Work Text:
In The Past
“–having superpowers makes us naturally able to handle more situations in life better than non-supers. I mean, take what we’re doing now.” The wind continued to tear at their clothes as Gamma Jack flew them over the small strip of forest that was starting to turn slightly orange. “Sure, you could still drive or walk or hangglide, whatever you want, but being able to fly is more convenient, more efficient, and just generally more useful.”
“I fail to see what you mean when not all of us can fly,” Gazerbeam grumbled from his princess-style hold.
You would think the guy would be used to this by now, but his scowl was just as deep and depressing as the last “joke” he’d made. Even though Gamma Jack had been flying him around to missions and briefings and Mike’s Diner for years, Gazerbeam still refused to do anything but weld his arms to his own chest and wait for the ride to be over, hardly even daring to look at Jack’s face, despite rubbing a crick out of his neck after every trip from bending it out of shape.
Jack rolled his eyes. “I think you’re trying to ‘fail to see what I mean.’” The laser-eye hero finally looked at him just to glare at his impersonation. “Well, that’s what you sound like.”
“If you’re going to have awful opinions, at least try to be convincing.”
“I would be if you didn’t keep interrupting,” he countered. “So, ahem, anyways. Yeah, you can’t fly. But you have abilities that let you do more than any non-super could. Non-supers can’t saw a car in half and stop an active shoot-out from taking place in downtown. Non-supers can’t contain radioactive waste before it irradiates an entire city block.”
“Being able to handle dangerous situations doesn’t make us more or less human than non-supers,” Gazerbeam sighed.
“I didn’t say powers made anyone more or less human.” The treeline disappeared just ahead, so Jack started his descent to the seldom-used hiking trail below. “I just mean supers are more capable and we should be given the proper respect for it. We’re just better at most things, so we’re better than most people.”
“Again, having talent doesn't make us superior. That would be like saying a naturally-gifted musician is superior, or a champion…uh, football player who’s made more goals than any other person in history is superior.”
He wasn’t sure if that was supposed to mean soccer or field goals, but there’s no way Gazerbeam knew what he’d meant either.
“It means they’re more capable and more likely to be successful and more likely to contribute something useful to society,” Jack concluded. They both ducked into each other as he dove through the branches, somehow managing to get through the foliage without any noticeable scratches before Jack’s feet touched the worn gravel path. “It’s all statistics, Beamer, I thought lawyers liked those.”
“You’re incorrigible," he grumbled. If it was anyone else, Gamma Jack would have asked if he was pouting, except that Gazerbeam’s expressions were too steeled-over to be anything but entirely honest. It made Jack feel just slightly intimidated until they both remembered he was still carrying the other man like he’d rescued him from an evil dragon. “Put me down.”
“Fine,” the blonde relented, setting his feet down so he could remove himself from his arms.
Gazerbeam immediately began to dust himself off from the quick flight, making sure his dark dress pants hadn’t picked up any stray leaves or smushed insects from the trip.
The other super pretended to be distracted by making sure his hair was still in his overly-perfected position (it was) as he concluded, “And now you don’t have an argument, so I think I win.”
The pause that followed made him think he had gotten the lawyer to consider that before Gamma Jack had the distinct feeling of a hot wind searing into his face.
He looked up at Gazerbeam, who was staring him dead in the eyes for just how annoying the blonde could be.
Aggravated even more when said blonde gave him an unimpressed look in return. “You’re not wearing your helmet.”
He immediately looked away, blinking more than necessary to turn off the beam of hot air that was milliseconds away from becoming a high-powered laser of death. “Sorry. I’m not used to being flown somewhere without it.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Jack assured him. Then let him know just how serious he was by innocently smiling at him. “It’s a good thing I’m part of the superior race and my powers let me resist your eyes.”
That time, his friend didn’t stop his eyes from shooting him with a low-powered laser.
He frowned. “Ow?”
Gazerbeam might have been smiling to himself as he started down the trail. “Play stupid games…”
“...Get shot in the chest by your friend’s eyeballs,” he finished as he widened his stride to catch up with him. “Good advice.”
“How are you so capable and so clueless?” Gazerbeam wondered aloud in all seriousness.
So, of course, Gamma Jack had to laugh at just how deadpan and sincere it sounded. He nudged a shoulder into the taller super’s arm as their normal, everyday shoes crunched against the first few leaves of autumn. “Beats me. How do you handle that?”
“I stay with you, usually that hides any instances of it I have.”
Gazerbeam couldn’t figure out why the super just laughed harder.
They emerged at the end of a trail into a cozy, suburban neighborhood. The same cookie-cutter houses with the same, straight driveways, with the same, cube cars parked outside, the only distinction being some different shades of paint and the occasional pink flamingo lawn ornament hanging out with the gnomes.
Down the road, at the only bend in the otherwise straight path, there was the first of those baby blue cape cods to have a name they recognized written across the welcome mat: Parr.
Gamma Jack snorted. “Don’t they know putting their name on this is a security risk?”
Gazerbeam shrugged. “Bob probably enjoys tempting crime near his house.”
“Remember last month when someone burgled them because they thought they were out of town?”
“And both Mr. Incredible and Bob Parr made the paper for their acts of heroism that week.” He shook his head.
“Heh. I’m surprised the NSA didn’t call him in for a talk,” he mumbled, distracted by looking for the doorbell.
It didn’t take more than a few seconds before the ringing was cut off by the door opening. A girl at about waist-height was looking up at them, dark blue eyes widening under a floppy, purple hat. A toothy smile grew across her face at the sight of the visitors before she turned towards someone deeper in the house. “Mommy? Uncle Jack and Uncle Simon are here.”
That’s right. Here they weren’t Gamma Jack and Gazerbeam. Just Jack and Simon.
It felt like someone taking the jacket off a book’s cover and finding out it’s not nearly as colorful and flashy as they thought. But it still managed to make them both feel something like…pride? No, that wasn’t the word. Gratitude wasn’t quite it either. It was something warm and fuzzy but still so strangely exposing.
But that got interrupted by the sound of someone shouting. “They are?!”
A woman in a loose, ivory dress practically ricocheted into the room, wobbling as one hand caught the doorframe and the other held onto the small bump of her stomach. She had a smile on her face, but it got twisted into confusion before her words could leave her mouth.
“Hey guys!” she exclaimed, very quickly following up with, “What are you doing here?”
“What, weren’t we invited?” Jack quipped, running through his schedule just in case they got the wrong day, finding a moment to hug her shoulders.
“No, of course you were,” Helen assured him, giving him a quick squeeze as well before shaking Simon’s hand. “I just didn’t expect you to be here only five minutes late.”
“We are?!” Jack turned to look at Simon, who was busy smiling at a pot of petunias by his feet. “Did you know about this??”
“I asked you to show up at 5:30.” He shrugged, slipping his hands into his pants pockets. “I knew you wouldn’t get to my apartment until 5:40 but I didn’t realize we wouldn’t leave until 5:45. That leaves 15 minutes for a 20-minute flight from Metroville. Five minutes late. Thank you for breaking my streak of punctuality.”
Five minutes late–? That’s practically on time!
What a foreign feeling.
“Well, it’s good to see you for an extra, what, 10, 15, 20 minutes?” Helen counted off nonchalantly.
“Now you see why I need to tell him to be early for everything,” Simon commiserated.
Jack looked at both of them with utter disappointment.
They both ignored him. “Come in, I’m not letting you stand on the porch to wait out the rest of Jack’s schedule. Bob is in the backyard with Lucius and the others.”
“How many of the others are here?” Simon prodded as they stepped inside the small house, Jack closing the door behind them.
“No one Thrilling or Three,” Helen assured him as she led both of them through the living room. “We didn’t think you wanted to see– Where’s Violet?”
Panic smacked each of them across the face as they began to twist around and check under their feet for the youngest super in the room, only for a small giggle to try and hide itself on the couch.
Helen froze, slowly turning around and keeping her eyes filled with the sort of terrifying justice that can come from a mother who got spooked by her child. “Violent, what did we say?”
The giggle cut itself off, gradually being replaced by a small, scorned voice, “No powers cuz we have visitors?”
“Exactly. We don’t want someone to accidentally hurt you because they can’t see you,” she gently reminded her, trying to spot her somewhere on the couch. “But we can play superpowers later, okay?”
“...Okay…” Her daughter reappeared, sitting on the back of the couch, head low.
Simon couldn’t hide how impressed he was, even as his gaze fidgeted between the three of them and the maroon carpet on the floor. “That’s really excellent control for someone her age.”
“Yeah, seriously, you got some talent, kid,” Jack agreed, both of which seemed to brighten up the kid’s smile.
“And she can still do forcefields,” Helen added, just trying to help the conversation but she did a lousy job of hiding how proud she was.
Jack wanted to say, “Oh, good, that means she grew out of teleporting and transforming into a purple monster,” but settled for the more appropriate and kid-friendly, “Wow, you have a dual-super on your hands.”
“Yes, we do.”
“Huh?”
“You have two superpowers instead of one,” Simon explained.
“Woah…” she whispered, like she hadn’t thought of that. Probably not because she was four and completely unaware of how rare it was to find someone who managed to keep hold of two different superpowers after they grew into their abilities.
“Hey, Violet,” Helen said, bringing back the conversation, “how about you go show Daddy who arrived?”
“Okay, Mommy,” the little girl said, swinging her legs as if she meant to slide off the back of the sofa before Simon helped her down. Which meant he was the one she grabbed by the fingers to pull into the kitchen towards the back door. “Daddy is on the porch with Uncle Lucius, do you want to see him?”
Simon kindly didn’t mention how she was already leading him in that direction. “Of course.”
“Hey, don’t take him yet, kid, he still has to tip me for the ride,” Jack called after the two of them, following behind while Helen shook her head at the strange parade.
The fenced in yard already had a smattering of off-duty supers hovering around, most of them in their own circles chatting about what happened on their recent patrols, a couple exchanging wallet photos of what their families were up to. Jack was happy to sneak into a handful of them just to say hi and figure out who out of their friends were still unmarried.
“You’re engaged?!”
“I am!” Peggy (Psycwave) sing-songed, flashing her ring in the middle of a circle of her, Quinn (Macroburst), Seiko (Plasmabolt), and Universal Man (...this didn’t seem like his crowd, but alright).
Jack was about as impressed as the others. “You’re not doing anything to the guy this time, right?”
“Pfft,” she waved her jeweled hand through the air and took a sip from her plastic cup of root beer. “Nooooo! We’re all natural.”
Quinn mockingly mouthed her words behind her, fanning a hand through the air like Peggy had been practically hailing a cab when she’d shown the ring off.
Jack snorted in spite of himself. “Whoops! Sorry, I must be allergic to the company.”
“You would be,” she teased back, poking him in the chest. “That’s one more woman off your table~”
He didn’t know how to say “Thank goodness, please take your possession powers and scare someone else with them,” without being rude, so he just flashed one of his signature cocky smirks and brushed her hand away. “Sorry, doll, I’m into brunettes right now.”
Peggy actually looked somewhat offended by that, even more so after she caught Seiko choke on her lemonade trying not to laugh and Universal Man had to grab Quinn’s shoulder to keep the kid from wheezing into the grass.
The psychic super tossed her hair against her shoulder in a meager act of defiance. “Well, lucky you, I never cared for blondes myself.”
“I’m devastated,” Jack drawled, glancing around the backyard. He had lost Simon and Violet somewhere near Dennis (Downburst) with his girlfriend and *ahem* Dr. William Preston (Everseer) and getting away from Peggy before she got too insulted was always a good idea. “Well, cool ring. Hope you keep it.”
He found the lawyer sitting with Lucius on the patio, nursing a very scandalous glass of water while the two of them chatted in hushed tones about something. Bob would occasionally comment when his attention wasn’t on the grill or his daughter on his shoulders. That left just enough for Jack to pick up what they were talking about:
“...They’re still moving forward with the ban…”
“...Can’t…supervillains will…”
“...course they will! They haven’t…thought it…!”
“...gradually…we might get some leeway…?”
“...your best…we have faith in…”
The superhero ban.
It was officially happening, and it would be in just a couple months. If they were lucky, they might get another year at most before they were all forced underground.
And who wanted to talk about that?
Jack sauntered over to the stone encampment, that cocky smirk still pinned to his face as he leaned his arms against the back of the patio sofa and asked right in Simon’s ear, “Whatcha talking about?”
That got him a very startled lawyer and a full blast of lasers to the face. Bob and Lucius howled with laughter as Jack tried to blink out the afterimages while Simon gently shoved his face away.
“You fell right into that one!” Bob told him, keeping an extra hand on Violet so she wouldn’t fall over from his grizzly bear chuckling.
“Fell right on your face!” Lucius agreed, clapping in approval.
Simon shook his head, rubbing one eye behind his glasses before deciding they were stable enough he could look at Jack, who was somewhat able to see again. “Are you okay?”
“I should have ducked,” he chuckled, blinking a couple more times before sitting down next to him.
“You should have. Uh. Looked where you were going,” he responded stiffly.
The three men had to wait and make sure that was intended as a joke. Which Jack had confirmed for himself when he noticed just the slightest, smallest amount of pink trickle into the super’s cheeks.
That’s when Jack started to laugh. “That was awful!”
“It could work,” Lucius tried to offer. “Try workshopping it a bit.”
Violet’s little voice whispered. “I didn’t get it…”
And now all four of them were laughing.
“I didn’t!”
“It’s okay, honey,” Mr. Incredible assured her, tussling at hat until a few strands of her dark hair became visible. “It’s just adult jokes. They’re not always funny.”
Simon scoffed, crossing his leg over his knee and leaning back into the patio sofa, even though that just made him look even more dignified and humorless. “Maybe my sense of humor is just too sophisticated for all of you.”
“Yeah, and it’s bringing the rest of us down with you, I was laughing at it,” Jack bemoaned. Then his eyes caught on the bowl of peanut butter cups sitting on the low table in front of them among the napkins and haphazardly-placed drinks. “Oh, hey, can we take those?”
Lucius gave him a funny look. “You eat those?”
“Eh. Sometimes. But he does,” Jack explained, nudging his elbow toward Simon.
Simon snorted. “This again?”
“Well, we got them specifically because you like them,” Bob told him, ripping open a bag of charcoal.”
“I mention I like them once, in one interview, not even as the topic of interest, and now they’re the only thing I eat?”
“We were just happy to find out you liked something other than coffee,” Lucius told him.
“It’s fine.” Jack leaned forward just enough to steal the bowl, then flopped back onto the couch, examining one of the cheap candies like it was a gold doubloon. “I’ll eat all of them so they won’t go to waste.”
“Fine, I’ll take them,” Simon grumbled, stealing the entire bowl and putting it on the table next to him. Then relented to the silent peer pressure and snuck one into his mouth.
“Happy?” Jack asked.
He sighed, thoughtfully chewed for a moment, then decided it was worthy of a nod of approval.
“I thought you might be,” Jack triumphantly muttered.
“Hey, Si, would you mind giving me a light?” Bob gestured to the grill chimney, which was succinctly lit on fire by a laserbolt. “Thanks. Okay, Vi, it’s time to get down.”
“Okay…” she mumbled, lifting up her arms so her dad could take her off his shoulder and set her on the patio.
Jack glanced at the peanut butter cup between his fingers, feeling his stomach already whining to him, and decided to say, “Hey, Violet, do you want one?”
Her blue eyes perked up, then glanced at her dad. “Well, it’s not bedtime yet and we have guests, so yeah, you can take it.”
“Just don’t tell you mom,” Lucius sagely advised her, taking a drink of what might have been actual beer.
Jack would have to find where he got that later.
Violet smiled shyly and shuffled over to Jack, taking the candy from him and snarfing it down like he might change his mind if she was too slow.
“Woah, Bob, are you feeding her at all?” Jack checked. “Man, it’s a good thing Simon already claimed the rest or she’d take those too!”
Simon playfully smacked his knuckles against Jack’s shoulder while Violet giggled, chocolate smeared across her face. “Um, Uncle Jack…?”
He leaned in a little so he was closer to her height. “What is it?”
She looked at him, then shifted her eyes like she was doing a bad Simon impression or she was a government spy. Then she whispered. “Can we do flying?”
The super’s face lit up. “Of course we can!”
Violet smiled, practically bouncing. “We can?!”
Before anyone could object, Jack got up and offered his arms to his pseudo-niece. “Your chariot awaits, princess.”
She started giggling again, practically flying herself as she jumped into his arms. They never did anything crazy, but as soon he she noticed him floating off the ground, she was already squealing and kicking her legs. Jack spun her around a couple times to earn a few more giggles before moving the two of them around that corner of the backyard, occasionally adding commentary about how now they were dodging Baron von Ruthless’s giant laser robots and, wait, now they had to get passed Xerek’s zombie monkeys! Oh no, now they were facing–
“Jackson!”
He snapped his attention to the man walking towards them. “–nature’s most cruel villain: the legal bureaucrat!"
Despite the tone of his voice, Simon seemed genuinely concerned about something as he jogged over to them. “You’re too high.”
“...What?”
“The neighbors might see you!”
That’s when Jack noticed he was hovering just a little too high over the fence to be believable. “Which neighbor? The redhead?”
Simon somehow managed to simultaneously resist glaring, snorting, and rolling his eyes all at once, having to compromise by just crossing his arms and looking between Jack and the fence until the flying super relented and dropped the two of them back on the ground.
“Alright, princess, that’s probably all for today,” he told her, fixing Violet’s hat back into place. “But next time I visit, we’ll finally beat the evil legal bureaucrat.”
She pouted a little, even resisting when Simon came over to tousle up the hat Jack had just fixed, but he did crack a small smile out of her. “I think I just saw Bill arrived. How about you go play with him?”
“Okay…” she tried to mumble, only to run over to the other kid who had just arrived next to Bea (Stormicide). They both watched as the two of them immediately jumped into a strange mix of tag and hide ‘n seek and shouting names at each other that only kids could come up with.
“I didn’t think Bea could make it, kind of figured she’d be ready to pop by now,” Jack mused, watching Stormicide join Everseer and Universal Man in a conversation that had to do with her accepting a cup of soda from the table. Her hand stayed protectively over her stomach even as she laughed at something Universal Man had said.
“One last meet-up before she goes in?” Simon suggested.
“Maybe. It’s good to see everyone like this, you know?” Jack mused, taking a sweeping view of the backyard. “No NSA breathing down our backs, no villains to thwart…no women to rescue either, which, I mean, that’s always a bummer, but I’ll take two out of three.”
“It is…” Simon agreed.
They didn’t have to say the next part.
They both knew.
It could be one of the last times so many of them met up before they were forced underground. Before using laser vision to light a grill or fly a few feet off the ground in a backyard wouldn’t just blow your cover, it would be illegal.
They were trying to erase supers. Trying to make it seem like they had never been there. It made Jack’s hands burn at just the thought.
All of the suffering and all of the sacrifices and all of those lawsuits because of people who would be dead without supers, they had all decided that they wanted it locked up and tossed into the ocean. Never even pretend it was real.
Never pretend any of them were real. Or that they mattered.
They thought they knew what was best for supers when they couldn’t even comprehend what being a super meant! What being powerful meant! All they could do was tell the clueless public to burn everything to the ground, for what? Because not everyone wanted to be rescued? Well not every superhero wanted to be banned, but here they were! Where was their choice?! Their right to say no?!
They thought they were so powerful because they didn’t have to live with the burden of what that actually meant!
“Jack?” Simon’s voice echoed against his spinning mind like a balm, pulling the tension out of his shoulders and bringing air back into his lungs. He hadn’t even noticed his hands had started to glow green until someone else grabbed one.
The younger super’s breath hitched in his throat as he glanced at the long fingers intertwining with his. Every spec of gamma radiation in his body began to simmer, like Simon’s eyes had finally managed to set him on fire.
He had to swallow before he could look up at him, just in case Jack was doing something stupid, like blushing or smiling or staring into those piercing blue eyes behind his glasses.
He should say something to break this before anything happens. Something that just breezed past this whole thing like Simon wasn’t constantly flicking his eyes back into Jack’s.
“Yeah?”
Uggggggggggggggh, that’s it? That’s the best he could come up with?!
He tried again. “W-what– *cough* What is it, Si?”
Simon’s face was almost as red as his helmet’s visor as he noticed he was holding his hand. And Jack was holding it in return. His eyes flickered away, shooting from Jack’s trademark grin to their hands, back to Jack, then up along his elbow. “You’re… I mean, your sleeve.”
He decided this was going on for too long and tugged the blue thin-striped sleeve over Jack’s elbow. Covering the brown-tinted bandages from that morning and the pinprick red scars that had begun to appear after years of blood being taken from the same place every few days.
“Oh, thanks,” Jack quickly said, taking his arm back to roll his sleeve up his forearm, trying to keep it from scrunching up that far again.
He nodded, looking away. Only to look back an instant later, grasping for an excuse when he caught Jack looking at him out of the corner of his eye. “You still wear that watch. That’s…nice.”
“Never leave home without it,” Jack confirmed, giving it a tap along the engraving on the side. “It’s a Gamma Jack staple now.”
Simon seemed to take that as a compliment. “Well, I’m glad you actually put it to use instead of using it to decorate your bureau.”
“Hey, I’m just impressed you found one that wouldn’t melt whenever I used my powers,” Jack told him, finally wrestling his sleeve into place. He straightened out his shirt, making sure his hair hadn’t gotten messed up during the visit. “Look good?”
Simon smiled, something soft and so, so sincere. “Always.”
They both froze.
“...You really should try to be more careful,” Simon warned him, trying to steer the conversation away from how his eyes kept lingering on Jack, whose smirk only grew wider and slightly more flustered whenever he did. “In civilian life, I won’t be constantly around to cover for you.”
“Of course you will. You’ll somehow sense that I’m flying a couple inches too high and yank me out of the air before the hot chick next door notices,” Jack assured him.
“Well, you really should try to be more careful?” he reminded him.
“Nah, it’s fine. I’m not into redheads. Did you catch the conversation I had with Peggy earlier?” He propped his elbow on the taller man’s shoulder.
That deep voice was almost nervous. Why was he nervous? “No, I don’t think I did.”
Jack’s smirk turned into something a little softer. A little more dangerous. “I think I’m into brunettes right now. …Maybe with glasses?”
Say something smart.
“Oh?”
Good job, Simon.
“Maybe with a sense of humor that’s funny because it’s never on purpose.”
Dial it back, Jack, you’re getting a little too close to home.
He bit back the next thing he was going to say, covering it up with a wink and a nonchalant, “So, if you see a girl like that, let me know, okay?”
He expected Simon to be flustered, and if he was blushing at half the intensity he actually was, Jack would have still been confident that’s exactly what he was feeling.
But then why was his elbow still perched around Simon’s shoulder? And why was Simon’s arm snaking its way around his waist?
Why was he kind of leaning into him now–? Jack! Pull yourself together, this is Simon! You can’t be– Can’t be hugging Simon like that! What was wrong with you?!
Why are you suddenly so invested in looking at him? Right into those eyes that could burn through anything, except you…?
“I will,” he joked. Actually joked. And it was very, very not funny. Because right after that, he squeezed Jack’s hip and let go. Jack’s elbow slipped off, landing back at his side.
And they were back to standing in Bob and Helen’s backyard. No one else seemed to have noticed anything. So it probably wasn’t anything to worry about.
…It must be a friendship hug.
Yeah. Friendship.
He sure loved…best friend friendship.
Woooooo…
“I need a hot dog.”
Simon nearly snapped his head off his neck for how quickly he looked at him. Excuse me?! “What???”
“You want one?” Jack asked, gesturing to Helen, who was now passing hot dog buns to Bob for assembly.
It took the lawyer a few moments to compose himself, sinking back into his own shoes instead of whatever place he must have floated off to for those couple of minutes. “Sure.”
“Great, I’m starving,” Jack exclaimed walking over.
Simon easily kept up with his shorter stride, even though it seemed faster than his normal, easy strut. “I didn’t think you liked those.”
“No rule against it,” Jack decided. “I can like anything I want to. I just don’t always want to. Besides, I’ll just let you eat mine if I don’t like it.”
Something almost like a smirk crossed into Simon’s face. “Well, that’s an offer I can’t refuse.”
“See? This is why I like you so much,” Jack cheered, resisting the urge to grab his shoulder as they joined everyone else on the patio.
********
The Present
Gamma Jack followed Mirage in here without knowing the other guy would be arriving.
Of course the lava dining room had a secret door. Why wouldn’t it? It wasn’t even real lava, why would it be a real dining room?
He hated to walk when flying just overhead would have been much stealthier, but it had only been a few days since he was able to even hold any gamma in his hands for a few seconds. He couldn’t risk tapping out his powers when he was heading even deeper into enemy territory.
Mirage stepped out from the lava hallway first, not even looking up from her tablet as she stepped into a black, inky void. Gamma Jack was only a few paces behind, silently going faster in case the fake lava was as hot as it felt, and slipped in behind her. When Mirage stepped forward, a collection of small floor lights illuminated her path just enough that he knew she was walking on some sort of platform. He didn’t want to keep casting his shadow on the floor via the lava door, so he had to get out of the way, still barely daring to touch his toes to the side in case the floor dropped off into a pit. After a few hesitant steps, he found the edge of the platform and crouched onto his heels.
If she happened to look behind her, it would take her just long enough to spot him that he might be able to lie his way out of the situation before he had to push her over the edge.
The door shut behind him like an upside down guillotine, plunging them into total darkness. It would have made him jump if he didn’t have almost two decades of superhero skills at his disposal.
Then the wall turned into a screen.
It took up every surface of the far side of the room, nearly as wide as some buildings were tall. The slight figure of Mirage was perched on a chair in front of a computer console from 50 years in the future, her fingers flying against the keys with practiced ease.
Password: KRONOS
Jack made sure the word burned into the back of his mind.
Just as the door opened again.
Instincts, kicking in, Jack leapt off the side of the platform, digging up enough power to fly into one of the dark corners at the top of the concrete chamber. Still effectively invisible in the darkness.
Mirage turned around in her chair, a smile stretching wide on her face as footsteps echoed through the room.
His eyes had barely adjusted from the dark void to the computer screen, now to a mix between the two as he looked down from his corner in the ceiling. But even from this angle, he knew he had found who he was looking for.
“Heeeee-eeeeeey, how’s the search looking today?” a man exclaimed, throwing his arms wide into the air, tossing his black and blue cape as he did. The white “S” painted across his torso gave Gamma Jack a sickly reminder of the table in the conference room where he had been ambushed by the second Omnidroid. And even with the black visor over his face, he could see the flame-like spout of orange hair coming out of his head to give him several inches of height.
This was Syndrome.
That's the look he picked? Jack had to wonder as the man cheerfully stalked towards Mirage. He looks like someone set a black and white candle on fire and forgot about it.
“I have yet to pull up the search information,” Mirage told him, no unease or fear behind her voice, even as the man leaned against the back of her chair for a better look at the mile-wide computer screen. “Just give me one moment to update today’s tracking logs.”
“‘Course, sweetheart, take all the time you need,” Syndrome assured her, placing a hard, smacking kiss against her cheek.
That earned a scoff from the super on the ceiling. Even after what she’d done, Gamma Jack might still be tempted to be friendly to her if he could somehow exchange it for never having to see this guy kiss her again.
She actually smiled at it too! Even as her fingers continued to click away at the screen. “Unfortunately, we have received no new reports of interest from the patrols.”
“Oh, yeah, I have to find that guy who found Jack,” Syndrome remembered.
Gamma Jack bristled.
He wasn’t allowed to use his name like they’d been friendly!
“Who was it again? Patrol…?”
“19-86.”
“Yeah, whatever his name is, I have to thank him for that,” he decided, pacing behind Mirage as she worked. “I didn’t expect good ol’ Handsome Jack to be able to hurt Omnidroid 6 as much as he did. Right, speaking of, honey, we might as well just change its log number to 7 in the machine. The factory had to gut and refit everything, so it’s not even the same model anymore.”
“Of course, sir.” A different computer screen appeared. This one was a file labelled “Gamma Jack.”
Seeing his face slashed in half by a red “TERMINATED” bar and taking up half of his vision was almost enough to make the very much alive Gamma Jack need to swallow some bile rising in his throat. But instead, he replaced it with a healthy dose of smug satisfaction.
Next to his beautiful, fake death was a matching picture of…Omnidroid v.5? And below it, the v.6 that he’d been forced to fight…
He’d fought the fifth and sixth versions?
What had versions 1-4 been??
Mirage clicked on v.6, making a few notes to the droid, then duplicated the file and began uploading something to it. The proportions and body changed a bit, but it wasn’t like the super had ever been that great with tech to understand what half of it meant. When it was done, a green bar flashed over v.6: “UPGRADED”
They were on Omnidroid v.7 now.
Syndrome’s voice broke through again. “Okay, great, now can we get on to the surveillance for the day?”
“I just need to update a few small things.”
Mirage backed out of Gamma Jack’s profile.
Bringing them to a screen entirely filled with superheroes with red bars across their faces.
Jack felt his heart stop and beat out of his chest at the same time, trying not to read the names as Mirage scrolled past, but being unable to look away.
“Universal Man: TERMINATED”
“Psycwave: TERMINATED”
“Everseer: TERMINATED”
“Macroburst: TERMINATED”
“Phylange: TERMINATED”
“Blazestone: TERMINATED”
No.
No, no, no, no, NO.
This can’t be what he’s seeing.
They’re not all–
He rips the visor over his head, almost yanking the hood into two pieces before he needs to put his hands against the wall to steady himself.
“Downburst: TERMINATED”
“Hypershock: TERMINATED”
“Apogee: TERMINATED”
“Blitzerman: TERMINATED”
“Tradewind: TERMINATED”
“Vectress: TERMINATED”
These weren’t even NSA supers.
They had invited all of these supers here…to…kill them?
Gamma Jack felt the power in his body begin to fade, each name dragging him down towards the pit below.
They had brought them here to kill them.
They brought them here to train their robot.
And they lured him here twice!
How could he have been so stupid?! So greedy for the taste of doing something actually worthwhile?! Just…wanting to use his powers to their full extent again…
Then a picture appeared in front of him that made his whole body feel like it was being ripped out of his soul.
“Gazerbeam”
Don’t show me this he wanted to say. Don’t you dare tell me this. You’re liars and I’m going to make you suffer for making me think you’re even halfway strong enough to–
“TERMINATED”
…
…
…
That’s not possible…
He had talked to Gazerbeam recently! Like, four, five, six months ago! He’d been busy! He said he was going on a business trip again, like he had earlier that year, and he would be back in a little while.
It was something that was going to help re-legalize the supers.
The computer rose above him, glaring down at him with that red bar over Gazerbeam’s smiling picture. He remembered that picture. He remembered when they took it.
Now, it was for his obituary.
Not even, it was a footnote under Omnidroid v.5.
That was a funny sort of revenge. Gamma Jack had killed the machine that had killed Simon without even knowing he had been there.
He didn’t even have the courtesy to know he was avenging his death.
The pit had swallowed him whole. Mirage and Syndrome were talking again as Mirage made some sort of note in Gazerbeam’s file, then clicked to something else like it meant nothing to her.
None of it meant anything to her or Syndrome.
They were just superheroes, just people you would cheer for in Saturday morning cartoons. Maybe you’d be sad if they lost, but there was always next week. There was always a new hero.
But the only one on the island was looking up at the death of the closest person in his life while standing at the bottom of a concrete pit. It was probably more of a grave than anyone else had gotten. And he was alive to find out why.
He vaguely heard Syndrome talking about how he wanted to bring in another hero by the time Omnidroid v.7 was fully upgraded. Mirage said she was already trailing someone in the Metroville area who she was fairly sure matched a hero profile.
Gamma Jack barely heard any of it, his mind breaking between every memory he had of Gazerbeam, like if he thought about him hard enough, maybe he could reason out that he was still alive.
He couldn’t even try to call the person he usually would when he got into trouble or needed to find some.
Because…Simon J. Paladino was dead.
His legs gave out from under him, bringing him to his knees as he kept staring up at the screen. It was flashing through maps and addresses and grainy pictures, but the red line over Gazerbeam was still branded into Gamma Jack’s eyes.
He was dead.
He was dead…
…And Gamma Jack was still alive.
“Who do you think it is?”
“Based on what little information we have compiled so far,” the screen flashed again. “I believe we have found Frozone.”
Frozone…
“Great! Let’s get him here, in, oh, a month-ish?”
“I believe we can do that.”
Frozone was next.
He was walking in on a trap that would get him killed.
Like everyone else was killed.
The screen went black a few minutes later, the chatter from Syndrome and the easy, soft compliance of Mirage fading into black as they left.
Leaving him alone in the black pit below the computer.
…No one else could die here.
They weren’t going to kill them when they had already ripped them out of society and left them vulnerable to people who would promise them their real lives back!
Gamma Jack wiped his stolen glove against his face until he was almost scratching away the couple traitorous tears that had slipped by.
His breath turned from something feeble and ragged into something that almost growled. Green power flickered up his arms as his fists nearly disintegrated the concrete beneath him.
No more supers were going to die on this island.
He leapt into the air, shooting back up to the platform and landing next to Mirage’s chair. It was all he could do to stop himself from tearing it into the pit.
The computer screen flickered back to life.
“Password: _?”
“...Okay, Simon.”
“Password: KRONOS”
He smirked.
That cocky, arrogant, trademark smirk. “Let’s learn how to kill these guys.”