Project ROWDY 8.5

The walls of the primary GDA headquarters nearly a mile under the Pentagon hummed faintly. A low buzz came off the holo-displays, filtered lighting too sterile to ever feel like morning or evening, just permanent nowhere. Cecil stood at the edge of the operations floor, half-shadowed by data projections washing the room in pulsing amber-blue. His arms crossed. Lips tight. Watching.

Stats floated around him like flies: mission durations, collateral percentages, approval ticks inching up like it mattered. Sixty-two percent. Like usual, the director didn’t smile.

Donald entered like the air hadn’t shifted, tablet tucked under his arm, posture brisk. “Sir, we’ve got a situation out of Anchorage.”

Cecil didn’t look away. Just arched a brow like he already knew.

Donald brought the tablet up and tapped. The center of the room bloomed open with a shimmer of hologram—grainy live feed of a four-story white-haired creature kicking its way through parked cars like rocks in a stream. Looked feminine, almost, in a specifically monstrous sort of way. Maybe it was the fur to her hips, or the fur everywhere else. It certainly wasn’t the feet like excavators.

“Well,” Cecil said, almost bored. “You know the drill.”

Donald didn’t flinch. “With respect, sir—the boys just got back from Montreal. They’re still in recovery cycle.”

“You’re joking, right?” Cecil cut him a sideways glance, the measured but somehow cutting look that he mastered his first month in that prison twenty-three years back. “When’s the last time the Terrorbrat Tykes actually needed recovery?”

Donald hesitated, his breathing clipped in a way that Cecil couldn’t help but wonder how his brain translated to the mostly metal that made up his form. Achievements in ignorance, he supposed, as amazing as that was. “Point taken.”

“They’re twelve, Donald. If we had living nukes, the boys would shit on them and use to beat over living nukes and laugh about it. Let ‘em stretch their legs.” Cecil stepped past the table with a sigh. “Besides, green one’s already bitching about how soft the Canadian targets were. Might as well give him something that hits back.”

“I’ll launch the call.” Donald turned, muttering, “And file another skylight requisition while I’m at it.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

The ops center doors split wide.

Boomer got there first, already mid-sentence. “—and then he says, ‘this isn’t even real poutine,’ like what does that mean? It had fries, it had gravy, that’s poutine!”

Butch flashed in and was already upside down on one of the chairs. Literally. The green Rowdyruff dug into the backrest, arms hanging off the edge like he might snap the whole thing just for fun.

Brick walked in last, quiet. Eyes locked to the tactical display before Cecil even finished turning.

“We’ve got a situation in Alaska, boys,” Cecil began flatly.

Brick raised an eyebrow. “When you say situation…”

“I mean, a goddamn situation, Brick,” Cecil answered back without hesitation. “Frost Giant. Downtown Anchorage. Civilian casualties already climbing.”

That got Butch’s attention. He flipped to standing in the blink of an eye, feral grin wide on his face. “Finally. Something big.”

Cecil went on, tone dry enough to flake as if Butch didn’t say that once a week. “These things predate most society’s gods. Think glaciers with feelings. One of ‘em wiped out a town in the 90s before we figured out how to bring it down without nuking a foreign country.”

Brick squinted at the display. “We extracting or containing?”

“Up to you,” Cecil said. “Just don’t get anyone else killed.”

Brick nodded once, already analyzing. “Alright, boys,” he said. “Flight pattern Alph—”

“Oh my god, just say fly normal,” Butch cut in, already cracking his knuckles.

Boomer tilted his head, giving Brick a look of his own. “I told you that pattern didn’t mean anything!”

Brick’s mouth twitched. He didn’t blink. “Fine. Fly normal.”

They shot through the launch shaft, glass and steel shuddered from the force ripple, metal giving way in their wake.

Donald winced. “So that’s… what, the sixth skylight this month?”

Director Stedman didn’t bother to look away from the screen. “Small price to pay for the world’s safety, Donald. Besides, they’re improving.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

Alaska kinda sucked.

Dull sky. Wind like razors. Nothing but white for miles.

But they weren’t here to sightsee. Besides, they didn’t have time as they crossed hundreds of miles in a matter of seconds. And then they were there.

Buildings split down the middle, scaffolding twisted into scrap. Brick’s eyes widened slightly as they came to a sudden halt in the air. There she was—towering over downtown like someone forgot to scale her model back to reality.

She wasn’t roaring. That was the worst part. She was humming, almost like she was enjoying herself. It would have been almost cute, if her humming didn’t sound like a fast-moving avalanche.

Boomer hovered lower. “Oh wow. She’s, like… bigger than the courthouse. Like way bigger.”

Brick adjusted his internal metric. “Size-to-force ratio is… uhhh…”

“Fucky?” Butch offered.

Brick rolled his eyes, but accepted the choice of words. It wasn’t exactly as good as any, but it was good for them. “Fucky,” he replied back. “I’m thinking magic-boosted.”

“Magic,” Butch said, grinning. “Good. Been a minute.”

Their comms crackled.

Donald’s voice, chipper as always, chimed in. “Just a reminder, gentlemen, we can level her from orbit, but it would cause—let’s say—irreversible downtown issues. Talk her down if you want but we had one of these show up four years ago. They don’t see anything that’s not their size worth anything but a distraction or a meal.”

The yeti stopped and looked up, it’s dark eyes sharp. She was old, but definitely not dumb. Not all that confused either.

“Well,” she rumbled in that rumbling voice of hers. “You’re new. When did the tiny ones start flying and speaking such pretty words?” A dark laugh left her mouth a moment later. “My last time hunting in these grounds, you only grunted and threw sticks.”

Boomer waved, smile twitching a little as he clearly took in the crazy things the frost giant was saying. “Uh—hi!”

Brick ignored him. “Target is vocal. Sentient. Apply nonlethal unless escalated.”

Butch pulled a face. “She’s eating people. Let’s just waste her hairy ass.”

The giant’s arm carved through the upper floor of an office tower and pulled out a man in a dress shirt and tie, screaming his head off. She held him up like a novelty pen as if showing him off to the boys. “So breakable,” she mused. “Even in these odd tall nests of yours.”

The Boys circled, fast. Brick took top. Butch to the left. Boomer crackling right.

Brick raised his voice—not loud, but sharp enough to cut. “Put the stuffed suit down. Now.”

The giant didn’t just laugh—she barked, the sound dragging itself up from somewhere low and ancient, like tectonic plates shifting. Then, without another word, the jotun squeezed. Brick saw the man pop like a tube of paint between her fingers, blood and bone painting the air before gravity remembered its job. 

That hand could snap a bus. She did it with her thumb and forefinger.

“Little rainbow pests givin’ orders now?” the yeti drawled, breath steaming as it rolled past cracked lips. She blinked slow. Eyes huge. Focused. Not dumb. Not confused either. “I’m lookin’ for my mate. Went huntin’ while I was nappin’. Didn’t come back.”

Boomer edged closer, hovering just behind Brick’s right shoulder. “Uh—how long ago was your nap?”

One of her feet casually turned a Honda Civic into folded steel. No change in expression. Like she was swatting bugs in the kitchen. “Short rest, I think. A few millennia, not too long. Ice was real nice.”

Butch snorted hard through his nose. “Yeah, well, sounds like your man’s been ice jerky since mammoths were trending.”

Her face split open like a chasm cracking through bedrock, clearly not a fan of that joke. “YOU LITTLE SHIT!”

The swing came fast, faster than she had any right to be. Butch caught the backhand across his forearms, whole body bracing—and still flew through a building. Glass and concrete peeled off like skin from fruit.

Brick didn’t flinch. 

He just clocked the numbers in real time, eyes narrowed. Knew it. Size-to-strength ratio’s off. Magical class. He’d dealt with worse, technically. Not often, really, considering he didn’t usually make it his job like the Powerpuffs.

Street-level panic spiked as civilians fled in clustered, twitchy packs, like every wrong movement might make her look twice.

Boomer blurred down, trailing arcs of blue that snapped the air like firecrackers. Two kids in a frozen yogurt shop were gone before the windows finished shattering. A dog, too. Brick saw to that.

The yeti tilted her head, more curious and less angry now. More—interested. “Not prey. Too quick. Too… shiny.”

You don’t get to be curious about us, Brick thought, and keyed the comms. “Lead her out. Waterfront. Get her out of the grid before she levels a block.”

Butch crawled out of the rubble, grinning like someone gave him candy and a concussion. “She hits like a truck made of hate. I’m into it.”

Boomer skidded back into the airspace above, lightning coiling around his arms. “Hey! Snowcone! Wanna dance?”

She followed. Of course she did. Tracked them like prey. Not with rage. With hunger. Hunting reflex. Visual lock. Quadrupedal stance option suppressed but not forgotten.

“So glowy,” she mused, almost fondly. “You might taste like sunfire.”

“Once clear,” Brick said low, “terminate.”

Butch’s laughter popped over the channel. “There it is! The nerd’s back. ‘Terminate with prejudice.’ ‘Execute with efficiency.’ ‘Decimate completely.’ Man, just say kill.”

“You knew what I meant.”

“Yeah, but your thesaurus is showing.”

“Focus,” Brick snapped, but his voice snagged mid-command because Butch was looping under her reach again, smiling too much. Not out of cockiness. Just because he was built to enjoy this.

And because, naturally, he couldn’t help himself, “Hey, while we’re here,” Butch said, blasting green concussives into her knees to stagger her forward, “Why we still callin’ ourselves Trinity?”

Brick blinked. “What?”

Boomer chimed in immediately. “I’ve been wondering that too! I mean, it sounds cool, but like—not us.“

“Not now,” Brick said, already preemptively regretting giving them the space to think.

“Kinda corporate,” Boomer muttered.

“Exactly! Thank you!” Butch called out, swerving around a boulder-sized fist.

Brick sucked in a breath through his teeth. “We’re not doing this now.”

Boomer hovered just behind him, shrugging in midair. “I mean… we’re kinda always doing this now.”

“Fooooocus. Giant. Monster. Rampaging.”

Butch, of course, grinned wider. “I’m just sayin’. If we’re stuck in this freak dimension forever, we should at least name ourselves something awesome. Not like… churchy.”

The yeti roared again, pawed at an apartment tower, peeled it open like a sardine tin. Nobody inside anymore. Brick had made sure. 

And then—

“PFTTT,” Boomer snorted behind him, holding his gut like the joke got stuck halfway out.

Brick didn’t look over. He didn’t need to. He could feel it coming—Boomer winding up like a toy about to say something incredibly dumb in only the way Boomer could fucking manage.

“What?” he asked anyway, flat and already done with it.

Boomer’s face crumpled before he even got the words out, like his mouth couldn’t decide if it was supposed to make noise or fall off entirely. “It—uh—hehehe—it sounded like you said ‘fuck us.'”

Brick blinked.

Butch lost it too. That sharp, throaty snort of his turning instantly into laughter loud enough to bounce off glass.

“Fuck. Us.” Butch rasped, barely keeping himself upright midair. Brick’s glare hit him too late to matter. Boomer was already cackling, doubling over mid-hover like his own joke had knocked the wind out of him too.

And then a massive pale hand backhanded Boomer out of the skyline like he’d tripped into a missile test.

Brick closed his eyes. Just for a second. Just long enough to regret ever being conscious today. “Idiot.”

The frost giant’s thunderous bellow rolled through the city like it had weight. Buildings shook. “WHERE IS HE?! WHERE IS MY HUSBAND?!”

Boomer zipped back into frame with nothing more than a few scuff marks and a lopsided grin. “Hey, if we’re picking names, can we not be Trinity? I vote Mega Force! Or, or—ooh! Thundercrash?”

The yeti swung again, this time catching a whole parked SUV with the back of her hand and hurling it without looking. It embedded into the side of an office like a thumbtack. “WHY DO THE TINY ONES SPEAK SO WELL NOW? LAST TIME I STRETCHED MY LEGS, YOU GRUNTED AND THREW DUNG.”

“Her name’s Kaltora, by the way. We just got her name fresh off a report from our thaumaturgical department,” Donald’s voice buzzed in over comms, still calm and upbeat in that way the glasses guy did. “A Jotun goddess worshipped by ancient Inuit tribes and fed to her as a sacrifice. She’s been in quite the deep sleep under the ice a few miles from here for roughly three thousand years. We didn’t know she was still alive until Anchorage lit up our seismic grid like a Christmas tree.”

Brick narrowed his eyes as a girder flew past his head, red lines of heat melting it before it could hit anything or anyone important. “And what are we looking at for her hubby? We fighting another one anytime soon?”

Donald was quiet for a few moments, but not in the way like he was reading, more like he was trying to recall something. “Deceased. GDA confirmed kill four years ago. Special Agent Brit handled the kill himself, with… with some GDA assistance, I believe.”

Brick frowned. You believe?

Butch snorted mid-pivot, zipping sideways to avoid a meaty swipe. “So she woke up all hangry and single. Great.”

“You’re not normal prey,” Kaltora snarled, reaching for Brick this time. “But maybe if I eat you and a few thousand of the screamers, my mood will improve.”

Donald’s voice chimed in again. “Civilian casualties are ticking up. You need to get her away from population dense areas immediately.”

“Yeah,” Brick muttered, rerouting altitude. “Let’s play tag.”

Boomer’s smile split his face in half. “Best. Game. Ever.”

“You’re it!” Butch shouted, green blur slamming into Kaltora’s knee like a freight train. Concrete spiderwebbed under her, pavement turning to dark gravel from the force of the blow. Her scream cracked more than a few windows but Boomer zipping up to yell in her ear with that sonic scream of his cracked at least twice as many.

“Come get me, frosty!” Boomer yelled at a more normal tone, voice peaking with joy as he let lightning ripple behind him in bright blue trails. He popped her in the side of the head with a focused sonic pulse, loud enough to make her stumble.

The chase started fast. Kaltora roared and lunged, and the Boys pulled her—left, right, up through buildings, down into streets. Luring her further and further out of the city. Brick stayed back to cut escape vectors, roasting a clean melt through snowbanks with a quick burst of heat vision. Faster.

Butch wasn’t shutting up.

“So listen, if we’re stuck here forever—and let’s face it, we probably are—we should keep the real name. Rowdyruff Boys still hits.”

“Cecil wants something more marketable,” Brick replied as he continued his forward pace, tracking the next path through the hills..

“Yeah?” Butch did a motion with his hands, the green Rowdyruff flying upside down for a few seconds to pull it off. “Then tell him to market these nuts.”

Boomer giggled. “Rowdyruff kinda rules, though. Trinity sounds like a math problem.”

Brick clicked his tongue. “What do you know about math, Boom?”

Boomer stuck his tongue out. “That it’s hard.”

“Idiots,” Brick muttered to himself, shaking his head. Seven years of stupid, and his brothers still managed to get on his last super-tough nerve. “Stay tight. She’s getting sloppier.”

Kaltora’s meaty hand dove into the ground, treating packed snow and dirt as little more trouble than water as she ripped a tree out by the roots. The noise croaked across the landscape like a roll of thunder as she hefted it up, and cracked again with another thunderous noise as she  hurled the whole thing like a javelin.

“Whooo-hooooo!” Boomer literally spun upside down, still laughing at the top of his lungs as the massive tree whiffed his head of messy blond hair. 

“I’LL TURN YOUR BONES INTO SNACKS,” she shrieked, rumbling voice thick with fury now, no longer just annoyance. “I WILL USE YOUR SKULLS FOR ORNAMENTS.”

If there was one thing Brick appreciated about his brothers, as ridiculous as they were, it was how they often managed to do what he needed, right when he needed it. Case in point, Butch was already baiting the thing again like it was a game, not a near-god-tier apex predator with biceps bigger than some city buses. “Yeah?” Butch called back, peeling through the air in a sideways loop, lazy even now. “You gotta catch us first, Bigfoot!”

Focus, Brick almost said. Instead, he tapped the side of his comm, three syllables coming out quick as he could manage, probably fast enough that a normal person couldn’t even make out a single word. “Pincer. Now.”

There was no protest this time, no joking, no interuption from either of his brothers. Boomer peeled off in a streak bluer than the Alaskan sky could ever hope to be. The Bluest of the three zigged high and zagged low, sparks shedding off his fists like static from a balloon rubbed too hard, give or take a few million extra. The air around him warped faintly from speed, voice already cracking with the excitement that came from a fight like this. “Hey! Snow lady! Bet you can’t tag me twice!”

From the other side, Butch dove in close, both fists glowing a bright green that looked downright toxic. The Green didn’t throw punches so much as hurl his whole body like the living weapon he considered himself. He skimmed her thigh, then lit up her calf in a spray of jade energy bursts. “Your man probably bailed ’cause you snore like glaciers!”

What that meant, Brick really wasn’t sure, but it had to be some kind of slur to Frost Giants from the way Kaltora wheeled around, roaring, eyes darting between the streaks harassing her like flies. She missed the third.

Brick went vertical. No taunt. No flash. No stupid theatrics.

Just a sharp rise, air cracking behind him as he angled upward into the open blue. Then nothing. For one second. Two. The wind stilled.

And then the sky ruptured.

Mach 9 turned his frame into a warhead. Brick punched down from orbit, every molecule in the air around him boiling off in a ring of compressed heat that made the world blink. His body didn’t bounce on contact. It tunneled, all of him focused through a single tight impact point—the crown of her skull.

Bone split. Air burst. Kaltora’s face snapped forward like a marionette getting its strings cut.

Brick came out the other side soaked in something that wasn’t blood but definitely wasn’t not. Blue. Bits of pinkish brain stuff. A single tooth.

She didn’t fall right away. Just… stood there, swaying. Like the body hadn’t gotten the message yet.

Then gravity remembered.

The sound she made when she hit was almost quieter than it should’ve been. Big things always fell soft. It was the concrete under her that screamed.

Brick hovered above her slowly cooling corpse, blinking red out of his eyelashes.

Boomer coasted in behind him, nose wrinkling. “Dude. Dude. That was so gross.” He squinted at Brick. “You got brain on your chin.”

“Handled it, huh,” came a new voice, dry and not surprised. The Immortal dropped in, cape settling behind him like he thought it made him look older. Which, sure, it did.

Brick gave him a look. A nod. Nothing else.

“Neat,” Butch said, not even facing them. “These comics suck. They don’t even got Dragon Ball.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

The zoo stank.

Old trees. Wet hay. Screaming. Metal. Shitty nachos. And sweat.

Also dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were a very big part of today.

Because apparently, the San Diego Zoo had a whole dinosaur exhibit.

Actual Cretaceans.

“Hold still, you lazy lumpy loser-ass iguana!” Butch was straddling a T-Rex like it was a dirt bike, tiny arms trying to wrap around its giant neck as it bucked and snarled beneath him. “I said chill!” Brick had to give him credit, he was doing a good job in not hurting the thing. “CHILL!”

Doing a great job.

The prehistoric section of the San Diego Zoo looked like it’d lost a bet. Broken pens, crushed fences, food carts snapped in half. One of the gift shops had a velociraptor halfway through its front door, blinking like huh, doors now?

Civilians trapped behind the ticket counter. Screaming. Always with the screaming.

Red Rush zipped by again, leaving a trail of crimson behind him as his afterimage as he hauled off two kids under each arm. “This is not normal day!”

What is a normal day, exactly? Brick thoyght to himself as he hovered thirty feet up, tracking the herd paths, cross-referencing grid data from their last sweep with satellite overhead. This seems pretty normal for the last month or so. Really, it wouldn’t have been too crazy if it was back in Townsville or even Megaville, being honest. Townsville was crazy, but Megaville was just… insane. Somehow even worse than Metropolis.

Brick turned his head slowly. “Boomer, herd them east. Keep the raptors boxed in.”

“Trying!” Boomer flailed midair, narrowly dodging a swooping pterodactyl. “I think they understand me, but they’re being jerks about it!” His gaze darted off to the left as a screech sounded his way. “How rude!”

Butch frowned his way with a look that couldn’t have said confusion any more clearly than if he wore a neon flashing sighn. “They said what?”

Boomer pointed at the raptors, face deadly serious. “That one just called me ugly. I swear. That one? It was personal.”

The air reeked of damp fur and overturned mulch. Brick didn’t care. Not when Butch was actively suplexing a T-Rex while screaming about anime power scaling and Boomer was getting into an actual argument with a raptor that seemed just as emotionally unstable.

“You can talk to dinosaurs?” Red Rush blinked into view again, blur-shift settling just long enough to be annoying.

Boomer lit up. “Yeah! I mean—I can talk to anything, technically, but like, they don’t always listen? These ones are kinda stubborn. And loud. Real loud. That one over there keeps calling me ‘shiny snack.’”

Brick didn’t answer. He dropped low, let a stream of frost-fire coat the feet of an incoming stegosaurus. Ice splintered up its legs like glass over water. It shrieked, pitched high and ancient, and buckled. Petting zoo behind it intact. For now.

“Dinosaurs are just animals,” Boomer added belatedly, half to Red Rush, half to himself as he backed away from another raptor that looked mildly offended. “Big, scaley, angry animals, but still.”

“Very bitey,” Butch grunted, digging his heels into the T-Rex’s spine. “And ugly. This one looks like a wrinkly foot.”

The T-Rex lunged. Butch caught the jaws with both hands and held.

“Nothing like Jurassic Park,” he growled. “These things actually fight back.”

“Jurassic Park’s different here anyway,” Brick said, eyes scanning for the next issue. Too many civilians still clustered near the reptile house. Red Rush was fast, but even he couldn’t evacuate people who didn’t move right. “Movies in this dimension are weird.”

“Yeah,” Boomer piped up, sparking out a shield as two raptors tried to leap past him. “These dinos talk. And wear little hats.”

Butch snorted. “No DBZ. Talking animals in suits. This place sucks.”

“I like the comics here,” Boomer said brightly, shifting to redirect the lightning around a kid with a balloon. “That Boku No Hero Academia one’s pretty cool—”

“It’s My Hero, you moron,” Butch snapped. “Say it right or I’m throwing you into the next triceratops.”

“I did say it right!”

“You said the weeb version!”

“They’re anime! They’re both the weeb version!”

“No, you said the Japanese one! This is America!”

Red Rush looked between them, bewildered. “You are fighting about cartoon while dinosaurs attack?”

“First off, it’s anime, not cartoons,” Butch corrected. “Big difference.”

“And second,” Brick added, freezing another dinosaur in place, “multitasking is a valuable skill.”

Boomer, still trying to reason with the velociraptors, called over his shoulder: “You’re the one who goes as Vegeta every Halloween!”

“I go as different Vegetas!” Butch shouted back, clearly as offended as if Boomer had insulted their nonexistent mother. “Base form, Saiyan Saga, Super Saiyan, Majin Vegeta—they’re completely different costumes!”

“Still the same character!” Boomer stuck his tongue out.

“Shut the fuck up, Sonichu!”

Boomer squawked, the blond barely missing a beat as he bonked a raptor over the head, the smaller dino trying to take a chunk out of his arm first. “It’s a mix of my two favorite characters!”

“It’s creepy!”

Red Rush skidded to a halt nearby, caught mid-rescue between two civilians dragging a stroller. He looked at Brick, baffled. “They are… always like this?”

Brick didn’t flinch as a pteranodon screeched overhead. Laser-precise heat vision clipped its wing. The bird dropped fast but didn’t die. Just enough damage.

“Every day,” he muttered.

Butch finally had the T-Rex choked out and was laughing as it collapsed under him. “Man, first the big snow bimbo, now this Jurassic shitshow. What’s next, aliens again?”

“Hope not,” Boomer said, skipping sideways as a raptor tried to nip his arm. He zapped it—gentle, controlled—and winced. “At least the lizards don’t talk about our feelings.”

Brick didn’t say anything.

Red Rush circled again. “This is very strange job. Dinosaurs. Children. Screaming.”

“We used to just rob banks,” Boomer offered, too cheerful. “Honestly, it was kinda boring.”

Red Rush tripped. Just a stutter in motion. He caught himself.

Butch didn’t let it go. “GDA’s using us,” he said bluntly, dragging the unconscious dinosaur by its tail. “That one scientist with the funky face hair looked at me like I was a test tube that could punch.”

“Fu Manchu,” Brick muttered. “And yeah. He’s curious.”

“I like Cecil,” Boomer said, petting a raptor now like it wasn’t trying to eat him a minute ago. “He gave us separate rooms.”

“Because you broke three walls last time we shared,” Brick said. “Because you fought over a toothbrush.”

“You used mine!”

“You licked mine first!”

“I marked it!”

Red Rush looked like he was reconsidering the contract. “In my country, we say ‘Trust, but verify.’ Cecil is… complicated man.”

“See?” Butch jerked a thumb at him. “Even Dash agrees.”

“My name is Red Rush.”

“Whatever, Dash.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –​

It was still a little odd, Brick wasn’t gonna lie, seeing the ground splitting open like this, when it wasn’t because of an earthquake or watching someone superstrong wreak some havoc.

Granted, the ones wreaking said havoc were usually them, but eh…

Whathever the reason and no matter the cause, the way the ground creaked open now, breaking the quiet of the otherwise calm Southern summer night, was still something to see, if you liked that kind of thing at least. Cracks spread faster than an ice cube would melt in this heat, and Brick couldn’t make sense of the energy that seemed to pour off the cemetery even as he tried to focus on it—Smells like corroded metal, tastes like… old rot.

Whatever it was, the air was sharp with it, the stench almost stilling the area in a way that felt dead.

Speaking of the dead…

Brick was the first to say that when he had heard they had a situation at a cemetery, he hadn’t expected the situation to be the occupants.

Dry bones wrapped in tattered gray, pulled themselves up and out of the shattered cemetery ground, pushing through both wood and dirt with the strength only the dead could have. Brick wasn’t exactly sure how they were managing even that much on what had to be barely-there strings of rotted muscle but Brick had a good guess… a pretty pretty good guess that it had something to do with the dark purple swirling necro-glow that surrounded each and every one of the undead. Confederate uniforms, crusted with mildew and legacy and way too much history to die proper.

Brick hovered sixty feet up, boots twitching toward the soil as he stared at the first horde shambling their way towards the cemetery exit. He wasn’t saying anything.

Not yet, at least.

He hadn’t since they pulled up to the cemetery and the first one had pulled itself out of the grave sideways and started moving on a missing leg and groaning through a broken jaw as it hopped toward town like it still had errands to run about a century and a half later.

“So like… are these the slave guys?” Boomer asked, voice cracking over the earpiece like he already knew it was a dumb question but couldn’t stop it leaving his mouth.

Gravestones—cheap, crumbling, mossbitten—leaned every direction, toppled by the literal dead weight clawing out from below. Some held bayonets, personal items they’d clearly been buried with, but after all these years, it’s not like they would even w-Crack.

A bullet plinked off his forehead, Brick staring up at the mindless shooter and down at the glowing purple bullet that seemed to vsnish almost as soon as it plinked off his head and fell to the groumd. Okay, so I was wrong.

All of them had those stupid glowing eyes, like light purple LEDs had been shoved into rotted sockets and no one told them till they woke up one-hundred and fify years after the fact.

“Yep,” Butch muttered, then cracked a grin Brick couldn’t see but could hear in his voice. The crunch that followed sounded like he’d just driven a fist through something you shouldn’t step on, let alone punch. “Zombie Confederates. I probably don’t say this all that often but best. Mission. Ever.”

Boomer’s lightning cut across the dusk like it thought it was helping. “So we get to see history come alive? And win a war again. That’s kinda cool.”

Brick raised an eyebrow so high that if he still wore his hat right now, it might have disappeared under the brim. “How is that cool?”

Boomer shrugged. “I dunno,” he trned to Brick with a smile, “we’re serving our country, I guess.”

Our co- Brick fought to keep his eye from twitching as he promised himself to keep Boomer from listening to Donald again, that perfectly placid and smiley cyborg stuffing his patriotic and self-sacrificing dumbassery into his little brother’s already too-small brain. “We’ve been here three months, Boomer. Don’t tell me the ice cream parties and pizza rotted your brain already.”

Boomer shrugged. “Ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.”

Brick didn’t answer this time, not even to roll his eyes at the bullshit that he knew Boomer didn’t even buy into… yet. He was still tracking the way the corpses moved. His breath hitched once, then flattened.

His thumb clicked the earpiece. “Donald,” he said, low and clipped, “what the actual hell.”

Donald’s voice came in like it always did—polite, smooth, like someone stapled military protocol onto a cruise ship captain. “According to records, a Confederate necromancer based out of Alabama—”

“You’re kidding.” Brick almost hoped he was because that was literally only half a sentence and most of those words already didn’t belong anywhere near the same zipcode.

“—cast a national-scale resurrection spell in the early 1950s. The Liberty League stopped the worst of it, but the fail-safe was already in place. The phrasing used was… ‘The South shall rise again.’ And again. And again.”

Brick didn’t blink. He just opened his mouth and let out a long, guttural, “Oh my god, is this the sort of shit the Girls dealt with?”

Butch cauht his muttered grievance and grinned his way. “Probably, biggest of bros.”

Brick shook his head and grunted. “Yeah, I’d have killed me too.”

Boomer zapped another corpse and winced as a finger went flyin. “Wow, they really stink. Like old people soup.”

Brick felt his eye twitch as he turned to his brother, fist crushing the skull of one that ambled just close enough. “Boom-Boom… what does that even mean?”

Butch was already three bodies deep, his fists coated in green-tinged blood that steamed where it hit grass. “Who cares? They’re Confederate zombies. It’s like a punching bag but racist.”

Brick sucked in a breath and froze half a dozen at once with a single exhale. Ice crawled up pant legs and over cracked boots. “Confederate zombies? It sounds so cool on paper,” he admitted out loud, “but just so dumb when it’s in front of you.

Boomer hovered overhead, squinting. “Why they all got the same costume?”

Uniform. Brick didn’t bother correcting him out loud, letting the word sit in his head instead. Thank you, Mojo, for thinking you could homeschool, Brick thought with such a heaping helping of sarcasm even Boomer wouldn’t ask for seconds.

For all he could do with his Chemical X-ed up gray matter, it didn’t take much time around Mojo Jojo to realize that the super-smart simian was about as effective in designing a good curriculum as he was in getting his point across in anything approaching a timely manner, if at all. As a result, Boomer could probably sing you a bunch of classic musicals, including and especially the Pirates of Penzance — entirely unrelated was that Brick hated that musical for… no reason at all, not because his brother wouldn’t shut up singing it, but no reason — but the blond Rowdyruff still had little to no skill in anything math or science related.

Well, nothing except an nearly instinctive mind for advanced electromagnetic theory and application.

Case in point, Boomer zipped between gravestones, creating an electrical field that short-circuited several corpses that dropped several corpses.

You take the good with the bad. “Good job, Boom,” Brick voiced as he lazily catalogued the field again with his eyes able to pierce the gloom easily. Boomer’s flight path had been erratic the last fifteen seconds. Distracted. Butch’s hits were getting sloppier.

More impact, less control. Not like it was necessary, these were zombies.

“Do you guys ever miss Townsville?” Boomer asked it too fast, too light, like he hadn’t meant to ask it at all.

The question came out of nowhere, momentarily halting Butch’s rampage.

Brick grunted, snapping his fingers at both his brothers in a sign that told them to ditch the earpieces. Without wasting a moment, they complied, all three of them shutting off and pocketing their communicators.

“What? No,” Butch scoffed, resuming his destruction with slightly less enthusiasm. “Why would I miss getting our butts kicked by the Powerpuffs all the time?”

Brick remained silent, methodically eliminating zombies with precise blasts of heat vision.

The bodies were still burning—ash and steam curling up from loose limbs and fractured graves like the air couldn’t decide if it was supposed to carry the stink or choke on it. His heat vision cut a clean line through the last straggler. Precise. Controlled. Gone.

Boomer’s voice came quieter than usual. “I dunno, man. Sometimes I dream Bubbles is looking for us. Like, actually looking. Crying and junk.”

“That’s stupid,” Butch said, already moving again. No push behind it, though, no real heat to anything he was saying. “They probably threw a party soon as we blinked out.”

Blinked out is a real good way to describe that, honestly. Brick’s voice cut through after a beat too long. “Nah. They probably think we’re planning something.”

Butch perked up, the way he did when someone threw gasoline on his ego. “Yeah! Bet they’re all huddled up, freaking out. Waiting for the big comeback.”

A Confederate officer made the mistake of getting too close to Boomer mid-thought. Thunder cracked. The thing exploded into bone dust.

Boomer didn’t even flinch. “What if they’re not, though? What if they’re actually worried?”

Butch scoffed, loud and fast. “Who cares?” Another crunch. Another body dropped. “We got a better gig now. People actually want us here.”

Brick’s tone stayed flat. “Heroes, huh?”

Boomer drifted closer, sparks still hissing off his hands. “I mean, we’re not scaring folks anymore. We’re saving them.”

“Still breaking things,” Butch pointed out. His fist went through a mausoleum wall. “Just with better PR.”

“Different intent,” Brick said. “Different outcome.”

Boomer’s head tilted. “But still us, right?”

None of them answered. Not out loud. They just kept going. Systematic. Efficient. Quiet.

Then Butch grunted, popped a zombie’s head off with the heel of his boot. “I like it here. People cheer. Even when I do some insane shit like a skyscraper high elbow drop.”

“Food’s better too,” Boomer added with a widening smile. “Last time we cleaned up a town, Cecil let us eat whatever. Like, literally anything. I asked for that banana-flavored cereal they don’t make anymore and it just showed up.”

“It’s control,” Brick said. “Keep us happy, keep us useful.”

Butch snorted. “You make everything sound like a prison.”

Brick shrugged. “I like the tools. The backup. The challenge.”

“Told you he likes it,” Butch muttered to Boomer with a smirk.

Boomer perked up. “So we’re staying?”

Brick rolled his eyes.  “I didn’t say we weren’t. I was just saying...”

Butch pumped both fists like he’d won a game. “Yes! I can finish all of Science Dog. Season three just dropped, and I need to know if Dr. Wrench makes it.”

Boomer blinked. “Wait… you actually like that show?”

Butch’s face twisted. “It’s complex. It’s got themes and such.”

“You mean violent,” Brick said.

“Same thing.” Butch grabbed a corpse’s arm and beat another zombie to pieces with it. “It’s got layers.”

“Uh-huh,” Brick muttered.

Boomer hovered upside down. “This makes up for the dinosaur mess last week. Their heads didn’t even pop this easy.”

Butch grinned. “Watch this.”

Snap. Say what you will about zombie heads, but when they popped, they popped. Wet. Loud. Satisfying, if you were into that kind of thing.

Brick wiped his gloves off on his sleeve and popped his comm back in. “Focus. At least nine more sites to check after this one.”

Boomer groaned and Butch rolled his eyes, but both of them followed along.

“Donald,” Brick said, tone already back to work-mode, “get me every Confederate cemetery within a 500-mile radius.”

“On it,” Donald’s voice replied smoothly.

Butch sighed. “Nine more? We’re gonna be out till breakfast.”

Boomer was all chipper again as he added, “Better than math homework.”

Brick let himself smirk, barely. “Not bored. I’ll take it.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Cecil Stedman watched the screens. No reaction. Eyes scanning.

Yeti takedown: clean. Collateral high but contained.

Dinosaur breakout: chaos, but stylish.

Confederate dead: efficient. Brutal. No loss of civilian life.

Three boys seated at a round table in a steel-gray debriefing room. One stretching like a cat. One buzzing in his chair. One stone-still, watching the screen like it might blink first.

Cecil didn’t smile. Not really. But something in the set of his jaw shifted. “Three weeks. Seventeen ops. No civilian body count. Impressive.”

Brick sat forward slightly. “Protocols scaled better than expected.”

Butch stretched harder, arms behind his head. “Translation: we’re freakishly good at weird shit.”

Boomer let out a loud yawn. “Can we get pizza again? I’m literally dying.”

Cecil didn’t blink. “You boys are catching on faster than most full-grown agents.”

Brick met his eyes. “We adapt. Always have.”

Cecil’s nod was small, the measured movement the most the man usually did. “World’s noticed too.”

One gesture from him and the screens switched.

ANCHORAGE SAVED BY TRINITY 

DINOS TAMED BY TEEN HEROES 

TEAM TRINITY SPOTTED OVER TENNESSEE

Butch grinned. “Told you we’d be famous.”

Cecil’s tone dipped low. “Fame’s a loaded gun, son. Folks start looking your way for all kinds of reasons. Not all of ‘em friendly.”

Brick nodded slowly.

Boomer, oblivious as always, tilted his head, “So… pizza or what?”

Cecil didn’t sigh but something settled in his face. “Pizza party’s already waiting in your rec room. You earned it.”

Without a moment’s hesitation, they zoomed out of the room in a tri-colored burst of light, leaving the good director alone in his office.

After a few seconds of silence, wrinkled fingers tapped the screen atop his desk, the last file still open with a heading that was clear as day: Team Trinity Power Readings

Three graphs. Three names. Three spikes.

Brick. Butch. Boomer.

All trending up on a slow, yet decidedly steady scale over the course of nearly a dozen weeks.

Cecil leaned in, hands flat on his desk. “Now how in the hell is this happening?”