“No, seriously, you got off pretty light for your first powered fight. You should have seen what I looked like after mine! Both eyes were nearly swollen shut. I was worried I would go blind any minute for nearly a week.”

Meathead and I had made our way back to the compound fairly safely, but it had taken us a pretty minute to get there with all the safety precautions Basilisk insisted on. Hell, just making sure we weren’t being tailed took longer than the entire mission had. It did give us plenty of time to bond, though. Turns out he’s a real charmer! 

I laugh, pushing him slightly as we make our way through the compound. “Oh, this wasn’t my first cape encounter. And trust me, I think my war wounds would top yours any day.” 

He laughs and pushes me back, causing me to stumble and nearly fall over. “Either way, I’d feel better after the doc takes a look at you, makes sure you didn’t snap any ribs getting flung around.” 

“Where is he, anyways?” I look around for show, despite being in a tiny hallway. “You think he’d be waiting at the gates for us!”

Meathead starts weaving his way through the junk, pulling me along with him. “Command room, most likely. C’mon!”

Pretty soon we reach a door on the far side of the building. I would have assumed the place I woke up in was the command room, but now I’m guessing it’s some kind of medical bay? Or at least an office for Basilisk to work in. 

Meathead pushes the door open for the both of us, and the sight is frankly eerie. I expected maybe bright lights, walls of monitors and data centers or something, lots of noises and clacking. And while there was plenty of equipment surrounding us, almost all of it was shut off, silent. Instead there was a lone monitor playing at the far end of the room, spilling light around a figure hunched over, sitting entirely too close to it, sound too low for me to hear. It reminds me of my father watching a late night football game more than anything else. I shudder a little.

Basilisk looks over his shoulder at us briefly, waving us over to him before turning back to the monitor. I suddenly felt sheepish, crawling up to him, like he’s just seen my report card and we’re about to have a talk. He pauses the feed, puts down the pen he was taking notes with, and turns to me. “So. Did you two have fun out there?” His tone is snide, condescending. 

I look down in sudden embarrassment. “I… I know it was messier than we were expecting. But look!” I fumble with my bag for a minute, pulling out the orb of sloshing, glowing fluid, holding it out for Basilisk to see. “I got it! Not only that, I was able to take on two capes to get it!” 

All at once he stands up, grabs the orb, and glowers over me. “Do you think that’s something to be proud of?” I shrink in a little beneath him. “You managed to hold down a washed up sidekick for a few minutes, before an actual CCHIP threat treated you like a gnat that was bothering her.”

Meathead steps in front of me, pulling me slightly back by the shoulder. “Hey, back off her. It’s not her fault that lunatic is targeting us. You can’t blame her that she got ambushed.”

Basilisk turns his gaze towards him, growling even harder. “No, but I can blame you. It was your job to case out the warehouse, and to draw everyone away from it. How did you manage to let that little toadie get past you? A goddamned idiot in a motorcycle helmet.” 

He turns back to me, pointing his finger directly at my face accusingly. “That doesn’t let you off the hook. What was the one thing that I wanted you to do if you saw someone? I was hyper specific on this! You were to turn around and leave! Yes, you managed to get one of the many, many items we need. But you burned the single biggest asset we had in order to get it.” He sat back down in his spot, placing the orb down, and unpaused the monitor. “Say hello to Central City’s newest starlet.”

It was a news feed. If not live, it was freshly aired. Grainy footage of the warehouse we had just hit, zoomed in from afar, peeking in from a hole blown in one of the walls. Inside you can clearly see me, pulling up the ground, encasing Spiderbyte. Another shot stayed frozen in a square above it, picture-in-picture style, of me standing in the parking lot, almost square on to the camera, eyes barely visible though the goggles I had boosted from the display I was thrown into.

Oh my god. I was so worried about getting away with the orb and then just not getting killed, I had completely forgotten about the camera drones. 

As if it couldn’t get more embarrassing for me, Basilisk cranks the sound up loud enough for us both to hear what the news anchors have to say. “- who or what the masked assailant is, or what it is they wanted. Right now we only have this footage, which shows that they are indeed dangerous. It also shows that they were working with Meathead, a known accomplice of Basilisk, Central City’s top most wanted enhanced fugitive.” At their mention, both men had their images superimposed next to the blurry image of mine, both much crisper and cleaner. They must have gotten those from their CCHIP files. “Central City Heroics and Investigative Patrol encourages anyone with information on these men’s location or identities, along with the newest assailant, please call in and -”

Basilisk shuts the monitor off, leaving the room entirely dark save for the small amount of glow from Dr. Tock’s tonic. It highlights the sharp features on his face, and of his mask. “Get out of here. Patch her up, and send her home.” What? No!

I move out of my slouch, standing straight. “You can’t just abandon me! They know who I am! You said it yourself, I need help! You need my help!”

He stands up, turning his back to us as he walks out of the room. “You’re right. I need you. That’s not a good thing. Don’t be so ready to throw yourself into the woodchipper, kid.”

Me and Meathead stand there alone for a minute in silence. He places his hand on my shoulder, pulling me away. “C’mon, girlie. You know where the medical room is.”

He guides me out of there, careful to weave us around all the junk. “Where does he get off being like that,” I grumble. “I did my best! And I pulled it off! We pulled it off. I didn’t see him there, paranoid little fucker. He didn’t even stick around on the comms once it popped off. Where was his talking down to!” I throw one of the random hunks of junk laying around. “Probably too busy futzing with more of this garbage to actually help.”

“Actually,” Meathead looks away, almost embarrassed, “that stuff is mine. It’s part of my powerset. Super-engineering, basically. I can put together basically anything I put my mind to. But, I get too antsy if I sit around for too long. I have to build something, or take something apart, to keep myself sane. It’s like an itch that I can’t keep scratched.” 

I look to him. “Oh! I figured that your ability was super strength if it was anything, what with your codename and all.” I decline from mentioning his obvious physique. “I guess the nickname you picked is ironic?”

He laughs sharply. “I didn’t pick it, girlie. None of us do.”

“Wait! What does that mean? You didn’t pick it?”

“Nope! CCHIP assigns them for their internal files, and shares them for their propaganda.”

I throw my hands up in the air in frustration. “Great! So I don’t even get to pick my cape name! What do I do if they give me something terrible?”

He laughs again, slapping me on the back. It’s good that he’s in such a jovial mood already. I guess he’s used to Basilisk acting like that. “Don’t worry! They always give us something terrible. They took one look at me and assumed that I was just a roided up goon, and slapped me with ‘Meathead’. I wouldn’t be shocked if they still think that!”

I shake my head softly. “And yet you’re really some kind of super genius.” 

“Naw, c’mon, I didn’t say that. I said super-engineer. I’m not any smarter than anyone else. It’s just machines that come naturally to me.”

I glance down at his gauntlets again, both of us still in full costume. (Well, what counts as a costume for me.) I reach for one of them, pulling it up to my face for me to see better. “Does that mean that you built these yourself?” 

He stumbles for maybe a split second, before looking nearly the exact opposite direction of me. He lets me keep poking and prodding at his gauntlet though. “Uh, yeah. Them, my mask. The boss’s suit. Those data servos and computers I threw together too, and I maintain them with a little IT wizardry. Pretty much all the tech here I built, although the boss demanded I teach him what I knew. Now he’s got some of his own projects around here as well.” 

We reach the medical bay, him pushing the door open for us again, gesturing for me to sit down on the exam table I woke up on not too long ago. “Don’t be embarrassed,” he says, “but you’re going to have to take your top off.” 

I can feel myself blushing pretty heavily. “If you didn’t want me to be embarrassed, telling me not to be is the worst way to go about it.” Still, I pull my hoodie and my top off, wincing as I reach across one of the places I was hit. “Maybe you’re a bit of a Meathead after all.” 

Even with his face blacked out with that hood of his, it still felt like he was blushing right along with me. He waves some kind of see-through tablet over my ribs and my back, and presses on several spots lightly. Only a few of them make me wince. 

“Alright, I don’t think anything’s broken. And you don’t have any lacerations anywhere either. You’re just going to be pretty bruised up for a while. Don’t wear any crop tops when you get home and you’ll be fine.” 

I look down, sullenly. “Are you really going to make me leave? Just because Basilisk said so? I know I screwed up, but I can be better! Like, if I had some armor of my own, or just a little more training, I could prove what an asset I am!” 

Softly, he grabs me at my shoulders, holding me steady. “Ok, listen. I’m not telling you this because of him. I’m telling you this for you. Go. Home. You’ve been here too long as it is. You’ve got a life out there to live. You have family?” I shake my head no. “Friends then. Someone who cares about you.” I hesitate, and then nod. “Good. Go see them, go be apart from this for a while. You’re getting too attached. You have nothing to prove. That man is not your father, and he’s not your savior.”

“He literally is, though. He saved my life.” 

“Yeah, and how many others did he end? He leveled a hospital. I know you know this.” I… Yeah, I do. Everyone does. When he first showed up, he announced it to the world by using his powers to eat away an entire hospital, and everyone in it. There’s a reason he’s the most wanted. 

But still! “But he hasn’t done anything like that since… He always avoids people, avoids killing.” Unless he has to. “If he’s so untrustworthy, why do you work with him?”

He squeezes my shoulders tighter. “Who says I’m trustworthy? Or any better?” I… I shake my head. No, I hadn’t even heard of him before. If he’s so off the radar that I hadn’t, then there’s no reason to think that.

“Bullshit. I don’t believe you.” 

He sighs. “Then believe that I have nowhere else to go. I’m stuck here. You’re not. You have’ta go, before you are too.” 

I look down at my hands, shaking a little. At the glass digits I now sport. “I’m scared of them seeing me like this. I’m not ready for it. I don’t know how to hide it.” 

He stands up, rummaging around in a pile of medical stuff. Throwing me a pair of rubber gloves. “Here.”

I look at him sideways. “Really? Flimsy medical gloves?”

He shrugs. “Make them better. Tell them you burned your hands or something. Doc’s orders. Oh.” He reaches into a pocket and tosses me one of those old school beepers. “Here. When we need you, you’ll know. Now please. For me? I’ll have something for you when you get back, if you just go.” 

I sigh, grabbing my shit and leaving. I don’t even bother saying goodbye to him, or hunting down Basilisk, wherever he is. I just make my way out of the compound. Same way me and Meathead came in just a bit ago. I’ll zap my clothes into something else when I get to the woods, and then I’ll do it again later back into my old Jason attire. 

I stop before making my way out entirely though, and look back at the compound itself. For all the bluster about security, all the worry and the snaking we did to get here, all the hullabaloo about no names or faces and how we need to keep everything hush hush. He’s stashed himself right in the open, right in the city itself, in a small run down empty district. In a goddamned abandoned reptile exhibit. 

Fucking capes, man.

CassieSandwich

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