Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March 16th, 20:23.

Kiss/Kill. Clusters.

It feels like those two terms have slowly started to define May's life ever since she first heard them.

People know about Grab-Bag capes, capes with a whole bunch of powers, instead of just one, but those same people rarely actually know why some capes get a Grab-Bag.

But May knows. She's known ever since she got a peak backstage, and even more since meeting Tori, Megan and Jace, Megan especially.

Everything in this world is so small in comparison to that vastness that is powers, and the Shards that contain them.

When someone triggers, a Shard connects to them, one Shard from an Entity made up of more Shards than can be counted.

But when multiple people trigger at the same time, in the same place?

Those Shards reach out to each other, build up off of each other. That is a Cluster trigger. Every one of them get's their own powers as their Primary, while the others all get access to a weaker variant of their power.

May's Primary is her timing. Her Secondaries the explosions and the 'Perfect' weapon.

But when a Cluster triggers, it is not just  powers that get shared. They share  everything. They share who they are, their dreams and aspirations, habits and shortcomings. their very beings become entwined in a way that no one else could ever truly comprehend.

May had never done drugs before triggering. Never drank alcohol, stayed up past her bed time or anything. Homer was a homeless man, addicted to drugs and alcohol, and without the will to make something of himself.

Now May is the druggie, but that's fine. As far as she is concerned, she got the better end of the deal. Homer took away her discipline, that same discipline that sucked the joy out of her life every day before her trigger.

Lily took the stick out of her ass and shoved it up her own, and in turn she got Lily's recklessness, her ability to just go out and have fun socialising. And she's grateful, more grateful that she can put into words. Which is why she has to do what she is going to do.

But it isn't just personality that bleeds over, there's also the Kiss/Kill dynamic to consider.

In any given Cluster, it is guaranteed that there will either be an intense hatred shared between Cluster-mates, or an intense love.

In Tori's Cluster, there was one of them who wanted to kill all the others, and Jace and Megan are impossibly connected.

Homer felt the love, if only platonically. He was grateful to us, because we fixed his life, put him on the up and up. He stopped doing drugs, got a job and even started going out as a Hero. He even took May's skill with the violin and her singing.

Lily is the one who became hateful. She doesn't want anything to do with either of them, but May? May is the opposite. 

She's been jealous of Lily ever since she first saw her, before they even triggered. She loves her, she wants to be her want's to  wear her skin and put on her clothes and become and show her how much she loves her.

But Lily can't see it her way, so she's going to show her.

One of Megan's powers let her boost the strength of other parahumans' powers. But that's only the effect, not the actual process. 

It widens the connection between a parahuman and their Shard, allows  more to flow in. It's like being high, having every piece of you expanded to become  more of what you once were.

But, it can do more than just widen Shard connections. It can  manipulate them, to an extent.

Her theory was proven with Homer. 

It's a shame what had to happen with him, but he was stepping on toes anyway, it wouldn't have been long before he kicked it.

So she just... sped things along a little bit.

Now his power is hers.

Her weapon is even more perfect, her timing even easier to see, and her  explosions...

Now there's only the two of them, May and Lily, Lily and May.

She never understood May's obsession with her, never even tried to understand it. So May will make her understand. She'll strip everything away from Lily and make it her own. She'll wear her face and put on her clothes and smile her smile and speak with her voice.

And that feeling she gets when Megan boosts her power? That will become permanent the moment it happens, her mind will  expand forever, taking her to a whole new level of being all in one move.

She'll never even see it coming. Picking her off will be easy, even with Legend in the city. Her timing is too perfect for there to ever be any failure.

They'll grab her, and May will show her her obsession, and she will be free.

"Hey." The word drags her attention away from her thoughts, turning to see Tori entering her room. "Thinking about stuff again?"

They both know what she means by 'stuff', and so May smiles and nods her head. "You know I can't stop."

"I know. But sometimes I wish you would spend that much time thinking about me instead."

Jumping to her feet, May reaches up to Tori's face and brushes a strand of hair behind her ear, giving her a quick kiss on the cheek. "Our thing is temporary. You can't get attached."

Tori's face falls at the words that she has heard so many times since they got together. "You keep saying that. Is it temporary because you're going to die? Or because you'll leave me?"

May shook her head negative. "It's because I need to figure something out. Before I do that, we can't be together long-term. It would be mean to pretend we could."

"I'm kind of worried what your solution would be," Tori's voice goes from bland to worried as she continues, "Lily got you good. She's in your head."

"It's not that she got me," May explains, trying to express an answer that doesn't make sense to anyone who hears it. "I got it. I figured it out."

Tori's face scrunches into one of worry, deathly serious, and it makes May uncomfortable, so she grabs her by her collar and pulls her in to a quick kiss to make the expression go away.

If there's one thing she doesn't like, it's seeing the people she loves feeling sad.

"I won't die, and I won't leave you," May says, breathing against Tori's neck. "I promise."

Tori smiled.

"We'll be together for a few decades, I think. Unless we're interrupted."

Her smile fades slightly at May's words, and she hakes her head. "You're messing with me, not making any sense."

"I'm the most reasonable rabbit I know," is May's swift retort, even though her rabbit mask is on her dresser on the other side of the room.

But Tori only shakes her head again, looking May in the eyes. "You say interrupted, but you mean dying, or leaving me, or  me dying. You promise me decades and turn around and tell me no long-term?"

May only nods her head, like one does when agreeing with a sensible answer. "Yes on all counts. Yes, dead is always possible, and you know that. Yes, decades. And yes, I can't get your hopes up about long-term."

"I think you're fucking with me," Tori accuses, no real heat to her tone, "lying to me by talking about 'decades', or pulling some double-meaning lawyer shit over on me."

May just shakes her head, knowing that she doesn't get it, and gives Tori another kiss. "Talking about it makes me sad. Let's just focus on the time we have together, without worrying about commitment, okay?"

But Tori doesn't give it up right away, looking for an answer in all the wrong places. "It's Thinker neurosis. Like a society Thinker having a thing about social experiments, except you somehow think decades aren't a commitment?"

"Sure, we can call it that," May nods her head, hoping to assuage Tori's worry.

"Or maybe this relationship just isn't important enough to count?"

"You are important. You count."

"Not as much as Homer did. Not as much as Lily does."

Shaking her head, May struggles to think of the words to explain what she knows. "They count in a different way."

Considering that, a wry smile grows on Tori's face for a moment. "I suppose I should be glad that you don't want to drink my blood as well?"

"I don't want to drink Lily's blood.  But... If I could? If I can,  I'll map you to our cluster, so I could do all the Kiss and Kill things I have to do to them to you, too. And you would be the most important person in the world to me, then. I'm going to look for ways. I promise."

Tori reaches a hand forward and touches May's face, being one of the very few people May would ever let touch her, something they both know.

"Which is why we're gonna grab that teenager and tear everything out of her, and we can watch together as everything that she is, she ceases to be. It'll be like watching a balloon deflate."

"That's not nearly as romantic as you think it is."

"Balloons?"

"Killing teenagers," Tori clarifies, lapsing into silence for a moment as they share eye contact. Tori smiles. "You're so weird."

"I'm ahead of the curve."

"You're weird and I like it."

May smiles.

---

New York, New York, March 21st, 09:11.

Uppercrust is a businessman.

As a businessman, it's always a shame when an investment stops paying off, even if it's inevitable for any investment to eventually hit a ceiling.

Three weeks ago, his greatest investment to date, Lusia Abel, made international news, though mostly for the countries she visited during her travels.

Before she removed Oakland from the map, only one parahuman had ever been thought of as equal to Eidolon, that being the Faerie Queen herself. The cape Boogeyman, or woman, in this case.

That's still kind of the case now. People aren't really referring to her as the Strongest Villain to Eidolon's Strongest Hero.

Instead, they have started calling her a Fake Endbringer.

Combine that, with how the other Clowns collectively worked together to tear down the entirety of The Elite's presence in Florida, and Uppercrust felt he had good reason to be worried.

However, Lusia has seemingly disappeared from the face of the Earth. He doesn't believe for one second that she's dead. That woman wouldn't die so easily, and she certainly wouldn't commit suicide, he knows that much.

But the fact of the matter  is that she is gone, nowhere to be seen.

He's heard some people bringing the old theory that Endbringers are actually parahumans back up, saying that Lusia could have turned into an Endbringer, and is now going to do as they do, and only show up every couple of months to destroy another city.

Once again, Uppercrust finds the theory to be bogus. The only reason she destroyed Oakland was because she was grieving. He's not going to try and put the action in any kind of bright light, she killed hundreds of thousands of people and ruined the lives of millions, but he can at least say that it isn't something that she would just  do.

Which means there's something else going on.

Personally, Uppercrust thinks that the PRT might have captured her. Eidolon  is still incredibly powerful, and he could see why they'd want to, either for experiments, or to Master her and have a trump card, he doesn't know.

One thing he is sure of though, is that no prison could hold her. He doesn't even believe that the 'Cage could hold her for any respectable amount of time.

But with her disappearance, came another issue, that being that she was his sole contact with The Clowns.

they had a lot of business together, and a lot deals made between them. It would be a shame for it all to go up in smoke.

Luckily, he was contacted by No Face, who seems to be stepping up to take Fool's old job of keeping everything running for The Clowns.

He shared Uppercrust's belief that Lusia is alive somewhere, and they had a lovely conversation about business, though it was slightly annoying to Uppercrust that No Face refused to change anything regarding the deals he's already made with Lusia.

But that's fair enough really. It's not like the deals are anything but amazing in the first place.

Slightly less pleasant was when No Face informed him that the Red Hearts that were pushing their way through his State and further North were sponsored by The Clowns. At least he didn't demand that Uppercrust give up on the State, simply coming to an agreement that Red Hearts won't touch his city.

That plus, any competition or fighting done between Red Hearts and Uppercrust's cell of The Elite is to be done purely with unpowered men, and with a focus on trying to avoid casualties, then coming to an agreement on what sort of fine would be paid if the other breaks the deal.

All said, just business as usual.

Though he still can't help but wonder where exactly Lusia is, and what she is doing...

---

A/N: He~llo! Dear readers!

Did I basically copy an interaction between March and Tori from Ward? Yes. Do I give a fuck? Not even in the slightest. You might recall me getting mad at May for being fucking difficult, even trying to do an interlude with her and having a fucking bout of anxiety because of it. Well, I needed to do this to get her all centred in my mind, so now I don't hate May anymore, she chill.

It was just freaking me out cuz I was panicking about writing canon shit incorrectly, so I needed to write this chap to properly get into the mindset of "yes, I can write her being like in canon, but at the same time this shit is veering so far off of canon, that I can just make shit up too" so now it's all good.

Also, I find it kinda funny to introduce uppercrust with 'uppercrust is a businessman' every single time :)

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