Greg Vs Raid 9-9

Silence was a beautiful thing.

Precious.

Some would say golden, even. 

The silence surrounding him in his renovated warehouse-turned-lair was not only beautiful in its awkwardness but it was a damn near perfect thing, Greg conducting it like a symphony. Chef’s kiss, really. 

The young blond cape stood between two worlds, a semi-human bridge between his past and his goddamn glorious, terrifying future. On one side, Sparky and Theo stood looking like they’d just walked in on a secret cult induction, all tense shoulders and narrowed eyes.

On the other, his Four Heavenly Kings (sickest name he landed on after a long, long period of deliberation) standing with disciplined patience of men who were paid very well to wait for him to handle his shit.

Oh man, the looks on their faces. Priceless. Should have sold tickets. 

To who, was the question? 

But that wasn’t really relevant, now was it?

Clicking his tongue with a noise not too distant from a chipmunk, Greg clapped his hands together, acoustics doing the sound a ton of favors. “Right! Where… where were we? Oh, yeah, I remember now. Introductions.” 

One arm swept over and towards each of the four men standing behind him and a little to the left with all the gravitas he could manage. “Boys, meet my bigger boys; the senior management of my various, completely legitimate business ventures.”

Greg’s finger went over to the big guy in the red muscle shirt, the dyed-blond hair bright and ugly as ever, not that he’d ever knock the guy’s ego down like that but still... 

“This absolute unit…” The musclehead in red nodded up and down at Theo and Sparky as Greg did him the honors of introducing him. “…is Wesley Yang. Head of my Red Faction, in charge of… let’s call it ‘Aggressive Negotiations and Asset Protection.’ Guy gives great hugs, if you’re into potential spinal issues.”

“Yo,” Wesley grunted the single syllable as a grin, wide and almost challenging, spread across the bulky Chinese man’s face. “What’s good with y’all? I go by Wes, by the way.”

Greg held back the urge to narrow his eyes over at Wes, because that was news to him, but… I guess.

Shaking his head, the teenager gestured over to the next guy; the youngest member of his Heavenly Kings, and the only one of the group who looked like he’d just stepped out of a K-drama and was about to foreclose on your family home with perfectly combed hair and a smile built for the boardoom. “This sharply dressed bastard is Joon Lee. He runs the Blue Faction, which handles Finance and Acquisitions. Basically, he’s the guy who makes sure my money makes baby monies. He’s also the reason my taxes are, quote, ‘a fascinatingly creative work of legal fiction.'”

Taxes… were not something Greg understood, and he had no real desire to. That’s what he had Joon for, after all.

The young man in question gave a slight, polished bow of his head, smile tight, thin and poised as he did it. Honestly, Greg wasn’t sure the guy’s manners fit someone who was barely a little over twenty-one, but Joon was pretty much the most professional out of them. Seo said he was born with a briefcase in his hand and a perfectly-pressed quarterzip on. 

“A pleasure to make your acquaintances,” Joon emphasized his words with another crisp nod to both his friends again, each word just as crisp and clean like he’d rehearsed it in the mirror.

He wasn’t sure why he was going in this order, but they hadn’t exactly walked in as neat as he liked so he was kinda stuck with it. Greg’s finger jabbed over at the next guy in line, the only one  who looked like he was one cigarette and a piece of bad news away from just giving up on sleep as a human concept. “This here’s Seo, Seo Asada. My right hand and head of the White Faction. Intelligence, administration, and making sure I don’t forget to, like, eat. His job is to be everyone’s dad and boss at the same tim, so… you know, no one likes him that much.”

Seo’s tired eyes flicked from Greg’s with a quiet sigh and moved over to his friends. The Japanese man in the white silk dress shirt offered them a more formal, respectful bow than Joon had, the action making his long black hair shift over his shoulders. “It is an honor, sirs.”

Sirs? Greg didn’t bother to hide how wide his eyebrows went up, barely holding back from snorting at just how blatant that was. Oh…okay. I mean, he knew Seo was good at covering his ass and getting on people’s good sides, but come on, man. Laying it on a little thick.

Finally, Greg’s hand came to rest on the bald, muscular man in the leather jacket; a half-Chinese/half-Japanese statue carved from nothing but quiet menace and he assumed a small mountain of protein powder. “Last but certainly not least, this friendly fellow is Takata Jonouchi. I’d say you can call him Joey, but no…” Greg shook his head tight, pulling his smile back a little. “No, you can’t. Only I call him that. He runs the Black Faction, in charge of Discipline and Training. He’s our… spiritual advisor. And he can kill you with a soup spoon.”

That was a complete and total lie, considering he’d never witnessed him kill anyone but judging from the way Jonouchi didn’t even look his way, the big guy was gonna roll with it. Joey’s my number two. Jonouchi’s gaze settled on his friends, and gave a slow, deliberate nod that said more than a thousand words. 

Yeah, gonna have him train them to fight better.

Greg spun back around with another click of his tonue, smile still plastered wide and eager on his face like this was The Price Is Right. “Guys… these two are… Well, they’re more than just my friends. This is Axel Ramon, aka Sparky, and Theodor Anders. They’re…”

He paused, suddenly unsure how to even… say it, honestly. Friends felt too simple. Co-conspirators felt too dramatic. People I would literally die for was too honest and honesty made things stick and sticking meant bleeding.

“Well, they’re my boys.”

A pair of golden eyes snapped themselves in Greg’s direction, the set narrowed in that familiar way that meant there was potential trouble on the horizon. “You’re just… telling them our names? Like that?”

Oh.

Right.

Secret identities.

He knew how serious those were. Honest, he did.

Thing was, he’d stopped caring all that deeply about secret identities even before he’d gone all-out against Levi to the point he was pretty much a very wet version of the human anatomy model in a Bio class. “Uh, yeah? Bro, I trust these guys with my mom’s life. You think I’d have them around if I thought for a second they weren’t on the up and up?”

“Like, three months ago,” Sparky shot back, voice dripping with that lazy sarcasm Greg knew so well, the kind that felt like honey poured over broken glass, “they were on the down and fucking down. They were the ABB.” His best friend glanced over at the four captains, shrugging one of his faker shrugs. “…No offense?”

Wesley just chuckled, the sound a low rumble but not the distant thunder of one of Joey’s rare laughs “None taken, skater boy. We were doin’ what we were doin’.”

Seo sighed, looking more like he was exhaling imaginary smoke because the guy was always on the verge of needing a cigarette. “Your concerns are understandable, sir. Our previous allegiances were… a product of circumstance.”

Greg slid over and clapped Sparky on the shoulder, his friend stumbling forward a little with wide eyes. Whoops. “Trust me. They’re good guys now. They’re on the side of the angels. My side.”

Sparky let out a long, drawn-out grumble of a sigh as he stood up straight to rub his probably-bruising arm. “Well, if you say so, why not, right?” Thick as the sarcasm was, it didn’t mean much because like Greg expected, Sparky didn’t argue even an inch past that.

He was in.

Greg knew he would be.

And Theo… Blue eyes met silver and both smiled at each other; one soft, the other sharp.

Well, from what Greg knew of him, his godbrother would follow him to hell and back if he asked.

“Anyway,” the blond continued, dropping his hand and stepping back to take them all in, “the main reason you’re all here, meeting and greeting like it’s the first day of summer camp, is because you’ve all got something in common now. Courtesy of yours truly.”

Sparky’s eyes narrowed further as Theo’s head tilted, gears in his brain visibly turning. It didn’t take long before one of them broke the silence.

“You juiced them up?” It was Sparky, voice cutting through the quiet. “…really?”

“I just said that, man, keep up,” shot back with a grin because come on, he literally just implied it. “Well, not in so many words, but yeah. Gave them the same sort of boost I gave you.”

Sparky’s hands came out of his pockets, gesturing wildly in that way that meant his internal monologue was probably screaming. “You can’t just go around handing out powers all willy-nilly like that. That’s… that’s bad, man.”

“I’m not,” Greg held back a sigh as he raised his arms and let them fall, letting the humor slide out of his voice a little. He had to at least convince Sparky and it was much harder to do that when he was being himself. “These guys run my shit. They’re out there on the front lines every day and, as any good leader would,  I have a vested interest in keeping my men hale and hearty.” 

He clicked his tongue again. “That also comes with the prereq of being able to punch through a brick wall if some Nazi asshole gets froggy.”

“Vested?” Sparky asked, brow furrowed in confusion, even as Theo’s mouth twitched upward.

Greg’s eyebrows went up. “I read, Sparks. It’s a thing I do sometimes.”

“No, I’m not…” Sparky sighed, fight going out of him like air from a balloon. “…What does that mean?”

Before Greg could answer (and he had a great explanation ready), a voice calm and measured to the point Joon probably needed to take lessons cut in. “Vested interest. It denotes a personal stake in an undertaking or an enterprise, typically with an expectation of gain.”

Both finger guns went Theo’s way, Greg clicking this tongue again twice in a row. “Boom. See? Brains of the operation. And I am gaining a lot. A whole lot.”

“But y—”

“I’m stronger since Leviathan,” he cut Sparky off with a statement as simple and clear and solid as he could manage. Something that he knew would shut him up; mostly because he could see where this was going and they didn’t have time for another whole moral philosophy debate Sparky seemed to love half the time. 

More than that, it was just a fact.

Simple and clean.

Theo’s silver eyes scanned him, that slow diagnostic sweep Greg knew was seeing a lot much more than his godbrother ever bothered to say. “…We can tell.”

The grin he’d been wearing returned, a little wider than before as he showed off teeth that were slightly so sharp. “Could you?”

Sparky just hummed, a sound that was absolutely a yes.

Greg nodded slowly, eyes closing for a second as he jabbed a thumb behind him at his Ronin captains. “I figured, ’cause these guys could too. Wesley almost swung on me when I walked into the HQ this morning.”

Wesley’s hands shot up in surrender, wearing a look that was equal parts embarrassment and fear. “My bad, boss, I ain’t kn—”

He waved it off because honestly, it was fine. “It’s whatever. Better to be on your toes. Just… glad I know.” Greg shook his head in a hurry, none of that important right now. “Point is, I’m stronger, but that doesn’t mean much when I’m alone, y’know.”

The warehouse was silent for a little bit longer, Sparky’s eye half-twitching before the golden eyed boy grunted out a, “Sure, I guess.”

He didn’t sound all that sure, but Greg wasn’t going to let that stop him as he nodded his way and walked a bit away from both his boys. Finally, he turned on his heel to stare at all six of them gathered here in his hideout.

“Which brings me to the point of this little get-together. I didn’t just call you here for a meet-and-greet. I want to make you two,” two fingers on two hands pointed to two people; both of them pointing a finger each back at their own chests, “part of something bigger.”

Sparky and Theo didn’t say a word, simply waiting for him to continue with eyebrows raised.

Alright. This was the moment he’d been waiting on, waiting on for a while honestly. 

Longer than Leviathan.

Longer than Theo.

Before Spark even found out about him being in charge of a gang. Showtime.

His feet carried him in long strides, five steps in one direction then spinning on his heel to go five in the other. “Look around,” he finally said, one hand gesturing to the city they all knew was just outside this wall. “This city… our city. It is a mess. It’s always been a mess. Gangs, villains, corrupt cops, incompetent heroes… It’s nothing but a dumpster fire with a coastline and considering what Leviathan did to it, the coastline part is a fucking toss-up.” 

He shook his head, a little bit of a sigh leaving him with the motion. “But people are trying. For the first time that I can remember, everyone in this city is actually trying to build something here, for all of us, something better. And that’s an opportunity.”

Greg paused his pace, blue eyes turning to face the four men and two boys he was trying to convince of something he knew was a certainty. Expression dead serious, he flexed his fingers and kept going. “There are plans, of course. On the local level, state, and federal even… but none of those mean a damn thing. Because they’re not what this city needs, not really. Throw all the money in the world at Brockton Bay, and eventually, it’d be back to the same hellscape we all know and tolerate.”

Gregory Lucas Veder shook his head. “No… no, none of that’s gonna do anything because nobody actually cares about this city or the people of the Bay. What this city needs is someone who actually does give a single shit.” It was weird, you know… how saying all this out loud made him feel so much better, made it feel so much more real; a way to put the chaotic mess of thoughts in his head into some kind of order. “Someone who can make the people feel safe, able to look up in the sky instead of keeping their head down. It needs… it needs a symbol. A real one. It needs-”

“The Blue Eyes White Dragon?”

Greg’s train of thought went sideways; not derailed, but the tracks definitely felt a switch as Theo spoke up out of nowhere. He blinked, staring at him, more confused than shocked at how his godbrother knew his codename. How the f—

“How do you…”

Theo raised and dropped his shoulders in a move barely worth the title of a shrug. Half-lidded silver eyes turned Greg’s way, poking and prodding while somehow managing to look completely incurious all the same. “It’s not exactly a mystery that the remnants of the Asian Bad Boyz have been talking amongst themselves, especially online. Rumors spread. It’s a frequent topic of speculation on the PHO boards. The Blue Eyes White Dragon, the name of their mysterious new leader. Considering what I’m already aware of, I’d be the biggest idiot in the world to fail at putting something as simple as one and one together.”

Greg stared at his godbrother for another long second, Theo choosing now to speak up at length and just hitting him one after another with raw facts. Something caught in his throat for another second, before it finally burst its way out; a loud, genuine laugh that bounced off the high ceilings. “Oh my god, that’s amazing. It’s already spreading. Oh shit, that’s soooo cool, man, that made my day.” 

He shook his head, a wide grin on his face. “…But we actually go by The Ronin, now.”

Sparky snorted, voice halfway between annoyed and amused. “Oh, nice. Real subtle. Your branding is definitely gonna take off, man.”

“You think so?” The words came out dripping with sincerity so fake it circled back around to being genuine.

Sparky sighed. “…I know so.”

He’s being sarcastic but also not? Greg shook his head. Schrodinger’s support.

“The point,” He dove right back into it, sliding the track back into place before he properly derailed, “is that we have a chance to do some actual good here. This is our moment to make this city actually a better place to live; push out the gangs that are here and fight off any that want to take their place from inside or outside.”

“A leader’s vision,” Jonouchi’s voice sounded off for the first time since he had walked in. “It is the foundation upon which his house is built. If the foundation is true, the house will stand.”

Greg’s finger shot out, pointing like he was accusing Joey of being right. “See? Spiritual advice. It’s great.”

Joey’s gonna be so good at the wise mentor thing. Gonna make him wear robes, maybe a Gojo-kesa, even.

“So you’re a… a heroic gang?” Theo asked, the question more hesitant than his godbrother had been in a while. “What? You’re proposing a Protectorate that operates outside the law?”

“…what else could we be but that?”

Sparky snorted again, the sound sharper this time. “You do realize that’s still a gang, right? All of this… everything you’re describing… Doesn’t matter how you dress it up, it’s just a gang.”

Greg sighed, long and theatrical because come the fuck on for once. “Sparky, you act like the police are just a gang with social backing.”

The sigh that left his friend’s mouth was as heavy as it was frustrated, Sparky’s whole body deflating with it. “Not this weak bullshit, man. Get off your Anakin Skywalker ass, ‘From my perspective, the Jedi are evil’, fuuuuuuck off.”

Okay, fair.

Greg’s eyes rolled so hard it almost hurt. “…but you get where I’m coming from.”

It wasn’t a question.

“Course I do, blondie.” Sparky almost grunted the last two syllables, rolling his eyes harder than even Greg managed. “We all get it. You wanna make your own Brockton Bay Elite and no matter how you dress it up, you’re gonna get into some supervillain shit. Just…” Sparky sighed, eyes falling half-lidded as he pulled off a look that belonged more on Theo than his face, “Just don’t be a cringy fuck about it. Like, you’re already strong as fuck. Don’t start evil laughing for no reason.”

Greg nodded, filing that away under ‘valid criticism’. “Will do.”

He looked at each of them in turn, gaze moving from face to face. Seo’s tired eyes that saw everything and didn’t have the energy to judge. Joon’s sharp ambition barely hidden behind boardroom striver polish. Wesley’s brute loyalty written across every muscle. Jonouchi’s steady honor that felt like bedrock. Theo’s logical mind already three steps ahead. Sparky’s cynical, unwavering friendship that was somehow the realest thing in his life.

This was his team.

His absurd, dysfunctional, terrifyingly effective team.

The energy in the room shifted, last of the awkwardness burned away and replaced by something that felt like understanding, unspoken but solid.

Okay.

Okay, this is it.

Greg stood up straighter, all the jokes in his head sliding away for a split second as he stared at his open palm; almost seeing the city inside in miniature, Brockton Bay laid out right there in all its glory and horror at once. 

“The predators can’t have this city. The monsters don’t get it either. And anyone else who doesn’t actually give a shit doesn’t get to claim it when I’m fucking done.” This was something he was sure of, voice growing louder with every syllable as he clenched one fist tight in front of his face, a declaration of intent pushed out with conviction. “I’m going to make this city somewhere my mom doesn’t have to be afraid to walk at night.”

A promise. 

A goddamn prophecy.

“My city’s gonna be a shining beacon of justice if it fucking kills me.”

It was one of the truest things to ever leave his lips, Greg was sure.

Definitely up there.

A fact of life like “the sky is blue” or “I love you, Mom.”

He couldn’t deny it.

The silence stretched until it broke under a slow, deliberate sigh. Greg’s head came up to look at Sparky as his friend slowly shook his head.

CHA + 1

“…There is no bigger theatre kid on the planet than you.”