Detective Hasborough ran his hands through his hair. His job just seemed to get more and more stressful. Ever since Dynamis had pulled him aside to work on the Iron Wraith case, this whole thing had spiraled off into a mess. The town was small enough that even with Coriolis’ absence, there shouldn’t have been this much trouble. Sometimes, it felt as if everything was conspiring against him.

Hasborough put his hat back on, and took another look around the junkyard. The large mounds of scrap and garbage loomed high into the air, casting ominous shadows. The scent of smoke and burned circuits filled the air. Another detective was carefully photographing the remains of the Wraith’s suit of armor. It appeared that, for one reason or another, he had abandoned it. Likely, the villain had decided that it wasn’t worth the effort that it would take to repair. Puncher had done quite a number on it. The top half of the power armor had been reduced to a series of scraps. Hasborough still had officers looking for the pieces.

He felt a surge of frustration at the thought of Puncher. He had told the kid not to come here. To stay out of it. Manta, a professional hero, was on her way over. It didn’t matter how young they thought Iron Wraith was. He was obviously dangerous. The fact that he had taken out Dynamis should have made that apparent enough. Puncher never should have gotten involved. But kids were stupid. They did dumb things, especially when they were trying to right perceived wrongs. Puncher denied it, but Hasborough was certain that the teen felt responsible for what had happened to Dynamis, at least in part. He would have probably done the same thing, at that age.

That didn’t mean it wasn’t also damn stupid, though. It would still be another day before Manta showed up, and in the meantime, if anything extreme happened, they’d be up shit creek without a paddle. Plus, having two supers in the same hospital meant that a significant number of officers would have to be stationed there at all times, for their protection. There wasn’t really any way around it.

And now, his bosses were breathing down his neck. Since he’d been left put in charge by Dynamis, the police chief, who would normally be responsible for all of this, had a convenient excuse for the lack of action. That meant that Hasborough was the one taking the blame for this all. It was unfair, but somebody had to take the blame. The heroes were too important, both physically and politically, to get much flak, and since both Dynamis and Puncher had been severely injured, ostensibly in service to the public, meant that they were practically untouchable. Hasborough was perfect, though. Just the right blend of involved enough, and unimportant enough that he could take the fall.

He had been thinking about retiring, anyway. After this, it wasn’t likely that his career would be going much of anywhere. Hell, he might get demoted. At least he’d probably get that time with his kids that he’d wanted.

The old detective shook the negative thoughts out of his head, and went over to talk with the detective inspecting the armor.

“What’ve you found? Anything that’ll clue us in on the identity of our hometown villain?”

The man just shook his head.

“Nothing new, really. The armor is obviously super in origin. It doesn’t match any of the designs used by active Tinkers, which means it’s probably homebrew. We figured that, but it’s nice to get confirmation, I guess. There’s plenty of DNA evidence, but we already have had blood samples, so those are unlikely to turn up anything new. Our perp isn’t in the database. I do think we can rule out Puncher’s kid theory, though. I haven’t measured yet, but judging by the internals, whoever wore this thing was larger than you’d expected a kid to be. Could be a teen, I suppose, but it’s entirely within the realm of possibility of a tech based super to create a voice changer.”

Hasborough nodded. With the resources they had, it was unlikely that they’d get any good leads. He knew that it was a long shot, but it paid to be thorough, in things like these. Villains messed up often enough that it was one of the leading ways in which they were discovered.

He gave the detective a nod, and trudged back to his car. He’d know if something important happened here, the guys on site would make sure of that, but for now, he had to get back to his office. There was a lot of paperwork to be filled out. He could barely stifle his groan at the thought.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dylan sat in his room, arms wrapped around his legs. He felt empty inside. He’d won the fight against Puncher, but it felt bittersweet. To be honest, he hadn’t wanted to fight the guy in the first place. How had it all gone so wrong? Was it really that hard to be a hero?

Yeah, he’d thought it would be hard, but in a different way. It seemed so simple, on TV. Find the bad guys, and then do your best to stop them, and save innocents. Dylan had anticipated pain, struggle, and even failure, but he hadn’t been prepared to be labeled as a villain.

And at first, he’d tried to deny how much it had affected him. He’d felt angry, yeah, but at the same time, it’d been justified. Now, he wasn’t so sure. Was it really ok, what he’d done? Should he have just left it to the adults, the professionals? Was that truly the only way? He’d thought he’d be making stuff better. Turns out, that just hadn’t been true.

Now, he didn’t quite know what to do. His suit was in ruins, after Puncher had scrapped it. The bottom half, which was most of what remained, he’d left in the junkyard, unwilling (and, if he were being honest, probably unable) to try and put in the effort it would have taken to bring it someplace safe while he was running from the law. He’d left his drone in the city, too, he thought. Dylan wasn’t completely sure where it was. He’d just told it to go somewhere, somewhere away from him. Somewhere hidden. He didn’t want to be seen with it. And now, he didn’t know where it was. He wasn’t sure if that bothered him, or not.

In a sense, though, it was almost like he was back to square one. It had been a few days since everything had happened, and at first, he’d thought that the strange funk he’d fallen into would go away, but it seemed to only be getting worse and worse.

Dylan felt as if he’d lost all motivation, to do anything. Even eating had felt like a chore. It was bad enough that his mother had noticed the change in attitude, but she seemed content to give him space, for now, simply watching him, as if to see what he might do. Dylan appreciated it. He didn’t think he could handle any direct concern.

With a sigh, he got up off of his bed, and walked downstairs. He’d been sitting in his room for hours. If he wasn’t going to do anything productive, he might as well see what was on TV.

He found the remote, resting on the coffee table in the middle of their living room, and started flicking through the channels. He paused, briefly, on the national news.

A stern faced man, probably in his 40’s, with a dark suit and slightly graying hair, stared out at him.

“Experts report that severe damage has been done to government servers in a selected few key facilities over the past number of weeks, as a result of what is being called target villain attacks. This has resulted in some extensive outages in various electronic storage and recording services. Notably, the super-power registry is currently offline. Word from the engineers is that it’ll be at least another few weeks until it’s back up and running again.”

The man was interrupted by a commercial break. Dylan stared, blankly, at the wall. It hadn’t been long at all, since his parents told him to register his powers, but it felt like an eternity. It was a good thing that he hadn’t, he supposed, or he’d be in jail.

And now, he couldn’t, even if he wanted to. With the servers down, he’d have to wait weeks before the opportunity presented itself.

Dylan scoffed.

As if he’d go and register. No, that time had passed. He’d chosen to eschew being a responsible member of society. He’d just have to live with the consequences.

The commercials ended, and the news anchor came back into focus.

“Now, we’re bringing some brighter news. Our correspondents report that the mysterious event in Northern Africa has been nearly completely resolved. It seems that, whatever it was, was incredibly destructive. Repair crews have started to be brought in, and according to sources, the dome covering the area will come down in the next few days. We invite you to tune in at 6, where we’ve brought in experts to speculate on what might have been happening down there during these last few weeks.”

With a sigh, Dylan shut the TV off, and went back into his room.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dylan found out the nickname he’d been given by the police by watching the news. At first, when he’d heard of the “Iron Wraith” he thought that they were talking about some other, more established villain. He was soon disillusioned of that notion when his escapades were described with great vitriol by news reporters.

He didn’t really like the name he’d been given. By itself, it wasn’t terrible, but it rubbed him the wrong way that he wasn’t allowed to choose it for himself.

And that was leaving out the context entirely. The villain that the name was associated with was not well regarded. Everytime he heard somebody say the codename on TV, often with accusatory tones, it felt like he’d been punched in the gut.

It was weird, to be talked about. He wondered if the newscasters expected him to be watching them. Dylan figured that they probably weren’t. Watching the news felt too tame, too mundane, for the violent force of nature that was the Iron Wraith.

The way they talked about him made it clear that they didn’t think he had ever had any good intentions. The way they put it, the Iron Wraith had been out to hunt heroes from the start. His tactics had certainly been effective.

He supposed that it made sense, in a way, why they would portray him in such a way. He had never set out to be a villain, and he suspected that anybody who carefully reviewed the situation would concur, but a villain who hunted heroes was far more sensational than a failed hero. It did happen occasionally, but often, they were quickly apprehended or killed by the authorities. It wasn’t a good survival strategy, but it certainly made an impact.

The heroine from the other city that Puncher had talked about also seemed to make him her main priority. Her codename was Manta, and she wore a bright green outfit. She was, for lack of a better term, on loan from a nearby city, until Coriolis returned. Dylan didn’t know what exactly her powers were, save that they had something to do with water.

Unauthorized duplication: this tale has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

Manta had hosted multiple press conferences, and she seemed determined to let the public know that catching Dylan was her top priority.

Which meant that Dylan spent most of his time indoors. He was done with the powers stuff, maybe forever, but at least for now, which meant that there wasn’t a chance in hell he’d be caught out in costume, but that didn’t mean he felt safe. No, during the few times he did venture out in public, every glance felt accusatory, and it seemed that furtive whispers followed him wherever he went.

He knew that he was being paranoid, but leaving his house was still uncomfortable. It felt like it would be far too easy for them to track him down. After all, he was the perpetrator they were looking for. He didn’t have an alibi that would stand up to professional scrutiny, he was almost sure.

But it probably wasn’t realistic for them to find him. In their position, all they had to go off of was general size, and his blood, and as far as Dylan was aware, he wasn’t registered in any database. He would have to try and stay out of the hospital, he supposed.

Still, despite constant self-reassurances, he didn’t feel safe outside. It wasn’t logical, it wasn’t healthy, and to be honest, it probably made him seem even more suspicious, but at the end of the day he didn’t really think he could get over it that easily.

While at first, his mother seemed concerned about the sudden switch from being out of the house for days at a time to being isolated inside, he was able to successfully pass it off as him simply being concerned about the villain at large. It seemed to reassure her, and he suspected the fact that she had been so worried earlier played a large part in it. Had he not vanished, she probably would have been more willing to come to the conclusion that three super villain sightings weren’t enough of a reason to avoid going out onto the sidewalks, especially since there was a professional hero in town specifically to combat the threat. As it stood, however, he was mostly left to his own devices.

He didn’t really tinker, or anything like that. He just wasn’t in the mood. It didn’t have the same appeal to it. Even if he knew he wasn’t going to use it for superhero stuff, or, well, super villain stuff, he supposed, his power still felt like it was tied to his alternate identity. It was as if there was a separation, there, between Dylan, and the boy in the power armor. It was a separation he didn’t want to break, not now, maybe not ever.

Which meant that he spent most of his time idling around, reading, occasionally watching TV. Even that was a struggle. He’d open a book, and read a paragraph, and then have to fight his attention drifting away to something else. It just didn’t feel interesting.

He stared up at the ceiling, wondering if he’d feel like this forever. Surely, it’d get better at one point, right? It had to. He hoped. If it didn’t, he didn’t know what he’d do.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

His father returned from his trip a week later. Dylan was in his bedroom, eyes unfocused, idly scanning a page of a book, trying to make sense of it, when he heard the downstairs door open, accompanied by the sound of his mother happily exclaiming.

He looked up, and pushed himself off the bed. As he made his way downstairs, he caught sight of his dad. Paul wore a T-Shirt, and sweatpants, as opposed to his usual business wear. He had been dragging a suitcase behind him, which had been set aside in favour of giving his wife a hug. Dylan froze. In the drama of the past few weeks, he had almost completely set aside his dad. He hadn’t had the time or energy to be concerned.

Dylan waited for his parents to finish their reunion, and then stepped forward, wrapping his father in a hug as soon as his mother stepped back. He felt warm, the apathy that had been squeezing him finally relaxing its grip.

Dylan stepped back, scanning his father up and down. Although he was wearing casual clothing, his appearance was still neat. Paul's hair was carefully groomed, his shirt unwrinkled, the drawstrings on his pants perfectly even.

Most concerning of all, he had several bandages scattered across his body. They were thick, whitish pads, with an appearance that resembled duct tape. Dylan frowned. It was an unusual sight. His father didn’t often get hurt. In fact, Dylan couldn’t remember ever seeing his father injured. What sort of business trip had his dad been on?

Paul noticed Dylan’s stare. The slight smile on his face disappeared.

“It’s nothing to be concerned about. The taxi I was riding in was struck by another vehicle. It was only a minor accident, so everyone’s fine. I did get a little banged up, though.”

Dylan nodded, and offered a slight smile, but it didn’t really jive. The taxi accident really didn’t explain what had kept his dad so long. He knew that his father wasn’t important enough for a business trip to last several weeks, unless something extraordinary was going on. Was he being lied to? His father’s bandages looked familiar, but Dylan didn’t recall where they were from. He was pretty certain that most hospitals wouldn’t have had them on hand.

Perhaps the accident had been more severe than his father was letting on, and it was simply being underreported in order to assuage Dylan’s worries. That didn’t feel right, but he didn’t really know what else could be going on.

Dylan was broken from his chain of thought as Paul looked at him, and offered a slight smile.

“Would you mind helping me carry my bags to my bedroom?”

He nodded. His father didn’t often ask for help. Maybe he really was hurt?

Dylan leaned down, and hefted the suitcase, finding it surprisingly light. He lifted it off of the floor fast enough that its momentum carried it up past his head, and he had to wrestle it back down to waist level.

His father raised an eyebrow at him. Dylan looked down at his hands, appraisingly.

“I must be filling out some. It’s about time, anyways”.

“I suppose that it is. You are rather tall for your age. That might be the reason you’re so skinny”, his father remarked.

Dylan turned, and mock glared at his dad. Shaking his fist, he started down the hallway, towards his parents bedroom.

Dylan felt a smile creeping up the corners of his lips. The world didn’t look quite as dismal.

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

The next few weeks would go slowly by. As the excitement from his fathers return gradually diminished, Dylan’s foul mood slowly started to return to the forefront of his mind. It didn’t help that everytime he looked at his dad, he started to feel guilty. That had started a few days after his father had got back. At first, Dylan wasn’t sure why. It took him remembering the conversation that the two had had, what seemed like so long ago, where he had been warned not to scavenge from the garbage for supplies for his powers. It was the fact that his father had, in part, predicted what had happened that really got to him, Dylan thought.

The situation wasn’t exactly the same as the hypothetical he had been presented with, but it was close enough that Dylan started to feel even more guilty than before. Had the outcome of the entire endeavor been obvious from the start? Should he have known? He could acknowledge that, in highsight, he had certainly made a lot of mistakes, but he didn’t think he’d be able to deal with it if he had made an obviously and objectively terrible decision all those weeks ago.

The gnawing feeling of guilt meant that he started to avoid his parents. Who wouldn’t, when the sight of them spiked his anxiety. He even started to leave the house more, the fear of being caught outside lesser than the terrible churning feeling he got when he looked his dad in the eyes. It sucked, but he didn’t know what else he could do. It wasn’t like he could explain what was making him uncomfortable. His parents would react poorly to the knowledge that he was a supervillain, to say the least. With how by the books his father was, he might even get turned in by his own parents.

No, that was a risk he wasn’t willing to take. Which meant that he just had to deal with it by himself. If it meant long days walking around the neighborhood or browsing through the same stores over and over again, then so be it. He had been just as bored when he was stuck inside.

He spent weeks like this, trying to make himself unnoticeable, to project the feeling of normalcy, both at home, and in public. It started to become routine. He’d wake up slightly late, because his parents ate breakfast early. He’d pour himself a bowl of cereal, whatever they had, eat it, and then go put his shoes on and leave the house, maybe having a brief word with his parents before he left. The conversation was never too long, or too deep. Then, he’d be out of the house. He’d walk around, trying to entertain himself, until lunch, sneak back in, and then leave again, until dinner. After that, he’d sequester himself in his room and try to read a book.

He had thought about visiting friends, during the day, but during the past few months, they had drifted apart. He was already starting to feel the strain at the end of the last school year, and his month or so of no contact had been the nail in the coffin. It would have felt weird to come back all this time later, and try to rekindle past friendships. Plus, he didn’t really feel like hanging out with them. They wouldn’t be able to understand what he was going through, even if he was able to tell them.

It was during one of these daily cycles when it happened. As Dylan was putting his shoes on, his father spoke up.

“Dylan, I need to talk to you.”

Dylan froze, an icy feeling creeping up his spine. What was this about? So suddenly? Was it over? Did they know?

He tried to control his tone when he responded, but a note of tension slipped in.

“Yeah, Dad? What did you want to talk about?”

“Come sit down, please,” his father said.

Dylan stood, and schooled his expression, trying to look nonchalant, before turning and sitting down opposite of his dad, who was studying him intently. Dylan felt like he was under a spotlight.

“You’re probably not going to like this, but we’re moving.”

Dylan froze, not processing the words for a few seconds. When he finally realized what his dad had said, the relief washed over him in a palpable wave.

“I’m sure you were wondering why I was gone for so long, right? It was because I was being interviewed, in effect, by my boss's boss. Showing off my skills, if you will. They liked what they saw, and because of some recent vacancies in my organization, they’ve decided to offer me a job at a larger location. I won’t go into too much into detail, as it would likely bore you, but I decided to accept their offer, for a variety of reasons.”

Dylan took a second to take the information in, before asking a question.

“Where are we moving? And, uh, when will this all be happening?”

“We’re going to start packing up in approximately a week. As to the location, we’ll be moving to Baylorville. It’s a bigger city, and they’ve recently had a position open there, like I mentioned earlier. I also used to live there. In fact, my mentor still lives there,” his father said.

Dylan tried to look slightly put out.

“It kinda sucks, leaving my friends behind, but to be honest, living in a bigger city means that there will be more opportunity, right?”

His dad nodded.

“Yeah, Dylan, there will be. I know this will likely be hard on you, but you should try to look on the brightside, alright? It will make this whole thing easier.”

“Alright, then. Is that all, Dad?” Dylan said.

When his father nodded affirmative, he got up from the couch, and headed out the door. He thought he felt relieved. Had this happened a few months ago, he probably would have been upset. Most kids would be, having to leave their entire lives behind. Now, he was just relieved. He didn’t know if he would ever be comfortable in this city again. Plus, he didn’t really have anything tying him down, anymore.

The only thing Dylan would be leaving was his drone, but he didn’t feel like that was any great loss. It’s not like he could bring it if he’d wanted to, and to be frank, the thought of bringing it disgusted him. Now that he thought about it, he didn’t even know if it was functional. He wouldn’t be surprised if the police, or Manta, had destroyed or captured it. He certainly wasn’t about to go looking for it.

Perhaps he was finally getting a lucky break? Maybe everything really was turning around for the better?

—---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Dylan watched, from the backseat of their car, as the city he had grown up in faded out into the distance behind him. He had known that, by most accounts, it was a large town, not a proper city, but it still felt different, seeing it from out here. How small it was. It was hard to believe that everything had happened within those confines.

Finally, it passed over the horizon, and he could see it no longer. He turned around, and faced forward. It seemed that it was finally over.