CHAPTER ONE // Did you forget something?

A sleek, black-bodied helicopter hung in a starless sky over a city teeming with ten thousand lights. And in it, staring down at the myriad structures and skyscrapers below, two men stood.

Though both wore identical grey three-piece suits – the jackets and ties of which were now whipping wildly in the wind – they made, nevertheless, for a thoroughly mismatched pair.

The first - a gaunt, lithe young man whose left eye drifted perpetually to one side - reached up, ran a hand through his silver hair, and yawned. There were heavy black bags beneath his sunken eyes, and his hair hung messily about his narrow skull. His jacket, too, was a size too big for his slender frame, and his poorly-knotted tie hung looser and looser by the second.

The second - an older, bearded man who towered at nearly seven feet - glanced back at his companion through a pair of yellow-tinted glasses.

"Didn't you nap on the way here?" the tall man asked, rapping his steel scepter twice against the helicopter’s deck. His voice was that of thick, coarse, uneven gravel. Upon the lapel of his suit were embroidered the words NO.8 // BASTION, and upon the back it read WARNING: GOVT SANCTIONED ESPER.

"Yeah..." the lazy-eyed man muttered, still staring blankly down at the city below. “I dunno. I'm still kinda tired." His suit bore the words NO.9 // FALL, as well as a similar warning on the back.

"Well, too bad," Bastion grunted, knocking his cane hard against Fall's shin and eliciting a yelp of pain from the younger man. "You're here to work, so," he gestured below. "Any time, sweetheart."

"Yeah, yeah, yeah," Fall mumbled, still avoiding the older man’s eyes. He stepped forward - then stretched his arms back behind his head, letting out another sustained yawn as he did so. He blinked twice, slapped the side of his cheek, shook his head - and then, for the first time, his good eye narrowed with intense, sudden focus.

"The subway, right?" Fall asked, glancing over his shoulder.

"You really need to hear this again?" Bastion shot back.

"Nah, I remember," Fall replied, waving a hand as he took another step towards the open, howling ledge. "Just double-checking."

And then, Fall stepped out into the open night air as though it were the most ordinary thing in the world.

-----

"Son of a bitch - what do we do?"

There were eleven of them standing there in the now-abandoned subway, nine of them sporting long-barrel rifles and two unarmed. Every one of them bore upon their bodies some form of bloodstains - be it their own, or that of another.

The subway was supposed to be little more than the vessel by which they would be transported to the site of their latest heist. Instead, it had become the site of a grim massacre – a massacre that none of them had intended, but all of them were now complicit in.

Now, three of them - the unarmed, blue-eyed, blonde-haired man and woman, as well as a tan-skinned man with a patchy beard sporting a wooden-stock AK-47 - were arguing frantically.

"This isn't-this isn't how it was supposed to go-" the woman was saying, shaking her head. "Nobody was supposed to get hurt!"

"It's way past too late for that!" the gun-toting man snarled, shoving her back as the others watched in leery, uncertain silence. "I told you and your shitstain brother to keep it under control! And what does he do? Pops that poor fucker’s head right off!"

"Hey!" the blue-eyed man barked, stepping forward - and at once, the tan-skinned man moved back, though his face remained twisted with anger. "Don't raise your voice at her, Arten. I've already told you once."

"This is all your fault!" Arten hissed back, jabbing a finger. "We're gonna die here because you can't even control your own-"

"We're n-not gonna die!" the woman interjected, her eyes flicking frantically between the two men. "Right? There's still time for us to run!"

"Run?" Arten scoffed. He shook his head sadly. "Please. It's been forty-five minutes - the cops know, which means the feds know, which means there are Prestidigitators headed our way as we speak." He reached up, now, and racked the slide on his rifle with a loud click-clack. "Every one of us normals here is now associated with you two unregistered Espers, which makes us just as much dead meat as you are. Which - thank you, by the way. I truly do appreciate that."

After a brief moment of stunned silence, the brother opened his mouth to reply - but Arten just scoffed and turned away, meeting now the eyes of his assembled men. They were, to their credit, relatively calm and composed in the face of certain obliteration.

"Gentlemen," Arten said, simply. "We all knew the risk. Nobody twisted our arms on this. We chose – and we all knew it was always gonna end up like this, one way or another.”

And then, before anyone could reply, every one of them heard and felt it – two impacts, a scant few seconds between them. With each, the ground trembled ever-so-slightly beneath their feet.

"Two?" the brother said, his eyes darting rapidly around. "Oh shit."

"Well," Arten offered simply, turning back to the siblings. "Time's up. Tell you what-" he pointed down the far end of the tunnel- "you two take west, we'll take east, and maybe one of us'll actually walk out of here in one piece, yeah? Anyone got a problem with that?"

"Hey! I ain't no slouch neither-" the brother started - but the sister just stepped forward and laid a hand upon Arten's shoulder. The older man tensed - then, slowly, he closed his eyes, and after a moment a small smile spread across his face.

"Thanks, Lena," Arten said, quietly. "Apology accepted."

And so, without another word, the two groups split - and each began to march into the blackness at either of the tunnel's ends.

----

"So...Prestidigitators...?" Lena trailed off, quietly. The two were walking in solemn silence between the subway-tracks, the halogen lights flickering above and the gravel crunching beneath their feet below. "Leo, do you think you can...?"

"I don't know," the brother admitted, his jaw locked tight and his gaze cast firmly forwards. "But I'm not going down without a fight. And I promise you, Lena - whatever happens to me, you will get out of here. I don't care if it costs me my life." His hand clenched tight into a fist. "I'll kill a hundred of those dead-eyed government psychos if I have to. I've been training-"

"Leo!" Lena interrupted with a gasp, her hand clenching her brother's sleeve tight - and now he, too, froze at the sight of the half-visible figure standing some hundred-or-so-feet away.

Slowly, Fall emerged, and the shadows peeled back to reveal his gaunt and weary countenance. His hands were thrust deep into the pockets of his oversized suit-coat as he looked the siblings over with relative disinterest.

Above, the lights were flickering faster.

"You two," Fall called, his heels clicking against the tracks as he continued his nonchalant approach. "You wouldn't happen to be the unregistered Espers, would you?"

Leo opened his mouth to reply - but instead, he found himself unable to move, his body utterly frozen with fear as his heart raced and pounded in his chest. He couldn't explain this, couldn’t even possibly understand it. He had always been a proud, courageous, outspoken man, one who had never in his entire life shied away from a fight or a confrontation. And the tired-looking young man standing before him - he hardly looked the part of a Prestidigitator.

So why was he too terrified to even move?

Ahead, Fall was observing both the siblings with subdued curiosity. They were Espers, alright - he could smell them from a mile away. The brother looked terrified - he would die swiftly and without much of a fight. But the sister? She was staring at him now with that determined sort of look in her eyes that always, always spelled trouble.

This, he thought to himself, could end up being a real pain in the ass.

Better to kill them quick.

"Leo, do something," Lena was whispering. "Leo!"

But her brother just stared, rooted to the spot as he was - and so, slowly, Lena reached out and placed the palm of her hand against Leo’s shoulder.

Fall saw it at once - the change in the brother. His back straightened, his shoulders squared, and now, suddenly, he was striding confidently forward with the same dangerous eyes as his sister.

"That's a yes, then?" Fall sighed, pinching the bridge of his nose. "Great. Why do I have to deal with both Espers?"

"You," Leo growled, jabbing a finger at the lanky Prestidigitator as his boots stomped noisily against the gravel. "Move - or I'll move you."

"What, you want me to just let you go?" Fall asked, furrowing his brow. Then, he shrugged his shoulders. "Sure, why not."

"Yeah?" Leo sneered, clenched fists swinging at his sides as he continued to advance. "That's very kind of you."

"Nah,” Fall offered simply, “I’m just feeling lazy.” And then, without further ado, he turned his back on the siblings and began to walk away. And as he did so he reached out, interlaced his fingers, and popped every one of his knuckles in perfect unison.

Then, he extended a hand - pressed his thumb and middle finger together - and snapped.

Leo was mere inches behind him, shooting forward like a speeding bullet with fist cocked back and forearm bulging with purple, throbbing veins.

"Plummet," Fall ordered, without looking.

-----

Arten and his men had made it only a couple minutes into the subway tunnel when they, too, came across one of the Prestidigitators - this one Fall's towering companion, Bastion. The Predestitigator stood now at the center of the tracks, cane planted firmly at his feet and a hazy trail of smoke drifting from a cigar clenched tight between his teeth.

"Huh!" Arten called, scratching at his chin as both he and his men came to an abrupt halt. "What a coincidence! Didn't think we'd run into another normal down here. Hey, buddy - do you know a way outta this place?" He jerked a thumb over his shoulder. "Crazy fuckin' Espers started slaughtering people on one of the trains! It was a damn madhouse in there!"

"Is that what you think I am?" Bastion asked in reply - and a wolf's grin was spreading across his face, now, exposing two rows of yellowing teeth. "A normal?"

"Nah," Arten replied casually, and instantly, nine rifles were brought to bear against the cigar-smoking Esper. "Just figured, hey - no reason not to try, right?"

"Wasting your final moments," Bastion countered.

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"Ah, who gives a fuck," Arten sighed, sighting in perfectly between the Prestidigitator's eyes. "Final moments are important, sure – but between you and me, I’d rather not die here at all."

And then, at that, the subway exploded into a deafening barrage of sound and sight as a hundred bullets ripped through Bastion's body, sending him jerking and spasming back as bullet after bullet tore through his suit and shredded his tie and split his sunglasses clean in two. Even his cigar was all but obliterated by the fusillade Arten and his men had unleashed.

Six seconds later, every rifle clicked empty.

And then, before any of them could even begin to reload, Bastion's foot came up - and the Prestidigitator took a single step forward.

The skin had been almost sheared entirely from his left cheek, and now his crooked grin stretched nearly to his ear. His entire face, really, was a mess of exposed bone and sinew from which a pair of gold-flecked eyes stared out, completely and utterly undamaged. And now, as Arten and his men moved frantically to reload, already the Prestidigitator's body was beginning to re-form and re-assemble itself.

He was striding forward, now, his cane rapping against the railway tracks, and bloodied bullets were clattering to the ground with every step.

"A regenerator, huh?" Arten growled, racking the slide on his rifle once more. "Of all the shitty luck."

-----

Had Leo's punch connected with the back of Fall's head, it would have shattered his skull, liquefied his brain, and blown it clean through the front of his face. Despite the increased durability afforded to Fall as an Esper, Leo's ability had amplified the strength in his arm by an exponential factor of several dozen - there was not even a shadow of a doubt that the punch would be invariably fatal.

If it had connected.

Instead, the instant Fall snapped his fingers Leo plummeted to the ground, a crater forming beneath him and a cloud of dust kicking up around him. The impact was such that the very ground itself shook briefly beneath their feet, and now Leo was simply forced to lay prone as Fall turned to regard him with boredom writ plain upon his face.

"That's gravity manipulation, if you're wondering," he offered nonchalantly, glancing down at the stricken Esper as he struggled fruitlessly to rise. "There's about five tons worth of force weighing down on you. If not for your own ability, you'd be crushed."

Leo didn't reply - he just slowly reached out with a shuddering, shaking arm, his fingers digging deep into the gravel as he heaved with all his might. His arm was bulging, swollen, distended with muscle and power, even as the weight upon his back kept his face in the ground and his lungs from even drawing in new breath.

Gravity manipulation was a powerful ability indeed - one could expect nothing less from one of the government’s infamous Prestidigitators. But, Leo knew, to exert this much force it had to be some sort of limited radius of effect. And so, he reached out as far as his arm would stretch - and then, suddenly, he felt it.

His fingertips were no longer weighed down.

With an almighty roar Leo dug his fingers in and pulled with all the colossal strength his body could muster - and so he yanked himself free of the Predestitigator’s effect, rolling across the gravel and shooting, unsteady, to his feet.

Fall blinked.

"Come on, man," he complained as Leo shot forward once more, fist cocked back yet again.

Fall snapped his fingers once more - and then he was leaping back, dodging and ducking with incredible speed and agility as Leo swung again and again, the force of his punches carrying with them huge gusts of wind that blew Fall's hair wildly about as he jumped, twirled backwards through the air, and landed upside-down on the palms of his hands.

Leo lunged, but Fall met him early, handspringing back towards him and raising his foot high over Leo’s head.

"Ten ton kick," Fall said flatly - and Leo had only a fraction of a second to block before Fall's leg came crashing down.

Watching from the sidelines, Lena was forced to recoil and cover her eyes as the titanic impact rang out, sending an enormous cloud of gravel and dust shooting in all directions as the subway shook and the lights shut off in perfect unison. It was all she could do not to be blown off her feet by the sheer force of it all.

Then, slowly, the lights began to flicker back on, and slowly Lena rose to her feet, squinting to see through the thick cloud of smoke. Was that the Predestitigator’s kick? Or had Leo dodged it and delivered a counter-attack.

There was, in the dust, a shadow - and then Leo came flying, colliding hard against the wall and shattering the bricks behind him.

"Gah!" Leo spat, coughing up blood and teeth in equal measure and he slumped down to one knee. Lena was by his side, now, hand on his shoulder, looking her brother over with worried eyes as he lurched to his feet, one of his fists held high like a boxer - even as his other arm hung limp and ruined at his side.

Slowly, the dust began to clear - and Fall was still standing there, still looking bored by it all.

"You know, you're not gonna beat me in a fight," Fall offered. "I can make my body close to weightless - or I can make my fists weigh as much as one of those trains back there. I can soften your punches, too, if I'm fast enough. Which I am." He yawned. "It's a good ability, you know. I never really have to work all that hard."

"You're not-" Leo slurred, turning his head and spitting a glob of phlegm. "You ain't won yet, you bastard. All I gotta do is land one hit. Just one, and you’ll be paste on that wall."

"Sure," Fall admitted, shrugging his shoulders. "But you’ll never hit me. Anyway-" he extended his hand and pressed his fingers together once more, "-can we wrap this up, please?"

"Gladly," Leo growled in reply, his one remaining arm rippling and bulging as he spoke.

They fought for nearly thirty seconds - Leo swinging wildly, eyes wide and saliva spilling from his mouth as he pushed his body to the absolute limit - until, finally, Fall deflected one of his punches and delivered a trio of rapid jabs to his opponent’s stomach.

Leo gagged, hunching over, and in one fluid motion Fall dropped low and swept the other man's legs out from under him.

There was no need to increase Leo's gravity. The man was finished. He lay there on the ground now, groaning in pain, as Fall stepped back and bent down, searching for something.

"Leo!" Lena shouted, starting forward - but she froze as Fall rose once more, a quarter-sized stone now held between his fingers.

"You...bastard..." Leo seethed through gritted, bloody teeth. "She didn't...she didn't do...anything..."

"She's an Esper," Fall countered offhandedly. “It’s my job.” And with that he extended his arm and flicked the rock forwards.

Leo turned to look at his sister. It was a look that said a thousand things at once. It was a look the likes of which burnt itself upon one's memory for an entire lifetime to come.

"Drop," Fall commanded.

The stone hung frozen over Leo's head for just an instant - and then it shot straight down, piercing through the top of his skull and emerging from his chin amidst a spray of arterial blood, all just in the blink of an eye. The pebble had might as well have been a bullet.

Leo's body went limp. His eyes rolled back. He dropped to his knees, then slumped over on his side, fingers still twitching as blood slowly but surely began to pool around him.

Lena didn't speak, didn't call or cry out. She just stared, with tears frozen in her eyes and a hand over her mouth. And her brother just stared back, his own eyes lifeless and glassy and his mouth hanging ever-so-slightly open.

That's when it really, truly hit her: everything was over.

Footsteps were approaching. Slowly, Lena turned to look up at him - at the man who had murdered her brother.

"So," Fall said, brushing his hair to the side. His one good eye was fixed on her, now, while the other continued to stare oblivious off to the side. "Guessing your ability isn't much use in a fight, huh? That sucks."

"Spare me," Lena replied flatly, the words more mechanical routine than heartfelt plea. She wanted to live because living things wanted to live. That was the sole reason. "Please."

Fall just shook his head.

"I wouldn't bother with all that," he explained. "It's not gonna work. To me, killing is like mowing the lawn or washing the dishes - it's just a chore. Emotion has nothing to do with it."

He held up his hand, then, and prepared to snap his fingers.

Lena searched his eyes - but saw only dull, mechanical disinterest. She saw a man who was, just like her, simply going through the motions.

"Sorry," Fall offered, with little sincerity, and just as he snapped his fingers Lena leapt forward, her hands wrapping tight around the dead-eyed Prestidigitator's ankle.

Behind her, there was a powerful impact as several thousand pounds of increased gravity slammed down against the ground where she had once stood, leaving behind an inch-deep crater in their wake. And Fall blinked, surprised, both at Lena's sudden burst of speed and the strange warmth flowing from her palm into his leg...and up his chest...and his neck...and into...his brain...

Fall saw an entire lifetime, then, all of it in the span of a single second. A mother and a father, sobbing, kneeling, then shot. The inside of a cold, featureless steel box. Needles piercing skin. Vials swirling with blood. A chest sporting a dozen different tubes, all of them flowing with myriad translucent fluids. Screaming. Training. Howling. How to fight. Pleading. How to kill. Surrendering. How to kill without feeling. How to reach out and touch the invisible force that was gravity, to make it jump and dance at one's command.

And then...

Fall was on the ground. He let out a gasp and leapt back, eyes wide with terror, scrabbling away from Lena's touch and shaking his head in disbelief. His heart was pounding. His skin was slick with sweat.

"W-what..." he stammered, his eyes darting rapidly around as Lena just watched, a hint of sympathy playing across her face as she watched the Prestidigitator's confused, terrified thrashing. And as his mouth worked - with no words coming out - she rose in silence and made her way to Leo's corpse, kneeling down beside him and cradling her brother’s head in her lap.

"No..." Fall was whispering to himself - on his hands and knees, now. His heart was beating so loud that he could hardly hear, could hardly even think. "That's not...it's not..."

A silver cane rapped twice against the railway tracks - and Fall's head snapped around at once. Bastion was standing there, smoking a new cigar, his suit ripped to shreds and drenched in all manner of viscera and gore.

The blood, Fall knew, wasn't Bastion's - his would have long returned to his body by now. And for the first time in their nine-month partnership Fall found the implications terrifying. Horrifying. Sick.

Bastion was grinning as he observed his stricken partner, cigar puffing great clouds of black all the while - and then, slowly, his smile began to fade. His gold-flecked eyes flicked to Lena, now, then back to Fall once more.

"She showed you something, didn't she?" Bastion asked, his voice equal parts amused and annoyed. "That's her ability, Fall - to peer into people's hearts and show them old memories. Didn't you pay attention to the briefing?"

"I showed him the truth-" Lena started.

"Shut up," Bastion snapped without looking. "Corpses don't talk." He strode forward, now, stopping just inches from Fall's stricken form and bending over to look down at his terrified partner. Fall was still panting heavily, his hair hanging messily over his face. Gone was his calm, disaffected demeanor.

"Did she show you everything?" Bastion asked, cocking his head to the side. "Sheesh. Seems like overkill to me."

For the last nine months, Fall's memory had been a haze. He could recall nothing about his history, his past, how he had even got there - but he had never thought to inquire, either. It had all just felt so natural. It was a job, after all. He was just doing a job. He was a Prestidigitator, so he killed Espers. Bastion was his partner. They went where they were ordered to go, and they did what they were ordered to do. It had all made so much sense!

"That's right, buddy," Bastion said - cocking his leg back and kicking Fall hard in the ribs. The younger man cried out, fell backwards, but neither rose nor fought back as Bastion continued to leer down at him. The older man stretched impossibly tall - a giant, shadowy, looming figure from which a pair of golden eyes stared like blazing twin suns.

"Division Five," Bastion explained, visibly savoring the young man’s anguish, "killed your unregistered-Esper parents. And it was only when they realized you could manipulate gravity that they decided to spare your life, abducting you instead and holding you for...man, I don't know how long. However old you are now, I guess. Anyway, they thought that once your power developed you'd be out there sinking whole continents for the military. But you never really grew beyond," he gestured dismissively, "this, so to save face they threw you with the Prestidigitators and stuck you with me. Because, I mean, that way at least you'd be good for something, right?"

The smile returned to Bastion's face once more.

"But now you're useless. All those memories they spent all that time beating out of you - they're back, which means you're ruined. Which means..."

It wasn't Bastion's words - Fall could hardly even hear him, though the memory of what he had said nevertheless embedded itself deep in Fall's addlepated mind. No, it wasn't that. It was the look on Bastion's face - the look of anticipation and glee he always got right before he killed somebody. That was the only reason that Fall leapt backwards, narrowly avoiding Bastion's boot as it stomped down for a killing blow. Now, Fall leapt to his feet, crouching low, hands up and ready to fight even as his eyes remained wide with terror.

"Stay away from me," Fall shouted, extending his palms out before him. "I mean it, Bastion! Stay the hell back!"

Murderer. Fall was a murderer. He was an ordinary child with a happy life whom the government had tortured and mutilated and molded and shaped into a soulless murderer.

And that meant his partner, Bastion, was a murderer too.

And that meant he was going to murder him.

Bastion's smile grew wider.

Then, the space where Bastion had stood was empty, and the older man was practically flying forwards, his movements little more than a blur save for the faint trails of gold left behind by his sparkling eyes.

"No!" Fall screamed, clapping his hands together. And so, without thinking - acting on little more than pure, primal instinct - he applied a force of one thousand tons to everything he could see.

It was the most weight he had ever exerted, spread out across an area larger than he had ever encompassed. It was a feat the likes of which he had never even come close to achieving in all his training prior.

From above, all that the helicopter pilots would see was the road itself simply caving in and collapsing, all of it erupting into an enormous storm of dust and debris as a massive sinkhole formed at the intersection of 42nd Street.

And then, for just a moment, every light in New York City went dark.

-----

There was a slight tremor. A rumble. A shaking. And then, from the enormous pile of rubble, a bloodied hand burst from amidst the rocks.

The hand curled into a fist - and then rocks were flying in every direction, impacting and shattering against the subway walls as a near-skeletal Bastion emerged, naked, his skin hanging in tatters and his body broken and misshapen.

Still, he was smiling now as he stepped from the rubble, his skin patching itself together and his bones snapping loudly back into place all the while. A thin shaft of moonlight shone down upon him, cleaving the Prestidigitator nearly in two as he tossed Lena’s severed head aside and put a finger to his earpiece. It crackled noisily - barely, but thankfully, intact.

"Central, this is Bastion," he said, his voice coming out raspy and distorted – his vocal cords were still exposed by a gaping hole in his throat. "Do you read?"

"Copy, Bastion, we have you," a voice came, after a moment. "What the hell happened down there? We're getting reports of a giant sinkhole opening up in the middle of the street."

"Fall knows," Bastion said simply.

From the earpiece, there was only the crackling of static.

"I told you people that it was a bad idea," Bastion added, after a moment. "We knew what she was capable of."

"I'll note that down for the record, Number Seven," the voice growled, and the Prestidigitator couldn't help but chuckle at the other man's blatant state of panic. "Where is Number Nine, now?"

"Alive," Bastion replied, glancing around. "But in the wind. I was buried for upwards of eight minutes - more than enough time for him to get away."

"And the twins?"

"Dead," Bastion said simply. “He killed the brother, and I found the sister crushed beneath the rubble.”

"Good," the voice sighed. "At least there's that."

"So, the kid..." Bastion trailed off – a sly smile spreading across his face. "He's finished?"

"No shit, he's finished."

"Which means he's a corpse," Bastion smiled, loudly cracking his knuckles. "Beautiful. He always did piss me off, the lazy little shit."

"Absolutely not!" the earpiece thundered, and Bastion winced at the sudden surge of high-pitched static. "You will stand down, Number Seven, and you will return to base now! We already have one Prestidigitator running loose on the streets of New York and we will not, I repeat, we will not have fucking two of you freaks wreaking havoc! Are you listening to me, Bastion? If you so much as-"

Bastion reached up, pulled out the earpiece, and crushed it effortlessly between his thumb and forefinger. It sparked, crackled - and then fell mercifully silent.

He folded his arms, then, and thought for a moment. And then a moment later he set off, still smiling happily to himself as he made his way down the tunnel once more.

Fall would escape – of that, he was certain. And that meant he would need to be hunted down, and that meant that for the first time Bastion would be able to kill another Prestidigitator.

He pictured it in his mind. Fall's neck crumbling in his hand as the weak, pale little creature writhed and thrashed and kicked to no avail, its eyes wide and wet with the kind of terror one might see in the eyes of a rabbit or a gazelle. The eyes of prey. He squeezed, now, in his mind - and those eyes bulged, and that nose gushed blood, and that skull deformed, and with a rattling, wheezing gasp the last vestiges of life slipped from between Fall's broken teeth.

Bastion was grinning from ear to ear. He could hardly wait.