Chapter Text
What does it mean to be a good person?
It’s the age-long question that everybody has at least a gist of an answer to. In fact, it almost feels like a no-brainer— one of those filler questions made to sound deeper than they really are. Who doesn’t know what a good person is? Of course, there is not a single truth to this question that everybody universally agrees with, but it is impossible to argue with the humongous overlap in the circles everybody draws.
When one thinks of what a good person could be, there is always the image of a paragon of kindness, compassion, patience, perseverance, competence— all that “good” stuff gift-wrapped into one singular person. An unachievable standard by any human means, but it was a standard nonetheless. A real human had the capability to lash out, be angry, and most instinctively, they could be cruel. Sometimes, without intention. Most of the time, with ulterior motive depending on countless variables.
In a world like this, some were even said to be ‘born evil’. Abilities with no use but destruction or damage had no place in the hearts of people. Utter trash of a take, if you asked a sensible person. It’s a bit stupid how somebody could judge a person’s moral worth and compass just because of something they were born with. Angelic and demonic hybrids got the brunt of it, due to old religions and bad rep. It was… a disappointing pattern. Millions of years, and it seemed that humans could still barely grow their second brain cell.
So, what defined a good person by attainable standards? That was where answers usually differed. Attainable standards is not a concrete boundary, usually summed up by “just doing your best”. But a person’s best cannot be quantified in numbers or categorized neatly into boxes. Despite the lack of true and exact measurements— measuring human nature is a feat that remains to be achieved— there is some beauty in the variety of answers you could nitpick from a group of people.
To a hero? A good person was somebody who stepped in. Somebody who corrected mistakes, prevented others from making them, and protected the ones wronged by them. Justice was a common theme in their answers, usually linked with empathy or a sense of righteousness.
To a villain? A good person was somebody who excelled. Somebody with a goal higher than they could reach but still tried every day. Their definition of a good person wasn’t what one did for others, but what one could do for themselves. Self-serving was one of the better things you could do for yourself in a world like this.
To a vigilante? A good person was somebody who stayed true to themselves and their moral compass, even if everybody else was against it. Somebody who could choose their own path and live by it, despite external influences attempting to dissuade them otherwise. Whether that was morally correct or not was a coin toss flip, though.
…
To Wifies?
A good person was probably anybody who was willing to be a decent person to a retail worker during rush hour.
If he’d thought about this properly, instead of while he was dealing with nonsensical customers over the counter on two hours of sleep, he might have actually strung together something more poetic and wise sounding. But, last he checked, he was still speed-packaging loaves of bread for people who complained about him taking so long even if they were the ones holding up the line with all their yapping—
Gosh.
Wifies wiped the sweat over his brow, trying to double check if he’d counted the change correctly, or if he was about to accidentally hand over an extra ten dollars to some random customer. Unfortunately, his brain seemed to have been completely fried because he ended up looking at the cash register for a little over a minute before the customer grew tired and snatched a random amount from his hands. His bandana fell over his eyes from the sweat. The lack of sleep must have been getting to him. He was usually good at this.
Ah, whatever. The bakery was pretty well off anyway. Wifies’ manager probably wouldn’t mind.
Wifies wiped down the counter while waiting for the next customer to order, seeing as the powdered sugar from the beignets in the display case had spilled over.
Squiddo was normally the cashier at these hours. He wasn’t even supposed to be at the counter. Wifies was a baker, he was meant to bake. It was definitely the job he preferred over manning the cash register and talking to frustrating people. Baking was repetitive work with precise instructions and measurements. It was procedural, easy to follow, and nowhere near as stressful as dealing with an impatient crowd.
But, because the world hated Wifies today, Squiddo had to take her leave earlier for some dentist’s appointment and Wifies was the only one available to cover her shift.
Now, Wifies was used to this. The bakery was understaffed, and with such few workers, came with a lot of role-swapping whenever the time called for it. Customers weren’t too big of a deal most of the time, and the occasional out of line player could be shooed away easily enough.
The problem was this little exhibition the Hero Council had announced to be opening in a few weeks. It was this over-the-top museum of sorts to display the history of recent events (the overthrowing of the Monarch, the rehabilitation of villains, memorials for the heroes dead, retired, or missing, etc.), as well as some historical archives about heroism in the past. There was going to be this whole grand opening next week with motivational speeches and most of the top-ranking heroes were going to be there to watch its doors open.
So, much to Wifies’ dismay, tourists began flooding the streets of Capital City. Even more than the egregious number the city already had. Again, usually he could deal with angry customers, some even aggressive— it was Capital City after all. But these tourists from servers over took it to different levels. Way more levels than Wifies was used to seeing in a day. Whether it was stupidity or impatience that was next, was a 50/50. Wifies had even started a guessing game in his head at some point. If it was this bad for their little bakery, then he idly sent prayers to the more popular restaurants and cafés by the plaza.
“Hey, so, can I get this?” The next customer pulled up, showing Wifies a picture on their phone of a pastry. It looked to be a kind of sliced bread with swirls (cinnamon maybe?) by the middle. If Wifies was any lesser of the man he was, he’d probably say it was marble bread, but whatever the guy was showing him was definitely nothing that existed on the menu currently.
“Uh, sorry sir. We don’t sell that here. Could I interest you in other options or—”
“No. I know you guys make this.”
Wifies braced himself instinctively. “I think that some of our other locations do, but we don’t have that here. I’m sure there are other similar options I could pick out for you?”
“Look bro, no offense. But I’m pretty sure that I got this loaf the last time I came here, so maybe you’re just bad at identifying things,” the guy shrugged.
Wifies’ eye would have twitched if he let it. Bad at identifying things? Excuse this random, Wifies was made for identifying things. Primed and carefully built from a factory, actually. He took pride in the fact that he could catch things most players wouldn’t even have seen. “Well, I could show this photo to a baker from the back to double-check—”
“Yeah, yeah, go do that.” The stranger dismissed him with a wave. Well, Wifies couldn’t say he was too annoyed just yet, this was better manners than some he’d dealt with earlier this morning.
As promised, Wifies begrudgingly went into the kitchen, showed the photo to one of his co-workers, got the expected response, and trudged back to the counter like it was routine. It might as well be, because it had happened over five times this morning. Some people really do think they know better.
“Yup, we do not sell this here, sir. You might have confused us with our other locations, which I can give you directions to. Other than that, I’m sure we have uh… something in our menu that’s similar?” Wifies stopped himself from scratching the back of his head.
“I don’t want similar, and I sure as hell don’t want to drive thirty minutes to some fuckass other ‘location’, when you guys can make it here! I spent forever in line just get some shitty customer service—”
They mostly ping-ponged back and forth for a few minutes. And with every single second the seemed to drag and claw on, Wifies reaffirmed his belief in the concrete fact that humans were devolving and the human race probably would be long extinct by the time the sun exploded. There was no way he’d ever come out of this job without have at least half a head of grey hair. Honestly, all this for a snack or dessert? Wifies couldn’t say he didn’t relate to being irritable when he was low on fuel, but he’d certainly never acted so rude to people he didn’t know.
Wifies zoned out most of the things the stranger said, as it was complete and total dumbassery (as Zach might’ve called it). Sure, the guy was allowed to be mad that he wasn’t at the correct location where the loaf he wanted was (which was kind of his fault, since the menu was placed outside), but there’s a thing called ‘taking it gracefully’ and this guy was as graceful as a gorilla on tap-dancing shoes.
Plus, whatever argument that the guy had about ‘just making it for him now’ was even more moronic, because they didn’t have the ingredients nor time for it. See, bigger batches were usually baked in early morning and around noon, and most of the ingredients were sectioned properly for said batches. Which means, they couldn’t waste a full loaf’s worth of ingredients for something they wouldn’t even know how to price and risk understocking. Yes, a loaf does need that many ingredients, Wifies doesn’t want to hear it.
The only good part was that as time dragged on, most of the people at the back of the line seemed to slowly get bored and leave. Less to deal with later, but Wifies still had a guy in front of the line to somehow wrangle politely.
“Hey, does there seem to be a problem here?”
Wifies nearly sighed in relief. His manager was probably an angel sent by the heavens, coming in at the right time and all that. Branzy walked out of the staffroom, standing beside Wifies at the counter. Wifies stood aside to give him space.
The customer seemed to calm down too, as was the effect of Branzy. See, Wifies’ manager had a neat ability that could pacify or soothe anyone around him to a certain extent. It depended on a player’s defense to mental-type abilities. Wifies basically had the resistance to that of an impenetrable brick wall, so he never let himself get too paranoid of that. Extremely useful for someone who worked in customer service like Branzy, though. Commendable the guy swooped in to make things easier for workers a lot of people looked down on.
“I- uh… ah…” The customer stammered.
Hey, did Wifies mention that Branzy was one of the richest people in town and was pretty well-known all across servers for his participation in different charities? Oh, he missed it? Well, now you know. That made Branzy a pretty intimidating guy, for some reason. It wasn’t like he was mean or anything, but Wifies guessed that Branzy was pretty high up, power-wise. People tended to be scared of recognizable figures. Not to mention the bakery franchise he owned across multiple locations. A.K.A where Wifies was working in currently.
So, with Branzy’s very much appreciated intervention, the guy was escorted off grounds and Wifies could go back to doing his job. Yay. So fun.
“Sorry about that. Guess we’ll have to make menu board bigger, huh?” Branzy said once he re-entered the bakery.
“Doubt that would change anything.” Wifies sighed, wiping down the counter again. The line had long since dispersed because of how much time the dispute took up. Blessings are sent down weirdly.
Branzy laughed quietly, and returned to the staffroom. Man, his manager was so cool. Wifies was also about 90% sure his manager was affiliated with number one villain Ringmaster, but that wasn’t important because his manager was so cool.
Right, right. Back to slaving away at his job.
Wifies knew who was at the door before the bell even rung.
It was nearly time for closing, and Wifies was just about to put the chairs up since most of his co-workers had gone home. Honestly, the nerve of this guy to come every day just before closing. It was seven P.M., and Wifies had… more important things to do.
“Uh, hey. Sorry, real quick, but could I get one of those uh…”
“Birdseed buns?” Wifies finished Parrot’s sentence for him. It was a little amusing to Wifies that that was Parrot’s regular order. Extremely fitting. “Same one as always, right?”
Parrot smiled lightly, folding his wings behind his back. The avian seemed more mussed up than usual, hair sticking out, clothes rumpled as if they’d quickly been put on. Probably came back from another mission as Brightwing.
A little context here, because Wifies was feeling generous. Parrot— or Brightwing, he could say— was one of the top heroes. He’d put a specific rank, if it stopped fluctuating so many times across conflicts. The whole avian’s schtick dumbified was that he was a bird with a huge brain, and maybe an even larger savior complex. His ability? Supersonic. Brightwing could hear, feel, and see way more than the average hybrid or person, making him incredibly useful with invisible foes. Obviously, it’s a rather basic power, so to say. But in the hands of someone like Brightwing? It could get dangerous. Dangerous enough that Wifies knew to keep his guard up whenever he came around.
Because as much as Wifies knew about Parrot and his alter ego Brightwing, a hero should know next to nothing about him.
It’s kind of funny, now that he thought about it. How Parrot was standing there, digging through his wallet, not knowing that a worker at the bakery he frequented to knew about his identity. Not that Wifies was going to do anything with it. Yet. He knew the identities of every masked figure that roamed this server and others. Yes, every. It might be a little too meticulous to keep track of nearly hundreds of masked faces across the universe, but Wifies really needed his data collections complete. It wasn’t like they tried very hard to hide their identity anyway. He was inclined to believe those costumes were just for decoration.
He opened the paper bag, grabbing the avian’s usual order with tongs.
“So, uh. That orange haired girl not here today?” Parrot idly chatted.
“You mean Squiddo?” Wifies didn’t reveal too much, attempting to discern whatever the hell this guy’s intentions were. He knew Squiddo was in some dangerous territory lately too, befriending Ash. Wifies would have to check up on that later, now that he was reminded of it. Just in case. He didn’t want his friend getting caught.
“Yeah— her.” Parrot shifted around awkwardly.
Or suspiciously.
“Nah. She had some appointment with the dentist. I’m covering her shift,” Wifies said as vaguely as possible. This was the truth, anyway, so if Parrot was subtly trying to interrogate him, then the bird was going to have to accept he wasn’t getting anything.
“Oh. Good for her. Your name’s uh… Wifies right? Seen you around a few times.”
Wifies’ hand twitched (shouldn’t he be more controlled than this?) while taping the paper bag shut. Okay, so this was about him then. Unexpected, but manageable. “Uh, yeah. I work in the kitchens most of the time, so I’m not out often.”
A little info about him wouldn’t hurt. It would probably make Parrot less inclined to be suspicious of him, even if this was info that Parrot probably already knew. The guy was mad observant. It would also show that Wifies was willing to give information, which was obviously false, but it gave an impression. Still… Wifies wasn’t too guarded not to give Parrot the benefit of the doubt here. If this was a scheme against him or his alter ego, then he would’ve known like, three days ago. Parrot’s motive could be anything.
“Cool, cool, cool. So, baking’s like… the job for you? Or are you just here for the paycheck?”
Okay, what the hell is this guy’s deal?
“A bit of both.” Wifies awkwardly let out a laugh, sorting through coins to give the avian his change.
“I can relate.” Parrot nodded sagely.
“And your work?” Wifies tested his reaction.
“Oh, uh. Freelance. I just do whatever,” Parrot said easily, though Wifies didn’t miss the slight twitch in his eyebrow. “Gets me money, not really my thing though.”
“Right,” Wifies mumbled. Thoughtful, as he handed over the paper bag to the avian. Parrot might not know it, but he’d just given him a lot to think about. “Well, I’m glad baking’s my thing. Just don’t see myself doing it for too long, though.”
“Hope you find what you’re looking for, then.” Parrot tipped him a dollar and left, the bell ringing behind him.
Hm.
He’d deal with that a separate time; he had a more important thing that needed to be dealt with tonight.
Wifies took the same route home every night.
He didn’t live too close to the heart of the city, somewhere between the suburbs and the outskirts. It was part of the sketchier places, which was great because it was less monitored. Though, Wifies wasn’t sure how long it would stay that way, with those LAW officers from the government being so strict about patrolling areas. It shouldn’t be too much of an obstacle if Wifies was even more careful than he already was.
Eugh.
He hated LAW, and he hated the government even more.
Wifies quietly paid for his fare and got off the bus, wrinkling his nose slightly at the pungent smell. That’s the city for you, he sighed. He’d been sighing a lot recently. With any luck, maybe his lungs would grow stronger with the constant exercise. Or die from the horrid smells of back alleys. Either of them could be endgame.
The cool night air was refreshing on his skin after a long day of work. A cooldown for what was about to be a long night of work.
His apartment wasn’t far from the bus stop. Towering surprisingly tall for a building in the suburbs, it was lit up in the distance, glittering squares of light guiding Wifies’ way. He walked down the block a little faster.
In spite of what a lot of people thought for some reason, Wifies had a decent apartment. Decent for this economy, anyway. He had a bedroom, a living room connected to the kitchen, and a small bathroom. Electricity didn’t go out often, and when it did, the building had a back-up generator. Water always ran fine, and the landlady (may somebody bless her sweet heart) wasn’t too money-hungry. Perfect for a guy living alone.
Hell, he even had air-conditioning. But somehow that wasn’t the best part. The best part was that heroes hardly came by to cause property damage. Unlike in the heart of the city or in even sketchier parts of Capital City, where fights or bombings occurred routinely, Wifies had only encountered a fight happen around these parts once or twice. A miracle in terms of Capital City. Never heard of before, he could say. People would probably believe him.
Pretty cool right? Wifies made sure to pick out a good spot when he first started his operations.
‘Operations on what?’ one might ask. And Wifies has gotten to the point where he can’t answer that without sounding absolutely insane. Maybe he was. Wifies couldn’t care less nowadays. He didn’t have or need money to pay someone to tell him what he already knew about himself.
Wifies’ shoulders loosened once he finally got the door to his apartment unlocked. Thank goodness. Any longer, and his neighbors might think he was trying to break in to his own room. That would’ve been embarrassing.
He laid down his stuff on the coffee table, and bee-lined straight to his bedroom. Reaching under his bed was a small mini-vault. Metal with a password on a number pad and all. Wifies had to practically beg Wato to make it for him, because of its special properties. The vault was unbreakable, even by the means of an ability. It was fine work— nothing less than what Wato would allow himself to create. He hovered his hands over the number pad, and eventually punched the code in.
1056
His clone number. Not many knew it, aside from a select few. Which was why Wifies chose it as his password. That way, those select few would be able to access it too, in case they needed something for whatever reason. The metal box unlocked, a small USB and some miscellaneous blueprints were stuffed inside. Wifies pocketed the USB, closed the vault, and shoved the vault in a different spot. A compartment behind his drawers, this time.
He got what he needed. Now, it was time for the more interesting part.
Wifies went into his kitchen, tipping over the counter to reach for the cabinets by the ceiling. Behind rust cleaner, motor oil, and wrenches, was his personal stock of potions. Invisibility, health, swiftness, strength, etc. Most players had those stocked too in their own homes in case of villain attacks or emergencies, so Wifies wasn’t at a risk at keeping these in the open. Hopefully. With LAW increasingly getting more annoying, Wifies would soon have to relocate his stuff. Call him paranoid, but he was a man who wanted to keep his secrets. Maybe Ken and Wato would have ideas?
Nevertheless, he nabbed a few invisibility potions. Not too much, he didn’t want to drain the stock from his apartment— he only got what was needed for the trip to his actual base of operations, and a few extras in case something went wrong. Keeping himself on that line of thought, he added two splash bottles of swiftness to his bundle.
Huh.
What else was he missing?
Oh, right. His armor.
Don’t ask him how he managed to get a full netherite set of armor plus extras in this day and age. Most people only walked around in iron, or if they were rich, diamond. Only heroes, villains, and the off-chance, a vigilante (which was what Wifies constituted as, by definition), had this kind of armor. It had been a novel pain in the ass who was willing to sell him some, and an even worse pain to somehow obtain it himself. What matters was that, in the present, he got his netherite armor with his preferred iron trims.
He strapped the chest plate, gauntlets, helmet, and lastly his boots on with little to no difficulty. The task was easy for him nowadays as it was routine, compared to when he had just been starting out. Wifies winced at the memory of himself stumbling through properly buckling his boots.
He looked way more natural being in armor now. Like he belonged in it. Wifies liked that feeling, it made him feel more competent than he already knew he was.
Aura.
…
That was the worst thing he’d ever thought about saying his entire life, he needs to stop being chronically online now. Or else the rest of his brain might rot too. Wifies quite liked his brain, considering it was the only thing keeping him alive on these missions.
Wifies splashed invisibility on himself, started the timer in his head, and booked it for the most discrete window in his apartment.
One could ask what kind of operations was Wifies working on. And Wifies would say that was repetitive, because that line had been reused in the section before this.
The question remained.
…
See, if you told Wifies a few years back that he’d end up as some sort of vigilante attempting to protect the server from universal mishaps, then he’d ask if you needed mental assistance.
He means, the sentence alone nearly makes zero sense at all logically. It almost sounds like the plot of those animes he watched with Derapchu sometimes. But, as weird and nonsensical that sounded, that was the nightlife he lived. Now, what does that mean? What even is a universal mishap?
Well, to put it into less complicated words, this universe was a complete mess. An undiluted, ugly, tangled, concentrated pile of mess. The thing with having almost every person in every server a kind of ability, was that every second basically had the chance of causing the apocalypse. There wasn’t a recorded limit to an ability’s power, other than biology and the will of a person. But what about powerful, mystical hybrids? What about the magic that others could harness without harming their biology? Where was the limit there? The answer is: nowhere. A limit didn’t exist, and that was precisely the reason this universe was an unstable mess.
When you could have people roaming servers with the powers of gods, it does tend to glitch the system a bit. All the reality-bending, rifts, exploits, and magic leave a bigger mark than the population thinks it does. Well, you only need to put two and two together to know that tends to have drawbacks. Drawbacks that could potentially hurt others, yourself, or, as Wifies has iterated before, cause the apocalypse.
Wifies was essentially cleaning up the universe’s messes so as to make sure nothing too bad happens to leak through. Or at least, give anyone who was a victim to these rifts in the universe some closure.
Eldritch horrors, gods of the cosmos, sentient pieces of code, unexplained disappearances, come on, we’ve seen the movies. At this rate, Wifies had to be living in some sci-fi x psychological horror novel. He wouldn’t mind if he was. It would give him some answers.
Why he forced himself to do this tedious task? That had an easier answer: morbid curiosity.
There were whole worlds out there. Lost worlds waiting to be dug up by someone who knew how to look. Call him self-centered, but he’d always wanted to be that someone. There was always a new page for him to fill, another file to organize, another section to fill out with data and adventures. Who could blame a guy for just… wanting to know? If curiosity killed the cat, then he must’ve had over a million lives to still be here.
Along the way, he’d somehow even made a name for himself. Multiple names, actually. They called him the Enigmatist (this was a really cool name, Wifies liked this one), the Informant (a lazier name, he will admit, but the public wasn’t known for naming things very creatively), or more semi-officially, the Director (he… didn’t know how to feel about this one). There had never been a set name for him, and Wifies preferred that. It was better that he wasn’t a solidified as a public entity.
Still, people knew that when strange things happened without explanation, when loved ones disappear under overly strange circumstances, and when the police, Hero Council, or LAW couldn’t help— they called him.
Wifies left traces of himself only for that purpose. It wasn’t like he had constant tabs on every server— well, he did, but that wasn’t the point. That was a bad example. What he meant to say was that it was much more convenient for cases to come to him and it also meant he could cover more anomalies over a period of time. Scouring by himself, he could find something, but this was the type of thing that even Wifies, of all people, could miss. Anomalies were glitches in the universe itself; they weren’t exactly easy to spot with the naked eye.
He hopped off a shallow rooftop, reapplying invisibility. Eight more minutes before he had to splash himself again, he told himself. Instinctively slipping past broken cameras out of habit, Wifies slid into a back alley, climbing onto the rickety fire escape. It creaked and groaned, but he knew better than to be concerned. He pulled himself up into one of the upper floors of the abandoned building.
Cliché place for a hideout, huh? It worked well enough over the past year, but he was starting to think of finding a new spot. Maybe next time, when his workload was lighter.
Wifies found the stairs in the corner of the rubble. Going through the same motions as he did the night before, he went down how many flights of stairs until he reached the ground floor. The ground floor was blocked out from the outside, which was why Wifies had to use the fire escape. Too much damage and instability to move any of the bigger pieces of debris.
Discretely, under the last flight of stairs was a trapdoor leading to the basement. Wifies stood still for a couple of moments, observing the silence for anything out of the ordinary, when he was satisfied, he pushed the pieces of rubble and debris off the trapdoor, heading down the ladder. Beneath was, well, the basement. Wifies had repurposed it a year ago as some base of operations. It was a good spot; you have to admit. Dusty, but it was alright. The basement was barely affected by whatever demolished the rest of the building, so Wifies used some renovation hacks and brought down most of his stuff for the whole… vigilante (calling himself a vigilante sounded horribly corny, couldn’t he have any other label?) thing.
Faintly, as he went down, he could hear the clacking of somebody typing on the keyboard.
…
“Lomedy?” Wifies called out, shaking off the remnants of the invisibility potion. He wasn’t the type to be squeamish with potions, but invisibility tended to make him dizzy at times.
“Yeah?” A familiar voice rung back in return, the typing slowed to a pause. “Wifies, you back?”
Wifies wasn’t the only one bearing the secret of the instability of the universe, he might have gone somehow more insane if he was. No, there were enough to cultivate a full vigilante group around these parts. The Associate, Render had suggested the name. They weren’t exactly a team, in the sense that people thought about first. Wifies couldn’t say that they constantly teamed up or called each other for back up whenever there was a case that needed handling. In fact, all of them went solo. They did get together from time to time, sharing info, swapping files on what they all knew, and avoiding each other’s way or teaming up depending on how cases overlapped. It was more comfortable to handle it this way.
Lomedy was one of Wifies’ closest friends in the Associate, hence why he knew Wifies’ identity and also got to use this hideout. But there was another thing that made him special. Lomedy was part of the Hero Council. Double agent thing. Lomedy had already long since been secretly part of the Associate before joining the Council. He was well-known too— as Inferno’s back-up… Wifies had half a mind to tell Lomedy to exert himself more when in Hero costume, but he knew Lomedy enjoyed laying low.
“Uh huh,” Wifies mumbled. He turned around the corner to see Lomedy sitting in front of the shared monitor setup. His friend’s golden eyes were scrunched up in frustration, before relaxing once Wifies came into view. “You’re working on one of our cases?”
Lomedy groaned, stretching out his arms after what Wifies could only assume was hours of terrible posture. “Yeah, it’s been a pain. Just can’t seem to wrap my head around it.” He scrolled through a doc in the monitor. Pictures of strange terrains, links, and newsletter obituaries went by. Wifies didn’t put in effort to catch anything— Lomedy could handle himself. And if he couldn’t, he would ask for help. Lomedy was thankfully not too stubborn about that.
“What about you?” Lomedy inquired, tabbing out of the file and saving it into his own USB.
“Me?” Wifies blinked. “I’m uh. I’ve been doing alright.”
Lomedy squinted his eyes. “You sure? Ever since you took that last case, you’ve been acting kinda weird. Do you want us to see if we can sanction a cleansing or…” Lomedy must’ve noticed something in Wifies’ expression, because he trailed off after meeting eye contact.
…
Wifies didn’t know what Lomedy was talking about.
“Uh- uh huh... whatever. Just take a break from time to time, alright?” Lomedy hummed, shoving all of his stuff into his satchel.
“I get plenty.” Wifies chuckled. And that wasn’t wrong. He had a life and friends outside of this weird hobby of his. Hobbies- and… and...
“I’ll be on my way home then,” Lomedy interrupted the silence. “Have to get up early tomorrow for a meeting with LAW, you know how it is.”
Wifies stilled. “Mind telling me how that goes?”
“We’re gonna have our monthly uh… get-up tomorrow night, I’ll just debrief everyone then.” Lomedy scrunched up his nose. “If there’s anything useful. At this point, I’m starting to think that the only reason they talk to us is to criticize us.”
“They are trying to replace heroes,” Wifies remarked sliding into the spot Lomedy previously occupied, searching through his pocket for his own USB. “They do have some merit in their argument. But I have sense to recognize the schemes of a totalitarian regime.”
Lomedy rolled his eyes. “With the Mafia having happened, it’s surprising people haven’t caught onto it sooner.”
“That’s because LAW directly benefits them. The Mafia is a villain group, so it was easy to pick out their flaws. People aren’t gonna bite at the hand that feeds them,” Wifies thought out loud, tapping his fingers against the desk.
“Ah. We’ll figure it out in the future, probably.” Lomedy shrugged, already climbing up the exit hatch.
“Probably,” Wifies said off-handedly, once he heard Lomedy’s retreating footsteps from above.
He plugged in the USB.
Alright, here we go.