Project ROWDY 9

Inside the dorms, the lights were still down, but Boomer shot up like someone had yanked a cord in his spine.

His breath hitched in his chest, despite his lack of need to breathe at all, shirt stuck to his skin like he’d been dunked in something. Sweat was thick in his hair, hot and clammy and itching and his blue sheets twisted around his legs, half-kicked free, half strangling him. His heartbeat didn’t feel right. Too fast, too deep, like it was trying to outrun something still chasing him through the walls.

Something was still in the room.

He blinked around, pupils blown. Waited for movement, for a blur of Pink. Green. Blue.

Instead, he was met with nothing.

He wasn’t sure why that made him sad.

Just that blinking red light up near the ceiling.

Recording.

Watching.

Always watching.

“…Bubbles.”

The room stayed quiet as the words left his mouth like steam, like saying it might call her up out of the dark.

The monitor blinked red again, tagging the spike in his heart rate. More data for Cecil. Morning fuel for the cold press conference he called coffee. Donald would pretend not to notice while checking his little clipboard and thinking way too loud.

Boomer stared at the lens and kept himself from blinking, another something he didn’t need to do if he didn’t really need to, keeping his eyes on the camera in the world’s most pointless staring contest. After a few seconds, he just stretched his mouth into a grin that failed to touch his eyes and threw a weak thumbs-up.

The camera didn’t blink either.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The lights came on like punishment.

No sunrise, no warning. Just harsh fluorescents slicing through the dark and dragging the day out by the throat. The locks disengaged in sequence, hallway by hallway, like dominoes made of steel.

Brick’d been up since 3:12 AM.

He’d stopped checking the clock an hour ago. The screen of his tablet threw a ghostlight across his face, edges flickering as he scrolled through a physics model that stubbornly refused to match anything on Earth. His Earth, that is. The numbers weren’t adding up. Too many variables in the dimensional constants, no anchors to test against.

He rubbed his eyes, fingers digging into the sockets until stars flared behind the lids. He wasn’t really tired anyway. Just sick of thinking in circles.

Another model. Another dead end. Mojo hadn’t taught him how to run calculations, but you couldn’t be made of super-intelligent primate DNA and live with said super-smart monkey for years without picking up some advanced physics and engineering here and there. Still though, none of that did anything to change the fact that the math here wasn’t just different. It was wrong.

Or maybe he was.

A crash from the next room. Something heavy. Brick’s jaw locked as he kept his eyes on the math in front of him.

Second crash, louder. This one Brick recognized as a door slammed open so hard it might’ve come off the hinges.

Butch.

Of course it was Butch.

The floor thudded under his boots. Green and black training suit already clinging to him like a second skin as he walked through. Behind him, the training room wall—formerly reinforced, titanium-core, theoretically indestructible—was missing a chunk shaped like a boy who refused to believe in limits.

The intercom popped. Static hiss, followed by Donald’s voice, stretched thin and brittle. “Butch, that’s the third wall this week.”

Butch scoffed, not turning around to even glance at the speaker. His hand flexed once, fingers cracking. “Wasn’t strong enough,” he said, half to the air, half to no one.

The oldest Rowdyruff just stared back, jaw tight, fingers white-knuckling the tablet.

“Hey, fearless leader,” Butch said finally, loud enough to punch through the silence. His voice had an edge to it’s usual rasp. “You see the new walls? All fancy with the titanium? Not fancy enough.”

He grinned, savage and sharp, like he wanted someone to tell him to stop just so he had an excuse.

Brick kept his eyes down

“Keep it down. It’s early.”

“Early?” Butch snorted, flexing his hands like they were new to him. “Been up since four. Already broke a treadmill, two dummies, and I think I dislocated that training bot with the dumb little voice.”

Brick rolled his eyes with nothing to say to that, both of them well aware the thing had Donald’s voice. Instead, he just pinched the bridge of his nose and went back to the tablet.

“Still not strong enough,” Butch muttered again, low this time, almost thoughtful.

“Is anything ever?” Brick muttered, still not lifting his head.

Rather than respond, Butch redirected his energy elsewhere like a green-tinted Energizer Bunny if it was also a sociopathic little boy. Same pressure, different angle. His boots thudded against the floor too hard, too fast, like the place owed him for waking up still breathing. Cabinet doors opened and slammed again. Half a loaf of bread got sniffed and tossed. Fridge light flicked on, off. Back on.

Every motion carried that edge he hadn’t filed down yet and probably wouldn’t until he found something to distract him.

Finally, eventually, Butch crashed onto the couch. It groaned loud under the weight and tension both, one side tilting uneven. His arm draped over the back like he owned it. Like he might tear it off for fun. “So what’s the game today, huh? Another round of ‘watch Butch get bored to death in public’ or we finally doing something that counts?”

Brick kept silent.

“C’mon. At least lemme break something. I’ll even aim this time.”

A sigh left the Red Rowdyruff’s lips. “Whatever Cecil assigns.”

“Cool. So nothing,” Butch snorted. He stretched like a lion in a cage, full-body and deliberate. “I swear, next time one of those clipboard freaks gets in my face, I’m snapping their glasses just to see how long it takes ’em to cry.”

The far door hissed open.

Boomer shuffled out from the hallway leading to their bedroom looking like his bed swallowed him, rolled the blue Rowdyruff around in its mouth then spat him out when he realized showering wasn’t high on his list of priorities. His blond hair was a disaster zone, blue eyes bleary and dark underneath. He was quiet for a few seconds, just sort of existing there in the frame like he’d forgotten how rooms worked.

“Morning,” he said finally, voice cracked around the edges as if he was Butch.

Brick’s eyes flicked up, taking in everything about his little brother all at once.

“Bad dreams again?” Same as yesterday. Same as the last couple weeks.

Boomer blinked like he hadn’t expected the question. His mouth opened, closed, twisted. “Nah. Just… y’know. Weird sleep.”

Brick let it lie. No one needed that fight right now.

“You look like ass,” Butch said with unusual brightness, downright pleased as punch to have a target again. “Like… rotting shoe gunk.”

“Shut up,” Boomer muttered, already drifting toward their kitchen space. The Blue Rowdyruff opened the fridge, and stared inside like it had answers.

Butch leaned forward, voice dropping just enough to be worse. “You have a little accident, bro? Dream of your little blonde babycakes again? What was it this time—Bubbles with the knife or Bubbles with the chainsaw?”

The fridge door slammed shut, nearly hard enough to send the thing through the wall if it wasn’t bolted to the floor so many times over. Boomer turned, jaw clenched. “I said shut up.”

Brick’s hands slammed on the table with a loud, deliberate noise. “Enough.”

They froze, the same way they did every time he put that edge in his voice, reminded them who was in charge, and they turned to him eyes wide. Almost like dogs after you pulled on the leash or something.

Brick glanced at them both as he felt the way they both pulled toward him—Boomer trying not to sway, Butch practically vibrating with unburned tension. The moment cracked open between them, held together by the same unspoken agreement that always had—he leads, they don’t spiral.

The intercom cracked. Static, then Donald’s voice, scratchy and too tired to fake calm.

“Trinity. Briefing room. Fifteen.”

Butch lit up. “Finally. Something to hit.”

Boomer perked too, weaker but there. “Could just be talking, though…”

“Get ready,” Brick said, already moving. The tablet slid into his bag without looking. “And don’t break anything on the way.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Cecil’s office was lit like a morgue. Cold white and bleached blue from the wall of monitors, which spat graphs and pulse charts and energy sigs in real time. None of it looked good.

The air reeked faintly of sterilizer and the kind of coffee you had to earn by surviving something. Donald stood off to the side, hands clasped behind his back, like posture alone might save him from the conversation.

“How long’s it been showing like this?” Cecil’s gaze remained fixed, not shifting from the screens. His finger moved with surgical intent, flicking data between panels like a general drawing killboxes.

Donald pulled up a graph. “Started just after they met the Guardians. Two weeks and change.”

Cecil nodded, once.

Only once.

The files weren’t telling him anything the director could not already feel in his spine. They’d been different since the moment that first handshake went down—watching the Guardians like kids watching gods bleed. As much as they seemed to like the Guardians, they were clearly disappointed in them, viewing them as… knockoffs, was what they said.

Justice League. They’d said the name like it mattered. Like it was real. He still wasn’t sure if they were playing a game or confessing something. Whatever this Justice League was, as silly as Cecil found the name, they had to be some kind of hero group.

Far from fictional, no matter what Brick would have him believe.

Donald cleared his throat. Nervous tick. Too loud in the silence. “Sir, I… I’ve been wondering… where are they really from?”

Cecil’s mouth twitched. “Not from around here, I can tell you that much.”

Donald’s eyes jumped to the nearest screen—Brick’s vitals from what they recorded against the Immortal; at least 3x the older hero’s muscle density—and back. “So… alien?”

“Something more complicated, unfortunately, Donald.”

Donald shifted his weight. “Sir… do you… do we even know?”

Cecil’s fingers never stopped, tablet still humming under one palm like it mattered more than the man standing in front of him. He scrolled with one hand, reached for his coffee with the other, sipped without flinching.

“No, Donald. I don’t know.”

He said it like he was correcting a child. Like he was bored of the question before it finished. “I’ve got hunches. Strong ones. Some conclusions. But no confirmation.”

Donald stayed standing, his shoulders set too stiff, like someone who wanted to sit but had a strong distrust of the furniture.

Cecil finally paused, the old director blinking once. Not for effect—just inventory. “They’re opening up on their own. Enough, anyway. Brick’s got control issues the others don’t, but he’s learned to lie with silence. The rest? They leak.”

Donald opened his mouth, and closed it again as the clipboard in his hand shifted slightly.

Cecil tapped once. Closed the file. “Schedule Bridges. Full psych workup.”

There was a pause, one a bit too long for comfort. Donald’s mouth twitched like he was about to argue. “They’re not gonna like that,” he said finally. Midwest still clinging to his vowels.

“They don’t get a vote.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The briefing room was not a place the Boys enjoyed being. As a rule, the Boys did not like being told what to do even if it came with rewards, and the briefing room was pretty much where they got told what to do all the damn time. As usual, Brick walked in first, already bracing for whatever orders they were about o be given.

Cecil stood in the usual spot. Monitors behind him casting blue across his skin, cutting weird across the lines in his face. Donald to his right, clipboard ready like he was gonna take minutes at a PTA meeting.

Boomer slid in behind Brick, eyes low, fingers already tapping the table like they were trying to drum something out of his head. Butch slammed the door without meaning to, probably and sat down hard enough to make the chair whine.

Brick took center. Butch to the right. Boomer to the left. Like always.

“Morning,” Cecil said. Not a greeting. More like a test. “Sleep alright?”

Boomer twitched, just a hitch, but Brick felt it before he saw it.

“We’re good,” Brick said flat. “What’s the job?”

Cecil’s mouth did something almost-smile-adjacent. The kind you couldn’t afford to trust.

“We’ll get there.”

A manila folder slid across the table with a red tab at the top. Brick simply stared at it as he raised an eyebrow at Cecil. “Performance metrics,” Cecil answered the unspoken question, voice casual. Like the data wasn’t obviously about them. “Figured we’d debrief first.”

Boomer’s tapping stopped.

Brick opened the folder. Pages. Charts. Readouts. The same loops of strength, stamina, efficiency. All the stats people needed when they wanted to quantify a weapon instead of understand a person. Butch leaned over to look at his own and scoffed.

“We’re killing it,” Butch said, loud, satisfied.

Brick glanced sideways. “They wouldn’t drag us in here just to say good job.”

“Heh. Butt,” Butch muttered, but the joke went nowhere. Not even hitting with Boomer.

Cecil tapped again. The monitors behind him shifted.

The screen in front of Butch lit up first—him, slamming a villain’s chest cavity into the sidewalk like he was trying to find out what was under it. Then Brick. Surrounded by dark, with the glow of six screens on his face, searching something he wasn’t supposed to. Boomer’s footage was the worst one of them all. The blond Rowdyruff tangled in sheets. Thrashing. Face caught mid-scream.

No one moved.

“Anything you wanna share?” Cecil asked lightly.

Boomer shrunk back, mouth closed.

Butch’s fingers started pressing dents into the armrest.

Brick avoided looking at his brothers. Instead, he let out a breath. “We’re adapting.”

Cecil’s eyebrows lifted just slightly. “Adapting.”

Brick stared straight through him. “You got a better word?”

There was a pause. “I’d call it concerning.”

Another tap. The wall behind Cecil shifted again showing new overlays, new footage, and just more of everything.

“All three of you are running hot. Elevated aggression. Irregular sleep patterns. Escalation behaviors,” Cecil’s gaze turned to each one of them in turn. “Brick, you’ve bricked two more tablets since Tuesday by attempting to acces five restricted databases. Boomer’s screaming in his sleep. Butch can’t go forty-eight hours without structural damage.”

“We’re fine,” Butch snapped.

“You’re not,” Cecil said, tone flat as rebar.

“Well, you’re weak,” Butch muttered.

Brick shot him a look.

“And what about you, Boomer?” Cecil’s voice turned, shifting downwards in tone. Not kinder, just quieter. “Bad dreams over and over. What are you seeing?”

Boomer’s throat moved. Nothing came out. His fingers twitched. “I—I don’t remember.”

“You expect me to believe that?”

His voice cracked, hardening in a way Boomer’s oddly did. “I don’t care what you believe.”

“Hey,” Butch barked towards Cecil, chair screeching as he shifted. “Back off.”

Brick shot in sharp, voice hard enough to cut through all the noise. “Is there a point to this?”

“The point,” Cecil said, slow like he was chewing the words before spitting them down the center of the table, “is I need Trinity functional. Whatever this is—however it’s rattling your aim or your judgment or your sleep—I can’t have it bleed into the field.”

The GDA Director hadn’t specifically looked at anyone when he said it, the man just swiping left on the tablet in front of him, the screen flashing past graphs Brick had already memorized and dismissed. The kind of numbers that didn’t matter when Butch snapped a man’s jaw in six places or Boomer sparked his way through a steel door because he got startled.

“I’ve got Dr. Bridges cleared for evals. Full sit-down. You’re on her docket for tomorrow afternoon.”

Butch scoffed—loud, rude. “You kiddin’ me? A shrink?”

Brick shut his eyes. “We’re not doing a psych eval.” His voice came out quieter than he meant it to.

Donald, standing off to Cecil’s right with a clipboard tucked like a shield, cleared his throat too politely. “With all due respect, gentlemen, the assessments are standard protocol. Especially for new assets in long-term ops. It’s nothing to be alarmed about.”

“It’s not optional,” Cecil said, still scrolling.

The room went still for a second. Not quiet—Butch was still breathing too loud, Boomer’s heel thumped the floor twice in uneven rhythm—but still. Tight. Like something was stretching under the table.

Brick stayed still. He wasn’t gonna give them the satisfaction. But his jaw clenched, just once. Hard enough he tasted blood.

Cecil finally stopped scrolling. Turned the tablet off. Tapped it once, like punctuation. “That’s three o’clock. Bridges’ll be waiting. You miss it, I send a team to fetch you. Simple math.”

He said it with a smile that wasn’t.

Brick hated that smile. It was the kind you wear when you already know where the bodies are buried. Hell, when you buried them.

“Now,” Cecil said, shifting gears mid-step like he hadn’t just dropped a lit match, “your next pull. Westfield Research. Been dead since ’09 on the books, but we’ve got chatter. Unregistered power flares. Movement in a place that shouldn’t have movement. You’ll go. Observe. Report. Don’t engage unless you’re in the dirt already.”

Butch groaned so loud it was performative. “Seriously? Another stakeout? Might as well tape my eyes open and glue me to a wall.”

Donald stepped in. “With all due respect—observation is vital to the collection of long-term threat metrics.”

Butch turned his head just enough to look at him and just looked at Cecil’s number two.

Donald’s breath hitched, the cyborg still obsessed with acting like a normal human, and he adjusted his stance.

Cecil let out a sigh, “Officially, Westfield was medical research. Unofficially? Metahuman experiments. Ugly kind. Not our jurisdiction, but dirty enough that digging through it might get you something useful.”

That got Brick’s attention. His fingers stilled on the edge of the chair.

“What kind of useful?”

Cecil’s voice flattened. “Genetic engineering. Power amplification trials. Attempts to replicate extranormal capabilities in unaugmented subjects. And failure. A lot of it.”

He met Brick’s eyes for the first time. “Departure’s in thirty. Mission files are live in your rooms,” Cecil said. “And don’t be late for your sit-down. I’ll know if you try to duck it.”

He stood. Donald mirrored the move like he’d rehearsed it.

“Sir,” Donald said, nodding to the table, “I’ll notify the psych wing.”

Cecil was already walking. “Good. Let’s see what we’re really working with.”

The door shut behind them.

Butch’s hand balled into a fist against the table before Brick could stop him. Not a punch, just pressure. The metal groaned.

“No way in hell I’m sitting through that.”

“You think I want to?” Brick muttered.

Boomer kept his eyes down, looking at his hands as he fiddled with them. “You think it even matters?”

Butch turned on him. “Better than crying in your sleep every night.”

Boomer’s shoulders twitched. “…’m not crying.”

“Stop it,” Brick snapped as he stood up quickly. “We’ll deal with it later.”

Butch threw his hands up, standing up too. “We are dealing with it. Or we should be, but noooo, can’t break anything or light it up, can’t do nothin’ but sit on our asses and nod for some rich lady who’s gonna ask how we feel—”

“You done?” Brick asked, voice as cold as his breath was hot.

Butch stopped moving, just long enough for his shadow to catch up.

Boomer stood last. The quietest. They all filed out.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The doctor’s office tried too hard. That was the first tell. Soft lighting instead of whitewash fluorescents. Potted plants on every surface, like that was supposed to make up for the surveillance density. Chairs arranged in a semi-circle, too spaced for comfort, too symmetrical for coincidence.

Brick stood near the door, spine locked, arms crossed like posture might be armor. Butch made a beeline for the window—standard. He needed sightlines, an exit. Boomer drifted behind them both, hovering between chair and wall, fingers twitching at the hem of his uniform.

The doctor was already in the room.

She just stood there, polished and poised, with a clipboard Brick really doubted she needed and a watch that probably cost more than everything she wore twice over.

Dr. Bridges smiled, exactly once. Not warm. Not fake. Just… measured. Like she’d already finished this conversation before they walked in and was waiting to see which script they’d choose.

Brick felt the floor settle wrong under his feet. Like a trap that hadn’t sprung yet.

The Boys stepped in anyway.

Brick was the first one to make a move as usual, the oldest brother near the door as he scouted the place out as if something that could hurt them was waiting inside. Butch peeped in through the room’s large window, shoulders loose but twitching, tapping his foot then his finger then his foot again against the floor as he seemed to test whether the walls had secret GDA weapons hidden inside them, Boomer hovered mid-room like he hadn’t decided whether this was a trap or a test or both as his fingers curled tight and uncurled just as fast.

Dr. Bridges didn’t flinch. She smiled, but it failed to go all that far across her face. “Adjustment’s been difficult. That’s expected.”

Brick’s voice came out smooth and cold.“We’re good.”

The older lady nodded at that. “Homesickness can manifest in different ways.”

Brick stayed quiet this time and his brothers followed his example.

“Talking helps.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Does it?”

“I’d like to know more,” she said. “About your previous environment. Your family unit. Any formative traumas.”

Brick’s brow barely twitched. “Why.”

“Understanding context sharpens diagnosis,” she said. “And homesickness is—”

Boomer flinched. It was a small motion but Bridges clocked it like she’d been waiting for it.

She shifted her gaze without moving her face. “Boomer. Your sleep data shows irregularity and REM disruptions. Any recollection of your dreams?”

He blinked too fast. “Nope. I don’t—uh, I don’t dream.”

A lie. A weak one but she was smart enough not to call it out.

“Dreams help us process things our conscious mind resists. That includes trauma.”

She said it like it was weather. Like nightmares were a natural side effect of being displaced across dimensions.

Brick didn’t breathe. Not really. Not when the word wrapped around the edge of his skull and started scraping.

Trauma.

Mojo’s voice in his ears, sharp and high and cracked with genius. The first time they opened their eyes, stinging with chemical rot and sewer stench. The first scream. The first punch. The first time they tore something soft apart with hands they hadn’t known they had.

Three girls. Three smiles. Three victories in dresses and bows and color-coded pity.

Then the kiss.

Then the light.

Then—

“We’re not traumatized,” Brick said finally, voice iced over as he pushed everything that wasn’t here and now aside. “We’re fine.”

“Are you?” Bridges said, more a shape of a question than an actual one. “Cecil said you’ve been combing through dimensional mechanics. That’s an uncommon hobby for your age bracket.”

Fishing.

He could see it already. Talk about home, you start remembering. Start talking. Start giving her leverage she would take back to Cecil.

Red eyes narrowed. “Session’s over.”

Dr. Bridges remained in her seat, blinking in confusion. “We’ve barely started.”

Brick didn’t repeat himself. His brothers followed the shift like instinct.

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The door slammed hard enough behind them that the frame creaked..

“Boomer.”

The younger boy raised his hand on command. A blue pulse of energy burst out and hlit the ceiling for half a second. The cameras in the corners popped. One sparked. Two died. The air fizzled.

“Three minutes,” Boomer said, almost proud. “Maybe four.”

“They’re gonna figure it out,” Brick muttered, already pulling his tablet.

“They can choke on it,” Butch snapped. The dam finally cracked. “I’m sick of this shit. Pretending like we’re little mascots or science fair projects or something. Sitting there like this is school and she’s just—what—grading us?”

He slammed a boot into the wall. The dent spidered.

“It’s necessary,” Brick said, not looking up.

Butch spun around, fists clenched as he turned angry forest-green eyes Brick’s way. “Necessary for what, boss bro? To smile while they poke us with sticks? Pretend we’re adjusting?”

“You think I don’t know this isn’t home?” Brick snapped, head up now, voice sharp enough to cut. “You think I’m not doing everything I can—every second—to get us out?”

He didn’t yell but Butch froze anyway.

Boomer collapsed backwards, legs giving out like something cut loose in the knees. He hit the edge of his bed with too much bounce, sank into it like it might swallow him whole, hands limp at his sides as he laid back, looking up at the ceiling.

“Had it again,” he said, voice fuzzed at the corners, as his eyes stayed straight up. “The dream. They were after us again but this time I—”

He swallowed on the words, like he was choking on it. In fact, it took a good second or two before he got the rest out.

“I wanted ‘em to catch us.”

The words just sat there. Like they were waiting for someone to pick ‘em up and say they didn’t mean anything. No one did.

Brick said, “The Girls,” even though there was no reason to. It was almost as if confirming it could make the thought less sharp. Didn’t work, he realized a second later, shaking his head to himself.

Boomer nodded, eyes still glued to the floor. “It’s worse now. Feels more like… I dunno. Real. I can hear ‘em. Smell ‘em. Bubble’s shampoo—stupid strawberry crap. Buttercup laughing. Not the nice kind.”

Butch scoffed, but there wasn’t any bite in it. “It’s dreams. That’s it.”

“No,” Brick said, and this time his tone flattened like it’d been scraped clean. He turned the tablet toward them.

Numbers. Vectors. Frequency maps. Dimensional ripple graphs. Simulations half-rendered. The whole screen was bleeding red and static but it made sense to him. Some of it, at least, as weird as this world’s physical laws were.

“I’m working on it.”

Boomer looked up too fast, eyes wide and hope already racing ahead of the facts. “You mean like… home?”

Brick nodded, one time. “It wasn’t a fluke. Or, at least, not entirely one. The breach that sent us here. Something in us—speed, mass, chemical X saturation—it hits this frequency, and the whole thing reepeats. I just gotta catch it, map it, stabilize it. We can—”

Butch cut in like he always did when it got too sciencey. “So we can go back to what, exactly? Getting our teeth kicked in? You remember that, right? Us losing? Over and over?”

He punched the nightstand as punctuation, the entire thing caving in around his fist, reinforced wood splintering like it owed him something.

“We were jokes, Brick. Three-for-one sale. We couldn’t beat ‘em on our best day the last couple years.”

Three, Brick corrected in his own head.

“I just want to go back to knowing who the hell we were,” Brick snapped, louder than he meant to, voice tearing in the middle like the thought was too sharp to swallow.

Butch growled. “We were fuckin’ delinquents, man! No one came to Townsville except the usual suspects cause of the Girls and if we caused too much trouble out of town, the League would crack down on us and half the time, you,” he pointed a finger at Brick, “would stir shit up just to get Superman’s attention, you… you… you boyscout!”

Brick reared forward in a blur until he was only inches away, growling in Butch’s face. “Boyscout?!”

Butch bared his teeth, growling back as his eyes glowed the toxic green they often did when his blood was up. “You heard me! Calling yourself Brimstone like you’re really bad and hellspawn or whatever, like we all don’t know you’re a Superman lover!”

Brick’s nostrils flared, unable to deny that much. Yes, he loved Superman, but that wasn’t fair. What twelve-year old boy doesn’t? He also liked Lex Luthor too, that counted for some villain points, right? Whatever. He wasn’t going down without a fight. “Like you don’t looooove Batman, you little sneak!”

Butch reared back, shock clear on his face as he gasped soundlessly for a good five seconds. “That’s not… that’s not fair! He’s the world’s greatest fighter, and without powers. Everybody knows he can beat Superman!”

“Batman isn’t the world’s greatest fighter,” Brick shot back.

Butch narrowed his eyes. “Oh, yeah, Einstein, then who is?”

“Uh, the Richard Dragon!”

Butch rolled his eyes. “No one cares about Richard Dragon. Only reason you like him is cause he’s ginger!”

“Yeah, and you’re a hypocrite for liking Batman!”

“Why am I a hippop- a hippocrip, a h-” Butch grunted and shook his head, eye twitching, “Why can’t I like him?”

Brick screwed up his face in confusion, the hypocrisy actually confusing him. “HE’S A HERO!”

“VIGILANTE!” Brick roared back. “THAT’S TECHNICALLY A CRIMINAL!”

“I think the Flash is pretty cool.”

Glowing red and green eyes turned to the side immediately, so fast that the air actually cracked. “Shut the fuck up, Boomer!”

“Yeah, Boom,” Butch chimed in. “Shut up!”

The Blue Rowdyruff shrugged, unbothered.

Brick glanced back at Butch, blinking in confusion as he realized they had lost the point somewhere several insults back. “…what were we talking about?”

Butch blinked. “Oh… uh, something about you wanting to go home.”

“Right, right…” Brick nodded slowly as he got back on track. “Look, it’s just back there… at least we knew the rules. We were made for something.”

Boomer’s hands were lit faint-blue, trailing sparks that didn’t reach the bedspread as he played with sparks. “Mojo made us. For one reason. Destroy them. That’s it. That’s all we ever were.”

No one touched that. Brick watched the broken stand drop wood slivers to the floor and did the math on how many nights he’d heard Boomer tossing in his sleep lately.

“It was still ours,” he said, quieter. “It was still us.”

Butch scoffed again but slower. Less venom this time. He kept his eyes off anyone else’s when he dropped onto his own bunk. “We got it better here. Ain’t gotta answer to Mojo, or HIM, or whatever. We eat. We fight. They give us stuff. Feels like a win to me.”

Brick’s head tilted. Just slightly. “You think Cecil’s not Mojo with better teeth? You think this ain’t a leash?”

Butch didn’t answer.

Boomer kept staring at his palms like they had something written on them. “We’re helping people now. It’s different.”

Brick looked at him like he’d grown another head. “Since when’s that ever mattered to us?”

The room didn’t get quieter, just heavier.

Then the intercom cracked loud overhead—no chime, just barked noise. Cecil’s voice cut through the walls.

“Trinity to Command. Code Yellow. Repeat, Code Yellow. Now.”

Brick’s red eyes narrowed as he pushed all his other pointless thoughts to the back of his head. The Rowdyruff just stood, posture already locked and loaded. “Move.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Command center looked like someone shook a hornet’s nest full of caffeine and wires. Monitors everywhere. One showing a high-rise with the side peeled open, like God took a bite out of it. Smoke curled out the top like it was lit from the inside.

People running. Screaming.

Cecil stood in the eye of it, jaw locked, eyes pinned to the damage like he’d seen worse and wasn’t impressed. Donald hovered beside him, voice clipped and smooth as he passed updates through a headset, the air around him tense like he was trying to stay useful enough not to be noticed.

“Killcannon,” Cecil said, not even glancing at them. “Downtown Baltimore. Financial District. Thirtieth floor’s a mess, elevators shot, hostiles confirmed inside.”

Donald tapped a screen and Killcannon’s mug filled it. Helmeted, armored, heavy ordinance built into the left arm rig. Brick’s mind filled in the rest before Donald said it.

“Level seven threat,” Donald recited. “Plasma weaponry. Energy burst class. Capable of structural destabilization. Civilian casualties likely.”

Brick was already in leader mode. “Boomer, evac. Butch, hold structure. I’ll pin the target.”

Cecil blinked, looked at him like he’d handed over a test answer too early with all the answers correct. Then nodded.

“Bay Three’s got your teleport lined.”

Brick turned before the sentence finished. “Don’t need it.”

His brothers followed.

“We’ll fly.”

They didn’t wait for the bay doors to finish opening.

Boomer shoved ahead first, heel-spring off the ground in a blur that left the air wobbling behind him, the fastest Rowdyruff doing his thing. Butch cracked his neck, flexed once, then launched with a shockwave that set the floor groaning. Brick went last—just a breath behind—but still first in formation, always, because that’s how it worked.

Red-blue-green tore out of the launch bay like they’d been shot from a goddamn railgun. The sound ripped open the sky. Clouds sheared. Wind folded. Birds dropped out of the way like they’d hit a wall.

Below, the woods blurred past in streaks of brown and green, then suburbs. Brick blinked once and watched a cul-de-sac stutter into a grid of city blocks. Then smoke. The skyline. There.

Downtown Baltimore was bleeding.

One of the towers had its ribs showing—steel bent outward like a peeled can. Fire crawled up the side, clinging to shattered windows, flickering orange against the broken shell of forty-something floors gutted mid-spine. Smoke poured out in curtains. Brick watched glass fall in slow arcs, light bouncing off it like someone had upended a jewelry store across the air. Streets below were choked—cars flipped, civilians running with no pattern, responders screaming over radios no one could hear.

He broke formation without calling it.

“Gamma spread,” he said anyway.

Habit.

Boomer veered left, a shock-pop of blue streaking across collapsed scaffolding. He didn’t dodge debris—he moved before it fell. A kid pinned under a chunk of awning blinked, and Boomer was gone again, the wind yanking a scream out of her mouth like an afterthought. Then another civ, then another. The air rippled with displacement and flared with a blue streak every time he passed.

Butch slammed into the plaza like he’d been fired from orbit. The street cracked under him. and concrete exploded like a missile went off. He caught the edge of a tilting support beam before it could finish its collapse and grunted like he’d just found something fun to lift.

“C’mon, then,” he muttered, shoving against steel like he was benching the whole district. Rebar whined as he pushed off against nothing and moved up into the air.

Brick hovered above the chaos, scanning. Not just looking—calculating. Damage angle. Heat bloom. Blast pattern. Something felt off.

“Boomer.”

“Yeah?”

“Where’s the target?”

Static, then breath. “You mean Killcannon? Thought he was lighting this place up.”

“Someone else is already engaging,” Brick said, eyes narrowing on the top floors. Movement.

“What? Who?”

“Hold position.”

He rocketed up, body snapping forward into a sonic pop, windows near him buckling from the pressure wake. He hit the breach in the skyscraper like a missile threading a needle, fire licking at his boots as he punched through the smoke.

Inside was carnage. Desks were split in half, wall panels half-melted, wires drooping from the ceiling like the insides of a kaiju. Water pooled on the carpet where a cooler had burst and scattered plastic like shrapnel. The air tasted… burnt.

Brick hovered mid-floor, one arm lifted in reflex.

Killcannon was down, the cyborg villain slumped against a cracked support column, armor fractured, helmet caved halfway in. Still breathing but clearly unconscious.

Standing over him was a stranger. Blue, black and yellow spandex, with shoulders broad enough that he was probably no older than eighteen at most. Pretty tall, but not as tall as the Immortal, and standing with his back to him.

Brick said nothing at first.

He floated in lower. Not enough to make noise, just enough to cast shadow with his hands clasped behind his back in the perfect posture he’d copied from videos of Lex Luthor in his battlesuit.

“You gonna explain who the hell you are or should I start guessing?”

The figure spun, surprise clear on his face before shifting into a flicker of confidence as he smiled.

“Me?” he asked, voice catching on the turn. “I’m—”