Chapter Text
Chase knew there was no way he was crazy.
He’d seen it with his own two eyes.
Leo Dooley had shot lightning out of his hands.
He remembered running away and definitely not screaming.
He remembered calling the feds.
He remembered helping them look for Dooley when he’d escaped.
He remembered his siblings being with him the whole time.
He remembered…
He remembered it being real.
But no one else seemed to remember any of it. His siblings looked at him like he was delusional and started checking to see if he’d gotten concussed while playing football.
He tried calling the feds again, but they just laughed him off, so he tried to get together evidence to prove he wasn’t crazy.
That was another dead end. The Dooleys had packed up and moved away immediately, and since Principal Perry was such a big fan of them, she’d covered their tracks, removing any paperwork involving Dooley. As far as anyone was concerned, Dooley never existed, but Chase had seen him getting in his car to drive away to wherever they were moving to hide and gotten a picture of him. Unfortunately, a random picture of a random teenager was not enough evidence of anything.
He knew he wasn’t crazy though. His imagination wasn’t exactly something he was known for, so he knew he couldn’t’ve just made the whole thing up. He was going to prove that whatever superpowered bionic freak Dooley was wasn’t something he made up with a concussed brain. It was real.
Unfortunately, finding proof of someone no one knew the whereabouts of was incredibly difficult. Chase didn’t exactly have infinite money and resources either.
But he did have an inability to quit.
That was how he ended up dropping his sports scholarship and college to form his own company instead. He was well aware that he didn’t have the brains to create the technology he needed on his own, but he knew how to boss people around, so all he had to do was hire some nerds that actually knew what they were doing and shoot his ideas at them.
Within ten years, he’d developed fairly revolutionary technology that helped him track events and movements similar to what he’d seen Dooley do. He was fairly sure he’d seen some comic book superheroes at least a few times, but it was always in the blink of an eye.
Unfortunately, none of the nerds he’d found knew how to store any information from a camera, or at least that’s what it seemed like. Every time he got evidence recorded, either the file wouldn’t save, the memory would get wiped, or his device would get destroyed and the back up location would mysteriously be demolished as well. He knew how Candace felt every time she called for her mom. He’d given up on trying to get the evidence shown to his siblings at this point.
The superfreaks must’ve been onto him.
That’s why they always destroyed his things. That’s also why they planted this triangle thing here in his new spaceship. All the other billionaires were going to space. Why should he be the only one left behind?
Whatever the glowing ball inside the triangle was, it was probably made by the supers to kill him, which meant he was getting close to exposing them. What the freaks didn’t realize was that Chase was not that easily susceptible to a glowing ball of…something. He wasn’t completely braindead. He knew a trap when he saw one. After all, he’d set up plenty himself.
He wasn’t going to open the triangular glass door. He was just going to pick the thing up and finally have the evidence he needed. Cold, hard proof that he wasn’t crazy…or room-temperature, hard proof. The thingy wasn’t really that cold.
His space trip could wait. He called the head nerd in charge of the rocket launch. “Yo, Dave—”
“It’s Dirk.”
“Don’t interrupt me, Dork. Cancel the rocket launch.”
“W–what? But we spent—”
“I don’t care. We’re delaying it. I’ve got more important things to do right now.” Chase hung up, stepping out of the ship and walking back across the boarding ramp, turning the evil magic triangle around in his hands carefully as he walked.
A sudden force slammed down in front of him, nearly breaking the boarding ramp. Chase grabbed onto the railing with one hand, the other curled protectively around his evidence. He was not losing this shit.
Some bald old dude in a butcher’s outfit stood in the dent in the metal, pulling out a giant mace. “I am Slaughter Master. Prepare to perish.”
Chase did the exact same thing he did the last time he was in this much danger. He screamed and ran away.
Unfortunately, away wasn’t very far, considering he was on a ramp with his only escapes being into the rocket again or jumping from who knows what height off the ramp and hoping one of the freaks he’d seen over the years was contagious enough to give him the power of flight. If he got in the rocket, he’d just be trapping himself in a hole, but he couldn’t survive jumping down from all the way up here.
He chose option C: climb up higher on the rocket and hope baldo over there wouldn’t be able to follow him up. He yelped, barely weaved out of the way of the mace swinging at him.
He needed somewhere to shove the stupid glowy thing. He wasn’t going to be able to climb with one arm. He looked behind him at the rocket. He needed to make a quick stop inside it.
He sprinted into the rocket, since he at least had a speed advantage over the mace-wielding maniac, and slammed the door behind him, shoving something in front to try to keep it wedged closed for a little longer. He could hear the guy’s mace banging against the metal.
He scanned the area, rushing over to the machine when he finally spotted it. The nerds had installed a shrinking and enlarging device on the rocket to shrink all his frozen meals so that they wouldn’t take up much space until needed.
He shoved the triangle inside the machine, pressing the shrink button. He heard the door bust down behind him. “You have nowhere left to run. Hand over the Arcturion, and I’ll make your slaughter a little more painless.”
Chase looked at the newly shrunken glowy triangle thing in his hands. It must be the Arcturion the butcher dude was talking about. This was definitely important then. There was no way in hell he was going to give it up now.
Baldy stalked towards him. Chase shoved the Arcturion into his pocket and tried to analyze the space for an escape route. He didn’t have space to get past the guy right now, so he’d have to create his own opening.
He ran straight at the bald butcher, getting his attention and feigning running to the right of him, only to hit him with a hesi and shift to the left. Kratos’s momentum kept him going right, and he fell in his attempt to shift left fast enough to catch Chase.
“Ha! In your face!” He looked over his shoulder as he ran out of the destroyed door opening and across the ramp. When he looked back in front of him, he immediately ran into someone and groaned at the sudden sharp pain shooting through his nose. “...Or in my face.” He looked at the newcomer, disappointed that it wasn’t one of his nerds. At least that way, he’d be able to take his fear out as anger against them. Instead, it was some blue and yellow faced weirdo. “Oh, great. Another freak.”
“Fool. You should know better than to speak that way to Soul Slayer.”
“Do all of you have to talk like—” Chase waved his hands in the freak’s general direction, “—that?”
The freak disappeared in a puff of smoke.
Chase looked around. “The fu—” He was cut off by a hard hit to his back, sending him skidding across the ramp, and he hit his head against the railing.
Another puff of smoke, and the freak was teleporting again, reappearing right in front of Chase, trying to stab him with an arrow.
Chase was having to use both hands to keep the guy from driving the arrow through his neck, and even then, he was struggling. The freak must have super strength. He grit his teeth, trying to push back enough to get his back off the railing and run away. “Who the fuck uses an arrow as a weapon with their hands? Do you not have the bow?”
“Nah, he does. Just doesn’t know how to use it.”
Chase almost let go of the blue freak’s arm at the sound of a new voice. It better not be another of these freaks. The dude version of Nebula was also thrown off by the new arrival and actually slackened enough for Chase to slip away.
Chase turned to his savior, ready to thank them, until he noticed the domino mask, trench coat, and other random shitty accessories. “A third freak. Hooray.” He wondered what this one was going to do to try to kill him.
“Man, I just saved your life. Put a little more excitement in that ‘hooray’.”
Chase crossed his arms. “I’m good.”
Freak 3 laughed. “I was kidding anyways. Saving lives isn’t really my thing anymore. I’d rather you not ruin my cred with all the villains by telling them I just helped you.”
The blue freak showed his face again, reappearing in another smoke cloud, shooting out a blast of energy. Freak 3 pulled Chase out of the way just in time. “I think I’m attracted to you.”
Chase did a double-take. “Excuse me?”
Freak 3 shot at the rapidly teleporting blue freak. “No! Not like physically, but I mean, I guess in a way physically. You’re not exactly my type. I’m more into blondes, but you’re not not my type. Now that I’m actually checking you out, you are actually kind of hot. Look, what I’m trying to say is there’s a force pulling me towards you, and it feels a lot like this space rock that I thought I got rid o—”
“Oh, don’t tell me you’re into that same horoscope, birthstone, star shit my sister is.” He was in the middle of trying not to die. He didn’t need some freak with a goatee professing his love right now.
“Ya mean zodiac signs? I think I’m a pisces…or is it aries? Wait! I think I’m a gemini. What month is that for again?”
Chase shrieked as he barely ducked away from another energy blast. “You can look up your star sign later! Focus on saving me now!”
“Uh uh uh.” He tutted. “Told ya I don’t do that anymore.”
“Well, you’ve done it a lot so far.”
“I’m not saving you out of the goodness of my heart.”
Chase rolled his eyes. “I’m guessing this is the part of the conversation where I have to ask why you’re saving me so you can give me some longwinded backstory and explanation.”
“Nah. Reason’s simple. Oliver has a bounty out on you, and if he wants you dead, then I want you alive.”
“Oliver? Is that one of the nerds?” Chase was going to fire whichever nerd that was later.
“Nerds?” Freak 3 tilted his head in confusion, but that was quickly overtaken by a different expression as he asked Chase, “Do any of them know how to create an electric field with that rocket?”
“Why should I tell you?”
Freak 3 sighed. “You’re really annoying, ya know that?” He pointed aggressively at the blue freak. “It stops that guy from being able to teleport.”
“Fine. I’ll call the nerds.” He turned on his comm link. “Yo, Dork.”
“It’s Di—you know what. Nevermind.”
“I need you to turn the rocket into a big magnet or some shit.”
“Why?”
“What do you mean ‘why’? Did you not see what’s been happening?”
“No sir. The cameras stopped working shortly after you told us to cancel the launch.”
“Of course they did.” Just Chase’s luck. “Tell Kevin he’s fired. And find someone new to take over security.” Hopefully it would be someone who could design better cameras that didn’t shut off every time a superfreak showed up.
Dork sighed over the comm line. “I’ll get on it. The magnetic field should be up now.”
Chase turned the comm back off. “Aight. Field’s up, freak. Do what you need to do.”
Freak 3 took a deep breath like he was going to yell something out, only to let it out in defeat. “Damn. Still nothing. I really need a cool catchphrase to say before going into battle.”
Chase pushed him towards the blue guy. “No, you don’t! You’re already in battle. Just fight!”
Freak 3 stumbled to catch his balance and glared at Chase. “You could help too, y’know?”
“I already did, or are you forgetting who got the magnetic field set up?”
“I remember, but I’m pretty sure it was Dork, not you.”
“He’s my employee. It’s the same shit.”
“So if Dork blew up the planet, it would be the same shit as you blowing up the planet?”
“No! I never said that. You can’t just—goddammit. What’s that word Adam always uses? ExtrapolaAH!” Chase gripped his bicep where a stray energy blast burned through the astronaut suit and into his arm. “Dumbass! Do better at your job!”
“I told you, saving you’s not my job. But if you’re talking about this guy,” he gestured towards the blue freak he was fighting, “yeah, he could do better at his job. You’d think it wouldn’t be that hard to kill a normo waddling around in an astronaut suit on a walkway thirty stories above the ground.”
Chase made a spluttering sound, trying to reel in his anger, or at least direct it towards the guy actively trying to kill him instead of the one that was at least to some degree saving him. As Chase watched Freaks 2 and 3 fight though, he couldn’t help but feel like he was forgetting about something.
Or someone. “Oh shit! Freak 1!”
As if on cue, Butcher Boy came stomping out of the rocket, and Chase braced himself for an attack, only for the butcher to walk straight past him and sock the Blue Man Group reject in the face. “Your weak bindings could not hold me. I’ll slaughter you and then get my prize. No one takes my bounty.”
“Did someone say bounty?” A new freak was standing on top of the rocket, smiling evilly down at them.
“Great. Another one.”
“Aw man. Not this guy again.” Freak 3 groaned and threw his head back in annoyance.
The new freak jumped down in front of Chase, shaking the walkway and causing Chase to stumble. Couldn’t any of them land lightly? Chase’s back hit Freak 3’s chest, and the second he felt the impact, he pushed himself away, scowling at Freak 3.
Apparently, it was time for another introduction. The only one who hadn’t given one yet was Freak 3. “I am H—”
“Hunter Bounty, bounty hunter. Feared in seven galaxies, blah blah blah. Listen, man. I kinda have plans today, so can we just wrap this up? How about you three,” Freak 3 gestured between the three freaks hunting Chase down, “take some time to decide which one of you is going to slaughter, slay, or hunt this dude, and then we can come back to this tomorrow or something.” Freak 3 grabbed Chase’s wrist, tightening his grip when Chase tried to pull away. “So, if you don’t mind, we’re just gonna g—”
An axe barely missed Freak 3’s head.
Freak 3 sighed in defeat and turned to Chase. “Change of plans. Run!”
He pulled Chase in the exact opposite direction Chase would’ve run, and then jumped, dragging Chase with him, off the walkway, sending them plummeting towards the ground. Freak 3 let go of his wrist, and Chase panicked mid-air, clinging onto him like a backpack, legs locked around his waist and arms barely leaving any room for the freak to breathe. Chase’s scream was drowned out by the wind whipping around them as they fell.
The freak tugged at Chase’s arms to loosen them a little before pulling out a circular iPad and smacking it. “C’mon. Stupid tech. Never works when I need it tooooowoah!”
Chase tightened his grip again as they suddenly shot upwards a few feet. He hadn’t even hit the ground yet, but he was already going to heaven. He must’ve died from a heart attack or something mid-fall.
“You’re not dead, dude.” Apparently he’d said his thoughts out loud mid-fall too. “My laptop can levitate though…sometimes.”
“That is a knockoff iPad, not a laptop.”
Freak 3 made a face at him. “I think I know my own stolen tech.”
Chase huffed. “Just put me down, superfreak.”
Freak 3 laughed. “That’s normally something you don’t want to tell a villain when you’re in the sky.”
Chase scoffed. “Villain? Weren’t you just saving my life?”
“I can still change my mind.”
Chase laughed nervously. “No need for that. I’m sure you were very evilly saving me. Just got a little confused, y’know, ‘cause the other three did those dramatic introductions. I don’t think I caught your name. Why don’t we talk about what it is instead?”
“I haven’t really come up with a good villain name yet. I’m thinking of just using my name and changing my normo name to Matchhead.” Chase furrowed his brows in confusion. That seemed more like a superwhatever name than a secret identity. “I can’t just use Kaz though. It’s too short. Most of the villains here have three to four syllables in their names, like Slaughter Master, Soul Slayer, Hunter Bounty, Megahertz, Experion, Disembowler. There’s some shorter ones too, but I feel like Kaz doesn’t pack enough punch, y’know? How many syllables is Kazimieras? I can’t really count right now ‘cause my fingers are kinda busy holding onto the laptop.”
As the laptop started to slowly lower them towards the ground, Chase started counting out the syllables on his hand, accidentally flicking Kaz’s chin with the first finger he put up. “Four? I think.”
Kaz smiled. “Perfect! Thanks, man.”
Kaz’s feet hit the ground, and Chase let go of his death grip, dusting himself off and trying to hide his embarrassment. He cleared his throat. “Okay, I’m gonna get going now.”
A hand shot out and clamped on Chase’s forearm. “Not so fast. I’m not trying to kill you, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want the Arcturion back.”
Chase yanked his arm out of the grip. He was not going to give up his only evidence in ten years. “Sorry, man. I don’t have it.”
“Dude, don’t even bother lying. Any villain can sense when the Arcturion is close by.” Of course they could. Just Chase’s luck, again. “Just hand it over so I can get it back in that rocket before it launches.”
Chase looked over at where his rocket was a little distance away. “I cancelled the launch.”
“WHY?”
“Because I found your Arcturion. I’m going to use it to expose all you superfreaks.”
“Listen, man. I will personally announce to the world that superhumans are real if you just hand over the Arcturion.” He made grabby hands at Chase.
Chase scoffed. “I’m not an idiot. Announcement first, then you get the Arcturion. I’ll have no need for it after tha—” A large explosion resounded behind Chase. He whipped his head around to see his rocket blown to bits. Just. His. Luck.
A couple pieces of the metal flew off and bounced across the road next to Chase and Kaz. The latter teetered back and forth on his feet, wringing his hands together. “So…I think it’s kinda obvious, but deal’s off.”
“No!”
“How much did that cost you?”
“Billions.” Chase said it in a sad enough tone to where Kaz could tell he wouldn’t be able to afford to make another one any time soon.
“Damn. Sucks to be you.” He clapped Chase on the back while he was still frozen in shock and then took the shrunken down Acturion out of Chase’s pocket. “Imma go steal another rocket.”
“No! Please! I can pay you!” Chase desperately tugged on Kaz’s sleeve.
“I can just steal whatever I want. I don’t need your money.”
Chase scrambled to think of an excuse. “But you can’t steal the government’s ability to tax you.”
Kaz nodded. “True. Paying taxes on secret lairs sucks. That’s why I have to share and split the bill with Leslie. But, I can just steal the money from banks. I don’t need you.”
“You still need a spaceship. They’re not exactly easy to come by. Just give me some time, and I can make another one!” More like his team of nerds could make another one, but that was besides the point. “I’ll make it even better than this one. I’ll make it durable enough to withstand going straight through the sun.”
“Don’t do that! I was gonna send it to be destroyed in the sun.”
Chase almost missed the implication. “YOU WERE GOING TO SEND ME INTO THE SUN?!”
“I mean, that was just kind of an unplanned side effect of my plan, but yeah, I guess.”
“YOU GUESS?”
“Dude, chill. You’re alive, aren’t you?”
Chase didn’t respond. Yes, he was alive. But he was also in pain. He’d been tossed around enough to bruise, his nose hurt like a bitch, he had a giant burn on his arm, and to top it all off, he was still in his heavy ass spacesuit, which was getting increasingly harder to stay standing in as the adrenaline wore off and his pain and soreness became more noticeable.
Kaz took his arm again, this time lighter than the previous ones, and turned it to inspect the burn. His face furrowed like he was debating with himself over what to do, and then wordlessly, he led Chase over to a bench and sat him down, kneeling in front of him.
“I’m saying no if this is you trying to propose to me.”
Kaz rolled his eyes, pulling out a kit from his utility belt. “I’m not that desperate for someone to date.”
“Fuck is that supposed to mean?”
Chase’s question went unanswered. “Hold still. I’m gonna cut your arm out of the space suit. If you move, it’ll cut your arm with it.”
“Is that a fucking lightsaber?! Can’t you just use scissors?”
“Standard medical procedure.”
“Where?”
Carefully, Kaz used the lightsaber to cut away the suit. “Used to work in a hospital for heroes.”
“What changed?”
“You mean why’d I go villain mode?” Kaz tucked away the lightsaber, pulling out some out somethings to disinfect and cool the burn. “I grew a goatee.”
Chase waited a bit for him to continue the sentence. When nothing was said he offered his own suggestion. “And then someone made fun of you, and it made you go on a villainous rampage?”
Kaz laughed sharply as he got out some kind of ointment. “No. Don’t be ridiculous.”
“Then what the fuck does a goatee have to do with anything?”
“Everyone knows that only villains have goatees, duh…well, except for Crusher. I don’t know what that guy’s deal was.”
“Say sike right now.”
“I’m not kidding.”
Chase really hated these weird ass superfreaks.
Kaz finished treating the burn and hesitated before handing Chase the Arcturion. “Take it.”
Maybe the superfreaks weren’t so bad…or at least some of them weren’t.
Kaz stood up. “I have to stop by the lair, and I really can’t have Leslie be around that thing. He goes crazy. Just…try not to get attacked or kidnapped or killed for the next few hours.”
He activated his floating iPad again and dangled from it as he flew away. Chase needed to give the guy a better mode of transportation. No way was he going to let himself be seen with someone travelling that pathetically.
He looked at the Arcturion in his hands. If it was somehow attracting every superfreak nearby, he needed a way to block the signal it was giving out, or at least dampen it. When he’d activated the magnetic field, the freaks had stopped going directly after him. Obviously, they were still aware he had the Arcturion, but it seemed like they weren’t mindlessly trying to obtain the magic space pebble as much.
Chase turned his comm on. “Hey, Dork. I got a new task for you.”