Sundial's presence is as incongruous as her demeanor, her casual flippancy a stark contrast to the ruin she surveys with a dangerous sort of whimsy. Crossroads, battered yet unbowed, is her particular interest—a canvass upon which she paints her intrusive curiosity. "You holding up okay, Cross? How's the mantle of leadership treating you?" A sly grin carves at her lips, a sculptor teasing out secrets. "Oh, and how's your mom been? Saw her at the market last week."

The words, superficial in their care, probe deeper than mere pleasantries dare to tread. Crossroads’ jaw tightens, a steel trap rusted shut with reluctance. His eyes, sharp with the unspent ferocity of the fight and the latent hurt of wounds unseen, narrow a fraction. "Not now, Sundial."

"He's been leader for like half a year now, chica, catch up," Playback quips almost casually, like we're not in the middle of a life-or-death fight with a supervillain. Well, maybe not life or death. So far, none of us have been hit with anything harder than bone-breaking, and I only feel bruised and scraped.

Still more exhausted than I have any right to be, of course. All the running around has made me a little nauseous and my muscles are screaming at me for relief, but, you know… I've had much, much worse.

Ah, but Sundial is relentless, her voice a violin's trill, light and needling. "Come on, it's just a friendly chat among colleagues." Her head tilts, coaxing, a dancer swaying to a discordant tune.

Before the tension can crest, before Crossroads can craft a retort sharp enough to puncture Sundial's insouciance (a word my Mom taught me about that means being sort of lackadaisical), the air rends with a sound like the heavens splitting—a thunderclap born of no cloud, nor storm, but of conflict and raw power.

All heads swivel, eyes skyward, as the girl that tackled Ricochet through a pile of crates is expelled upwards—her trajectory halted not by physics but by will alone. She hovers, a defiant statue against the canvas of sky, her silhouette outlined in the dying light. She's very pretty, what with the way all the pads and guards sort of tie her hoodie down to her silhouette. Almost like a bicycler.

"You alright, Moonshot?" Sundial's voice climbs to reach her, the maternal undercurrent now undisguised, concern etching sincerity into her call.

With a shake of her head that sends her hood fluttering, Moonshot reaches up to adjust her opaque goggles, her hands steady despite the tumult. "I'm good," she affirms, a declaration made all the sterner for the casualness of her descent—a slow, deliberate float that defies gravity's jealous grasp.

From the periphery, my voice joins the chorus, the observation wrung from me by the urgency of understanding. "Guys, listen!" I bark, a conductor calling for a change in the ensemble's dynamic. "I think he has to know they're coming in order to redirect the attacks."

The revelation hangs in the air, a thread for them to grasp or ignore, an offering of strategy from one still grappling with the depths of her own capabilities. But my contribution stands, a buoy in the roiling sea of our tumultuous alliance.

Ricochet looks at me and lets out a noise that's more like a dying animal than a human being. His body is scraped open in enough spots that I can get a clear, easy view of his blood, and it's really not looking good. I open my mouth once more, waiting for the hit; "Also, someone call a paramedic. This guy's blood is literally orange."

"That's not the correct color," Moonshot observes wryly, staring at her hands. Her gloves are smeared with light streaks of almost bioluminescent, warning-sign orange. "That's weird,"

"Tell me about it," I say, bracing for impact. I dig my heels down into the ground and watch the charging bull as he thunders in my direction. His running form is sloppy, nothing like the athletes I'm used to - his entire body flops and writhes, his mask cracked in the center. "You doing good, Gas Mask?"

"It's Miss--" she starts, but I'm interrupted by Ricochet's running tackle.

The world around me narrows, a tunnel with edges blurred, its focus the advancing fury that is Ricochet. There's an expectation—a memory etched into my muscles, the anticipation of might and mass, of turning his charge into a guided fall. But the reality is a cruel misstep. My body, a traitor worn by beeping monitors and sterile air, falters. It's like expecting a staircase to be there in the dark, and finding only void.

I square against him, arms poised in forms practiced and perfected, tracing the arcs of Aikido with a desperation that claws at the recesses of my weakened frame. But the dance is wrong. His limbs flail, devoid of pattern or predictability, contorting with an unnatural cadence that seems to mock the very notion of human biology. Bones crack and tendons snap within him, a chorus of grotesque percussion.

I can feel the blood leaking into his muscles and organs on the inside. He's shredding himself apart. All humor is gone from his frame - all the humanity, all the desire for currency, all the jest.

I should be like a rock in a riverbed, immovable as the current breaks around me. Instead, I'm flotsam in Ricochet's torrent, every ounce of my being straining to remember how to be that immovable object again.

"A little help, here?" The plea escapes my lips, a mix of frustration and the bitter tang of humility. I can see my mistake, every time I try to leverage him, try to make him go a direction, his body seizes and twitches, pulling away with unnatural strength.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

Gas Mask comprehends my plight from where she observes, her brow furrowed behind the mask. With practiced ease, she dispatches a mechanical insect, a drone no larger than a playing card yet buzzing with the tenacity of a horde. It darts into the melee, a tiny kamikaze against the chaos of Ricochet's spasmodic defense.

The drone, a relentless pest, batters his mask with the stubbornness of a woodpecker, a staccato beat that jolts his head back with each tiny but forceful impact. It harasses his vision, his focus—each hit a diversion that chips away at his dwindling fortitude. No, it's not going to do any damage against the hardened plastic, but I can tell he's losing interest in me in the same way that a dog loses interest in biting someone.

Meanwhile, I'm a shadow of the hero I remember being. Muscles tremble under the stress of exertion, every movement an echo of the strength that once defined me. Ricochet's limbs are a puzzle, each piece cracking and popping from his flesh, a grotesque reimagining of human architecture.

I fight the nausea rising in my throat, the visceral recoil at the sound of his body's protestations. I cling to the slivers of training that remain lodged in my mind, guiding my actions like a half-forgotten dream. In the struggle, I am both less and more than I was—less the titan of the deep I once embodied, but more the human, clinging to resolve when physicality fails me.

The fight is less a clash of giants and more a dance of desperation, a clinging to principles when all else seems to forsake you. I can't just be the force that meets an unstoppable object—I have to be smarter, trickier. Have to use his spasms against him, direct him away from me, and towards the walls.

And as we tussle, his body betraying every rule I learned about how a body should move, the truth sets in with grim clarity. I am not what I once was. But I am here, now, in this moment, fighting not just for victory, but for every breath that fills my lungs and every beat that pulses in my chest. Amid the strain and focus on Ricochet’s ever-contorting form, the world beyond my narrow purview morphs unseen. My attention—tunneled and tunneled deep—misses the symphony of silent coordination unfolding just beyond my ears.

The click of the handcuffs is a sound that never reaches my ears—or his, for that matter. Playback, with the sleight of hand only a maestro of silence could wield, mutes their finality and entrusts them to Moonshot. She moves with a hush that defies her solid form, a specter in padded armor gliding through the tumult on unseen strings.

Ricochet's instinct is rebellion, his elbows torquing in directions that flirt with the surreal. Yet anatomy, even his, has limits, and his wrists, though strained against metal’s uncompromising embrace, find no quarter, no angle of escape. The floor becomes his arena, his body a spectacle of futile contortions as he struggles against the immutable. I can hear the metal groaning like he's trying to snap the handcuffs off of him, and for a second, I think he might do it.

When my eyes finally abandon their quarry to dart across the warehouse, the view of my teammates strikes me with the force of revelation. Sundial and Crossroads huddle over Gas Mask, their forms etched with both urgency and something softer. It's like walking into a room where everyone else knows the end of the joke except for you.

Gas Mask lies among them, their attention a shroud that screens her from my sight. I'm left to piece together the narrative from scraps—the half-caught gestures, the quickened pace of their ministrations.

Crossroads, ever the pillar even amid ruin, casts a backward glance, his visage carved with the gravity of our predicament. "It won’t hold him for long," he asserts, his tone brooking no dissent. "We need zip ties, restraints, whatever we have. Now."

The urgency is a fire that kindles action, and from pockets and pouches, the implements of improvisation are conjured. Cable ties, the darlings of any quick fix, find their place among the tools of our trade.

My breath catches, a tiny hitch that marks the descent from adrenaline's crest. We are a makeshift crew, our bonds forged in battle’s crucible, tempered by will and whatever wit remains to us. And as we work, a triage of strategy and strength, I cannot help but wonder at the fragility of our order, the thin thread upon which hangs the weight of consequence.

----------------------------------------

The warehouse echoes with an unusual sound—the voice of Crossroads, not raised in volume, but heavy with the weight of command unheeded. He stands before us, a stern sentinel, his gaze steady as it travels from Miss Mayfly - as I've learned her name is - to me. We're a sorry sight, our victory marred by the taste of rebuke.

Ricochet lies motionless, his struggles having ebbed into the stillness of unconsciousness, his blood a violent splash of orange against my senses, a warning sign in the physical world that's dried to a sickly yellow hue. Paramedics, clinical in their efficiency, swarm over him, preparing for transport. His body, bound in a cocoon of restraints, is a testament to his squandered frenzy, now silent.

"Playback and I had a plan," Crossroads begins, his disappointment a palpable thing, stretching taut between us. "We could have contained him before he took those… drugs." He gestures towards the unconscious figure, now a mere cargo for the EMTs. "We could have seized them, analyzed them, traced them back to their source. Prevented all this property damage, which will have to be repaired and paid for out of our team insurance."

"You guys have insurance?" Sundial jokes. Crossroads shoots her a withering look and she shrinks back, a split second.

I can only swallow the lump in my throat, my insides churning with the aftershocks of kinetic echoes that ricocheted through my flesh. The jackhammer pulse of residual energy still vibrates in my bones, a reminder of a close brush with an untamed storm. Even though I didn't do much other than hold him there, my body is feeling his raw misery much more now than it did before. I have to assume there was damage being done I wasn't aware of. Crossroads looks at me with an almost pitying look, the kind you give to a stray cat, or a mouse caught in a mouse trap.

Sundial counters, her arms folded defensively as she floats near. "You'd be toast without me, Cross," she states with a defiance that borders on insubordination, her chin lifting in challenge.

Miss Mayfly stands her ground as well, though her stance lacks Sundial's overt challenge. "And where would you all be without my intervention?" she interjects, her voice muffled through the filter of her mask, her tone threaded with a bitter edge of pride.

Above us, Moonshot drifts, her attention elsewhere, perhaps finding solace in the simple act of defying gravity. Her detachment from the fray below is enviable, a floating island above a sea of discord.

Crossroads’ gaze finds me once more, and I can't help but shrink beneath the intensity of his disappointment. "You disobeyed a direct order, Bloodhound," he says, the words like ice, chilling the space between us. "Your impulsiveness complicated what should have been a straightforward capture, and now you're injured even more."

I try not to make any noises.

Miss Mayfly receives no less of his ire. "And you," he turns, his voice like a blade drawn against whetstone, sharp and precise. "You have made things exponentially worse with your… amateur approach."