Project ROWDY 7

Brick hated the suits. He hated the way they fit, the way they matched, the way they made it obvious they were part of something. He hated that most of all.

It wasn’t the material—he could admit, fine, whatever, the stuff was high-end. Smooth, breathable, strong enough to survive Butch going full meteor through a truck. But it clung too clean. Vacuum-tight around his arms, tight at the ribs like it was trying to squeeze obedience into him. Fire-truck red with black stripes that made him look like a bootleg action figure. And dead center, on his chest: a dumb, shiny Roman numeral. Just I. Not even a cool logo. Not even a skull. Just a number.

Like they were inventory.

Like they weren’t already.

The gloves were worse. Fingerless. Like he was supposed to go lift weights at the mall or something. And every time he looked to the left or right—Boomer in blue, Butch in green—they all had the same look. Same suits, different colors, same numbers. II. III. They didn’t even like numbers. Who looked at three violent, flying preteens and thought, Yeah, they should be a list.

Two months. 

That’s how long they’d been doing this. Not missions. Training. Practice violence with seatbelts and rules. Memorizing camera angles. Sitting through Donald’s dry voice walking them through de-escalation scenarios while Butch chewed on a stylus like it was edible. Pretending like any of that mattered.

Brick hovered high over the city, arms crossed like his brain was locked behind them. Below, Baltimore yawned into the morning—glass towers all glint and gridlocked streets crawling with ants that thought they mattered.

Boomer hovered close, doing a lazy spiral like a balloon that lost half its helium. His blue suit clung to him even tighter, the cowlick above his forehead pointing sideways now. Looked like it gave up trying.

“How much longer we gotta float up here?” Boomer asked, dragging the syllables out. He was turning in place, spinning slowly like he expected to find something new the next time around.

Brick kept his eyes on the bank, ignoring that. “A few minutes.”

Boomer groaned like that was somehow worse than an hour.

Then Butch barreled into view from the side like he’d been launched out of a slingshot, barely missing Boomer and spinning him around once. His suit was already wrecked, the green seam along his leg starting to split, III half-hanging. He’d been chewing it earlier.

“This is so frickin’ dumb,” Butch muttered, flexing like he wanted to punch the sky. Which, knowing him, he definitely did. Butch would punch the concept of punching if you let him and he could figure out how. “Why we just waitin’ up here? Thought the bank was gettin’ hit today.”

“Because we’re supposed to wait ‘til it actually gets hit,” Brick said, deadpan, eyes still on the front doors of the First National like they might blink and disappear. “Observe and report till the guy actually does the thing. No jumping in.”

Butch pulled a face. “Observe and report,” he mimicked in a bad falsetto as if Brick actually sounded anywhere like that. “Cecil says jump, we say ‘how high,’ huh?”

Brick didn’t answer.

Then the alarms started.

A sharp wailing shriek of a noise the Boys had long gotten used to. Without a moment to waste or even a single word, Boomer’s head whipped down toward the bank like someone slapped him. Butch was already laughing.

And already dive-bombing towards the ground.

“Wait for the signal,” Brick called, already resigned. But Boomer peeled off too, a blue streak cutting through the air after his brother like a puppy chasing a lawnmower.

Brick followed. Not because he was told to. Because he wanted to. 

Because he wasn’t gonna miss out on some real fun.

They dropped like meteors. The speed made the wind scream and Brick felt the rush rip around his ears, past his teeth, into his spine as the buildings blurred. His whole body buzzed. He came to a stop a hundred feet above,  the street half a breath behind the explosion.

The bank’s west wall tore outward, concrete flying like it hated being a wall. Metal groaned, rebar twisted, and a full-grown war machine stepped out of the hole like it had somewhere better to be.

Red armor, gleaming like blood, all the thick metal plates on a frame that was seven feet tall easy, big mechanical limbs swinging with hydraulic smoothness. Two giant fists full of bags—cash, probably, maybe gold—and the kind of confidence that meant it’d walked away from a hundred other scenes just like this.

“Vault has acquired the necessary assets,” the robot-thing droned, voice flat like a text-to-speech app left on default. “Departure sequence commencing.”

Squad cars skidded into place around the scene like they knew it wouldn’t help but had to do something. Doors popped, cops ducked behind them, guns drawn but nobody eager to fire. They knew. You could see it in their faces; that moment of pure oh, we’re not enough.

Brick had seen it before. 

Lots.

Usually when officers had to face him.

Vault raised one arm.

The blast wasn’t even trying to hit anything. Just a flex. A car flipped like a soda can kicked across the pavement, smashed roof-first into a mailbox and stayed there, half-balanced like surprisingly good modern art.

Vault didn’t even look at it.

“Wise choice remaining behind cover,” the robot said, servo motors whirring as it stepped into the street like it owned it. “Vault has no quarrel with law enforcement unless provoked. Let us avoid needless property damage…”

Brick didn’t laugh, but he might’ve twitched. Okay, maybe more than a little. Which wasn’t a good sign. You really couldn’t blame him for that, honestly.

The villain in the power armor they had been briefed on — some scientist who had made a power armor in the 90s and decided that made him Lex Luthor but broke — had a hole behind him the size of a dump truck and was talking about not causing damage like it wasn’t already a lost cause. Brick hovered mid-air as his red eyes tracked Vault’s steps, but his brain was already split between the next move and the stupid script Cecil had drilled into them like they were stupid child actors on the Disney Channel, not living weapons of mass destruction.

Twelve years old. Super-powered. Supposed to smile for the cameras. Right.

He flicked his gaze left—Butch already drifting low to the pavement like he wanted to taste the concrete before he punched someone through it. Boomer was jittering in place to the right, doing that dumb thing with his fingers where sparks popped between them because he couldn’t sit still for anything longer than a sneeze.

This was it. Debut day.

Brick gave the smallest nod.

Three blurs moved at once. Left, right, above. Like a slingshot unraveling. Butch dropped like a cannonball, cratered the sidewalk, both fists planted on either side of his crouch like he’d just punched the planet.

“Breakneck!” he barked, voice cracking just a little even as Brick covered it up quickly with just enough growl to sound cool.

Boomer came next, spinning midair with one hand glowing and the other raised in a V he definitely thought looked awesome. “Blitzkrieg!” he shouted, bouncing once when he landed and grinning like an idiot.

Brick didn’t descend—he dropped. Heat rippled off his boots when he hit, one knee to the ground, fist planted like a meteor touchdown and pavement crackling out beneath him. Head up, eyes already glowing.

“Brimstone,” the oldest Rowdyruff said, voice just loud enough to carry. “Bank’s closed.”

Vault cocked his head, the weird stilted movement making it feel less robotic somehow. Like a confused dog with a jetpack.

“Who the hell are you to stand in Vault’s way?” That voice again. Metal-wrapped and modulated and trying too hard to sound above it all.

Brick straightened. Floated up an inch. Arms behind his back, chin up, like the war general Cecil probably wanted him to be. “Already told you. Brimstone. We’re here to shut this down.”

Vault shifted his stance, weight recalibrated like he was about to pivot into something dumb. His helmet moved from Brick to Butch to Boomer, then back again.

“You have five seconds to remove yourselves. This is a high-efficiency withdrawal operation. Vault does not entertain child dramatics.”

Butch actually barked a laugh. “Hey, Boom, this toaster just called us dramatic.”

Brick smirked before he could stop himself. Small. Controlled. Like the pressure valve cracked a notch.

“You’re right,” he said. “It’s not a show. It’s a beatdown.”

Vault’s arm whined, rising like a cannon being primed for war. The energy at the barrel’s end coalesced into a twitching white-red knot of heat.

“Confidence is commendable in trained assets. Dangerous in children. Vault will remember you fondly.”

The blast fired.

Brick blinked out of its path.

One frame he was there, next frame gone. Just a red smudge of afterimage and then nothing else. The beam carved through the air and slagged a parked SUV, melting the frame into a bent pool of chrome and flame.

Boomer dropped from above, feet-first like a lightning bolt with opinions. He hit Vault’s shoulders with a thunk, hands already sparking blue.

“Hi there!” he shouted, too loud and already frying something. Arcs danced across the armor, crawling into joints, sliding down metal seams and lighting up the inside like a short-circuit Christmas. “Bye there!”

“Voltage spike—unacceptable—system reboot initiated—error—override!” Vault choked out, voice glitching like a scratched disc.

Butch came in low, his green speed line bending the air around him, an angry missile with a face and fists. One, in particular, as he drew it back and hit Vault in the ribs.

Everything bent.

Vault flew.

One block. Maybe two.

Brick caught the recoil in his teeth, the sound of the impact rattling the windows hard enough to spiderweb glass half a block away. 

Butch was already under him again, grinning like a maniac as he slammed his foot high in a brutal upkick. Armor folded around his leg as the power suit went limp for a second, then stiffened—just in time for Butch to spin around to the villain’s back, maintaing pace with Vault’s flying form. Without warning, he let his other foot axe down like a guillotine.

Vault hit a parked bus hard, the whole thing collapsing in on itself with a noise like God crumpling a soda can.

Inside the wreckage, Vault twitched.

Boomer skipped across the sidewalk to the opening in the hull like a kid chasing a bouncy ball. Brick floated overhead, scanning for a second target that wasn’t there.

Vault dragged himself upright with one hand. The red paint on the armor was blackened at the edges now, like scorched candy. At least one panel was split right open, servos underneath whining.

“Who ARE you brats?”

Brick didn’t even raise an eyebrow as Vault started pulling himself out of the wreckage, gears screaming from somewhere deep in the chest unit. Sparks were still stuttering out across the bus frame, cutting hard flashes over the street. 

He stayed hovering above the busted asphalt, a few feet higher than the others, the air around him still vibrating from the earlier impact. His brothers shifted back into place like magnets snapping to charge, formation automatic. They never even had to look.

Boomer buzzed in low, breathing a little too fast, fingertips twitching like he wanted to blast something just for the hell of it. Butch popped a vertebra with a tilt of his neck, still grinning, still riding that buzz like a sugar high and a fistfight tangled together.

Brick watched Vault stagger upright through the smoke. The suit was dented, yeah, smoking a little around the joints, but not down. Not yet. He hated that part.

“Cecil said to keep collateral down,” Brick muttered, not even turning his head. Quiet enough to avoid hot mics, loud enough to hit their ears. The buzz in the comms was silent but always there, pressure in his skull.

Butch rolled his eyes like his whole head might fly off. “We’re standin’ in a hole the size of a semi, Brick. Little late for that.”

Boomer elbowed Butch in the ribs and lit up his palms with a zap. “What if I just zap the back of his knees? I won’t melt anything! Promise. Mostly.”

Vault’s suit clanked open like a bad toy commercial, shoulder plates pulling back and weapon ports locking into place like the whole thing had been holding its breath. Panels along the forearms hissed out puffs of gas.

“You children insist on escalation,” the voice said, deadpan mechanical. “Vault shall accommodate.”

Mini-missiles popped out like seeds from a pod, no delay, trails of smoke curling across the sky as they split wide. Ten, twelve, maybe more. The whine of tracking systems buried under the sudden roar.

They split apart immediately. Boomer cut up vertical, corkscrewing past a pair of missiles so fast the smoke hadn’t even caught up yet. Butch took the sidewalk like a wrecking ball, baiting three into slamming into the busted remains of a deli, fire and metal swallowing the front of the building.

Brick twisted through the middle, shoulder-feinting left before darting hard right, pulling two warheads into each other just a breath behind his head. The explosion cracked like thunder, concussive and deep enough to rattle glass a block away. Heat licked his heels.

A few strays didn’t find targets. One blew apart a mailbox. One slammed into the corner of an office complex. One tore through a parked van and knocked the fire hydrant loose. Water sprayed up like a geyser, pressure-sheared. The sirens hadn’t even started yet. Too early.

“You knock that crap into a law firm, I ain’t takin’ the heat,” Brick growled.

Vault dropped into a crouch, fists at his sides, as if copying Butch’s landing pose. The V on the chest plate slid up and the panel beneath that opened up sideways, yellow light flooding the street, too bright and too steady. “This concludes your opportunity for retreat. Vault will now initiate final protocol.”

There was a thrum in the air. Not sound, not smell, but something in the charge that made static crawl up Brick’s skin.

Boomer skidded to a stop behind the mech, feet barely grazing pavement. He cracked his neck once, fingers snapping together in a rhythm only he understood. “Lemme try somethin’.”

The blue Rowdyruff raised a hand and sparkked it off before Vault could get off whatever he was trying to. No overkill, no sparking theatrics. Blue lightning lanced out and stabbed right through the glowing panel on the villain’s chest, the power armor seemingly starting for a moment. It looked like a hiccup.

Vault’s whole frame seized.

“Critical destabilization—core—access point—” the voice hiccupped, distorted and drowning as Vault’s arrms locked at weird angles, chest light flickering like a dying bulb.

Butch landed at his side, teeth bared. “My turn.”

Two fingers under a shoulder plate. Ripped it off like wrapping paper. The metal howled.

Vault bucked once, sparks blowing sideways from the open cavity. A human face blinked through the exposed inner cockpit. Pale, sweating, eyes wide.

“Whoa, whoa—wait! Okay!” the guy yelped, hands flying up fast. “Okay, okay, I surrender! I’m out, I’m done!”

Butch let go, not because he had to. Just to stretch his arms. Pop his knuckles slow.

The second police van finally squealed up. The cuffs weren’t needed. They were just for show.

Cameras showed before the medics. Boom mics came before stretchers. A guy in a Channel 6 jacket yelled something that sounded like a question. Another crew was already filming the bus wreckage.

Boomer waved like a puppy who just won a ribbon. Butch flexed hard enough his whole shirt wrinkled weird at the seams.

Brick was a solid statue, the only thing changing on his person being his expression. Blank, but just confident enough. Chin up. No slouching. A pose like he’d seen Superman pull off before.

A woman pushed to the front of the press wave. She wore heels too expensive for the neighborhood and a blouse that had definitely never seen sweat. Makeup was still perfect.

“Excuse me!” she called, mic already raised. “Were you sanctioned to intervene in this incident? Who are you?”

Brick fought the urge to scoff. That’d show. He blinked once, remembering the script.

“We’re Trinity,” he said through his teeth, every word like chewing tinfoil. “A new superhero team… here to take down threats to… the people.”

Cameras swarmed even closer with the press people, like flies to a dead thing. Mics on sticks, lenses shoved close enough Brick could’ve snapped one off with his teeth if he wanted to. 

“You’re kids!” some guy shouted, squinting through a viewfinder like he was the first genius to figure that out. “How old even are you?”

Brick’s jaw twitched. He locked eyes with the reporter, flat and unmoved. “We’re trained to handle superhuman threats.”

The line slid off his tongue just like Cecil taught it. Perfect pace. Perfect dodge. No mention of the number twelve anywhere in there. No one needed to know what grade they should be in.

“You shoulda seen the mutant freak we fought last month!” Butch yelled, flexing both arms at once like the cameras were measuring bicep size now. His grin was full-on stupid. “That thing made this guy look like a busted vending machine.”

Brick stayed stone cold, but he heard the sharp breath behind him. Knew the moment the feeding frenzy kicked in.

“Wait, monster? What monster? When was this? Where?”

Boomer’s eyes went wide like he was being asked to describe Santa Claus. “Oh yeah, it had these arms—like way too many—and the face was like all—”

Brick stepped on his foot and instantly, Boomer squeaked and shut up.

It didn’t help.

Another guy shoved forward, one of those older reporters with the face of someone who wanted you to lie. “Weren’t you three the same kids who robbed two casinos in Vegas? That video with the flying kids? That was you, wasn’t it?”

Brick felt Butch freeze, like something coiled tight and ready to swing. 

Boomer’s breath hitched.

Don’t freak out don’t freak out don’t freak out—

He forced his mouth to move. “Nah. Those were evil clones.”

It sounded dumb. Dumber than what Cecil told them to say, something about being kidnapped by an evil scientist and experimented on and mind controlled. He said it anyway. 

Boomer nodded like his neck was on a spring. “Yeah! Totally evil. Like mirror universe evil. With goatees.”

“They ran off to space!” Butch blurted. “After we kicked their butts!” He paused, then nodded, serious-like. “Hard.”

The pause that followed wasn’t silence. It was outright confusion. Pens hovered. Cameras zoomed.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Cecil sat in the GDA control room, eyes locked on twenty feeds of what had to be one of the worst GDA press conferences and superhero debuts in recent history. His jaw clenched so tight, the director wouldn’t be surprised if his molars rubbed themselves smooth.

Donald stood next to him, arms behind his back like a polite death row inmate, as he watched with the patience of one used to the antics of preteen boys. The corners of his mouth twitched. He coughed once. Definitely not laughter. 

Probably.

“This is not a joke,” Cecil said, voice slow like each word cost him something.

Donald nodded, still polite. “Of course not, sir. I’ll alert damage control.”

“Right now.”

Donald tapped his ear comm. “PR team to Command. Code Yellow. They’re… improvising.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Brick tried to shift the subject back on track. Whatever that was supposed to be.

“Trinity exists to protect the people,” he said, straight from the flashcards. “We have been training to stop threats before they escalate.”

Boomer tried. Really. You could see it in his eyes, how hard he was trying to remember the script. “We uh. We want to work with, like… the government dudes. Y’know, to fight… bad guys… and stuff.”

The moment slipped sideways again.

Someone asked if they were affiliated with the Guardians. Another reporter shouted over them, and another after that. It turned into white noise, overlapping questions, chaos barely held together by press badges and hope.

Boomer started sparking at the fingertips again, bouncing a little too much.

Butch floated upside-down behind Brick’s head, doing slow somersaults. He waved at a random phone like it was a fan.

Brick held the line. Chin up. Shoulders straight. Pretending he was still in control of the whole thing when even the cops didn’t know where to look anymore.

“Can you tell us your powers? How did you get them? Where are you from?”

He chose not to answer that one. Ignore it, more like.

“We’re here to stop bad guys,” Brick said. Voice smooth. Eyes empty. “That’s it.”

The woman from before made sure she wasn’t pushed back or spoken over, a look on her face that told Brick she was the kind of person who’d eat you alive on morning television if you flubbed a syllable.

“Were you authorized to act today? By who? Who exactly signed off on this?”

And right as Brick felt the last thread pulling loose from the edge of the whole thing—

“That’s enough. Return to base immediately.” Cecil’s voice crackled in their ears like it was spliced straight into their skulls.

The Boys exchanged looks and shrugged. With a sound like an air cannon and three tri-color bursts of light, they were gone.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Miles away, tucked into and beneath a surprisingly large mountain nestled in Utah nobody important ever noticed, the Guardians of the Globe watched three children dismantle a supervillain with the casual ease and maliciousness of kids stomping anthills.

Their monitoring room hummed with machines too expensive to have commercial names, screens everywhere showing the bank fight from angles the news crews couldn’t access. Satellite feeds, traffic cams, Cecil’s own surveillance network that nobody was supposed to know about – the Guardians saw it all in Ultra-16k HD clarity that only made the whole thing more disturbing.

They watched in silence. Well, mostly. 

A kind of silence that buzzed, pressed in too tight around the room like it was holding its breath for them. Surveillance feeds stacked across the walls in layers, some of them looping and reframing the same thirty seconds from a dozen angles. One close-up of the green one cackling as he flipped a city bus. Another zoomed shot of the blue one landing like a bolt through steel. One wide drone angle showed all three landing in formation like they rehearsed it for TV.

War Woman stood dead center, arms crossed, jaw tight. Her body was statue-still, but her eyes never stopped moving. Tracked every punch. Every blast. Every line that kid in red delivered like it wasn’t a line at all. Her muscular arms crossed over her chest, brown hair pulled tight enough that it should have strained her divinely young face. Yet it didn’t, the only strain on her appearance being the hard look she wore.

Nothing about her had been soft for centuries.

She didn’t look away. Not even when the armored villain begged. Not when the camera zoomed so close you could see the bruises blooming under his helmet.

“Children.” The word landed heavy, not shouted but felt. “They send children to war again. We swore we’d ended this.”

Her voice wasn’t raised, but it cut.

Darkwing stood just inside the shadow of a column, almost blending into the wall itself. His arms stayed low. Fingers twitching just enough to suggest he’d rather be holding something sharp.

“No,” he muttered. “Cecil sends them. That’s not the same.”

They all knew Cecil’s ways.

Red Rush wasn’t leaning on anything, the man just stood in that same blur that rarely settled when he was in costume, an outline that flickered across four places in the room in between sentences. “The blue one adjusted a live circuit through insulated composite armor. The green one breaks trajectory laws when angry. Frightening implications.”

The Russian hero finally stilled—almost—and squinted at the monitor like it offended him. “But they move like they’ve fought each other more than they’ve trained. That is not training. That is instinct.”

Nobody answered.

The Immortal hadn’t spoken yet. He stood back, the way he always did now. Distance a habit that he’d taken to more since the loss of his last wife a decade or so back. His arms were crossed, eyes on the footage as the green one pulled a villain’s armor open like a soda can. America’s oldest hero failed to flinch when the human face screamed. Eyes stayed firm when the cameras caught a child grinning above a collapsed wreck.

“They don’t hold back.” The Immortal finally said, voice steady and low. “They haven’t learned to. This will end poorly.”

Martian Man shifted where he stood, green flesh rippling as his form subtly rearranged itself. His expression remained flat, alien eyes unblinking as they tracked the footage. “Their capabilities exceed normal human parameters by… significant margins,” he noted, pausing as if accessing internal reference points. “Their physiology is inconsistent with known baselines,” he said, calmly. “Shared genome, perhaps. Eyes degrees too wide and despite different appearances, those differing features distinctly identical. Possibly not human.”

That made a few heads turn.

“Possible,” the Martian refugee repeated, slower. “But not confirmed.”

Aquarus sat apart, mist curling from the rim of his collar as his breather adjusted to the dry air. His tone was slow as ever, but not dull.

“Unpredictable.”

He watched the feed where Boomer spun midair like a coin before hitting Vault’s back with all the precision of a lightning strike.

“Young ones ripple outward,” he said. “One splash becomes many.”

Green Ghost hovered above them all, half-phased through the ceiling panel.

“I mean—sorry—but did no one else clock the fact that they coordinated all that without a word?” Her voice tripped over itself, rising as she gestured midair. “Because that kind of syncing? That’s usually power armor or mind links or something and they’re just… k-kids. Literal kids.”

Her glow jittered at the edges.

“And that red one? The oldest? He doesn’t miss. Not once. Not even in the smoke.”

The Immortal finally stepped forward. The screens lit half his face blue. He stood like he’d buried kings and would again.

“This world does not need another wildcard,” he said, slow enough to make everyone shut up. “I’ll speak with Cecil. We need answers. The kind that don’t come from press briefings.”

Green Ghost looked like she wanted to object. Maybe five different objections. She made a noise but nothing came out of it.

“I just think…” she tried again. “If they feel threatened, if they feel cornered—”

“Then better we know what happens when they’re cornered,” the Immortal said.

War Woman hadn’t looked away from the screen since it started.

“They are not soldiers,” she said. “Not yet. But they are already weapons. And weapons with no wielder cut indiscriminately.”

Her hand dropped to the hilt strapped across her back. No flourish. Just memory. “Children have no place in warfare,” she said. “This has always been true. This will always be true. Some lessons are written in blood across millennia.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Mark couldn’t make sense of his own handwriting. 

Which wouldn’t have mattered if Mr. Gleason stopped insisting on collecting actual paper like it was still 1994, already assigning a ton of homework despite the first week of school. The high school senior pushed his pencil under the graph line he was trying to solve, but the numbers weren’t behaving and the graphite had already smudged under his wrist. His elbow stuck to the kitchen table, math in front of him pointless to his future if he was going to get his powers.

He stared at it anyway.

The news was still on. Background noise. Until it wasn’t.

A car flew through a bank sign, and then three tiny bodies drop-kicked it out of the air like it owed them money.

He blinked.

The pencil slipped from his fingers and hit the linoleum with a dry clatter. He didn’t pick it up. He leaned forward, mouth halfway open, watching the rerun footage without blinking. One of them—the one in green—spun through the frame like a plane that hated physics. Another was hovering, arms up, crackling bright blue, something between a conductor and a sparkler. And the red one just stood there, floating with his arms behind his back like he thought he was royalty or something.

“What…?” Mark muttered, then louder: “What the hell?”

Nolan walked in like he hadn’t just missed child-sized nukes taking apart a tank with legs. He had his usual look on. The one that meant he either hadn’t seen the news yet, or he had and just had no interest in it.

Mark pointed at the screen. “Those are kids. Dad, those are kids. That one’s like—I dunno—eight? Nine?”

Nolan looked. Not long. A second. Two. Maybe. “Hmm.”

Mark gawked at him. “That’s it? ‘Hmm’?”

He gestured toward the screen again like maybe Nolan didn’t get it the first time. They were on a loop now. The green one bicycle kicked Vault into the ground and flexed at the camera. The blue one waved. The red one melted through a power armor like it was drywall.

Nolan exhaled through his nose. “For what it’s worth, they seem effective.”

Mark turned. “They’re literal children.”

“You said that already.”

“And they’re fighting real villains! That guy they beat up was in, like, top-tier armor. Vault? He took out half of Capes of Cleveland last year.”

“Sloppy technique,” Nolan said flatly.

Mark looked back at the screen. The footage zoomed in as the red one cracked the villain’s helmet in half with his bare hands. “He tore open a power armor chestplate with fists.”

“Undisciplined,” Nolan added. “No strategy. No focus.”

“They’re like eight!”

Nolan remained silent, lips pursed. He poured himself coffee like this was Tuesday. It was Tuesday. Mark stared, then back at the TV. The boys had started taking questions from the crowd. Cameras everywhere.

Mark slumped forward on his elbows, dragging both hands down his face. “I haven’t even gotten my powers yet.”

Nolan Grayson paused. The coffee machine beeped behind him. For a moment he just stood there.

Then he walked over, hand resting on Mark’s shoulder. “You will,” he said. “And when you do, you’ll do more than them.”

Mark looked up.

“Once you get your powers, son.”

As Mark looked back down and got back to his work, he failed to notice his father’s eyes remaining locked onto the television.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Cecil stood in front of them, backlit by a grid of monitors rolling through every dumbass second of the press conference. He paused the footage with a remote and spun it around like he was about to read them their last rites. The screen froze on a shot of Brick mid-sentence, face caught somewhere between smirk and guilt, Boomer mid-blink, Butch halfway through a shrug. 

The text bar at the bottom read: BREAKING – TRINITY CLAIMS EVIL CLONES ESCAPED TO SPACE.

Cecil didn’t say anything right away. 

“Okay, but like—” Boomer started.

“Evil clones?” Cecil’s voice was flat, pinched like someone jamming their fingers in a vice. “That ran away. To space.”

Boomer made a face, that scrunchy little pout he did when caught. “You said don’t say the other thing.”

“I said don’t admit to robbing the goddamn banks,” Cecil said, dragging his hand over his face like he was trying to sand it off. “Which is why I gave you a cover story. A simple one. Evil scientist. Brainwashing. Escape. Redemption arc.”

“Didn’t read that part,” Brick said, real calm. He wasn’t gonna apologize for something he did on purpose. The lie came easily, though in truth, he had read every word. He just thought it was a stupid cover story, one that hit too close to their actual creation by Mojo.

Butch snorted. “Was like twenty pages. I’m not doin’ homework after blowing stuff up.”

“I had it highlighted,” Cecil said. “In three different colors. Your colors.”

“Well that’s your mistake,” Butch muttered.

Cecil flipped to another monitor. Footage rolled. Vault getting obliterated. The bus incident. The part where Butch laughed while kicking a car in half.

“Public. Trust,” Cecil said, slowly. “Isn’t just some fake-ass phrase. It’s why the public doesn’t scream when you fly past their windows. It’s why they let us operate without fifty lawsuits a week. It’s why I haven’t been fired yet.”

Butch leaned back so far his chair tipped for a second. “You make it sound like we want their trust.”

Boomer shifted in his seat. “I mean, some of ‘em were clapping…”

“Some of them were running,” Cecil said. “From the building you almost collapsed.”

“Collateral,” Butch shrugged.

“You’re not funny.”

“I wasn’t trying to be.”

Brick hadn’t moved. He just kept his eyes on the screen, watching his own frozen face.

“Being heroes isn’t a toy commercial,” Cecil said. “It’s not about flash and catchphrases. It’s about restraint. About keeping your damn fists holstered until the right moment.”

“Sounds exactly like something they’d say,” Brick said, biting the word off before he could stop himself.

Cecil’s head tilted. “They?”

Brick was quiet. Boomer winced. Butch cracked his neck.

Cecil didn’t push. He could’ve. He chose not to. More than anything, Brick was surprised that Cecil hadn’t pressed them further about their past. Almost two months of training and working with the GDA, and the scarred old man had barely asked about their dimension of origin beyond the basic details they’d unthinkingly volunteered.

Instead, he turned back toward the wall of screens. “The Immortal wants to meet you. Him and the rest of the Guardians… but mostly him. Didn’t say when. But I doubt he waits long.”

The Boys stared blankly.

Butch was the only one who chose to speak up. “…Soooo why do we care?”

“Because,” Cecil said with a sigh, the sound of a man reaching the limits of his considerable patience. “Because he’s the leader of the goddamn Guardians of the Globe. You’ll find updated files in your room. I suggest you actually read them this time.”

Later, in their reinforced quarters, Brick paced angrily while Boomer flipped through Guardian files on a tablet. The room bore the unmistakable signs of superhuman habitation: dents in the reinforced walls, scorch marks on the ceiling, furniture that had been replaced multiple times.

Butch worked out his frustration on a reinforced punching bag, each hit sending vibrations through the floor strong enough to rattle the furniture.

Brick paced, feet eating the room in loops.

Boomer lay across the bunk upside down, tablet above his face, legs kicking idly in the air.

“I told you this’d happen,” Brick snapped, spinning mid-step. “We’re drifting. Look at us. We’re one training montage away from Saturday morning cartoon crap.”

Butch paused mid-punch, wiping sweat off his forehead with the back of his glove. “You mean we weren’t supposed to be the Powerpuff Girls?”

“Shut up.”

“I’m just sayin’.”

Boomer peeked over the tablet. “At least we still fight bad guys. That’s cool.”

Brick stared. “It’s not about cool. It’s not supposed to be fun. We were made to—”

He stopped himself. Too late. It was out there.

“We’re the bad guys,” he finished, quieter.

They all just stood there for a second, like the air had dropped ten degrees.

Boomer sat up slowly. “Are we, though? Just because we’re bad guys, doesn’t mean we have to be bad guys.”

Brick sighed. “…stop watching Wreck-It Ralph.”

Boomer stuck out his tongue.

Butch scratched at his jaw, looking around like he expected Mojo to materialize from the closet and start barking orders. “…Ain’t nobody telling us what to do anymore.”

Brick sat. Just sat. Like gravity tripled all of a sudden. “We weren’t built for this,” he muttered.

Boomer did his usual distraction thing and tilted the screen toward him. “This Immortal guy… says here he can’t die.”

Butch grinned, all teeth. “Bet he ain’t been hit hard enough.”

Brick stayed quiet His eyes tracked the ceiling like it might give him an answer.

“What are we doing here?” he asked. Not loud. Not for them.

Boomer was still scrolling. “Maybe we’re figuring it out.”

Butch stopped punching and looked over. “No one here knows who we’re supposed to be.”

Brick looked at both of them. Eyes sharp. Tired.

“So we could be…” he started.

The words failed for a second.

“…anything?”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

In the study, the light was too warm. The windows were shut, the door half-closed, the room still.

Nolan sat motionless at the desk, right forearm braced beside the keyboard, left hand barely grazing the edge of the trackpad. The laptop hummed. The screen cast hard light over his jaw, over the faint crease in his brow that hadn’t relaxed since he first hit play.

He didn’t blink, not that it was a hindrance to him at all. The footage stuttered, paused, reversed in increments too small to register. Vault’s chest folded inward again, crushed under a green blur. Again. Breakneck’s fist dented the street with a twelve-year-old’s knuckles. Again. Lightning blooming across the mech’s shoulder servos like fractures. Again.

Again.

He narrowed the frame. Dragged a finger across the timeline. The blue one’s charge lit up half the corner. Energy crackled against insulated metal. It shouldn’t have.

He zoomed in until the pixels broke down into noise.

Behind him, soft footsteps padded across hardwood. No surprise in them.

“You’ve been in here for two hours,” Debbie said, setting a mug down beside his elbow. Her tone was breezy, but the kind that wanted a response. “You planning on blinking anytime soon, or is this your new meditation routine?”

His eyes stayed firmly on the screen. “They move differently.”

Debbie leaned her weight against the desk, arms folded loosely. “They’re kids. All of them look like they’re moving differently when they’ve got adrenaline and too much power.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

“Yeah,” she said quietly. “I figured.”

He advanced the footage again. Watched Breakneck twist midair like a rocket with bloodlust, watched Brimstone hover a few feet above his brothers, still, poised, eyes tracking every angle of approach. Not improvisation. Not instinct. Patterned. Calculated. Coordinated.

“You’re thinking they’re not from Earth,” she said, not asking.

His silence was confirmation enough.

“You think they’re Viltrumite?”

Nolan could have outright laughed at the absurdity of that if he wasn’t so focused on the here and now. “No.”

“Something else, then?”

“…that could mean anything, you know that?”

He clicked through more frames. Paused on a wide shot. The energy flares were wrong. The thermal residue should have remained. It hadn’t.

Debbie’s tone flattened. “Nolan.”

He closed the laptop like a man finishing a report. “It’s probably just Cecil and the GDA again. Another experiment. One that got out before it was ready.”

She looked at him. “If you’re sure.”

He kept his eyes off hers. “Whether or not I am, it doesn’t matter.”

“Mark thinks it does. He’s a little jealous of them.”

That did pull his head up. Slightly. “Mark is seventeen. He’ll forget.”

She straightened, the edge of her blouse brushing his shoulder as she stepped back. “I know work is work, but there’s no reason to stress over things too much.”

No response.

“Try to remember that.”

She left without the mug.

When the door shut behind her, Nolan opened the laptop again.

Just once.

Frame by frame, the footage unspooled. The blue one — Blitzkrieg — raised his hands. Discharge bloomed outward, branching like nerves.

Something about the pattern.

He froze it mid-flash. Stared.

It’s nothing.

He closed the screen for the last time.

But his frown remained.