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There’s the thing about getting fucked up on the job: As a superhero—when at least twenty percent of superhero teams are some varietal of regenerator or magical healer or bio-hacker or whatever—the idea of medical recovery gets pretty wishy-washy. SDN has healers on site, one or two for every shift to say nothing of the half-healers and combat medics. Everyone gets fucked up. Everyone gets healed up. Everyone gets back out there.
The point is: Getting shot really isn’t that big of a deal.
“Getting shot is a big deal,” Malevola shouts over the wind, annoyed as they soar over the rooftops of Torrance. Her grip is comfortable and secure at the back of Sonar's neck, where the ruff gets thick and she can safely hold on without pulling all his damn fur out. She adjusts her thighs slightly where she’s tucked them over his ribs, just below his armpits. Wing pits? Whatever.
“I’m just saying—” he beats his wings a few more times to get some elevation before locking his arms and gliding again— “I got shot seventy-two hours ago and I look fuckin’ great today.”
“You do look great.”
“Right?”
Sonar sees something in his peripheral and turns his head. A couple of window washers are waving from the side of a skyscraper. One of them flashes a hand-heart, their bright orange uniform a spot of neon against the building and in the gleaming glass Sonar sees his own blurry shape—his and Mal—cutting like a shadow across the reflection.
Mal lifts a hand to wave, and the window washers pump their fists.
“Did we save this building or something?” Sonar tries to remember.
“Nah, mate. We’re just cool as fuck.”
It’s just before 8AM as they land on the SDN Torrance Branch rooftop. Sonar hits the deck going a little faster than he would for anyone but Mal and waits patiently as she hops, effortless even in her heels, from his back to the concrete. She slings her duffle bag off and starts pulling out Sonar’s neatly folded dress shirt, jacket, and shoes, shaking them out while Sonar rolls his neck and shakes his entire bestial body.
“You gonna stay beasty for a bit?”
“Nah, gimme a sec.”
Mal drapes his clothes over her duffle and moves to stand in front of him. She lifts her arms outstretched until Sonar does as she’s requesting and drops his massive monster-sized skull over one of her shoulders and allows her to wrap her arms around his neck and squeeze. Mal hugs feel like a steel cord drawing tight, but in a nice way, and feel especially good when he’s the size of a small elephant so he closes his eyes and nuzzles in a little.
Mal smells like her shampoo and hot iron. She rocks her body a little, shaking him, and proceeds to stamp kisses along the side of his head.
“Is it a beast day?” she murmurs, low enough only he can pick it up.
“Hmmm…” He focuses on it, like pawing around in a drawer looking for a key to a room he’d like to get back into. “Yeah, it’s kind of a beast day.”
“Hey, maybe it’s good Robbie benched you a bit coming back on.” She ruffles the fur between his ears. “You can do some of those breathing exercises we talked about.”
The ‘Instead of doing drugs’ is left unsaid.
“Ugh. I’m already at the bottom of the board, Mal.” He pulls his head back to give her the full effect of his monstrous puppy-dog eyes, ears flipped back for full sad impact. “He brought in a fuckin’ ringer with Phenomaman. I need to keep on my grind!”
“Phenomaman was so fucked up being a sad bitch Robert couldn’t get him out the fuckin’ door, dude.” Mal spreads her fingers to cup his jaw between her hands and look up at him, eye-to-eye as she says, “You don’t have to do shit. You don’t have anything to prove. You’re good, mate. Honest.”
Sonar huffs and fully lies down on the rooftop. “Tell that to Flambae and the others…”
“No one is talking shit about you but Flambae and Robert ripped him a new asshole for ditching you, mate. No one fucked up but him.”
“He put an entire chemical fire out by himself and then I got shot babysitting the civilian evacuation.” Sonar sighs glumly, stacking his claws and dropping his chin on top of them to bemoan it all. “Like, that’s so fuckin’ lame, Mal. It wasn’t even a supervillain. It was a rando with a gun. Ugh. That’s beta shit. I gotta get, like, Coupe-levels of dangerous man.”
“Ugh. First of all, Coupe was fucked up. She was literally an assassin for the mob and Rob fired her because she wouldn’t stop stabbing people multiple times—”
“Nonfatally,” Sonar reminds her.
“—because she was a deranged weirdo who scared every civilian she encountered.” Mal gives him a look to drive her point home. “And secondly, stop saying ‘alpha’ and ‘beta’ and all the weird shit, dude. You’re scaring the bitches.”
Sonar lifts his head. “Bitches you say?”
“Yes, bro. I told you hotties in the SDN offices like it weird. There’s a guy in accounting and girl in the mail room who asked what your deal is but you gotta cool it on the red-pill bullshit because its fucking lame. Getting shot on the job is kind of heroic. Declaring you have ‘alpha’ energy is soul-crushingly cringe.”
“Fiiiiiine.”
He feels a modicum more human.
Sonar reaches again, internally, for the part of him that’s Victor-shaped and this time it’s easy to wrap his mind around it and pull. There’s no good way to explain the magic that rules his conversion from hybrid to full beast and back, but the way he feels it in practice is pulling himself from one shape to the other. Passing through a narrow canal where, briefly, he is neither Sonar nor Victor, but a monstrous and mindless collection of bones, blood, and—
Malleable. A thing sucked from one mold to the other and the change is both painless and violent as a fatal car accident.
Sonar shifts.
He feels every bone in his body snap and crunch, organs and mass evaporating into a null space held only by the part of him that is Sonar. (He’s always Sonar, though, even when he’s Victor. That’s the thing.) It’s like getting gutted if getting gutted felt kind of good. How do you explain to normal people that being ripped up and remade feels fucking awesome? That the mutilation is a comfort?
Victor, lying on the roof with his arms folded under his chin, pushes himself up into a brief plank position. He stands up, brushing dust off his bare chest and out of the fur that covers his shoulders, upper back, and down toward his stomach before running thin. His pants did not shred (great, sometimes they do, despite his careful choice in high-elasticity fabrics) so he adjusts the cinch strap in the back of the waistband, folding the excess fabric a bit to smooth it out.
Mal hands him his shirt and jacket. “Looking sharp, mate.”
“As if there was any doubt,” he chirps, tucking his dress shirt in and shrugging his jacket on. Victor takes the massively loosened tie hanging around his neck and cinches it neatly under his crisp white collar. “Okay. Lookin’ office-ready?”
Malevola slings the empty duffle bag over her shoulder and tosses it in one of the roof-top equipment bins. “Lookin’ hot, mate. Let’s roll.”
“You have hand to hand training with Flambae at the end of shift,” says Robert, looking up at him with a coffee mug in hand and that lidded half-asleep-already look that rules Robertson’s face 90% of the time. “I know. I know, but hear me out—”
“He ditched me to get shot!”
“I know, and—”
“He said I wasn’t pulling my weight!”
“I know, but—”
“Mal knocked him through a wall!”
“And everyone clapped and cheered.”
“Oh shit. They did?”
“No, but you gotta listen to me, Sonar.”
Victor concedes to shutting the fuck up momentarily. He would have resented, not long ago, being pulled into a conference room for a one-on-one first thing in the morning, but Robert Robertson has lost some of his new car smell as their beleaguered team dispatch officer over the last couple weeks. It’s incredible how high intensity life or death situations breeds familiarity because Victor struggles a little now to imagine someone not-Robert on Z-Team comms trying to give them orders.
“You and Flambae are our main fliers,” he says. “I can’t have you two at odds. Phenomaman is a legend but he’s inconsistent as fuck right now and, well, even if he does get better?” Robert shrugs. “Chances are, downtown will pull him back up to their branch because he is an S-tier supe even if he’s slumming it with us right now. So, I need you and Flambae to work well together.”
“But he hates me,” Victor protests.
“Flambae hates everyone.” Robert sips his coffee. “You’re not special.”
“Okay, but consider: I also hate him.”
“Because of what happened or because of other things?”
“Eh, the getting shot thing was only kind of his fault. My hatred is nuanced and cultured. Have you ever tried to have an extended conversation with that guy? I’ve got a running bet with a few techies in IT that he doesn’t know how to read.”
“Sonar, first of all, that’s rude. Second of all, he absolutely knows how to read.” A pause. “He texts elaborately mean things to people on his IG all the time.”
“Right, but could he read War and Peace and, like, get it?”
“Have you read War and Peace?”
“Not, like, yet…”
“Right. You have training with Flambae at four PM unless a call runs long. Got it?”
“Uh, wait.”
Robert, already reaching for the conference room door, turns to blink at him. Victor hasn’t gone as far as asking how old Robertson is and suspects they’re about the same age, but whatever Robbie did before being a dispatcher has ground the dude’s soul to the same grainy consistency of a forty-five-year-old combat vet, grizzled and unaffected by the manner of bullshit that sent other ex-dispatchers running.
Victor fidgets with his lapels, realizes he’s doing it, and stops.
“Look, I know it was stupid how I got hurt. I’m gonna be more on top of it and—”
“Sonar—”
“Mal and I are still working on the shifting thing,” he says hastily. “I shouldn’t have gotten huffy while I was in beast mode and I probably shouldn’t have swapped to hybrid when things got, uh, scary. I’m still new to the field work stuff. I’ll get it.”
“Sonar, you didn’t do anything wildly wrong.” Robert sounds genuinely baffled, like it’s inconceivable to him that Victor would blame himself but goes on. “Look, if I was going to give advice, it might be that no matter what form you’re wearing, you’re still you. You didn’t need to shift back to hybrid to de-escalate. PR team says your external ratings with the public are pretty good. Comparable with early Terrordactyl numbers.”
Victor, soothed by numbers, says, “Really? But people fuckin’ love Terrordactyl.”
“Yeah, because she’s really sweet and polite and also a giant dinosaur who can tear men in half.” Rob shrugs. “Charisma is everything. Marketing is everything. I know you know how to do marketing, Sonar. I’m not worried.” There is a faintest crack of a smile at the corner of his mouth, and he sounds almost disgusted as he says, “The public is going to fuckin’ love you the second you put some time and effort into making giant bat monster relatable and fun.”
Victor huffs. “Tch. That’s a tall fuckin’ order, Robbie-boy.”
“You’re fuzzy.” Another shrug. “That’s like twenty easy PR points right there. Also, you already did it once. Remember that Vanderstank pitch? You killed that and you were a giant bat monster with a Power Point. People love that shit.”
“I dunno, Robbie…”
“Hey. I’m a white dude in LA with no external mutations.” Robert levels a look his way; something in his stare makes the words weigh something they did not before. “I’m not gonna sit here looking like I do and tell you you’ve got it easy in the PR department. You don’t. But I am telling you from a pragmatism standpoint, you might have it better than you think.” He claps Victor on the shoulder, just the once, and says, “Doubt yourself, and the public capacity for weirdness, less.”
It’s a little annoying how much that all makes sense.
Slyly, Sonar points out, “You sound like someone who had to work on their public image at one point.”
“No comment,” Robert says. He pulls the door open and leaves.
It’s an easy day. Quiet.
The rest of Z-Team keeps ribbing him about his two-day free vacation but also kind-of-but-not-really expressing round-about ways to admit they’re happy he didn’t get shot and die. Which, like, same. Flambae says nothing to him the entire shift, but Prism keeps loudly and pointedly asking Victor if he’s got any cool new scars or if Mal fixed them all. (She did.)
Robert manages to wrangle Phenomaman into some kind of shape for the evening shift to cover all their flight-centric calls, and kicks Flambae off the roster to meet Victor at the gym in the basement level. There’s a battle-ready fitness centre retrofit with all the latest and greatest construction to ensure your building doesn’t burn down when your superheroes train together.
Feels like overkill when Flambae just punches him in the face.
Victor hits the floor with a bang. He wasn’t remotely prepared for that and very nearly beasts the fuck out from sheer offense.
“Hey! What the fuck, man?”
“Wow. Bob-Bob wasn’t kidding. You really don’t know how to fight.” To his credit, Flambae looks surprised standing over him. Less to his credit, he’s laughing as he says it. “Oh man, you suck. This is gonna suck for you.”
Victor gets up, touching his jaw where it aches. Not for nothing, his hybrid form is not as durable as his bestial form, but there’s a lot of bone density retained between his forms and he does, in fact, weigh a lot more than his physique would suggest. Which is to say, that hurt and it startled the fuck out of him, but he’s otherwise fine.
Victor stands up and huffs.
“I’m not gonna stand here and let you punch me, dumb fuck.”
“Uh, the point is that you try to stop me, dumb bitch.”
Victor mutters and loosens his tie and shrugs off his suit jacket. Flambae eyeballs him while he does this, his weird orange eyes glowing faintly even under the overheads in this room. Victor tries to ignore it. Ignore Flambae’s side-eye and the nervous twitch that starts when his brain begins to race on the ‘what ifs’ that seemed so unlikely when talking to Robert earlier.
Robert makes everything seem soooo manageable, the hypnotic little bastard.
But standing alone in a room with one of Z-Teams most dangerous combat-first superheroes—an A-grade pyrotechnic that burned down an entire mall once upon a time and once went head-to-head against Mecha Man (or so he brags)—Victor feels extremely flammable. He tries to tell his brain that Flambae’s swapped into sweats and a muscle tank so he can’t possibly go full flame and light Victor on fire… right?
“Do you not have gym clothes?” says Flambae in disgust. “What the fuck is with the suits? Like, s’weird, man. You’re weird.”
“My dude, I have a whole-ass were-bat thing going on.” Victor turns around, rolling his sleeves to his elbows. “If my gym clothes are what’s got your goat, I don’t know what to tell you.”
“Tch. Don’t try to not answer me when I’m asking you things, dumb bitch.”
Victor blinks, mildly surprised at getting pushback on the re-direct. “Oookay. I don’t own gym clothes.”
“What? Why? Do you not work out?” Flambae sounds so appalled by this possibility Victor must restrain a laugh. “Like, what the fuck, dude? You’re a fucking, like, crime fighter. You need to work out.”
“Uh, actually, it makes no difference, dude. My physique is, uh, lowkey magically time-locked or something. Forever.”
Flambae blinks slowly. “What the fuck?”
“I got my powers when I was, like, twenty-five?” Victor gestures at his own torso. “My build then is what my build is now. Permanently, dude. The day I went bat is what I’m stuck with.” He strikes a pose. “Luckily, I was a fucking gym-rat back then, so I have abs forever, fucker.”
“You lucky bitch,” Flambae says immediately. “But also, that’s kind of fucked up.”
“Oh yeah, bro. I loved going to the gym. Doesn’t do fucking shit now though, so I mostly just spot Malevola cuz I can’t do fuck all.” He says that last bit a touch too aggressively, so he shrugs and pretends to rotate his shoulder to loosen it up. “Anyway, it’s a weird magical thing. Mal hasn’t been able to figure out what my deal is for years so it’s, you know, whatever, man. We ball.”
Flambae frowns at him. “Does that mean you can’t get any new muscle memory?”
Victor pauses, considering. “I… don’t really know.”
“Bitch, I re-iterate, you’re a crime fighter now. You need to do stuff to not, like, die.”
“I turn into a giant bat monster to not die. I think I’ve got it.”
“You didn’t have it when you got shot,” Flambae says immediately, then visibly regrets it because he’s got zero poker face whatsoever. “Shit. Nevermind. Fuck. I wasn’t supposed to say that.”
“You’re so fucking fascinating,” Victor says, folding his arms. “Your brain must be so… aerated. Amazing.”
“Don’t use words I don’t know, you bitch. Being wordy won’t make you bulletproof—FUCK.”
“Wow,” says Victor, ears perked forward with delight.
“Shut the fuck up,” Flambae says, looking a touch redder than before. He turns, throwing his hands up. “Ugh. So, Bob-Bob gave me a bullshit task because, maybe, you’re going to suck forever with your noodle arms that forget everything the second you to turn into a bat monster. Great. He’s gonna blame me because you suck.”
Victor tenses at this extremely laser-focused shot to the core of his goddamn insecurities, delivered by a moron who doesn’t seem to be aiming. He tries not to immediately go beast mode and bite his teammate’s head off. Fuck. Beast days suck because the bat form is always constantly just around the corner, leaning on him like a grizzly bear on a screen door.
He wishes he’d taken a bump of something before coming in here. A relaxant of some kind. That might make him less twitchy, keep the beast at bay a bit. But he didn’t and so Victor says, playing at nonchalance, “Stop complaining and actually try to teach me something then.”
Flambae turns around. “Fine. Come here. Did you do anything like a martial art?”
“Uh, boxing? Like, at a bag? I guess? I didn’t fight people, bro, I was getting a finance degree at—”
“Harvard,” Flambae sneers in time with him. “Yeah, yeah, nerd bitch. I know. Stand here. Ugh. No. Feet like this.”
“Why do you know hand-to-hand?” Victor demands while Flambae man-handles him into a better three-quarter angle boxing stance. He lets the grumpy fire-starter position his arms. “You light shit on fire, man. You don’t need to actually fight people.”
“Are you fucking kidding me? Yes, I do.” Flambae looks at Victor like he just drooled on himself. “Most of the big-fuck supes are basically fucking fireproof. The fire just distracts them. The rest is punching their fucking skulls until they stop being fucking conscious. Do you not ever pay attention to what I’m doing on mission?”
“We don’t fight many guys that big.”
“And when we do, I am punching them the fuck out so fast they don’t get a chance to be a fucking problem.” Flambae steps back, glaring. “You know what big strong villain motherfuckers do when they get big and strong?”
“Uh, start a life of crime involving punching?”
“They don’t fucking train,” Flambae enunciates. “They just go ‘Oh, I’m big and fuck huge’ and never get any better. Then I can punch them in their fucking jaw and find out if it’s glass.” A pause. “Then I light them on fire a little for good measure. It works.”
“Well, that works for you because you’re like, what?” Victor gestures up and down at Flambae who looks confused. “B-grade super-strength? Ancillary mutation cuz you’re an energy convert or something? That plus the fire propulsion can really fucking deck someone.”
Flambae has gone from confused to angry. “What the fuck is ‘ancillary’?”
“Side-effect mutation,” says Victor slowly. “Your main thing is fire, but whatever makes you do fire makes you stronger too?”
“Why didn’t you just say that?”
“You’re right. That was too many syllables. My bad—”
“Stop being a dick or I’ll punch you next.” Flambae slaps Victor’s wrist. “Get that up. We’re doing some punching drill things. Fucking bitch. Yes, I am stronger than a normie, but I still have to work out. Unlike you. So, let’s figure out how strong you aren’t so I can tell Robert you suck and I can’t do anything.”
Victor has to resist flipping his ears back. “Great. Sounds awesome. Sooo excited.”
Flambae holds up a bare hand. “Just aim there and punch.”
“Why?”
“If it hurts me, then you’re not a bitch. Let’s go.”
Skeptical, Victor takes a swing and his knuckles slam into Flambae’s palm. The impact skin-on-skin echoes with a satisfying bang through the gym, but Flambae seems largely unaffected and rolls his burning eyes.
“Oh my god, that was shit.” Flambae grabs his arm. “Elbow up, bitch. You don’t have any fucking force jabbing at me like that.” He grips Victor at the wrist and elbow, corrects his forearm, moving it up in level alignment with his wrist and bullies his limb into the motion of a right hook. “Speed, goddammit. Elbow up. Flat arm. Angle… uh, ninety? Ninety-five degrees? Whatever. Like this.” He does indeed position Victor’s arm at a slightly obtuse right angle. “Here. Gonna break your fucking wrist otherwise, dumb ass bitch.”
Victor levels a look at him. “What percentage of your English vocabulary is just combinations of ‘fuck’ and ‘bitch’ do you think?”
“I don’t know you dumb bitch maybe fuck off and try to hit me and not be a pussy about it.”
“Like, poetry, dude.”
“Shut up.”
Victor pays attention to his elbow this time and vaguely recalls a beginning boxing class where some guy iterated the same things, so his frat-bro teammate isn’t entirely full of shit. This time, he swings and feels a twinge of familiarity at doing it. The impact is louder and Flambae’s shakes his hand out, hissing in satisfaction.
“Ha! Better. See, I was right. Stupid fuck.”
Then Flambae makes him do this same punch a hundred fucking times at a punching bag before switching to the left hook. Then he does that a hundred fucking times. It’s insanely boring and Flambae yells at him every time he fucks up his form. Then they do it again. It’s been long enough that even Victor’s hybrid vigor is starting to fail him and, frankly, he’s really starting to feel a chemical bite of exhaustion and rage chewing at the back of his brainstem.
“Break,” Flambae declares with no warning. “Fuck off for five minutes, I have to make a call.”
Victor heads for the showers. He ducks into the furthest back row and puts in the combination into his locker. It’s not that he never comes to the gym, it’s just that it’s a pointless ritual and mostly to give him an excuse to duck in here away from the bullpen and main office. He digs in his duffel bag, pulls out his stapler, pops the top of the magazine and selects one of the tiny baggies tucked near the hinge, behind the reload row of staples.
He's got a selection here: morphine and cocaine.
For calming down or amping up. Whichever he needs.
He picks the morphine, does a quick sonar-chirp to make sure no one is in here (even invisible) then tips the little bag to pour a neat line across the back of his hand. He snorts it with a quick single motion. He’s only got the good stuff so the dose hits immediately and Victor woozily sets one hand against the locker, lets the dim euphoria bloom from his brainstem through the rest of his bloodstream like pouring warm water into a close system.
He feels the beast-form, happily tranquilized, settle inside him.
Victor rubs his snout with the back of his shirt sleeve, puts his stuff away, and checks himself in the mirror. Satisfied that his drug usage is sufficiently hidden, he strolls under a pleasant haze back to the training room and even through the walls, he can hear Flambae speaking rapidly in a language Victor doesn’t recognize. Even in this language, he punctuates his sentences with English curse words and phrases.
Victor pauses just outside the door to listen a little longer. The woman he’s speaking to on the phone (who Victor can also tinnily make out if he focuses and tilts his ears right) is also using the language Victor doesn’t know. Smooth and rhythmic.
Flambae says, exasperated, breaking back into English, “Fine, fine, Ābji! No. I have time.” A pause. “Yes, I’m at work.” A pause. “Why would I get in trouble for that? The fuck?” He mutters again in the language Victor doesn’t know. “It’s fine. Put him on.” A longer pause, then Flambae’s tone changes, swings up as he enthuses, “Aye, papi!”
Flambae swaps entirely to Spanish at this point.
(Does this meathead speak three languages?)
Victor speaks Spanish well enough to mostly understand that Flambae is talking to his dad about A: How he is generally and B: some kind of event happening this weekend involving a younger girl in the family (probably the dude’s niece). C: The health of the older man on the phone who keeps coughing periodically while chatting.
Victor leans against the wall by the door, frowning as this exchange goes on. It’s extremely pedestrian in a way Flambae is, uh, not. There is discussion of barbeque and who brings what food and who makes bad versions of various dishes. (There is an aunt, apparently, who can’t be left alone with lamb kebabs.) Flambae’s dad keeps asking how Flambae is doing and he keeps saying ‘fine’ in a way that gets increasingly fed up as the conversation goes on.
Right. Everyone in the family checking in on their fuck up ex-con family member.
Victor can’t relate.
Eventually the call ends. Flambae assures him he’ll be at the big family thing. His dad drags the farewell out making him promise to be careful and ‘I saw you on TV, mijo’ which seems to fluster the team fire-starter a bit because he clears his throat before saying something like, ‘Of course, because I’ve got the best outfit. I’ll see you there.’
Victor wanders in then, drawling, “Plans with the fam, huh?”
Flambae whips around and, oh shit, his eyes only get that bright when he’s about to flame on. He doesn’t though, just stands there holding his phone looking at Victor like he’s doing some hard math on the cost of lighting his teammate on fire. Victor tries very hard to seem unbothered by this possibility, but the truth is he’s sweating a little.
“Don’t,” Flambae says eventually through his teeth, “eavesdrop on my calls.”
“Uh, I wasn’t,” Victor lies. “You were standing in the middle of a room talking, dude. Chill out. We done or can I go now orrrr…?”
Flambae studies him for a moment. Then he says, “Why did that guy shoot you yesterday?”
Victor freezes. After the shock wears off, he shoves his hands in his pockets and takes a wary half-step back, angling his body away. “Why the fuck do you care?”
“I don’t want it to happen again, stupid. I mean, unless you liked getting shot. I don’t know what you’re into, fuckin’ weirdo…”
Victor studies his teammate.
Flambae is such a loud, dumb, firebomb of a person, Victor struggles to imagine him being duplicitous. Even his weird little scam with the leaderboards wasn’t really a scam because, no shit, Flambae does, for real, contain the most fires in SDN… he just also doesn’t do anything to stop them starting in the first place. Sonar thinks Blazer hasn’t docked him for it because a little property damage is better than Flambae sulking and ignoring it.
He’s such a bizarre dude.
Because of this, Victor is inclined to believe that Flambae is genuinely curious and says, warily, “I mean… he shot me because I was a big bat monster, dude.”
Flambae looks skeptical. “That’s it? He just… got spooked and pulled a fucking gun? C’mon.”
“I mean, I was a bit rude to him,” Victor admits, “but being rude when you’re a hot dude with your tits out and being rude when you’re, you know, me, goes a bit different.” He flaps an ear and tilts his head. “For real though, is your suit like that so you can be mean and people won’t care because you’re, like, an evil firefighter calendar?”
Flambae shrugs. “Maybe. Not telling. Seriously, though.” He clears his throat and tries to seem casual. (He’s so so bad at seeming casual.) “What, uh, happened?” He glances sidelong at Victor. “C’mon. Robert will be pissed if you get fuckin’ shot the fuck up again. So…”
Victor sighs.
“Uh, I dunno, dude. I think he had some kind of mental break or something.” Victor contemplates the ceiling, clicking the tertiary vocal cords in the base of his throat as he thinks back. “It just... happened really fast, you know? It as like...”
“Aaaaye. Nice, Flambae.”
Sonar hits the crane tower on the container ship with the grace of a furry flying kaiju. The entire structure shudders and creaks with his weight as he snags his claws in some of the open joints and support rods that comprise the giant metal arm. Sonar chirps a quick far-and-wide ping, the vibrato returning a fast layout and headcount of the ship and the parts of it he doesn’t have line of sight on.
The deck is covered in smoke, rolling in a black and green cloud off the smoking shells of the burnt shipping container stack center of deck. A half dozen tug boats far below are furiously shoving the listing ship toward dry dock, but nowhere near fast enough.
Robert’s in his ear, on a two-way, saying, “Toxic fumes rolling across the deck, man. You gotta get those people outta there.”
Sonar, hanging sideways from the crane glances briefly skyward. Flambae’s hovering far, far above the harbor just… burning. He beat Sonar here and put the fire out before he even arrived. His entire body is skinned in flame, burning in that way that makes Sonar uneasy even after months of watching his pyrokinetic teammate safely and casually immolate himself from the inside out. It just always looks like he’s poured gasoline on himself and lit a match.
(Victor’s seen that shit in person, for real, and watching a person’s face melt off their skull while they scream is not something you forget.)
Robert, on comms, says, “Give him a minute. Chemical fires are tough.”
“Roger that, Robbie-boy.” Sonar shouts down to the dazed-looking crewmen emerging from cover and looking very fucking much in shock right now. “Hey! Sailor people! It’s really fucked up here. Let’s, like, get the hell off this deck before something else catches fire, yeah?”
Sonar swings down from the crane, throwing his arms wide to catch the air under his wings and for a moment the shadow he throws across the deck is massive, making the crew flinch together. He hits the deck at an angle, landing a little heavily but with control so he can skid into puppy-dog sitting position with one ear cocks like someone’s harmless cocker spaniel. One of the crew women, previously backing away from him, stops looking scared and instead looks confused.
Sonar jerks his chin at her. “Sup?”
The woman, startled, emits a baffled guffaw.
Good. Good. All friendly. All good here.
Sonar flaps one big ear and says, “I know I look scary, but I’m honestly just tryna get back home and watch some Netflix. Any recommendations? Anyone?” He pauses to let the braver crewman start to approach, convinced now that he must be a second hero on site, but for the others hanging back, he declares, “I’m Sonar by the way. SDN? Superhero. Yeah.” He catches movement on his peripheral, a bigger dude, holding a crowbar uncertainly. Sonar ignores that and chortles, “Nice hat, buddy. You a Dodger’s fan?”
Being addressed directly seems to snap the big man out it and he sheepishly sets the tool down and coughs, saying, “Can you get our injured outta here?”
“Gotcha. Don’t worry, man. There’s EMTs on the dock. I can carry about three of you at once.” He points with a purposely dainty flip of his claws at three of the strongest and least afraid looking and able-bodied. “You. You. You. Let’s go. I’m taking you first so you can show everyone else how it’s done, alright?” He points to the big man. “Dodgers hat. What’s your name?”
“Roy?”
“Roy. Cool. You get injured peeps up here. I’ll see about getting them out next.” Then, having successfully delegated himself into a position of authority, he hunkers down on the deck and says to one of his three selected passengers, “You’re on my back first. Ever been air-lifted by a flying supe before?”
Sonar keeps it light, joking around with the first three sailors so the other more nervous members of the crew get to see their teammates relax and take his instructions on how to get on his back. One petite lady volunteers to hang onto one of his legs, wrapping herself around his ankle, crisscross locking her legs around the limb and sitting on his foot. He stands up with the two other crewmen on his back and experimentally shakes her like mailman with a dog on his ankle.
She laughs a little.
“Okay, she’s not going anywhere,” he announces.
Sonar carefully steps up onto the edge of the ship rail, then falls into an easy glide from the ship to the dock, landing softly amid a gaggle of waiting fire fighters and EMTs. He drops his belly to the concrete and swivels his ears around, listening to conversation and heartbeats as people clamber off and get checked by friendly medical professionals.
His last passenger disembarks just as he hears Flambae, through the sub-team comm, say with disgust, “Can pull his own fucking weight. Like Coupé did.”
Sonar blinks and looks up with all the other firefighters as Flambae—previously hovering and seemingly recovering—flares white-hot and rockets off toward the city.
“Um, bro?!” Sonar shouts after the comet of retreating fire. “Some help down here?!” He watches his other teammate disappear over the horizon and says, “Well, fuck me I guess.”
An EMT on his left, a stocky woman with freckles points angrily. “Did he just ditch you? There are people injured. Can he not carry people?”
There’s a tall Asian guy in fire gear who seems concerned, “Is Flambae okay? I know he’s fireproof, not explosion proof. Did the chemicals fuck with him?”
“Uhhh, dunno.” Sonar taps anxiously at his comm. “Dispatch is… working on it?”
In his ear, Robert is swearing.
“Fuck. Goddammit, Flambae. Flambae you fuck, if you took your comm out— Jesus Christ. Sorry, Sonar. I think he’s out. Can you handle this? The evac? I can send Malevola if you need it. Portaling she’s five minutes out or— Wait. Hold on.” There’s a pause, a dragging noise as Robert pulls his headset off to shout, presumably across the bullpen at SDN. “Phen! PHEN! Are you functional today?!” A pause. “Bro, can you lock the fuck in?”
Sonar looks at the concerned EMT. “Yeah, I can get everyone. Just slow and steady is all.”
The Asian dude eyes him. “I’m Captain Toshiro. Do you need stretchers? We have some if you need to carry people back.” He points to Sonar’s clawed feet. “I assume it would be easier if you had a rescue board with a four-way grip strap? Like a rescue helicopter?”
“Yeah, thanks, man.”
“Let one of us come back with you to the ship.” It’s an order, not a request. “We have respirators. Let us organize people.”
“You sure?”
“Yes,” says Woman With Freckles, already pulling her mask on. She climbs him like a horse. “Take me. I’m lightest.”
Several big yellow stretchers are provided immediately and Sonar flies back to the ship where people are not looking so hot with the smoke. As he hits the deck, Freckles bails out to get the injured secured for transport while Sonar is lightly mobbed by people desperate to get away from the ship. The shift from ‘too scared to approach the giant bat monster’ to ‘literally grabbing Sonar’s fur and trying to climb on him’ is jarring.
“Hey! Rude, man. Stop.” He hisses as someone yanks his ear. “Ow! I’ll get everyone. You gotta calm down.”
Freckles, in the middle of securing an injured man to a stretcher shouts, “HEY! NO!” She storms forward, pulling people aside. “Get off of him! He’s our only air evac! Groups of three! Now! Get in groups of three. He will come back for you in groups of three! Be ready to move! Sit down on the deck in groups of three! Cover your nose and mouth! Protect your eyes! Be patient! Ambulances are on the way! You will be tended to!”
The man on Sonar’s back is choking him a little. The woman behind that guy has a death grip on his fur. There are two people around his legs which isn’t safe, but fuck it. He waddles awkwardly to the edge of the ship, then again glides to the dock, dumps people and returns. There’s some commotion as he takes just one person on his back and uses both feet to secure an injured man on the stretcher for the next flight.
People are getting frantic.
Freckles has her mask off; she is letting the worst afflicted use it to breathe a little. Her eyes are watering from the fumes. Sonar drops off the injured man and his passenger. Comes back for the second to last group. People are arguing with Freckles, a big dude is up in her face, yelling the smaller EMT about ‘doing her job’.
Sonar lands on the boat railing exactly as Big Guy goes to grab Freckles by her fire suit.
Sonar lunges forward and shoulder checks the dude away from her, snarling, “Back off, bro!” He puts some sonic behind the sound and Big Guy stumbles back so fast he falls over and scrambles away like a camper confronted with a grizzly. “Don’t be a fucking dick or your fucking last!”
“Hey! Whoa! It’s fine!” Freckles says, scooting around his wings. “Hey! Stop. Frank.” She’s addressing Big Guy. “Hey, Sonar here is gonna take you first.” She looks significantly at Sonar. “Right now. You’re outta here. Okay?”
Sonar chirp-growls, but says, “Yeah. Fine.”
Then he pounces on Frank.
Frank, understandably, screams like a little girl as Sonar pins him by the arms, grabs him about the biceps with his feet—honestly the most secure position one can be transported, but fuckhead doesn’t know that—and launches skyward with a full vertical takeoff. He does not bother with passenger-friendly speeds and bowls the dude to the dock without stopping, banking midair, and coming right back to the ship in less than fifteen seconds to slam to a stop against the side of the ship.
In his comm, Robert says, exasperated, “Dude. I saw that.”
“Worth it, Robbie. Worth it.”
Freckles also has a disapproving look ready for him as he climbs from the railing to the deck.
“He was just scared,” she scolds.
“And I was scared he was taking too long.” Sonar shakes his head like he’s getting a kink out. “Can’t be ditching cool firefighter ladies on poison ships because assholes can’t get their shit together.”
Freckles gestures, rolling her eyes, and the last three passengers, the captain and two older shipmen, climb onto Sonar’s back while she assists them and checks their handholds. She lets Sonar perch up on the railing before gamely clambering up onto the rail beside him, checking the deck is clear one last time, then wrapping her arms and legs around his leg.
She shouts, “Nice job, Sonar from SDN! Let’s get the fuck out of here!”
He grins and is gratified when Freckles doesn’t even flinch when he tips off the side of the ship and glides swiftly to the dock below, taking special care to land with extra delicate control and smoothness.
You could sip tea on this ride.
“Rate me five stars on Uber,” Sonar declares, letting Freckles roll away from him before laying down on the concrete to let everyone else slide off his back. “Watch your step. Thank you for flying Air Sonar. Tip your flight attendants.” He sits up and shakes his fur out again. “Okay. That’s everyone. We all good here, Robbie, or can I—?”
The sound of the gunshot, in Sonar’s unready ears, briefly splits his skull in two and blinds him. He reels back, screeching, thrashing his head and howling, ears ringing so hard it’s rips through every nerve in his body. He goes deaf, both from the ring and because he instantly closes all the internal structures of his inner ear to protect his enhanced cochlear nerve. The world goes quiet as he stumbles, pawing at his head and trying to shake it off.
That’s when the second gunshot goes off and—no longer distracted by the pain of his eardrums half-bursting—Sonar feels the second bullet join the first lodged in the muscle of his upper right side. The bullet hit rib and something cracks in the hyper-dense structure of his bat-form ribcage. (Deeper, like instinct, he feels the ribs break for the part of him that’s Victor as well.)
Oh, he thinks stupidly, turning in time to see Frank—glassy-eyed, teeth bared—walking him down with a handgun leveled. Shit.
People start screaming and scattering for cover behind emergency vehicles. Sonar spins and tries to screech-blast the man with a concentrated sonic shout… but his ribs immediately contract in protest, unable to get the air and the bestial screech only triggers the man to empty the fucking clip at him.
“Sonar!” Robert’s in his ear, the bone-vibration transmitting his words directly into his skull and cutting through his panic. “Sonar! Run! He’s tunnel-visioned on you! Get out of there!”
Sonar is big in his beast form, but he’s fast. He jukes sideways. Bullets tear through his wings as he spins to protect his head, belly and spine. He takes off into a full gallop across the dock, thoughts together enough to make sure he races for the open water, drawing fire away from the non-super civilians. He feels his membrane in his wings shred as he runs, unable to fly now as a cluster of shots ripped a massive flap of bleeding skin open in his right wing.
“Rob! I can’t fly!” Panic. Panic. He’s panicking. He doesn’t have Mal or Flambae or any other Z-Teamers. He can’t remember how many shots he’s taken. Shit. Is he dying? He’s never been shot this many times in beast form. He doesn’t know—
Then a bullet clips the joint of Sonar’s elbow and blows it apart. His arm buckles immediately as he brings his weight down on it and he goes down mid-stride, skidding and rolling from his own momentum. He slams into a parked forklift, spraying the metal in blood. Pain. Instantly. World-ending. Pain like he’s never felt and so big it threatens to knock him unconscious as it blooms red-black and nerve-shattering from his arm up through his entire body..
He’s curled up whining against the forklift.
He hears people screaming. His vision’s gone spotty. Robert’s on comms trying to scramble flight-capable backup to his location. He’s swapped everyone to team-wide which means everyone hears it when Sonar starts to wheeze, cough, and spit up blood. He can see the gunman closing in. From the ground, he instinctively tries to alert-chirp, like he would to summon Mal to his side, but he can’t.
“Sonar!” Malevola’s on teamwide. She sounds like she’s crying. “Sonar, get the fuck out of there!”
Oh shit. Oh shit, she’s gonna hear him die.
Frank closes to execution distance.
“Monster,” the man says, eyes feverish and wild. “I won’t let you hurt any—"
Sonar shifts.
It happens so fast, so immediately, Frank seems to forget to fire and then freezes when left with nothing left to shoot but Victor, not Sonar, fetched up against the wheel of the blood-splatted fork-lift.
Frank blinks, confused, not understanding the bleeding bat-headed young man that’s replaced the beast he was just hunting. Victor tries to breathe through his own adrenaline-frantic hyper-ventilation. Tries to focus. He’s curled with his ruined arm tucked up against his naked ribs. The fur along his shoulders and chest is soaked in beast-form blood. More blood than any human could lose and survive.
But at least now he looks almost human.
Like something you have to murder.
“I’m with fucking SDN!” Victor flinched back against the forklift as Frank steps closer, squinting at him, the gun pointed at his skull. Panic has him completely. He scrambles for the right words. What he can possibly say to stop this guy killing him. Victor pulls one knee up like his shredded slacks and human anatomy are any protection from the next bullet. He raises one hand, palm out. “Stop! Dude, stop…”
Frank stares at him.
“Don’t, man.” Victor can feel blood filling his lungs, can feel his hybrid form struggle with the damage, the shattered bone and displaced wounds. He’s a mauled and mutilated version of himself, carrying the wounds from the monster but even so he shakes his head and says, “I’m a fucking superhero.”
Frank stares at him for a long moment.
Then he tries to shoot Sonar in the head.
Victor, tunnel-visioned the variables of his failure, accepts he’s going to die. Captain Toshiro however— fast as a fucking viper, taking full advantage of Frank’s confusion—does not and he comes out of nowhere wielding an oxygen canister like a bat. He hits Frank in the arm with it. The bullet ricochets off the forklift, tearing a chuck from Victor’s right ear. Toshiro swings again, pivoting at the hips to really clock the bigger man again with the canister.
This incredible act of selfless citizen bravery is rewarded immediately because motherfucking Phenomaman—traveling at roughly forty miles per hour—hits Frank from the side and rockets the screaming man half a mile into the sky in half a second. Everyone stares up. Eventually, a crushed handgun drops from the sky to land on the pavement and Phenomaman swoops back down, holding Frank upside down by ankle.
“Hello. I am Phenomaman,” he announces like there’s anyone in California who doesn’t know who he is. He shakes Frank at the group of firefighters like the man is a misbegotten puppy. “Take this unstable person into your custody. He is unarmed and both his arms are broken now. I must take my coworker for immediate medical attention.” A beat. “Now please.”
Sonar loses the thread a little.
He’s aware of Phenomaman trying awkwardly to pick him up, of his fingers slipping briefly on his skin with the amount of blood. He remembers screaming and cursing at the big dumb alien hero because, holy fuck, it hurts. It hurts so fucking much suddenly. He hears Freckles and Toshiro yelling, then the wind roaring as Phenomaman punches through the sky at what feels like one-hundred-fifty-miles-per-hour trying to get him back to the SDN medics and healers.
Victor tries to tell Phenomaman to loosen his grip.
That he’s hurting him,
But what he keeps saying is, “They shot me, man.” He gags up blood and wheezes, “I don’t… like… that’s not… supposed to happen. I’mma… superhero now.”
Phenomaman shouts over the wind, “Ah! This is a misconception! I can assure you, I’ve been shot by both villains and civilians! There are many civilians with guns in America and none of them are very good at hitting what they aim for, statistically!” A beat. “Except the man who shot you! His aim was exceptional!”
A beat.
“Sonar, Robert has instructed me to keep you talking, Sonar! Please continue to talk!”
“I… don’t feel… so good, Phen.”
“It is likely the catastrophic internal bleeding!”
“Fuuuuuuuuck.” Sonar is fading out. He can’t speak without blood bubbling into the back of his throat. The sky overhead is going gray. “I’m kinda… scared, man.”
“As am I! Please keep talking! We are thirty seconds from arrival!”
A beat.
“Sonar! Please keep talking! Sonar? Sonar, please keep speaking with me. Sonar—”
“Aaaaand then I woke up in medical,” Victor finishes.
Flambae, having been silent through the entirety of Victor’s retelling, remains quiet, staring, eyes glowing faintly, arms folded, and weirdly intense as Victor goes on.
“Total side note, if you haven’t signed all those medical release papers to allow our company healers to do big fucking magic on your guts, sign ‘em. Mal and Knight Light had me stable in, like, seconds.” He clicks his tongue and huffs. “People are suuuuch pussies about healing magic. Look, if it all comes undone one day because of weird magic takebacks or something, fuck it. Won’t matter if I’m dead today.”
Flambae’s brow knits. “How many times did that fucker shoot you?”
“Seven times but whose counting?” A beat. “I mean, me. I am counting. Also, SDN medical. Knight Light says I set a branch record for bullets extracted. My bat-form’s not bullet proof, but I’m bullet resistant. Which I know now.” He folds his arms and shrugs at Flambae. “Anyway, dude, the moral of the story is, like, don’t be a scary bat monster and maybe people won’t shoot you.”
Flambae continues to frown quietly. The ‘quietly’ part is weird.
“Hello? Flambae come in?”
“How have you never been shot before? The fuck?”
“Uh, I don’t get shot at, man. I went to—”
“Harvard. Yeah, yeah. Fuck off.” Flambae shifts his weight restlessly. “Haven’t you, like, fucking eaten people before? How did none of them shoot you?”
“Hey, I only ate people when I was really, really strung out. I did white collar crimes, dude. Well, uh, up until I got really into morphine and then did some B and E stuff… and battery…”
A pause.
“I did eat one of my dealers, I guess, but only because he tried to tranquilize me. Dick move! I was a great customer up until then. Like, if he was my coke dealer, I would have understood. The bat loves coke. Morphine is chill tho. Morphine is for being human and locking in, dude.”
A pause.
“Okay, you’re being way too quiet, man. You’re freaking me out.”
Flambae continues to study him. Victor—who had previously never considered his firebug teammate much past the whole ‘he might light me on fire’ thing—wonders all at once how many times Flambae has been shot that being un-shot is so foreign to him. Victor does a quick up-down Flambae’s exposed ribs and biceps, but the overheads make it hard to tell what’s shadow and what’s—
“Phenoma-dick got kinda fucked up about you almost dying,” Flambae declares, breaking the silence suddenly. He ignores Victor’s confused-dog head tilt and complains, loudly, “Robert’s been babysitting him, like, constantly while you’ve been out and he just, like, mopes around being a sad-wet-loser man. Like, Water-bitch cries less than his guy.”
Victor, cautiously taking the invite, says, “Ugh, I hate that guy.”
“Like, I fail missions and it fucking sucks.” Flambae rolls his eyes, gesturing laboriously skyward. “But I still go out and do the fucking job, even when I feel like shit and don’t want to.”
“Because we’ll go to jail if we don’t,” Victor says, nodding sagely.
“Because we’ll go to jail if we don’t,” Flambae agrees, also nodding. He huffs suddenly. “Phenoma-bitch needs to go to fucking jail. He’ll stop being depressed about being single when he realizes being single and not in jail is amazing.”
“Right? Every superhero should go to jail. Obviously. For morale.”
“Exactly.” Flambae shrugs, circling toward the punching bag with some intent. “Anyway, don’t get shot again, bitch. I realized not having you around is way more annoying than having you around. Also, you need to learn to throw a fucking punch.” He gestures to the bag. “This is pathetic. I can’t, like, be on a team with you. Being this pathetic. Like… c’mon.”
Victor isn’t sure but this might be Flambae being nice.
He considers the bag with a sigh. “So I have to punch this thing a billion more times? We can’t just fuck off?”
“Like, yes, you have to punch the bag. That’s how muscle memory works, stupid.” A beat. “I’m serious. I can’t be on a team where you can’t throw a punch. This is embarrassing.”
“Fine. Fucker.”
As it turns out, muscle memory is something he can keep.