72

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The twilit calm of the Tacony Music Hall’s ‘lounge’ feels surreal, a slice of normality amidst the uproar of the outside world. Jordan’s scavenged couch–plucked from a curb on bulk trash day–sports a stylish constellation of burn holes and mysterious stains, but to us, it’s as good as any throne in a supervillain’s lair, minus the sinister plotting, plus a bag of stale tortilla chips. Jordan slouches in one corner, their boots kicked up on a coffee table that has seen better eras, scrolling through their phone with an attention born of pure avoidance. They’re trying not to look at the stack of unopened mail on the counter. Bills. Reminders of responsibilities neither of us wants to deal with.

I’m curled up at the other end of the couch, my arm thrown over my eyes, trying to silence the whispers of restlessness clawing at my insides. Recovery is a caged marathon I never signed up for, a test of patience I’m already failing.

My phone’s ping slices through the lull, a staccato note that triggers an all-too-familiar itch. I’m on it before the sound fully fades, all frayed nerves and eagerness. The Young Defenders group chat bubbles into life–new message, urgent alert.

“Another villain?” Jordan intones, their voice lacking even the enthusiasm for curiosity.

“Mmmhm,” I mumble, eyes scanning the text. It’s Maxwell, his words curt as he paints the picture–supervillain, my neighborhood, escalating chaos. I feel a jolt, a jumpstart to my systems that I haven’t felt in weeks. An ember of purpose flares, struggling against the damp of mandated downtime.

The follow-up messages roll in, terse instructions, and it’s like they’re written in someone else’s story: Stay away, Bloodhound. We’ve got Crossroads and Playback on it.

“Figures they wouldn’t want you jumping back in headfirst. You’re supposed to be on the mend, Sam,” Jordan says, an echo of our previous dozen debates on the subject.

“Yeah, but…” I trace the edge of the couch, my nerves thrumming. I can’t just sit here. “People could be in danger, J.”

Jordan sighs, long and weary, and finally abandons the phone with a flick of disdain. “And you think strapping on a cape and playing hero is going to help? While you’re still down bottles of pain meds?”

I ignore the jab, but it lingers, a muffled drumbeat in my chest. My fingers twitch, an innate signal flaring from the shark-fueled parts of me hungry for action. “I just… I have to do something. If I can help–“

“But the Defenders have it covered.” Jordan’s voice is softer now, reasoning, almost coaxing. “Remember last time? You barely got out of there and we were dealing with just some small-time robbers.”

My hand pauses mid-tap, images unspooling–shouts, chaos, pain. They’re right; my body’s a collage of half-healed stories, each scar a word in the diary of a daredevil. Yet the rest of the messages blink up at me, and the impulse is unquenched. Risk whispers my name, as intoxicating as it is foolish.

Jordan watches, a silent sentinel to my internal tug-of-war. “Sam, I…” Their concern is a tangible presence, pushing against my bravado. “I can’t endorse this. ‘Supervillain’ is too vague. Don’t know if there’s another Chernobyl situation.”

A moment’s silence balloons between us, fraught with unspoken pleas. But I’ve never been good at surrender, even to common sense. The muscles of my jaw clench. “Then I go alone.” My thumb hovers, then plunges into the thicket of text, as I type a single line–a commitment, an apology, a divergence. “Don’t worry. I’ll stay back. I just need to… to go watch, in case they need me. And his name’s Illya, by the way. Not Chernobyl.”

Bravery or stupidity? Maybe they’re just two words for the same wild, reckless heartbeat.

The glow from my phone throws shadows across the scattered vigilante paraphernalia that populates the “lounge”–an unofficial museum of the Auditors’ escapades, each object an anchor in the tempest of our double lives. Jordan’s eyes drill into mine, conflict etched in their brow as they wrestle with an internal adversary tougher than any street thug.

A beat drags by, ponderous, heavy with the weight of countless arguments we’ve left dangling in the precarious balance between recklessness and righteousness.

“Fine,” Jordan exhales, the word more surrender than permission. They lean forward, elbows on knees, the lines of their face hardening with resolve. “But listen, Sam, you’re not invincible. If we’re doing this, you’re on recon only. Stay back. Stay hidden. Use that dog nose of yours or whatever.”

My pulse thrums a frenetic rhythm, buoyed by the reluctant benediction. There’s a lick of satisfaction, sure, but it’s tempered by Jordan’s stern gaze–sharp, protective, and piercing enough to fillet my ego if I get too big for my britches.

“I know, I know. Recon.” I mimic locking my lips and tossing the key, but the grin that follows doesn’t quite reach my eyes.

Jordan’s disapproval hangs between us, a fog that doesn’t quite conceal their deep-set concern. It’s a rare moment; they’re not big on the whole touchy-feely pep talk thing. “But seriously, Sam,” Jordan adds, their voice threaded with a hint of steel, “our neighborhood doesn’t need another hole punched through it. If you’ve gotta act, make it count, and for God’s sake–“

“Don’t get hurt,” I finish for them, nodding. My heart gives a leap, like a shark eyeing a seagull–too tantalizing, even if the thing’s got wings and I shouldn’t even be jumping.

Jordan snorts. “I was gonna say don’t do anything I wouldn’t do, but yeah. That too.”

---

The cool cloak of the evening does little to dampen the chaos unfolding in front of the warehouse–a carnival of debris, light, and sound that beckons to every fiber of my hero-self. Pockets of darkness cling to the edges of the building like spectators, bearing silent witness to the spectacle of ruin yawning wide at the front entrance. The supervillain had turned a simple doorway into a blast site, mockery in every shattered beam and bent metal sheet.

I approach with the stealth afforded by shadow and caution, padded armor snug against me. With extra padding, from Gossamer. Everyone’s been treating me with the kid gloves recently. There’s no need to strain my ears for the scuffle within; the air vibrates with the rhythm of combat, waves of force emanating from the villain’s location with a certainty that bypasses sound.

I catch sight of Playback, silhouette dynamic against the flicker of emergency lights, ducking and weaving like a dancer spun wild by his own stolen beats. Crossroads is a pillar amidst the maelstrom, poised and pivotal, the silent fulcrum around which futures hinge.

They’re caught in an intricate ballet of engagement, trying to confine a foe who wears force like a cloak of rubber skin, repelling their advances with gleeful abandon. For each punch thrown, a backlash awaits, vibrations eager to find new purpose against attacker rather than the attacked. I watch the air vibrate and distort, lensing like that one movie with the black hole in it, like the air is wrapping around this guy’s hands.

He’s got this whole ‘imp’ thing going on, with a chesire grin mask under a red-and-teal hoodie, black sweats, sneakers, fingerless gloves. Nothing interesting outside of a hint of padding, elbows and knees, someone prepared for action. Crossroads swings for a right hook and the guy chuckles as it smacks him uselessly in the face, just making the air around him wobble.

Playback is a spring, potential energy in human form, noise sucked into the vacuum of his talent only to be redirected, a soundscape sculpted to disorient and disable. But silence is no barrier when force itself is the weapon, and he tumbles back with a grace born of practice rather than preference, air blasted from lungs without a sound, a vacuum the only testament to his strike.

I inch closer, every muscle coiled with the urge to dive in. But Jordan’s words tether me–a silent pledge bound by worry and the stubbornness of a partner unwilling to watch another dive headlong into the jaws of injury.

The tang of ozone and dust scratches at the back of my throat, sharp reminders of the maelstrom I orbit. My presence is a shadow, a ghost audience to the two-halves of a battle waged with fists and possibilities.

For now, I watch–eyes sharp, pulse thrumming to the beat of danger’s drum. My teeth are a secret snarl under the mask, a predator’s patience tested by the scent of an unseen threat. A villain with the audacity to turn my neighborhood into their personal bouncing castle, flipping the switch on physics like a game.

Amid the discordant symphony of shattering concrete and warped air, the would-be thief holds his ground, a haphazard emcee to this unwelcome rave. The guy – the imp, not yet named but stamped with the surefire swagger of the newly empowered, slinks between baton swings and repurposed reverberations. The squall of fumbled bravado and heavy breaths is a solo that hasn’t quite found its beat.

Playback zips, a smirk woven into his mask, spinning a mockery as deft as his escrima batons, “Come on, Tigger, can’t you stick to one spot for a sec?”

Tigger’s reply tumbles out, hasty and indignant, “Maybe if you’d quit flipping around like an acrobat on fast forward, we could– Oomph!”

The warehouse is a broken-beat dance floor, our villains in an unlikely pas de deux, albeit with more clatter and less grace than the term implies. Tigger’s movements lack polish, his words lagging just behind his actions–a telltale mismatch that reveals the rush of adrenaline in someone unaccustomed to multitasking threats and quips.

“Alright, just stop it, yeah? Just–wait!” Tigger gasps, his hands thrown out in exaggerated frustration as a baton swings perilously close. He huffs, a mask-muted snort, “What do you want, a dramatic monologue while I’m at it? A discourse on the sociopolitical implications of my ill-fated life of crime?”

Playback, all twirls and lightning taps, doesn’t miss a beat, chipping away at Tigger’s clumsy exterior. “Socio-what? Buddy, you tripped into the wrong comic book.”

I’m a statue, a study in shadow, positioned just out of sight–an apex predator waiting, baiting. My gaze cuts to Crossroads. Our eyes lock–a silent conversation, a nod to the inevitability of intervention. His displeasure is a tableau of tight muscle and keen eyes; an unspoken resignation to the Bloodhound’s willfulness.

Tigger continues his stumbling tirade, a defense wound with anxiety and bluster, “Look, you overzealous vigilantes–I don’t want to hurt nobody. Just let me grab what’s owed and skedaddle. Call it a day.”

Playback laughs, a note of disbelief in his glee, “Owed? What, did the world promise you a tiara, Spirit Halloween?”

Tigger’s mask contorts, miming a roll of the eyes. He kicks a stray piece of debris with petulance, watching it bounce off a wall harmlessly, “A tiara would be nice. But no. I have… expenditures. And it’s Ricochet! That’s my name now!”

The circling continues, playback orchestrating his adversary towards my hidden vantage. Like a maestro leading a recalcitrant orchestra member back to their chair. My limbs twitch, prepared for the lunge, to wrap silence around his breaths as surely as ink cloaks night.

But it’s a waiting game–a heartbeat measured in feints and jeers, two fronts closing the gap on an unwitting target. Each jest, a parry; each retort, a thrust. And amidst the thrust and parry of a mock gladiatorial banter, we wait for the pause that says “now”, the sigh of space that invites calamity. Playback’s batons swing and swing, and Ricochet steps back, back, backer, avoiding hits as much as his powers seem to let him take them. Every second, he gets closer, and closer, and closer.

I know how to deal with invulnerable types, I’ve sparred with Rampart enough. Sure, he seems like he can just bounce anything Playback throws at him, but that doesn’t mean he can bounce lack of air.

I can almost taste the moment, briny anticipation a palpable scent on the stagnant air. Ricochet might be laughing, might be spinning that yarn, all snark and sass, but soon enough it’ll be a gurgle of surprise that–

Tension coils, an anticipation so tangible it hums through the dilapidated warehouse. My muscles prime for pounce, a panther in patient savagery, but that’s when the whirr of tiny rotors pierces the balletic discord, drawing all eyes skyward. A palm-sized drone, a hovering harbinger of new variables, bobbles in with the merry chime of a puppet show introduction. Beneath it, a foil pouch sways with pregnant implication.

Time slows to a crawl, the drone an interloper in our staged serendipity. Crossroads moves with a preternatural sense – an instinct born of a leader’s foresight. He pinches his nose closed just as the bag bursts, its contents a silent explosion that mushrooms into an acrid cloud of unseen revulsion.

“Stink bomb,” he mouths, low and preemptive.

Into this olfactory assault slips a new player, swathed in anonymity and gear, a silhouette against the backdrop of industrial bleakness. “Heard you guys could use some backup,” quips gas mask’s digitized monotone, an artificial edge overlaying what might be amusement.

Gas mask’s baton extends with a threatening whisper of metal, the hilt nestled firmly in their grasp as they wade into the fray.

Playback’s grace deteriorates into scrabbling retreat; he chokes back a gag, his body language voicing his horror, “Aw, come on! That’s cheating!”

Even as he cackles and bellows, struggling to maintain his comedic performance between half-retching gasps. The gag may be his primary role, but this punchline has affected the jester as much as his audience.

Ricochet – our unasked-for jest of a villain – feeds off the opportunity, his cartoonish facade belying newfound tactical instinct. A boon of energy falls into his lap with Gas Mask’s entry and swing at his head. The baton hits his hoodie with a dull thump, only causing his mask to rattle, and the air around him bulges and ripples. Now I understand – Playback was thrusting, poking, prodding, but avoiding outright swings. I think he understood going in. I don’t think this new person does.

The ‘imp’ moves, shifts, begins to come into his own, his power ballooning with the ample harvest that Gas Mask has unwittingly provided. Pulse after pulse he hurls back; walls become drum skins to his percussive whims, stirring a rhythm that would be impressive if it wasn’t so potentially lethal.

With alarming ease, a turbulent wave of force strikes out. Playback flies backward, a balletic pinwheel, forced to enact his own variation of flight, the superhero genre’s perennial favorite. If his fall resembles grace, it’s a trick of desperation and the lingering hangover of his inherent agility. “Thanks for the juice, dumbass,” Ricochet announces, while Gas Mask swings and swings again, uselessly thumping their baton against Ricochet’s head.

And the stench, gods, it is unbearable. I’m not the queasy type, but this vile concoction writhes into my nose, clawing up sinuses and behind eyes. Even tucked behind cardboard ramparts, the reek slips through unseen chinks in my improvised fortress. The banter curdles, sickening with the scent as the action escalates. This fight just went from manageable mischief to a brawling blender of oaths and odors. Gas Mask doesn’t relent, another newcomer braving the miasma with only mild disgust twisting her body language.

I squeeze my eyes shut against the stink, every sensory receptor shrieking betrayal. This isn’t quite the moment I was waiting for. But that’s the rub with plans–they rarely survive first contact, even with the enemy as oddly buffoonish as Ricochet. Especially when there’s someone tossing in variable stink bombs. Through watering eyes and a clenched jaw, I hunker down, mind racing for ways to reorient amid this reeking reshuffle. The game’s changed, but so must the player. The battle continues, a dynamo of farce and ferocity, spinning madly on its clown nose of a fulcrum.

“Stop hitting him!” Playback’s frustration crescendos as he twirls handcuffs around the tip of his batons–a would-be magician with an escape artist for a rabbit. His words ripple through the pungent haze, but Gas Mask’s fury is a tempest of its own, teenage storm clouds boiling over into reckless action.

She’s a gust of heated zeal, embodiment of rash confidence–until the room folds under an invisible wave, Ricochet’s kinetic airburst flinging her through the stench-swirled air with brutal clarity. Her impact against a distant stack of crates is a punctuation, her presence truncated by sudden, blunt distance.

Now the space is ripe for disruption, the flavor of chaos begging for a dash of hound’s bite. My wait ends, replaced by a primal sprint, an unexpected powerplay by a recovering hero. I tackle Ricochet mid-celebration, the art of surprise leaving no room for activated powers, the crunch beneath me both satisfying and essential.

His eyes, wild within the cheshire grin of his mask, meet mine, registering shock to find Bloodhound in place of easy targets. “Bloodhound!? I thought you were recovering!” Gas Mask’s voice, tinny and hollow through her mask’s filters, sparks amidst the tumult like an accusation borne of concern.

“Recovering,” I grunt, eyes narrowed on Ricochet’s surprised face, his body pinned to concrete coolness. My arm muscles dance with the pressure of a chokehold, my only reply the focused strain in my stance. All I need is him to black out, stop blasting, stop bouncing back every hit like it’s a game of Super Smash Bros.

Ricochet’s hands fumble, pressing against me–desperate spasms that soon find their rhythm. My gut knots against the thud of redirected force, over and over, a barrage of kinetic grievances making their protests felt through layers of padding. Involuntary oofs escape as the air in my lungs becomes a premium asset, economy of breath bargained away with each impact.

The flavor of vengeance is absent in my grip, just the cool calculation of necessity–a hound running her quarry to ground, adamantium will enforcing nature’s most primitive directive. It’s not fun, not like doing flips off a diving board into a deep pool. Every blast from Ricochet feels like I’m taking hits from Rampart when he’s not holding back–bruising, deep, too much.

Playback barks out from his vantage, “Give it a rest, pinball wizard!” A taunt laced with desperation, knowing every thud is both fruitless resistance and pained endurance.

But for me, there’s only the strain, the choke, and the silent hope that counts more than sheep–it’s seconds, long enough for blackout, for peace, and for my teammates to pull themselves back from the edge. My jaws are clenched tight, resisting the urge to bite down on anything – this isn’t the time, this isn’t the way. Every sinew whispers the same chorus: hold on, Bloodhound, just a little longer. “Count sheep, count sheep, count sheep,” I beg, trying to bring Ricochet to the point of passing out.

Then, he puts both hands next to my face.

In an instant, the warehouse transforms into a kennel of aerodynamic canines–my body hurled away as Ricochet’s powers crest and crash against my chokehold. There’s a sharp jolt, like a siren’s call to every tooth with an anchor in my gumline, as several find new homes in the dust mites and debris. I’m glad, extremely glad, that they grow back, along with the rest of me. Every part of my body thrums with adrenaline and regeneration. Honestly, I need to get into more fights, sorry Jordan. This is the best I’ve felt in weeks.

Ricochet, now unshackled from my determined grip, clambers with frantic energy–a fish flopping back towards his urban stream, heaving for every advantage. I roll, catch my breath, and taste iron; the sting from my mouth nothing compared to the burning rush of air blasting past me. He scrambles on the ground, quipping still, “Four against one? What is this, a superhero pile-up?”

“We’re not with that one,” Crossroads says, just loud enough to be heard over falling pieces of wood and cardboard.

I’m regrouping, teeth already tingling with regrowth, while Gas Mask rises like a bad penny–no worse for her collision with the crates–her quartet of drones, buzzing guardians, forming a jagged halo above. There’s an air of the revenant about her, those spirited back from the near beyond with a vengeance. The vibrating halo signifies an unvoiced promise of more than just a stink bomb payload. I don’t know what’s underneath each of them – the one with the stink bomb seems to be depositing its remains in her hand – but I know she’s ready to use them.

Crossroads stands stoic beside Playback — their squared shoulders forming an unspoken alliance, twin pillars facing down the upstart in his ill-begotten mask of mirth. There’s no room for humor in his ranks, only the grit of resolve set against the wild card ricocheting before us.

With his face hidden behind grinning mask, Ricochet dives into his pocket–a magician indulging in his final act, revealing two small green pills. “Waste of a good payday, let’s get poppa his new car…” he mutters under his breath.

In a gulp, the pills disappear beneath his mask–a fleeting retreat before the onslaught recommences. The air wavers, pregnant with the building snare drum roll of anticipated power; whatever lay contained in those little emerald harbinger has awakened. With this chemical bolster, Ricochet’s capabilities flare, the very air charged as if with the static of a brewing storm.

Were they superpower pills? Do those even exist? I figured I would’ve heard of them before today – maybe it’s just normal stimulants? Either way, Ricochet rolls his shoulders until they pop, and I feel a sudden wave of nausea as the lingering remains of the stink bomb waft over me.

The fracas reeled into a dizzying crescendo, Ricochet, our self-made pinball powerhouse, now dowsing himself with what smelled like fear disguised as bravado. His fingers, deft as a pit-pocket’s, produce an epi-pen, or something like it from some inner reserve of tricks. I watch, tense as bowstrings in the drawn moment, as he uncaps and jabs it straight into the soft territory of his abdomen.

I can smell the wrongness before the thing’s even clicked–a snarling, canine intuition warning of rot amidst the wounds. The substance within his bloodstream fizzes–a chemical torrent gone rabid. As the scent fills the ruptured quiet, a pungent orange almost sickly sweet, my blood sense pulses with alarm. It’s like a soda, gone crazy, been frozen and thawed and frozen again. His blood is… wrong.

That’s not a normal alteration. The bloodstream changes with drugs, sure, not always like this, but at least a little. Chernobyl’s blood is white hot, literally white, in my blood sense. This guy’s blood is orange. And it feels like it’s carbonated, I don’t really know how to express the sensation any better than that. It’s not literally carbonated, but it tickles my brain somewhere in the part that’s afraid of danger, the lizard part.

He claps his hands together, and the air goes loud and heavy, all at once. I can’t even see the shockwave as it hits me.

The world blurs–a carousel spun by a cosmic child’s mischievous palm. Gas Mask, Playback, and I, we’re flotsam in a carnival ride with all safety checks torn screaming from the control panel. I’m hefted like a straw in the winds of a whimsical tempest, Gravity, my once-solid ally, no match for the chaotic ballet Ricochet has sprung upon us.

Crossroads, ever the pillar in our storm, somehow anchors Playback, clasping his hand in a gravity-defying grip that denies the shockwave’s dominion. Beside him, the lament of shattering drones signals Gas Mask’s aerial guardians, dashed upon surfaces as unforgiving as the world we’ve chosen to defend.

With exultant elation painted across his face, Ricochet absorbs the echoes of his own detonation–a high riding upon adrenaline’s coattails, wrapped in the ephemera of untempered power. “Woo! That’s good shit,” his exclamation drills through the pounding in my ears, cocky and jubilant.

His shuffle, a dancer treading the boards of his stage with an actor’s glee, is nearly euphoric–each bounce an echo of delirium mixed with chemical consequence. Bloodhound is recovering. Sometimes from physical injury, sometimes from just too much life, too close together. She’s better with people’s muscles and the specific kind of bright red the body spills when it’s mad or in love. She’s no good with fizzing drug blood, which feels almost like teen spirit – selfish, panicked, angry, ready to latch out.

But it doesn’t matter if he’s fighting gravity or the grip of addiction now; the “game” has shifted to deadly earnest. It’s all hands on deck, clamber back up, catch your breath and hope that your balance returns before his blood-infused frenzy directs its eye towards your still-reeling form. I don’t know what he’s taken, or what he’s gonna be like when it hits, or how we’re supposed to put someone down whose veins are fizzing like shaken soda cans. But I don’t want him to do that again.

“Alright, Tinker-Toy, if you’ve got any more tricks up your sleeve now’d be a great time to use them,” Playback tosses over to Gas Mask, somehow finding the lung capacity amid his gags for a half jest, half plea.

Her response is an unreadable silence–vigil behind the visage of her mask, posture coiling in momentary thought. Yet, even as she reconsiders her stance, stepping in uncertain cadence towards Ricochet’s bulging and altogether unnerving muscular display, the chaotic dance of fight choreography begins its kinetic symphony.

With no fanfare, no verbal ripostes or witticisms to draw the ear, we all converge upon our subject–each move a wordless communication in this full-contact conversation. Playback and Crossroads orbit like binary stars, Crossroads’ arms a blur, playing the shell game with those cold-metal handcuffs while Playback skips and pivots in feints designed to confuse and corral.

Yet, for all their coordination, it is Ricochet who seems possessed of a new potency–a sneering Atlas hoarding borrowed might. His arms swell, not just with power but with the garish mapwork of veins–roadways primed with his bizarre, sludge-like lifeblood.

The first strike is mine–a hurl towards his carotid, a grip searching to seal and tighten. Yet his skin feels steel-belted, a grinning fortress reinforced by layers of unbidden strength. My fingers scramble to compensate, to reclaim leverage over this monstrous physique.

Beside me, Playback meets a suddenly granite jaw with a rapid-fire combination–bass line to the falsetto of his ongoing banter. Each thump on Ricochet feels like a pen tapping thick rubber; it’s grim satisfaction tied with dread, knowing such rebounds promise little in the way of gain.

Gas Mask dances a disjointed rhythm–each strike unfocused but relentless–a maelstrom in search of a heart. Ricochet’s derision goads her into ineffectiveness, her temper clouding technique, her flailings carving hapless patterns in the wake of stronger foes.

But through the bodily thrum and combative delirium, Ricochet seems to uncoil further–a human slinky somehow drawing tension from air itself. Muscles coil, his form both shrinking and growing into itself–a grotesque magician contorting under our incredulous watch.

In turn, I squeeze and clutch, bloodsense telegraphing the ricochets within his vessel even as my hands slip–desperate for the clasp of a fragile trachea among striated layers of induced fortitude. The texture, that alien abrasiveness set against my failing force, stirs a primal response–fearful and undeniable–a creeping urge to set teeth deep into throat.

Playback’s rhythm never falters, chirping like a frenetic bird–each note a drumbeat against the enfolding silence. “C’mon, man, flexing won’t get you on any magazine covers here!”

Crossroads dodges, a nimble waltz punctuated by the chime of cuff meeting flesh, but the rings won’t close, Ricochet’s enlarging wrists laughing off the attempt like a bad joke–Crossroads’ stolidity does not crack, determination his sole aura in the dim of failed attempts.

We’re writing poetry in violence–each blow, lock, and lunge a stanza etched in sweat and blood-fueled mist. Our gazes, far flung from the ignominy of brutality, set beyond the moment–chasing the narrative cadence that leads to a captured villain, a city secured, and peace uneasily claimed.

The crescendo of fists builds to a feverish pitch as Ricochet, with defiant snarl, gathers his swelling might–a storm within his sinews awaiting release. The air turns thick with tension; a taut ribbon stretched to its singing brink. And then, with the subtlety of a sledgehammer, he unbinds his human coil, dispatching our congregation with an airburst more felt than heard.

Our disparate collection of abilities and bravado is sent spiraling–puppets snapped from their strings. We’re tatters in the wind, recoiling from a hubris paid back tenfold in kinetic dollars.

I find reality’s again too late, rising in the time it takes for the echo of our expulsion to fade into painful remembrance. Pain lances through me, muted only by adrenaline’s sweet anesthetic — a bruised, weathered animal, not yet bested, but bearing the taunting of each gathered shadow of former victories.

Ricochet, his gaze locked onto Crossroads, seems unaware of the blows landing upon him—no mere theft or retreat, but the siren call of dominance beckons him. It’s a display of raw power, a Goliath intent on crushing defiance beneath him.

Crossroads stands, undeterred, but Ricochet descends upon him, a Goliath seeking to squash and assert. The first blow is a sucker punch–a wicked uppercut aimed at humility’s cornerstone. Yet Crossroads diverts, infinitesimal seconds bought by his foresight, turning a knockout blow into mere glance.

Ricochet roars, unaccustomed to the slip of prey from his grasp. He jabs, a series of harsh crosses aiming to land with grievous intent. Playback intercepts, a blur, his movements silencing impact, only to unleash discordant crescendos of swatted hands at Ricochet’s ears, followed by ripping, shredding bursts of sound that send him stumbling out of Crossroads’ armspan.

Gas Mask, rejoining our chorus, lunges–her movements, no longer chaotic, are precise cuts. Her hand extends, fingers encasing pepper spray aimed with a librarian’s precision, catching Ricochet in the mask and bouncing off to form a spicy, painful cloud. She tosses the can at his head, and it thuds off, stopping without a bounce and falling down to the ground. He doesn’t even notice.

All the while, Ricochet sends flesh-hammers pounding, imprints of ire mapped upon my colleagues’ bodies–Crossroads’s ribs throb a morbid rhythm; Playback’s arms hoist purpling badges of his echoed fury.

And so I fly once more to the fray, the ever-resilient hound, teeth bared and aching from regrowth. This time it’s a slide, low and rapid–the world flipping as I clip Ricochet’s legs. They buckle with my weight and leverage, a fleeting setback before a flailing kick launches me back, my air squeezed into the battleground. Crossroads can’t heal, and I can – the calculus is easy. I punch him in the balls.

Whatever powers he has doesn’t seem to be able to protect against that. Maybe he’s too busy dealing with everything else. Either way, I don’t feel the same dull thud that I felt when he ate my prior assault. And lucky me, he’s not wearing a cup. I punch him in the balls again.

Every exhale is a small defeat; every respite a transient ally. We are sinews stretched to fray, spirits indomitable, heroes not by acclaim but by unyielding, scrappy, and altogether dogged tenacity. We circle Ricochet, an impromptu firing squad without bullets, seeking the chink in his armored performance–an opening to press advantage and drag this one-man spectacle down into closure’s quiet.

Blow by blow, breath by ragged breath, our theater of war plays out–an improvisation on a theme of justice, each of us scoring the measure of our will upon the body of our adversary. Each bruise is a stanza, each grunt a line break–our actions weaving a poem of knuckles and bone.

This dance of flesh and will spirals on, and in the ragged ballet, my focus narrows to a singular and ignoble ploy–one I’ve tried and tested. I punch him in the balls once more, steeled for the onslaught to come. With a grunt, I let my knuckles do the talking, and just like that, our human pinball machine buckles, his vocal cords unraveling into a grunt so guttural it vibrates in my teeth.

Over the top, Gas Mask sails in a leapfrog’s larceny, riding the thermals of my distraction with elegance I never pegged her for. Gloved hands plunge to seize Ricochet’s own, tethering him to reality with a grip as unyielding as the narrative of our shared defiance.

The zap is almost anticlimactic–a subdued crackle lost in the melee’s symphony until it’s too late. Ricochet jolts, his body conducting a requiem of electricity as the voltage kisses his skin. The energy, stewed and soured within him, seeks swift exodus–a kinetic exorcism whose fury would not be contained nor quietly dismissed.

Reality bleaches to white. Sound itself is stripped from the air, a vacuum preceding a roar like the birth-pangs of creation. The warehouse weeps, its skeleton coming apart in jerks and shudders, timbers and concrete bidding hasty adieus to their moorings.

In the silence that follows the tempest’s climax, I see Gas Mask–an outline of defeat yards from where her valiance left her, a collapsed truth against a wall already whispering its cracks.

Crossroads stands, his commands are the frayed threads by which we hang–a captain listing aboard his crippled vessel. “Playback, get Miss Mayfly,” his voice breaks through the ringing in my ears, “and get out of here. Bloodhound, step back and send out an alert.”

My nod is imperceptible in the daze, fumbling for a device, any device, my fingers slick as I trigger a distress signal bound for ears we pray will heed. My phone. The screen is cracked but it works, and I ping alerts and GPS coordinates to the HIRC chat.

“I’ll keep him busy,” Crossroads’ tone brooks no argument, yet it’s lined with the tremor of a red-lined gauge.

I chance a look at Ricochet–every convulsion a morbid twitch, the skeletal marionette whose strings are played no more by his own accord but by the echoes of violence past. Miss Mayfly’s glove lies attached still, a testament to her gamut run in full, and he shakes it off, foam dripping from under his mask. I look towards Miss Mayfly and Playback, my friend and teammate applying what first aid he has on his utility belt, swaddling her behind nearly-demolished wooden crates.

The twisted ballet of muscle and kinetic discord continues. Ricochet rises, grotesque in his rebirth, the convulsions mapping the unsteady cartography of his power. Like a birthing star, his body morphs, skin oscillating between states as the air around him waltzes with invisible eddies, kicking up dust in a spectral display. “Just let me win!” He screams, shrieking like a child losing a match of their favorite video game.

I am still, my senses tingling at the periphery — an anticipatory crawl of my skin that preludes an uncertain solace. Behind me, the steady cadence of reinforcement footsteps whispers promises, and I spin on a hope.

“Don’t worry, backup’s here,” echoes a voice, weighty with the steady confidence that drills into my confusion. I expect the familiar silhouette of my own, the Young Defenders, but time mocks the desperation of my call.

It’s just… Sundial? Alone she stands, a statement of sharpness against the haze, her eyes locking onto the scene with intent that belies her singular arrival. Too fast, too soon for the cavalry.

Then, as if the world itself gasps and is punched outward, a streak rends the atmosphere, a slingshot humanoid poised on trajectory’s edge. It’s a whiplash blur of cloth and protection gear, aimed with prescient precision, features moving too quickly to be seen. Someone else.

Through the yawning maw of the warehouse wall, where a hole had been punched in it like notebook paper twenty, thirty seconds ago, the new figure arrives. Her form horizontal, a missile marrying gravity and vengeance. She collides with Ricochet like a bullet, the meeting of their bodies an exclamation punctuating the chaotic sentence of our scramble, and the two of them go flying into the next nearest wall.

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