Let me clarify some stuff. First of all, never trust anything Brendan says and definitely don’t trust Grace. Their stories are accurate, but not 100% truthful. The layoffs weren’t some huge riot like Grace described (yes, I’m reading the other entries into the book as well), a lot of people were too exhausted to make a big fuss about it, but it is true that Grace broke after Lang announced everything. As for Brendan... I wasn’t happy about becoming a superhero or anything, and it didn’t happen in the forest. He stood on a chair in our apartment and we both turned him down at first. We didn’t form the Unreliables until after we stopped Grace. I still don’t understand how the goggles work. The way he described it was a lot more melancholy than it actually was, and Jacob told me he was leaving for work during Brendan’s rambling.

But I don’t wanna just recant the past. Everything about the shack was true. All the stuff about Grace’s mom and how Lang treated her? Also true. Things aren’t just black and white anymore. People are complex. But that’s not what I wanna talk about.

Today I just want to tell you about the final match between two of the Unreliables and Grace, cause Jacob was... busy. You see, during the week in which we were studying and training, Grace was hard at work constructing a giant robot using her malfunctioning drawing-summoning tech as a base. City-Destroying level tech. One week after the layoffs were announced, Grace decided to mount an attack on the very thing she built in an attempt to screw over Lang and thrust the entirety of Seattle into the dark age, taking all tech companies in the city down with them.

I still remember the day she broke, far beyond redemption.

It was a warm day near the end of July, Brendan & I had trained a bit and got hold of parts of our powers. Jacob, however, had his big court case and was focused on that. We were all sitting in the living area, around the coffee table we had to replace due to the first one transforming into a goose (long story), watching the local news.

“It’s impossible. The general public doesn’t see you as superheroes, just nuisances who destroy grocery stores. If you aren’t superheroes, then superheroes don’t exist and I can’t win my case.” Jacob spoke angrily, upset at the news.

It was showing an out of context clip of Brendan & I running out of the grocery store Brendan worked at, then cut to a clip of the inside of the store, completely destroyed. The news neglected to show that there were also ravenous bobcats inside that grocery store.

“It’s not our fault, the Sinister Gang showed up! Then their guns turned into bobcats!” Brendan shouted incredulously.

“It sounds insane, but it’s what happened.” I added.

“Look, I can’t deal with your campy nonsense right now. I have to win this case or my future is fucked.” Jacob said, standing up and exiting through the apartment door.

The next few moments were met with silence as we continued to watch the news. Nothing happened for a solid couple hours or so. Then, a car got thrown through the wall of our apartment that was closest to the street.

Brendan and I immediately screamed, because it basically destroyed our coffee table and entire living room set up. After relinquishing the incredulousness of the situation, we walked over and stared out the wall that was now just a hole, and saw something even more ridiculous.

A giant robot spewing out crude drawings of flying pigs.

“Brendan, are you seeing-” I started before realizing that Brendan was already fully in his superhero garb, “How did you do that so fast?”

“I’ve been wearing it the whole time!” He shouted, laughing.

I took a minute to get serious before heading back to my room and changing into my quantum brain outfit.

“Let’s go.” I said, putting on my goggles and turning the car that was currently just sitting in our apartment into a cardboard cutout of Danny Devito.

Fitting. We both headed down the 31 flights of stairs to get to my car, then hopped in. We drove past legions and legions of flying pigs, as well as crudely drawn shadow men terrorizing innocent civilians. Eventually, we made it over to Pike Place Market, right as it was getting stepped on by a giant foot and hundreds of guests were running in all directions as we stepped out of the car.

“Got our work cut out for us.” I said, walking over to one of a fruit stand with oranges, taking them one by one and changing them into random objects until I transformed one into a weapon. Brendan immediately summoned Gerald, the dodo bird he summoned back at the shack.

“We got this, Gerald!” Brendan shouted as he ran with his dodo bird towards the giant robot.

“Swear to god, can’t take him places.” I said quietly to myself, still transforming objects in my hand, until finally I managed to turn an orange into a Jet Pack, then another orange into a hefty steel mallet. I did accidentally leave behind a trail of appliances, rare gems, and roasted food in my wake, but maybe people who needed them, took ‘em. It wasn’t a good situation to be in.

After that, I got slammed in the back by a crudely drawn flying pig. As I got back up, I saw the pig oink at me, as if mocking me for going down so easily. I slipped on the jetpack and stared it down with my mallet, it staring back at me. Then it charged, and I slammed the pig into the wall as it exploded into shredded paper.

“What the fuck?” I asked before I got swarmed with more pigs.

All of them got a hefty chunk of my mallet before I tried to look for Brendan. Sometimes, shadow men would approach me and attempt to fight me in hand to mallet combat, but having a weapon just proves too powerful.

Eventually, I found Brendan, his dodo bird jumping around on market stalls and getting the jump on several of the flying pigs. Brendan was doing his best impression of an mma fighter, and it somehow managed to work.

“Are you okay?” I yelled through the sounds of pigs exploding into shredded paper.

“Honestly? Better than I thought I would!” He shouted back before punching one of the shadowy men in the face, exploding him into shredded paper as well.

Suddenly, a burst of bright light blinded the lot of us and Gerald, Brendan’s trusty sidekick, disappeared.

“Shit, guess five minutes isn’t a lot of time!” Brendan shouted in dismay.

“I’m gonna go on ahead!” I yelled, slamming various pigs and men into the ground with my mallet as I jetpacked through the air.

After some time had passed, the giant robot’s destination was clear. It was headed for Lang Corp. I had to stop it before it got there, millions of lives were in danger, and Seattle City Court was on that same trajectory.

I sped up, put all of my emotion into flying in front of the giant robot to stop it and figure out who was controlling it. Therefore, I went for the head. With my mallet, I mean.

The metal on most of the skull didn’t dent at all, no matter how many times I hit it with my hammer, but the eyes were made of glass and shattered at the first sign of impact. I heard a voice say ‘Autopilot On’ as I flew into the control room of the robot. Where I saw the person controlling the robot.

Grace.

“You.” I spoke, with an undertone of rage.

“I should’ve figured out of the three of you, you’d be the one to show up here.” Grace said, through a helmet while being dressed head to toe like a medieval version of the pink power ranger.

“What do you mean, three of us? Do you know who I am?” I asked, lifting my mallet into a warning position.

“Alphonso Ramirez, 28, Maintenance worker on the Seattle Nuclear Reactor. Personal favorite of Jared Lang. Lives with two roommates, Brendan Frakes, 24, an incoherent nonce with brain worms, and Jacob Smith, 31, a person so desperate to cling to any hint of approval only to be shot down by the very people he’s working towards. There are three of you.” She said, standing up from the chair next to the control panel that I assumed controlled the robot.

“How do you know that?” I asked again.

“Because Al, we’re coworkers,” Grace said through her outfit, pressing a button that flipped a wall to reveal an armory, then picking out a lance.

I was flabbergasted for a second.

“The only person who I let call me Al is... Grace? You’re behind this?” I asked, incredulously.

“You know what’s funny about people who design blueprints? The people who want the thing made only care about the end product. Once that product is finished, you’re tossed out the window. No longer needed. My mom is sick, and Lang cost me the only way I could take care of her. So I’m going to take the very thing that he held so dearly for the last decade.”

“Grace, you can’t destroy the reactor. If you do, all of Seattle will lose power. Everything will collapse. Hundreds of lives will be lost. Including your mom.”

Grace thrusted her Lance straight over my shoulder as a warning.

“Grace died the night her mom went into the hospital. I’m the kinderdrawer.” She said menacingly.

“Okay, I’m gonna assume that you’re having a totally understandable mental breakdown and once this is all over, I’ll find you a really good therapist but for now I can’t let you get away with this.” I said, blocking her next lance attack with my mallet.

Stolen story; please report.

“Entertain me, Al.”

What followed was like something out of an action movie. Grace’s ability to use that lance was really strong, and I could barely keep my balance half the time. She managed to scrape me a few times before I realized that I could just make it so she no longer had a lance. I had to jump around the room before catching her off guard and grabbing her lance, pulling down my goggles. Unfortunately, I had turned her lance into an even bigger lance, and she used it to push me out of the giant robot's eye.

I tried to start my jetpack, but unfortunately it didn’t start until I was floating right next to a movieplex sign. I looked into the theater, and just barely above the counter, I saw someone with green hair looking back at me. There was someone with Orange hair next to them. I saw them sign, and luckily I took 2 years of sign language back in high school. I swatted a few flying pigs away before I tried to sign for them to get to safety. The green haired kid signed back that they couldn’t leave because they were at work. Frustrated, I threw on my goggles, touched the movieplex sign, and turned it into a hot air balloon that just floated away. ‘Not anymore’, I signed back.

I flew off without ensuring their safety, and that was my mistake. Those two ended up being Serenity and Mylo, who immediately got kidnapped by Matt Shapiro and his goons.

After that encounter I flew back to Brendan, who wasn’t as far away as he used his box to summon a triceratops, rampaging all over Pike Place, shredding paper pigs in his wake. I flew down as close as I could to let him know the situation.

“It’s Grace. She’s doing this.” I called out over the raging winds.

“Grace? The girl who made the blueprints for the reactor, like, a decade ago? Tracks.” Brendan called back, holding onto the triceratops with all his might, dodging buildings as the Kinderdrawer’s robot knocks them down to try to block their path.

“How did you summon a Triceratops?” I called back, confused on how he’s smart enough to remember the dinosaurs are extinct.

“I have no idea! Guess this species of Dinosaur didn’t survive the fall of Isla Nublar.” Brendan laughed.

Gave him too much credit.

“Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom isn’t a documentary!” I yelled back, getting irritated, then calming myself and focusing that irritation on the pigs and shadows flying at us at high speeds, “What the hell do we do? There’s far too many of them, and we can’t hurt the robot with just the two of us.”

As if repulsed by my response, Brendan crouched down behind the frill of the Triceratops as he commanded it to crash itself directly into the robot's leg. The robot itself faltered, but unfortunately it didn’t do a whole lot of damage as the Triceratops horns only slightly pierced its legs. The robot took only a few seconds to continue towards its trajectory.

“Shit. We’re running out of time.” I whispered to myself.

Before I had time to think of another plan, however, something relatively crazy happened. I flew up a bit, and I witnessed Grace’s robot pass by the Lang Corp building before out of nowhere, A massive robot emerged from behind Lang Corp that looked like a cross between a Bulldog and a Raccoon.

Jacob just told me it’s called a Tanuki and that Lang Corp bought the suit from a Japanese company.

So before my eyes were two massive robots, one that just looked like what a mix between a transformer and a copy machine would look like, and the other looked like cultural appropriation. That’s the state of our society.

There seemed to be a brief pause between the robots, as they started realizing what was about to happen. I tried to get closer to see what was going on, but Lang smacked me through one of the windows of his building, destroying my jetpack as it collided with a concrete wall after I hit several cubical stalls on the way there. I don’t know what was happening with Brendan.

The Office I landed in was really busy and somehow didn’t even realize I was there. One of them greeted me in a very corporate drone-y way as I walked back over to the wall I was just slammed through. The goggles somehow managed to stay functioning, much to my surprise, but I also realized I had dropped the mallet in the fall and had no way to defend myself from the flying pigs that were charging directly at the hole in the wall.

I tapped a girl that was sitting near me.

“Do you have, like, an eraser or something?” I asked.

“Yeah. Are you that guy from Crash Bandicoot?” She replied, handing me an eraser.

“Sometimes, I truly wish I was.” I responded, taking the eraser and changing it until I found a suitable weapon as I watched the two robots fight each other with robot fists.

“Hey, Neo Cortex, want a donut?” A random guy called from another nearby stall.

“I’m the Quantum Brain! Also yes!” I shouted, taking a purple donut and finally transforming what once was an eraser into what now is C4.

This’ll work. I could plant it on the control panel, while rescuing Grace and stopping her attack on the city while Lang’s distracting her. Only question was, how to get there. I didn’t have to think for long as I thought I was going to need to as Brendan came up into the wall, smashing all the flying pigs with a really large bird. When he was done and there wasn’t anymore Pigs flying near us, he came towards the wall.

“What is that?” I asked.

“Aiolornis. Extinct bird of Prey.” Brendan replied.

“You know that but you think T-Rex’s are still alive?”

“Maybe I’m just really into Birds, dude, you don’t know me.”

“Did you just google large, extinct bird?”

“Shut up and get on. We have three minutes. The lang-bot is getting worn out.”

“I have C4.”

Without another word, I took Brendans hand and joined him on the back of the Aiolornis as we flew into the eye of Grace’s machine. Brendan entered too, because the Bird disappeared into a burst of light the second after we both dove into the robot.

“Grace, stop this!” I called out.

“Yeah, it’s incredibly rude to fight Japanese spirit animals!” Brendan added onto my statement.

“No. You’re too white to say that.” I replied to Brendan.

“Why are you trying to stop me? These corporate shitheads don’t care about you, either, Al.” Grace said, putting her robot into an auto-fight mode and jumping at me with her spear.

I tried to duck out of the way but she grabbed my shoulder and took me down with her. I tried to grab her spear, turning it into a single three starred tree leaf and passing the C4 over to Brendan as I attempted to pin down Grace.

“Put that on the control panel, and detonate it!” I said, struggling to keep Grace pinned.

“How?” Brendan asked.

“I don’t know, I’m not a demolition expert!”

I watched as Brendan went right over to the large panel with a bunch of buttons and placed the c4 directly in the middle of it. Before I could see more, though, Grace used my moment of distraction and kicked me to the other side of the room before gunning towards Brendan and pinning him on another wall of the control area.

“This tech can save my mom. It’s my only shot left. I’m not gonna let you assholes take it from me!” Grace called out, angry that her plan was about to fail.

I came to my senses after a bit, and upon seeing that Brendan was pinned onto a wall by Grace, with her hand around his neck, I took one of the many papers that was on the floor to see what it was.

When I got a decent look at what looked to be a kid's depiction of what Grace looked like to them, then I turned my head a bit and noticed slot on a door that had a warning labeled “Drop in here to create life” just above it. I then looked back at the paper, and then I looked back at Grace.

“Grace, you attached experimental Lang Tech to a Copy Machine. This Tech can’t save your mom because you can’t save your mom with just a drawing. But a drawing is what’s going to be able to stop you.” I said, throwing the paper into the slot on the door.

Suddenly what appeared before Grace’s eyes, right on the nose of the robot, was a child’s interpretation of Grace. I hadn’t learned that she kidnapped an entire kindergarten class until later. The Grace Drawing looked a lot more like a normal, stereotypical woman. Blonde hair, blue eyes, a fondness for cooking, and a wide smile. Grace immediately dropped Brendan, as he started coughing.

“That is NOT the way I want to be pinned to a wall by a hot, crazy woman.” Brendan said, grabbing his box.

Grace walked over to the window and put her hand up to it. The Grace Drawing imitated her on the other side.

“This is how they saw me?” Grace said, weakly.

“That drawing was from two weeks ago. What did you do, Grace?” I asked, slowly walking closer to her.

Grace said nothing. Then, she grabbed another spear that came out from the wall and stabbed the Grace drawing directly through her paper stomach. Then, she let go of the spear and turned back towards me.

“You haven’t won. I'm not weak.” Grace said, staring at me as she grabbed her spear without looking at it.

At that same time, I saw coming into view, a large tanuki fist.

“Brendan summon another bird.” I said as calmly as I could.

“Why?” He asked, before looking at the fist that was coming at us really fast.

“SUMMON A BIRD.” I yelled.

From the outside, it looked a lot like a robotic raccoon fist flying straight into the head of a copy machine transformer robot, but then it looked like a flash of really bright light before a massive explosion, as we flew out in the nick of time on another Aiolornis, destroying Grace’s machine without letting Grace die.

What actually happened was I just grabbed Grace, Brendan summoned his Bird, and we flew out seconds before the punch ignited the C4 and ended up also destroying the left hand of the robotic tanuki. The tanuki then fell over backwards, taking out multiple glass frames of the surrounding buildings and knocking over the Seattle Space Needle.

That mess took several months to clean up.

As we got off the bird, it disappeared in a flash of light and journalists started taking pictures of us. The Police came up and arrested Grace.

“What can we do to thank you Gentleman?” One of the policemen with the words ‘S. Ricardo’ on his uniform said to us.

“Defund yourselves.” I replied as they got really offended and walked away.

“Who do we have to thank for saving Seattle?” One of the Journalists asked us.

“Shit. No way to hide things now.” Brendan whispered to me.

“I’m the Quantum Brain. This is Buzzkill. We are the Unreliables. Do not call on us unless it’s an emergency.”

“Are there more superheroes like you out there?” Another journalist asked.

“Yes. There are all sorts of heroes. Firemen are superheroes, for starters. Fishermen are pretty superhuman.” Brendan started.

“Buzzkill.” I said, trying to get him to see that we need to leave, but without being obvious about it.

“Engineers can be superhuman, MMA fighters, voice actors, retail workers, food service peeps, warehouse guys. You name it. Superheroes come in all shapes and sizes.” Brendan finished.

“Sure, but I mean people with superpowers like you guys.” The journalist responded.

“No, no, we don’t have powers. We just have objects that do things, we’re no different from Firefighters, if I’m being honest, thank you.” I replied, instantly, covering the mic she was shoving in our face, “Can we go?”

I turned to Brendan. He groaned, and then summoned another Triceratops.

“Buzzkill, you can’t just summon a tricera-” I started saying before Brendan interrupted me.

“WE MUST DEPART! YEEHAW!” Brendan yelled before we both got on the Triceratops.

Then Brendan slapped the ass of the Triceratops and it took off down the street, hopping over cars as we headed back to our car-studded apartment. As in, There was a Car studded into our wall and the landlord wasn’t going to do shit to fix it for another month.

After we made it back to the apartment, we both passed out in our respective beds until Jacob came back home. When we came too, we asked how his case went. Turned out, the jury ruled them guilty right before a large metal foot came smashing through the wall and the case was thrown out on something called ‘apocalypse rules’, so the case didn’t count and the law firm gave him another chance. Jacob didn’t put on the suit for about another week or so afterwards, which was around the time the missing queer people started popping up, including Mylo and Serenity. That was also around the time we met Caspian, but that seems like a story he’d want to tell you himself.