort to be friends with me out of costume. If they died, it wouldn’t be the most devastating loss, nothing compared to someone like Mom, but it would still be pretty bad.

“How long does his power last?” Regent asked, but Leviathan was moving again before he finished the question. “Nevermind.”

A short use of Clockblocker’s power, more than the thirty-second minimum, but probably less than a minute. Leviathan kept moving like nothing happened, only to be frozen again a moment later. 

The armband read the names out again. “Clockblocker deceased, BW-8. Oni Lee deceased, BW-8.”

This time, the sound was a relief. Proof that it was, in fact, a redundancy. They hadn’t found a way around it, it seemed, or maybe it just wasn’t enough of a problem to waste precious brainpower fixing.

“It’s random,” I answered, and I saw movement out of the corner of my eye. Bakuda on Kid Win’s hoverboard, I realized. I tried to send my bugs after her, but they were far too slow, and she was far too fast. I supposed it didn’t matter. She already knew the plan, it seemed, and there wasn’t anything I could do to help her.

Laserdream and Glory Girl showed up about a minute later, presumably taking advantage of Leviathan’s immobility to do some search and rescue. 

“Bugs and an Undersider?” Glory Girl said, sounding a little disgusted as she laid eyes upon us, and I couldn’t help but feel a little offended.

Regent voiced my thoughts. “Rude. We can hear you, you know.”

Glory Girl at least had the decency to look embarrassed. Still, I was glad it was Laserdream who grabbed me, even if I had to dangle from her arms instead of getting princess carried like Regent. He seemed to be enjoying it, even after Glory Girl had just insulted him.

I was grateful for his presence so far, but I was a little happy to get away from him.

“Where to?” Laserdream asked once she had a good grip on me. All my weight was being supported by my shoulders, and they did not like it. I could deal, though, if it meant I could start being useful again.

“I have a minor Thinker power,” I told her. Thinker 1, they’d told me. I was a little surprised, but not really. After all, Kenta had initially assumed I’d triggered with a Thinker power. “I can sense stuff with my bugs, and I’ve got some kind of a multitasking power. Is there anyone who could use that?”

Laserdream might have nodded, but I couldn’t tell. “The leaders are sitting with an impromptu Think Tank right now. You might be able to help.”

I would take that. I shut my mouth and focused my power, collecting as many bugs from the surrounding area as we flew. There weren’t as many as there would normally be, given all the rain and flooding, but I’d never really flown before, except for the handful of times Kid Win let me use his hoverboard. It was a lot easier to collect bugs like this.

Laserdream dropped me on the roof of a building without much fanfare. There were a good number of capes here. 

Alexandria was the first I noticed, because how couldn’t I? She seemed to be at the head of the conversation. Eidolon and Legend were nearby, hovering a decent distance away from the edge of the roof, present but not really part of the conversation.

I recognized Oni Lee, Bakuda, and Clockblocker, of course. Locals I knew well, and the ones at the center of the current plans. None of them were Thinkers, as far as I knew, and they hung back for the most part, listening to the conversation for anything that pertained to them. Oni Lee disappeared periodically, and I wondered what he was doing. Saving people, hopefully, but I kind of doubted it. The docks were all submerged by now, so none of the people he might’ve cared about were in a position to get saved.

Armsmaster, Miss Militia, and Chevalier from the Philadelphia Protectorate team, if I remembered correctly, were here too. Again, not Thinkers. Leaders. Valuable, but watching them wouldn’t tell me much.

There was a small cluster of what I was pretty sure were the Thinkers. Über and Tattletale were among them, and they were the only ones I recognized. I tried focusing on Tattletale, knowing she was probably the best chance I had of learning anything important.

She noticed me looking. “Thinker?”

I nodded. “Barely.”

I described my power, and she nodded, face not betraying anything, but I knew she wasn’t particularly impressed.

“She warned us about Leviathan,” Miss Militia said, and I jumped, not having realized the others were listening.

Alexandria sharpened to attention. “I thought it was Armsmaster’s technology.”

“I knew the general area, but she warned us before I had a precise location,” Armsmaster explained. His voice was… hard? I didn’t know how to describe it. Was he mad at me? I knew it was a silly thing to think, but I could see why he would be. I had said something before his technology had, technology that no one really knew he had, apparently. It would have been a revolutionary reveal if he’d warned us, but I’d ruined that.

My brain kicked a thought from the back of my brain to my subconscious. They’d think I did that with bugs if I didn’t say something. “That wasn’t my power. Lung told me.”

Oni Lee teleported again, and he didn’t come back, at least not as quickly as he had the previous times he’d teleported. Bakuda looked away. I wondered if they knew something I didn’t. I hadn’t not noticed that Kenta wasn’t here. I’d sort of assumed he was with Dad, but considering Oni Lee could teleport other people, there really shouldn’t be anything keeping him from being here.

I forced that thought out of my head. I couldn’t think like that. Besides, if Kenta was the first to know, he’d make sure Dad was okay.

Alexandria’s mouth hardened into a line. “He’d be a great asset here, but he told us he wouldn’t fight Endbringers anymore.”

He had? That was news to me. I sensed faint reactions around me, even from Armsmaster and Miss Militia. I sort of remembered Kenta mentioning that he’d been saved by Alexandria. I’d forgotten about that, and the anecdote didn’t really make sense now that I knew he was Lung. He’d said she’d saved him from the water, but he’d also told me he couldn’t swim. It’d been relevant to the Leviathan story, but I hadn’t thought much of it past trying to get Kenta in a pool to teach him last summer.

“He says there’s no point,” Bakuda said, speaking up for the first time since I’d arrived on the roof. “His escalation power reaches its maximum, then starts fading. He thinks it means the Endbringers can’t be beaten, so his power thinks there’s no challenge, and it gives up.”

I could see the logic, but that wasn’t why we fought Endbringers. We weren’t fighting Leviathan just because he arrived, and he posed a challenge. We were fighting him because people were going to die if we didn’t. To stop Brockton Bay from becoming another Kysuhu.

Maybe it was different for people on Kenta’s power level. The Triumvirate wasn’t like that, though, at least I didn’t think. Maybe it was just a Kenta thing.

It was hard to reconcile that version of him with the one I knew, but that wasn’t anything new.

Leviathan started moving before anyone could counter what Bakuda had said, and Eidolon threw up a forcefield as the bombs went off.

It wasn’t a classic kind of forcefield, but Eidolon’s powers usually weren’t the most classic version of whatever power he was using. This forcefield was more of a stream of bubbles pressing together to make a shield, protecting us from the explosion. It was hard to see out of, but I could tell there was some kind of effect.

I sent my bugs out to assess the damage before Eidolon brought the forcefield down.

“Time distortion, organic matter warpage, and crystalization,” Bakuda announced, a hint of pride bleeding through her voice modifier. I assumed her words were for my benefit. I couldn’t imagine everyone else here would have allowed for Oni Lee to deploy her bombs if they didn’t know what they would do.

I saw the effect before my bugs actually reached the Endbringer, but I instructed them to investigate even as I studied Leviathan with my eyes. He was jerking a bit, likely the effect of the time distortion bomb, but it was an afterthought to the damage. There was a big chunk taken out of his flank, crystal-like growths filling half of it and spreading up to his chest. I sent my bugs into the holes to try to learn more about it, but the feedback they gave me was confusing at best. There was damage, yes, but Leviathan wasn’t flesh and blood. I couldn’t actually tell how bad he was hurt.

I tried to recall my bugs, and I realized that a few of them were stuck. I made the bugs stay, feeling around to understand what might be happening, but they too got stuck.

“He’s healing,” I realized aloud. I looked up at Legend and Eidolon. “The wound from the weapon is already closing. You have to hit him fast!”

Eidolon and Legend didn’t give any indication they heard me, but they responded to my words anyway, speeding off to resume the battle. Alexandria was only a beat behind them, a few other capes not far behind.

Leviathan twisted, pivoting his massive body, and seemed to break free of whatever that time distortion effect was. Water was pouring off of him like it always did, and his water echo fell back, making the water around him churn more rapidly. Eidolon and Legend fired blasts into the wound on his flank, killing some of my bugs but sparing some of the ones that had been trapped, but soon paused and quickly retreated. 

I only understood why when Eidolon put up his forcefield in front of us again, surrounding us this time, and water crashed down all around us. It was another tidal wave.

I was safe this time, but I could still hear the blood roaring in my ears as the water hit the forcefield. We were pretty high up, so it wasn’t as bad as it could have been, but I was nervous about the building being taken out from under us. I couldn’t tell if Eidolon was protecting it or not.

The armbands read off the names of the dead and fallen. Some of the people who had just attacked, maybe? But most of them had been flyers. Tidal waves could get pretty high, though, right?

The water was still roaring around us when Miss Militia looked to the group of Thinkers and asked, “Any more ideas?”

“More bombs?” someone suggested, speaking a little slowly. It was like they knew it was the obvious answer, but also knew it wasn’t a very realistic one.

“It’d take me awhile to build more,” Bakuda pointed out, sounding annoyed, “and we need Oni Lee to plant them, and he’s fucked off to god knows where.”

Right. It hadn’t been long, but I had sort of forgotten Oni Lee had left. Where was he? Most of our good strategies so far have relied on abusing his power. He greatly expanded our options, and we’d be losing a limb without him.

Miss Militia sighed. “We don’t know how long this battle will last. It’s worth investing early, I think.”

“Hey, is it just me, or has this tidal wave been really long?” Tattletale asked, and I realized she was right. The bubble forcefield still surrounded us, the Triumvirate inside with us, and there was clearly water outside, but it wasn’t crashing down on us like it had before. The tidal wave must have ended by now. This was something else, probably.

Eidolon slowly picked apart the forcefield, taking the bubbles out a few at a time, and our new battlefield was slowly revealed to us.

Something warm and wet filled in around us. Steam, I realized.

“Holy shit,” Tattletale said, and my head snapped up to face her. Her head was tilted upward. “What is that? Another Endbringer?”

I turned to follow her gaze, fearing the worst. If the Simurgh was here, if the Endbringers broke their usual patterns and were teaming up, all hope was lost.

But it wasn’t the Simurgh. It was flying, yes, but that was where the similarities ended. Scaled like Leviathan, flying like the Simurgh, and broad like Behemoth. A dragon. I’d seen it before. Only in a picture, but I’d still seen it before.

“Lung,” I breathed as my stepdad dived out of the sky to grapple Leviathan.