Chapter Text
Suspended under a metric crap ton of source-laden magma that glowed the color of very old blood, Bubbles was in a seriously bad position.
“I can’t break the bars!” she screamed.
“This is bad,” Brick said, pensive and calm like Bubbles wasn’t about to be melted down to gristle.
Brute glared at him. “Can’t you do something?”
Brick had his hand out as if to touch the magma river boiling under Bubbles. Above, more of the stuff bubbled in a globule fast descending over her. “This magma’s not normal.”
“Astute and inspiring. You’re the full fucking package, huh.”
Brick shot her an absolutely filthy look.
“My eye beams don’t work either!” Bubbles said, sounding desperate.
“Just give me a minute, Bubbles, I’m thinking,” Brick called to her.
Brute growled. Fuck this. She tore off to help Bubbles, but Brick grabbed her ankle and stalled her flight.
“You fly in there cocked out to kingdom come and we’re all dead!”
“Then fucking do something! You’re the damn leader, aren’t you?”
Blossom hesitated, unsure how to act, and that was entirely the problem. Do something, Butch demanded. But what could she do?
“Or tell me what to do, and I’ll do it!” Butch waited by her side, waited for her sure command, ready to go at her word.
The darkness was fast encroaching, and it brought claws and teeth with it. Blossom could hear it clicking in her ear, bones popping and jaws grinding. Brat was on one knee between them, nearly spent.
“It’s a shadow,” Blossom said, her eyes wide and hardly seeing in the everlasting darkness quickly submerging them. “Shadows disappear in the light, so—”
“We already tried that!” Brat complained, her breath harsh through gritted teeth. “I’m not a goddamned glow stick you can just pop open whenever you like!”
“You’re going to have to be.” Blossom took Brat’s hand and squeezed.
Brat looked up at her through the gloom, barely there except for the fear. “I can’t,” she said, her voice strained.
“You can. Butch will shield you, and I’ll be right here with you.” She knelt down and ignored the raptor claws that scraped at Butch’s flickering shield as the darkness pressed against them. “This place can’t kill you.” Then, with venom: “I won’t let it.”
Brat glowed an eerie, noxious green under the aegis of Butch’s shield, and this close Blossom could smell the fear on her, taste the salt from her tears. And she could feel Brat’s hand squeezing her back hard enough to hurt.
“You better not,” Brat said, “or I’ll come back and haunt your prissy ass for life. Ahh!”
The creatures pawed at Butch’s shield, drawing long, rending crags in the energy that smoked black with miasma. Butch sweated as he strained against them, but the creatures were many, and they only three.
“When I count to three, drop the shield,” Blossom said.
“Are you insane?!” Brat said.
Butch snarled through his teeth. “I hope you know what you’re doing.”
“One.”
Blossom took Brat’s other hand and held tight as she began to channel her ice.
“Two.”
“Oh, fuck me.” Brat shivered and began to glow a blinding, brilliant blue just as Butch collapsed his hands and the shield with it.
“Three!” Berserk’s shrill voice echoed a bone-chilling rattle right in Boomer’s ear as he swung his energy bat blindly—literally.
“Did I get it?”
“My three o’clock! Not yours, obviously!”
Guess not.
Lost to darkness, Boomer could hardly tell up from down, let alone the time. The sound of Buttercup panting as she fought back against the monster was reassuring until he heard the smack of rock meeting flesh and bone to his immediate right (oh, that three o’clock) and stumbled over debris in the direction of what he could only assume was Buttercup getting the shit kicked out of her.
“Buttercup?”
She didn’t respond except to grasp his arm to haul herself up and lean most of her weight on him. All he could hear was her labored breathing, but he could imagine her choice fury well enough from the ass-clenching hold she had on him.
“I’m going for the head, so just stay put!” Berserk commanded.
“Berserk, wait! Just tell me where—”
Another smack preceded a sickly crunching noise, and Buttercup suddenly yanked him sideways to avoid what must have been a hell of a lot of rocks flying at them, dislodged from the monster Berserk now fought alone and deaf to his protests.
Buttercup grunted and released Boomer roughly, leaving him disoriented, but not for long. There was another horrible crunch, and something warm and yowling crashed into Boomer. It was Berserk. He sputtered to get her hair out of his mouth.
“I told you to stay put!” Berserk shouted way louder than was necessary.
Boomer took her by what he was pretty sure were her shoulders. “Yeah, I heard you, but—”
“Did you hear me?” she continued to speak far too loudly.
Buttercup took Boomer’s arm again and must have jostled Berserk pretty harshly in her attempt to communicate something.
“I can’t fucking hear you, moron!”
Buttercup flared with power, and Boomer instinctively reached for her. “Buttercup, cool it! Jesus Christ, can we just all chill for a second before that thing kills us?”
“What did he say?” Berserk shouted.
Boomer winced and covered his abused ear. “Buttercup, please, a little help. This is getting super old super fast.”
Buttercup let out a sharp, very pissed off breath. Somewhere, the rock monster was reassembling. Boomer could hear rushing water. Berserk must have burst a pipe when she’d gone after it.
He felt Buttercup tug at his arm until it collided with Berserk, and he nearly fell over as Buttercup manhandled him into position with Berserk’s arms around his neck.
“If you think I’m letting you fight that giant gallstone by yourself—”
Buttercup cut Berserk off mid-sentence. Boomer felt her take his hand and join it to Berserk’s, and he understood.
“You want her to be my eyes.”
Buttercup shook his free hand enthusiastically. This was going to suck all the balls. But, literally anything was better than having to remain blind fighting a giant, alien monster.
“All right, up you go!” Boomer felt for Berserk’s legs and hoisted her onto his back when he found her knees.
“What the shit—I’m deaf, not disabled!” Berserk protested.
“Technically, that counts as being disabled,” Boomer grumbled, trying to ignore the pounding in his newly sensitive ears.
Buttercup snorted. He pictured her sneering up at Berserk. Something in her silent communication must have gotten through, because Berserk grumbled in resignation and wrapped her arms around Boomer’s shoulders to hang on.
A roar rocked the chamber, and Berserk didn’t need to shout for him to get the fuck out of there for him to dart off into the sky just before the monster smashed the floor where he’d been standing.
“I can’t see where I’m going!” Boomer yelled up at Berserk.
“You can’t see where you’re going!” Berserk yanked on his shoulder in a horrible attempt to steer him away from the wall.
Obviously.
But yelling at her would not help either of them.
Somewhere, Buttercup fought their monster. The sound of running water grew louder.
Berserk squeezed Boomer’s shoulder. “Hey Boomer, I know you can hear me!”
Boomer winced hard at her voice right in his ear. “Loud and clear,” he said, even though it didn’t matter. He squeezed her thigh and hoped that would tell her he was listening.
“Listen, I have an idea. That thing’s all stone and X, so even Captain Punch-A-Dick over there can’t crack it—shit, swerve!”
Boomer swerved out of his body’s sheer instinctual need to distance itself from her volume more so than any comprehension of the danger he couldn’t see hurtling straight for them in the form of Buttercup getting swatted again.
“Okay, pretty boy,” Berserk hissed in his ear, making him shiver. “I’m gonna point you in the right direction, and I want you to light it up like it’s Bastille Day and this stone fucker’s passing out cake, got it?”
Boomer had never experienced Bastille Day, but he took her meaning well enough and squeezed her thighs tighter around his waist.
“Move your ass, Buttercup!” Berserk shouted as Boomer flew with no choice but to trust her eyes and hope it wouldn’t end with him ground to dust. “Here we go, Boomer!”
Boomer began to spark as he charged his power, but Berserk hadn’t gotten off his back yet. He attempted to shake her, but she held fast. “Berserk, get off before I—”
“Dead ahead! Now!” she commanded.
Boomer rolled, desperate to get her off by any means necessary as his electricity charged to full force, and the moment he couldn’t feel her anymore, he discharged with everything he had—and promptly hit a stone wall.
Pain exploded in his cracked face and electricity popped in his ears, and if his eardrums weren’t ruptured and bleeding before, they sure as hell had to be now. Still, he didn’t let up, digging his fingers into the wet rocks wherever he could, bellowing as they crumbled under his hands.
Something stronger than him peeled him off, and he was falling, which didn’t matter because everything was dark and his brain was fried and everything hurt. He felt the impact of something monumental more than heard it, and a body wrapped around his as they collided with the ground.
He wasn’t sure how much time passed before: “Is it over?”
Berserk’s raspy voice drew Boomer out of semi-consciousness, and he opened his eyes to the light. The first thing he saw was a riot of red hair and a pale face furrowed in discomfort “Berserk?”
She coughed, and Boomer realized he’d landed on top of her. Immediately he lifted himself off her bruised body, but his arms gave out. His clothes smoked and he stank of ozone.
“Yeah,” she said at a blessedly normal volume. She cracked her eyes open. “You are heavy.”
Her arms were still wrapped around him, and the stone floor cratered and crack under her back where she’d taken the brunt of their fall. Boomer stared down at her. “You could have let go.”
“And miss those puppy dog eyes? Nah.”
Boomer flushed, realizing he’d been openly staring, and averted his gaze. With a bit of shuffling, he managed not to keel over in pain and got them both standing. The creature that had attacked them just before they’d been robbed of their senses was nothing but a pile of smoking rubble, and Buttercup stood over it holding its Challenge Key.
“Hey, genius,” Buttercup spat, “you look like you lost a fight with a crimping iron.”
Berserk sighed. “You know, I’m kind of going to miss being deaf.”
Buttercup approached them, Challenge Key in hand, her eyes narrowed in scrutiny. “You okay?”
It took Boomer a second to realize she was talking to him. It took him a couple more to clock that she was concerned about him, and that she had a good reason to be. “I’m okay,” he said. “All good.”
Buttercup looked like she didn’t really believe him, but she handed the Challenge Key over to Berserk anyway.
“What, did you booby trap this or something?” Berserk asked, but she took the Key all the same.
“I don’t want anything to do with those alien Keys. As far as I’m concerned, it’s your problem, so you deal with it.”
Berserk grinned wolfishly. “Well, I’m glad we’ve all accepted the hierarchy of things.”
“Suck a dick, Berserk.” Buttercup turned and took off toward the Challenge Room’s exit.
Now that Buttercup was gone, Berserk winced and clutched her side. Boomer reached for her, but she swatted his hand away.
“I’m fine. I’ll live.”
Boomer pressed his lips together, but he decided not to argue with her. Together, they limped their way to the mystical door that had opened for them and their latest harrowing challenge.
“Hey,” he said softly. “Thanks for having my back.”
She snorted. “You sort of gave it to me with that piggyback ride from hell.”
They were back in the concrete hall of the House with the door closed behind them and the newest Challenge Key tucked safely in Berserk’s jacket pocket. There was no sign of Buttercup.
“I’m serious,” he said, stopping at the base of the stairs to the main floor of the House. He waited until Berserk was looking up at him. “Thank you.”
She had the look of someone who wanted to snap at him, but she didn’t. She merely pursed her lips and shrugged, averting her gaze once more. “Yeah, sure.”
She didn’t push him off when he pulled her weight onto his shoulder and led the charge up the stairs back to their quarters.
Blossom had never felt more discomfited by Berserk’s absence than her presence, but she felt it now in the library across the table from Brick with no one else around to draw her wandering eye, or his. He shifted his weight in his chair. She stretched her neck. He took a sip of water. She cleared her throat.
After ten minutes of this, he slammed his book shut. “What is happening?”
Blossom fixed her gaze firmly on her book and the passage she’d re-read at least four times now without absorbing any of it. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“It’s taken you twenty minutes to read two pages.”
The knee-jerk urge to refute him tugged at her like a dog begging for table scraps, but she ignored it. He wasn’t wrong. “I guess I’m finding it hard to concentrate today.”
They watched each other across the long table, and it struck her just how red his eyes were even from afar: two burning coals fixed entirely on her. Unsettling, yet strangely warm. She thought about retiring early, but she wasn’t tired. In fact, she was having some trouble sitting still in her chair. Maybe a walk outside would do her good, or even a run. Maybe Buttercup was free and up for a spar. Just anything to get her body moving and her brain blanking before her thoughts burned a hole through her skull and exposed everything to him.
“Let’s go a round,” Brick said. The sound of his chair sliding over the tile screamed in the cavernous, quiet library.
“What?”
“I feel like I’m trying to crawl out of my own skin.” He flexed a fist, and red sparks spiderwebbed along his knuckles to the wrist eager for something to burn.
Blossom’s mouth went dry at the manifest threat of his power calling to her like old ghosts. She could retreat, provide some excuse, it had worked before. But no excuse came to her now, and under the table, her fingers curled around a mass of pastel power itching for a summoning. She rose from her chair, books forgotten, and headed for the door. “We can’t have that,” she said.
He fell into step after her not a moment later and followed her out of the Red Wing and through the atrium to the first Challenge Room. The House was quiet and empty tonight, its vaulted ceilings cold and distant. It was as though they were the only two people awake in this uncanny place.
It took everything Blossom had not to stop and wait for him to catch up. His eyes at her back gave off a singular heat, homing and hyper-focused. Perhaps years ago she would have never entertained the thought of turning her back on someone so dangerous. Now, the thought of what she might invite if she faced him kept her squarely focused on her destination ahead.
“Ladies first,” Brick said directly behind her when they reached the Challenge Room door. He grabbed the edge and held it open for her.
Blossom looked anywhere but back at him and stepped over the threshold. The change of pressure entering the pocket dimension made her ears pop and the access band on her wrist heat with power. As before, the walls on all sides moved as concrete structures grew and shifted, sky scrapers bursting and withering to dust, only to sprout again elsewhere. Brick followed and closed the door behind them. Already disoriented, Blossom began to float as she adjusted to the altered gravity and tried to abandon the idea of up versus down.
“Restrictions?” Brick asked. He shed his red jacket, leaving him only in his matching pants and a form-fitting tank top.
Blossom, who had been caught staring at him way too many times already, saw no harm in doing it again now—who was she kidding? Steeling herself, she unzipped her own jacket and tossed it aside to join his. It had been years since they’d properly gone a round. Watching him unleash everything on Berserk the other day had been gut wrenching, but it had also set fire to something in her blood that she’d never known to be flammable. There was a violence in him, in her, that she recognized, and her body hummed to feel its attention on her one hundred percent this time. “Since when can you afford to restrain yourself against me?”
His laughter, light and low, shivered her to the bone. “All right, then. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
He was on her in a flash with a hard punch. Blossom blocked at the last second, but the force sent her crashing into concrete. She barely had time to cough when he came at her again with another punch aimed at her face, but this time she dodged in the nick of time and it was his turn to eat rubble.
Adrenaline and Chemical X made for a heady, explosive cocktail in her veins that spread from her fingertips to the very ends of her long ponytail. Incandescent pink power jumped over her bare arms as she poised to receive him again. “Come on,” she invited him.
Brick glowed red, and it was her only warning before he rocketed after her. Blossom took off deeper into the maze of ever changing obstacles, the exertion only fueling her faster along in a familiar chase they had not run in years.
The pocket dimension was a death trap. Blossom darted over and under spikes and spires closing around her like jaws, her movements precise and fluid. But Brick was just as adept and wasted little energy swerving around the masticating maze they had chosen for this evening’s playground.
Blossom swung around and under a sprouting obelisk, trusting her body to move exactly according to her will, but Brick abruptly changed course and met her mid-spin. Anticipating his sneak attack, Blossom let him have it with a wicked kick to the ribs.
Unfortunately, he was damn fast and grabbed her by the ankle just as her kick connected, and they both went flying with the force of her attack. A receding column broke Blossom’s fall with a rude crunch, and she broke Brick’s. Rose met red through a cloud of dust and electric Chemical X.
“Caught you,” he said.
Maybe it was the rush of the moment that drove her, the old thrill of the hunt from their heyday, never acknowledged but deeply felt. She felt him now, palms searing around her knee and pinning her neck, and she reached back.
Too close to avoid her open palm on his chest, Brick took her ice at point-blank range and blasted away in a flurry of snowflakes. He nearly hit a stone pillar punching out of the undulating wall, but managed to flip out of its path at the last second.
Blossom floated higher, her arms sleeved in ice and her breath misty. The temperature plummeted further as her power rippled through the pocket dimension. “Not quite,” she said, all heat and hoarfrost.
Across from her, Brick’s power sluiced off him as thick as magma. He was a bright, burning star in this grey world, and god she could feel him pushing back and fighting for ground as if he were right in front of her. The Source-saturated air shimmered around him and ignited the blood in his eyes as they met hers. “Come here.”
It was all the encouragement she needed to give in to the timeless spark between them and unleash. Frost met fire as they collided, broke, and collided again. His punches smoldered, but her ice tempered them to cleansing smoke. And when she caught him in a freezing hold, he inevitably slipped through behind a veil of steam. Each unable to smother the other, they were evenly matched and forever at odds as they ricocheted off stone towers and toppled thrusting obelisks in their bid for dominance.
And that was what this was, what it had always been. Blossom had never felt the need to control and dominate another like she felt it fighting Brick. Call it fate, or design, or maybe it was just him, but there was nothing like this release, this honest surrender to the creature she was and always would be, made magnificent in the eyes of a true equal.
“I’m right here!” she taunted, with snowflakes in her hair.
Brick landed on a cracked block. The cement began to melt under the heat of his power where he crouched and captured her in those pyre-bright eyes. “Is that an invitation? Or a threat?”
Alive with the thrill of unfettered competition, Blossom grinned. “Let’s find out.”
She took off at a punishing pace, half flying around the cement blocks and half skating over their frozen faces. Brick was right on her tail, his steps scorching the swaths of ice she left in her wake to cataclysmic ends. Wherever the two Supers’ extremities came into direct contact, the concrete collapsed and exploded in a parade of supernovas.
He was close, she could feel it, but he wouldn’t catch her, no way. Blossom was the best at what she did, and no one knew that better than her counterpart even all these years later. But he was fast closing the distance between them, and when she chanced a glance back, there he was haloed in haze, his fire rising in great, golden chains behind him, and he reached for her.
Blossom gasped, and it was her mistake. Brick caught her waist and pulled her back hard. The blizzard in her lungs went up in steam between his fingers clamped over her mouth. They hurtled together head over heels with Blossom kicking and jabbing with her elbows. But Brick locked her arms to her sides and anchored her to his chest until they came to a stop and she could hardly move. Pink power crackled on her skin as she thrashed in his arms, but he only laughed.
“That tickles,” he murmured.
Blossom immediately ceased her struggling. Immured in his arms with no chance of escaping unless he let her go, she became acutely aware of just how close they were. His breath was warm in her hair, and he smelled like smoke and parchment. He hadn’t loosened his hold around her at all.
“Brick.”
“Yield.”
The very word inspired an electric disdain in her. “No.”
He pressed his nose to her hair, and when he spoke his lips brushed against the side of her neck. “Are you sure?”
Blossom turned her head to look him in the eye and held onto her nerve out of sheer force of will. “Are you?” This close, she could count his freckles and taste the heat he radiated, but there was no reading him beyond his singular and absolute focus on her.
He loosened his grip around her. “No.”
Blossom caught him before he could move away. Thoughtless perhaps, but Blossom never stopped thinking, not about their entrapment here, not about finding a way out, and not about him since the day they arrived in this strange place. She had barely invited him with a tug at his shirt before he was on her again, arms around her waist and kissing her hard. Her fingers sparked with power as she threaded them through his short hair, making him groan, and he suddenly shoved them against the freezing concrete wall until it cracked. His kiss was volcanic, as relentless as he was, and Blossom welcomed him deeper with a soft tongue and the threat of teeth on his lips.
The wall lurched at her back, and as quickly as it had begun, Brick ended the kiss and pushed her out of the way of a wicked spike just as it erupted from the enchanted wall. Blossom landed deftly on a nearby block and watched him do the same. Breathing hard, she wiped the traces of him from her lips.
“Best two out of three?” he called.
Unable to resist, she smirked. “Restrictions?”
“You couldn’t restrain yourself against me if you tried.”
A retort sat poised on the tip of her tongue, but it still remembered his kiss and refused to castigate him after all that.
“Blossom,” he said, hot like it was his favorite thing about her.
Blossom’s power burst around her, radioactive, and she launched herself skyward. If he wanted her, he was going to have to catch her again. “Try and keep up.”
They spent the next hour raining tempestuous ruin, on the pocket dimension and on each other.
Butch hadn’t been looking for her per se, but she had the look of someone who wanted finding as she sat alone in the green looking at the night sky. Brat had been dutifully training with Blossom and him, had pulled through against their latest Challenge Room shadow monsters, but that was just it: her duty. She fought with resignation, a shell puppeteering her punches through some detached sense of requirement. He had seen it before while he was deployed, men dissociating because they were too shellshocked by atrocity or fear or the general malaise of a pointless war they couldn’t win, but trapped in their enlistment and by their promise to their country. If Blossom noticed, she didn’t point it out, at least not in front of Butch. But he had a feeling she wouldn’t quite understand what she was looking at, anyway. Leader she may be, but she had never been a soldier taking orders.
“Yo,” Butch said as he plopped down in the grass next to Brat without waiting for an invitation.
Brat looked like she’d just come from a shower. Her hair was down and still damp, the dyed blue ends of it curling in the balmy evening humidity. She lay on her back with her knees bent, and she barely spared Butch a glance when he disturbed her solitude. “What do you want?”
“Nice night. Thought you could use some company.” The three moons were half full tonight and glowing with blue-gold coronas.
“Whatever.”
Butch sighed and leaned back on his elbows. There were a million stars out, more than he ever remembered seeing back home on Earth, but not a Big Dipper in sight. They must really be in some ass-end of the galaxy for even the stars to look foreign. Beside him, Brat stared tight-lipped at the sky. She looked like she was trying super hard not to be bothered by his presence.
“Relax,” Butch said. “I didn’t come out here to ambush you.”
Brat’s glance his way told him she didn’t quite believe that. “You can report that back to my sister.”
“Heh, fuck off. I’m no one’s errand boy.”
She heard the levity in his tone, and miraculously, she did unclench just a tiny bit. “Oh. Then why are you here?”
“Told you.” He looked down at her, no posturing, just him. “Thought you could use some company.”
She made a face. “You know, being alone sort of means doing it without anybody else around.”
Butch looked over his shoulder. “I don’t see anybody here.”
“Moron. Obviously I meant you.”
“Nah. We can be alone together.”
Brat rolled her eyes. “God, whatever. Do what you want, see if I care.”
Butch humored her for a time, and they sat in silence watching the sky. He counted a few shooting stars, but his attention was still tethered to the lonely girl next to him. She chewed her lip. A frown line marked her between her perfectly sculpted eyebrows. Hell, but she was stubborn. He almost suspected she was doing it on purpose.
Well, Butch was dating Buttercup. If Brat thought she could out stubborn Buttercup and get him to cave first, she had another thing coming.
“If you’re trying to cheer me up or something, you’re doing a crap job of it,” Brat said.
“Didn’t know you wanted cheering up.”
She shot him a glare. “Don’t lie, Butch. You’re not good at it.”
He chuckled because she wasn’t wrong. “Aight. Fair enough.”
“Just say whatever you came to say and leave me alone.”
“Is it really so hard to believe I just came out here to sit with you?”
“Yeah, it really is.”
He looked down at her, but she was back to winning a staring contest with the stars. “Why do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Push everyone away.”
“Believe me, you’d know if I was really trying to push you away.”
“And your sisters?”
She tensed. “What about them?”
Butch had never been the most tactful person in a room. He said what he meant, or he didn’t say anything at all. Manipulation and subterfuge were more Brick’s thing, and he didn’t have Boomer’s weird sixth sense for empathy. He saw what he saw with his own two eyes and went from there. And right now, what he saw was a girl cored of everything but her last defenses.
“I was kinda hoping you’d tell me,” he said.
“Why the hell would I do that?”
“‘Cause you want to.”
“That’s hella presumptuous. And also wrong.”
“Yeah? Then why haven’t you told me to fuck off yet?”
“Pretty sure I did. You’re the one who wanted to stay.”
“You’re still letting me stay now.”
Brat fumed, but he could tell she had no leg to stand on. She hadn’t made him leave or gotten up and left herself, after all. “Just ask your damn questions, then.”
“Here’s one. Why are you zombie’ing your way through Blossom’s training and our Challenge Rooms?”
“I thought you wanted to know about my sisters.”
“Hey, give me a little credit. I don’t have to be a Red to connect these monster-sized dots. This shit started when Berserk went all Lizzy Borden on Brick’s ass.”
Brat’s face went cold. Her annoyance made her expressive, but this shit was just depressing. Bingo.
“You and Berserk,” Butch said, not really sure how to ask, or what.
“Everything always comes back to her, doesn’t it.” It wasn’t a question so much as a lament. “You’d think I’d stop expecting a different result eventually.”
So that’s it.
Butch eased himself down onto the grass until he was flat on his back shoulder to shoulder with Brat, though they didn’t touch. “It’ll never stop. Trust me.”
“You don’t know my sister.”
“Not really, but I know my brother. I know his type.”
Brat was quiet a moment, hesitating. “Brick and my sister aren’t as alike as you think.”
“I think they’re both as Red as a cardinal’s asshole. It’s in their DNA by design, literally.”
“Even Blossom?”
Butch snorted. “Especially Blossom.”
Brat didn’t return his laugh, but she didn’t look quite so chilly anymore. More pensive than morose. Butch held on while he had her attention.
“When I enlisted straight out of high school, Brick was really pissed at me. Straight up ordered me not to serve.”
“Why would he do that?”
“Pride. Selfishness. Jealousy. Take your pick. You think he’s got a control complex now? You shoulda seen him before he did the world a favor and dragged his bitch ass to therapy.” Butch returned his gaze to the sky and the scattered mess of stars. “We didn’t speak for two years. Not even a birthday text.” He could feel Brat’s eyes on his profile boring a hole into him.
“So, what changed?”
Butch smiled wryly. “I did. Took me two tours in the Middle East and losing half my squad to finally see a version of the world through my brother’s eyes.”
Brat didn’t press him, but she didn’t interrupt him either. Butch folded his arms behind his head, and her flood of hair tickled the soft flesh of his tricep.
“Reds are the sun in their own personal solar systems, and everything revolves around them. That’s why they’re the leaders. You gotta see the whole map to know where to deploy your soldiers.”
“And they call me vain.”
Butch laughed. “Tell me about it.”
“So, where does that leave us?”
“Huh?”
Brat gestured at the night sky. “Your little space analogy. Where do us lowly soldiers stand in this miserable universe?”
Miserable.
He could sense that she really was, deep down, and that sucked. Brat wasn’t his sister or his main squeeze. She wasn’t even really his friend. But she was his teammate, a soldier in arms, and he knew her value as intimately as he knew his own.
“I guess we’re constellations,” he said. “We don’t shine as bright, and we’re all over the place in random directions. But what’s a sky without stars?”
“Just some stuck-up moons.”
“Yeah, just some stuck-up moons.” He couldn’t agree more.
They lay there for a few heartbeats under the open sky, and Butch wondered how far away the stars were. If one of those little lights up there was home. If they’d ever see it again.
“If Berserk can’t see your worth,” he said softly, “then that’s her problem, not yours.”
Brat said nothing, but he heard the hitch in her breathing as she watched the sky, a billion star lights reflected in her glassy eyes.
It was a warm night, and they stayed out for a long time yet, alone together.
Robin had to wonder just how many secret military-grade bunkers Princess’ family had access to just waiting to be filled with illegal alien spaceships, because two was already two more than she ought to have. The ship Eric had somehow retrieved from the Department of Defense (Robin did not want any details on how) had been transported to the bunker in all its nacreous, trapezoidal glory.
Eric and John were discussing something while John operated an iPad loaded up with diagnostics downloaded from the ship’s mainframe. Princess, who had been exploring the interior of the ship, emerged and descended the gangway.
“Well, your government buddies really stripped her for parts,” she said.
“Please tell me you have been able to extract something marginally useful,” Mojo grumbled as he joined John and Eric at the iPad.
As the three of them talked tech, Princess joined Robin at the bottom of the gangway.
“So, this is how they spirited away Bubbles and the others,” Robin said.
Princess crossed her arms. “Pretty dated model from what I could tell. But that makes sense since it’s probably older than Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum over there.”
The professors in question were arguing over Mojo now, who seemed to want a chance to look at whatever data was on the iPad.
“There’s got to be something we can use,” Robin said. “There’s just got to.”
Princess was about to respond to that when Mojo exclaimed, indignant, “Of course I can read it! I am the most advance species on this planet, present company, by which I mean yourself, included!”
“No, you fool. I meant you can read this language,” Eric said with all the patronizing frustration of having to communicate with a misbehaving child.
“Of course I can! Can’t you?”
John was looking at Mojo curiously. “Mojo, what does this look like to you?”
Mojo looked suspiciously at the two men. “If this is your idea of a prank, I will point out that I am not, have not, and will not ever be laughing.”
“What’s going on?” Princess bullied her way into the group and peered at the iPad. “What the hell is that?”
To Robin, it looked like nonsense. Looping symbols and shapes that reminded her a bit of Windings font, but nothing that make any sense to her.
“This,” John said, “is an alien language. Are you saying that it’s legible to you?”
Mojo frowned. “You are not attempting to jest, make light, or otherwise tease me with your suspicious questions?”
“No.”
Mojo looked a little red, and Robin realized he was embarrassed.
“It looks weird to me too,” she said. She wasn’t sure if it was her words that mollified him or something else, but Mojo lowered his hackles a bit and took the iPad back from John.
“This is English to me,” he said.
“Fascinating,” John said, and Robin could tell that he really was.
“Uh, how about more like weird? Creepy?” Princess said.
“Why are you able to read it?” Eric asked, hollow like he wasn’t sure he wanted to know the answer.
“Well, this is a ship that was powered by and transported Chemical X, built by an extraterrestrial race that created the formula,” John said. “So it stands to reason that you, Mojo—”
“Oh, shit, yeah,” Princess said. “That has to be it.”
Eric frowned deeply. “What are you all talking about?”
“Duh, the reason Mojo can read it and none of us can.” Princess tipped her head in a look that asked are you slow? “Obviously, because he’s a Chemical X Super just like Brick and the others.”
“Can you read all of it? Are there any coordinates? Last known locations?” John was more interested in the boon of information they had just stumbled upon than anything else, and so was Mojo.
“I am looking! Do not rush me,” Mojo reprimanded as he slid his short fingers down the iPad to scroll.
Robin watched Eric, confused. He didn’t know about Mojo? Maybe that made sense since he wasn’t from here and wasn’t present when Mojo was created alongside the Girls. Robin had only been five at the time, but she remembered the way Mojo had terrorized Townsville and the Girls put a stop to him for the first, but certainly not the last, time.
“You have Chemical X in your veins too,” Eric said distantly, like he was having trouble comprehending the truth of his own words. “Just like them…”
“Hey, Plutonium.” Princess snapped her fingers in his face. “You still in there?”
Robin watched Eric like you’d watch a car crash about to happen in slow motion. The realization dawned on him with all the gravity of bad news, poorly delivered. It was gone just as quick, but there was no mistaking what she’d seen on his face: horror.
He ignored Princess’ question entirely and turned, stony-faced, to Mojo and John. “Tell me when you’ve found the coordinates to whatever planet we’re going to. I’ll be with Dynamo.”
“Perhaps you should desist with your plans,” Mojo said, note of triumph in his voice. “I have found the coordinates of the last point of origin.”
John’s excitement was palpable. “Mojo, please read them aloud so I can copy them.”
Eric looked on, his lone eye hard and glassy and his mouth thinned to a line. Grim, for a father who was officially one step closer to locating his missing daughters. He felt Robin’s stare and turned to look at her, and she held him there a moment, as hard as he was.
“Well,” he said, “I expect we’ll learn soon enough if all your training amounted to anything.”
“Yeah, we will,” Robin said, angry and not entirely sure why.
“Holy shit, that’s in the Milky Way!” Princess said, staring at her phone. “That means—”
“Dynamo can reach it, yes,” John confirmed, a rare note of relief in his voice.
Princess was so ecstatic she actually hugged Mojo. She squealed. “Fuck yes, you brilliant, X-positive ape!”
Mojo, for his part, was so startled that he dissociated long enough for Princess to get her fill without being shoved off.
“We’ll need to make some adjustments for this journey. If I can find a way to increase power to the boosters, we could shave off a few lightyears…” John muttered to himself about technicalities and specifications and wandered off vaguely in the direction of Dynamo’s connecting bunker.
Everyone seemed motivated in some way or another, and Robin wanted to be happy right there with Princess. But she couldn’t shake the memory of Eric’s bizarre reaction to learning Mojo’s status as a Super. He hadn’t known. He’d called him radioactive. But why did that matter to him so much?
“Robin! Come on, let’s go a round in the simulator. God, for the first time since this shit all started, I feel like we might actually pull this off!”
“Oh, yeah, sure!” Robin let herself be dragged off, but she cast one look back at Eric.
He was staring at the alien ship, an ugly curl to his mouth that betrayed his anger. And for reasons Robin was not able to understand, he scared her.