The comforting weight of Seth’s old hand-me-down tomb was tainted by the crusted dusty crumble of a dug out rubble pile. Rotting blood tinging and staining as it rumbled and tore away under claws seeking to-

“HUUGHH… ugghhh”

He shot up, slammed face first into an all mighty headache beating out his chest for attention. Like his head was getting vibrated against his will to the tune of a return to Brighton. The same dingy apartment greeted him in its dim drab as he tried to rub his head out of the past. But his movements had grown stiff, real blood crusting and staining his holed and shot up coat. The nightly nightmares that had deprived him of sleep were beaten back, rubbed away as best they could. But… something else lingered from that relived hell. Something other than eyes looking down on him. Voices, disjointed and hollow. He couldn’t remember what they said, just that they spoke at all. Something familiar in them, emotions tied in but difficult to discern. He could still feel them in between the pounding headache that was defeating any malignant focus he still had. The odd sensations dying away before he could make sense of it. But the message was hard to ignore. He could feel weight in them, on them. The suit’s form behind those garbled words, stiff and immobile. A little too poignant of a feeling given his rigor mortised clothing. He could feel it though, far off. Something in it connecting to him, trying to draw him back. It had to be the Garkah, it had to… But that ever reliable ache in his chest flared again as he was reminded of why he was here. And why he was lying in bed covered in his own dried up blood.

The demand grew over his headache and finally forced him up. At this rate it would be better to just forget than to work through the guilt. Because the pile was already reaching higher than he could manage. But at least he knew its surface now. A stiff stretch cracked the dried blood off his shoulders, he was going to need to wash his sheets anyway. He pulled up off the bed and headed to his bathroom, needed to inspect the damage. Looking in the mirror at least made things out to be manageable. A few torn holes, a ripped seam on the scarf, his pants were a near total loss. He… didn’t have any shoes anymore. At least his hat was still intact, so he could still go shopping if he needed to. But… something felt different as he looked down at his swisscheesed coat.

A bit of focus, as best he could, scrutinized his threads, his means of power. But… but they were extended out a little more than before. Splaying out, stretching through his skin into his clothes. He found himself looking along them and seeing the fibers that made up his coat. Mostly polyester, but they were wrapped tight in his electron threads. Like they were protected, not quite a part of him but spared from…

“Ghrrr!” ‘Fucking stop already!!’

His chest buckled him out of his focus, he couldn’t forget seeing those goon’s memories. Couldn’t get over the thought of being able to cannibalize someone’s being like that. He hated himself… hated that he could do that… hated that he had done that. But he gritted and refocused despite the pain trying to force him down.

He looked back at the threading throughout his coat, at the holes in it specifically. The electron threads wrapped every… thread. They followed them to every end, but kept the frayed ends open for some reason. Like they knew where to rejoin. Like he knew where they could rejoin. And he knew he needed to make this power do something good for once. And so he pulled… slightly. The lights in his bathroom flickered as he borrowed some power to work with, threads flaring and extending out from the frayed fiber ends. But Seth felt something else as the lines pulled their fibers together. He kept his focus, eyes shut tight and cut off from distraction, but compounded that focus deeper, followed his own pull up to the light. It was practically infinitesimal, may as well not even exist, but he could follow one of his threads out from himself. Zigzagging, chaining, coopting a path and reaching into the light and its socket. He could feel it attached to the wire inside, the steady current from the city’s grid. A burst was intercepted and pulled in and the chain rippled back to him, the line drawing closer together as those electrons were added onto the end. The line wisped about weightless, attached to the molecules it chained to. But it still followed his pull, followed his focus, and flowed where he wanted it to. This was what his power always was. What he’d been manipulating. He just never saw it for himself, never felt it for what it was. Something in his ache made sure he could see this, made sure he knew. Or just accented to the implications.

His coat and pants rethreaded themselves, electron lines tying their frays back together. Seth felt his hum, his resonance. It pulled for what it needed, but didn’t take with abandon. Spans that were too wide for what material was left were pulled as tight as they could be as pieces of thread were pulled apart and brought across. The result was thinner than the surroundings, but the threading held it tight despite this. It was like his armor, just with a lot less protection. But it meant way more than that to him. Seth looked back up to the thread pulling from the light, letting it release and flow back to him. He looked past it, at his mirror, at himself. At the unconscious smile rising through the aftershocks of that incessant beat. This meant he could fix as much as he broke, repair not just himself but others. It meant he could fulfill that hope that carried him out of Brighton. He could-

*bang bang bang*

The sound of someone banging on his door threw him out of his upward spiral, something he really could have fucking used! At the very least his ache abated in the afterglow, but who the hell is-

‘Oh please don’t tell me its-’

Seth walked up to his door, looked through the peephole, and banged his head against it in overloading curmudgeon. It was the neighborhood watch, all smiles despite most of their obvious bruising.

“Fuck.”

Tightening down his hat and beating back every ounce of common sense screaming at him to leave them to collect dust on his doorstep, he opened the door, exacerbated scowl already on his face.

“Yo! You suck at hiding.”

The punk was upbeat and almost barging into the apartment before Seth could rebuke him.

“Wow… this place sucks for mainstre-”

An arm nearly cracked the door frame as he turned to face his uninviting host.

“What do you want? I already said I was sorry-“

“Whoa whoa… it’s all good. We’re all good. I mean hell, we couldn’t do shit to you even if we tried. We just wanted to come by and say you were fucking amazing.”

He wasn’t seeing the compliment very well.

“I mean… fucking hell man, you killed like… 5 Dockers on your first go. We can’t even beat 1 of those fucking bruisers, let alone 2 and their handlers. You’re goddamn incredible! Well by our standards anyway.”

Practically failing himself, just short of growling at the overly cheery kid talking about the constantly relived deaths of five people like they were a milestone.

“What… do you want!?”

“Well…”

The punk lost his boastful edge as Seth’s ire became oppressive, but still had more to say.

“We want you to join us!”

“Absolutely not!”

The bluntness bashed the punk’s spirit to dust, desperate delinquency finally showing throu-

‘…Wait.’

“Oh come on dude! You’re practically the most powerful person in the whole district!”

“Yeah! You could probably lock an entire block down by yourself.”

The unstable electric tried to hang off his arm, drawing his ire about as protective rubber gloves invaded his personal space.

“We can barely cover the one street, let alone all the turf we’ve been left with.”

“Yeah.”

“We need you.”

“Please.”

“Quac.”

The rest of the crew, shoulder perched mascot included, were just short of a squad of puppies eyeing him for affection as he looked back and yanked his arm out from under those invasive rubber gloves. His eyes practically igniting on their own.

“So what… you just want another killer to put you guys on top. Is that it?!”

The simmer in his voice couldn’t last, he was fighting the ache as best he could but that will was crumbling.

“You want what little is left of this place to be torn apart and to rule over the rubble!! HUH!!”

The ache was done being ignored, and Seth was losing out bad. The venom in his voice heartlessly tarnishing the optimism trying to reach him. A hand snatching up the punk’s hoodie again, making sure he could see clearly the hell he was in.

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

“You want me to murder just as callously as YOU!!!”

The glow behind Seth’s eyes was undeniable, but so was the pain. Every bit of the punk’s edge withered under that plasma blue glare.

“That’s… That’s not what we want at all man!”

Seth pulled him in as close as he could get, teeth gritted in utter agony and voice growling like the animal he felt like.

“Then what… the fuck… do you want?”

“We… we just want to help people! To be actual heroes!”

The ache finally became too much for him to take. He tossed the punk about deeper into the room, his own knees wavering and giving out. Back slamming into the door pinning it against the wall as his hand gripping his chest as tight as it could, heaving breaths desperate to find just a moment of peace again. The crew tried to scramble to help the both of them, but the punk waved them off, picking himself up but staying sat on the floor at Seth’s level. The bluff he lived in weathered to nothing as he watched Seth suffer his own being.

“That’s all we’ve ever wanted in life. To be heroes, to fight bad guys and save people. It’s all anybody who still comes here thinks about. Sure somewhere along the way a lot lose that and fall in with the wrong people, but that's not us. We’ve all been rejected by the League, we’ve all had our dreams thrown back in our faces. But we still want to help people, protect them from the worst this place has to offer. But… but we all suck as heroes.”

The ache kept Seth’s head low, but it abated slowly as the punk tried to pull him out of himself.

“You shouldn’t feel bad for what you did yesterday. Those guys would have fucking made Little Miss Mage Hair suffer as they-“

Seth suddenly canted his head up, pained expression covering up an exacerbated sense of naming standards.

“Little… Miss… Mage Hair?”

“What? You saw her hair, and she’s a bomb ass lady.”

The ache started to be occluded by an exacerbated sigh, Seth clonking his head into his raised knee.

“Look… you saved her. You fucking saved the life of an innocent woman. And so what if you killed those Dockers, they would have done far worse. I mean fucking hell, those fucks kidnap children on a regular basis! They deserve the shit you dealt them!”

Seth wasn’t feeling the bright side of this, the ache clouding everything as he grinded his head up from his bodily fortress of solitude. Pained expression clearly talking for him.

“…Look, someone like you is a god damn fantasy around here. Someone with enough power to fight for real, but still able to keep the dream alive. Some who can still be a real hero when it counts.”

He still couldn’t fight the ache, but it waned in the wake of heartfelt plea. Just enough to allow him to pull his arm away and bury his head deeper into his knees.

“Huugh… It was worth a shot.”

The punk stood back up, Seth’s depression seemingly too contagious for a heart to heart to reach.

“Look, the invite’s always gonna be open. And if you need someone to talk to we-“

His fists suddenly tightened too hard to keep his fight inside, his head ripping that fortress down in an agony wrought demolition, head banging itself against the door as his knees toppled to the floor defeated.

“Wait… grr! Just tell me one thing.”

The punk and his crew almost lit up as growled up at them.

“What the fucking hell even is a Docker?”

“Does that me-“

“Don’t get your hrrph fucking hopes up. I just need an answer.”

Seth got up off the floor as the crew invited themselves in again. All clanks and squeaks and waddling feet. He begrudgingly beelined it for the couch before any of them could try and get comfortable, ire keeping them back and in line as they crowded in. The laminated guy at the end closed the door and kept an ear to it while the unpowered umpire girl closed up the pitiful blinds on the window. The punk kept center stage.

“Sorry, nothing stays secret in this town, so it’s better to make it as slow as possible. Also you really should learn to be stealthier. You-“

“Enough! Dockers, what the fuck are they!”

“Alright alright… Just keep your voice down a little in the future. Every wall has an ear behind it. And information is a cottage industry people have been killed over.”

The scrap metal duck owner scooped up Seth’s kitchen chair and passed it to the punk who sat it down in reverse in front of the couch’s horrifyingly stained coffee table.

“So… back when this place was-“

“I don’t need a history lesson!”

“Well you do to know these asshats. Now. Back when the docks actually ran supplies and operated as, you know, docks, a whole bunch of the workers there unionized out of the blue. TYeah they were run ragged moving shit around all day and the pay was barely a step above minimum. But… that union was a little too powerful, gave them better pay and better hours sure, but they basically had the guys in charge of running all this stuff by the balls. An issue that did not sit well. The actual workers got what they wanted yeah, but the heads of the union kept demanding more. They tried to call up a full strike, closed the docks up to bargain and show the world who was boss. Well the League wasn’t having any of it. They fucking came down hard, I mean damn near Pinkerton hard-“

“Wait… you actually know what a Pinkerton is?”

“…The fuck’s that supposed to mean?”

“Does this place even have schools?”

“It does for your information, fuck you. Anyway.”

“The strikers were beat to shit but the heads were nowhere to be seen. Long story short they were some fucking Terror Matrix holdouts that got nabbed after everything was over. But their damage had already been done. The hardcore members of the union were radicalized hard against supers, both for the crackdown and the manipulation, while the rest were just generally resentful.”

The punk turned a little dour.

“So when all that shit ended and this place started losing work a lot of them came back and staked a claim on the docks. The whole area’s become a no-go zone for anyone with powers. Let alone anyone who just likes living.”

Seth sat forward a little, most of the ache faded away by simple distraction.

“Then why are they branching out now? You said they take kids, what's all this about?”

The punk finally hit the max of his down turn.

“…They… they’re… they’re fuck sadistic fucks is all I can say. But that’s for the lucky ones. The unlucky get fucking experimented on.”

Seth pulled himself back up.

“They what!? You said they were dock workers not fucking mad scientists!”

“Well, no one who goes into their turf comes out to explain it very well. But… the bodies left over say a lot. Maybe one of those holdouts is still around and riling them up. And you saw those bruisers, the fucking over jacked simpletons that they were forcing around. That shit ain’t natural. So maybe they do have a mad scientist with them.”

The electric guy stepped up, rubber gloves squeaking as he folded his arms in.

“I heard they drain the blood out of people and drink it. One guy even said they strip out organs and sew them into the bruisers.”

“Ugh, I keep telling you that’s not how that works. Look whatever it is that they do, it’s pretty unsuccessful most of the time. They only ever seem to be crazy strong and muscle bound.”

“Doesn’t stop them from hating on them as well.”

The bony armored girl drew attention even as she looked away.

“They treat them like fucking cattle, expendable soldiers to soak up bullets and haul crap around.”

Her armor clinked as she moved her arms, an almost unnerving sound given that it was bone… or at least looked like bone. The punk waved the two off.

“Okay! Just understand these fucks do fucked up shit and make life hell for everyone in Eagleville. I mean like I said yesterday, that guy who died was looking for marks on our turf. Anyone weak enough to grab they ca… con… fuck what was that word again?”

“Consign boss.”

The umpire girl finally spoke, a rather random New English accent coloring things in.

“Yeah that’s it, thanks Batzor. They’re consigned to whatever shit the… Dockers…“

The punk stopped in the near physical ire blaring from Seth, eyes glaring and twitching as if outright insulted.

“Batzor?”

“Oh shit! Yeah we never introduced ourselves. Fuck, guess things were just so hectic.”

The punk stood up, completely distracted from his previous disturbance and casually pointing to the baseball armored girl.

“That’s Batzor as you know. She’s our resident booknerd as you can imagine.”

He pointed at the electric guy, making sure to not extend his finger too close.

“That’s Tazor. You already know what he can do.”

Seth winced hard, but the punk continued and pointed at the scrap armored kid.

“That’s Scrapzor, our mechanic.”

The laminated guy

“Glazor, our muscle number one.”

The bone armored girl.

“Masticazor, muscle number two.”

Seth narrowly winced his face off at that last one, the punk finally taking notice of his reaction.

“Masti-cazor… as in… masticator?”

“Yeah…”

“So… those are all… teeth?”

She looked at him a little insulted.

“Well yeah… why do you think I ended up here?”

Seth couldn’t help but twitch uncontrollably, but the punk wasn’t done, holding up the crew’s waddly mascot off the floor.

“This is Quaczor-“

“QUAC!!”

“Ahh!!”

His hand recoiled as the perturbed waterfowl bit into his thumb and splayed its ruffly wings out, landing rather insulted onto the coffee table.

“Heh… And… and I’m the Immortal Zor…! By the way. And this… this is… the Neighzorhood Watch!”

The weight of the entire civilized world fell over Seth’s head as it nearly obliterated the coffee table unjustly left in its path. The complete and total affront to everything he knew of naming conventions smiling presentationally at him. Even as the woody echo and catapulted feathers filled the air.

“You… uh… You okay?”

Seth inched his head up only a single degree at a time, but an almighty indignation was rising upon the punk.

“You don’t… want to know… how much I want to SNAP YOUR GOD DAMN NECK RIGHT NOW!!! ZOR!?!? What Kind of Stupid Naming Convention IS THAT!?! AND THE TEAM NAME!!! WHAT THE FUCK!!!”

Seth fell back forward, head wrapped in his hands trying not to collapse in on himself out of spite, unable to comprehend the absolute atrocity was just subjected to. The punk was dumbfounded, but ‘Tazor’ talked first.

“We told you it was stupid Kev.”

“Hu… Fuck you! You actually know why we chose this!”

The tooth armored girl interrupted him.

“Except only you chose this, remember. I said we should come up with our own stuff and you complained that we needed to be thematic or whatever the fuck.”

“Oh, Fuck yall!! The names are great! And we need to keep them or else we’ll be forgotten about when Razor gets high up!”

Seth glare threatened to explode out from between his fingers.

‘God fucking damn it!!! I knew it!!!’

He pulled himself up as best he could, but only succeeded in slumping his head higher up in a hand fortress of utter hell, and having whatever bit of optimism left sloughing away.

‘Of-fucking-course I end up with Razor’s friends! Because why the fuck not?!?’

An over exacerbated sigh finally drew… ‘Zor’ back to him, thoroughly demotivated and criticized.

“Look fuck that shit, okay! You want to help us or what!?”

Ever frayed fiber of Seth’s being wanted to just retreated into himself and slam the button on that teleporter just so he wasn’t anywhere near this situation anymore… But he couldn’t do that. He wanted to be a hero, wanted to prove he was more than what this guilt kept condemning him as. And… and these bozos needed help.

“RRrggggghhh…!! Hugghhh… fine… I’ll help you.”

The crew lit up off their forced upon indignation, even the tousled duck unruffling its feathers in Batzor’s catching and cradling hands. But Seth wasn’t done.

“You fucking need it pretty desperately with names like that anyway.”

“Hey fuck off already! I’m trying man, but all the good names are taken. And we gotta have a brand ya know?”

“You made that team name up after last night and could barely corral one guy with a gun.”

Seth looked back up at him from under his cap brim, judgmental embarrassment flustering his face… but sincerity pulling through regardless.

“But… thank you… for pulling me out of this.”

Seth rubbed his sore chest and squared back up, fight coming back up with a resigning breath. As he remembered what he and them were up against, and as he remembered a single detail gleaned from amid his sickening feat.

“I only need to know one last thing. Where’s the Hotbox?”