"Dude!" Will ran up to Nico, a hand falling on his shoulder. "Is it true?"

Nico swallowed, shrugging Will's hand off. "Is what true?"

Will rolled his eyes. "Oh, don't play dumb, You know what I mean." He glanced around warily. "Is it true that you got saved by Silver Skull?"

Nico's right hand clenching into a fist within his sleeve- if Will saw the skull ring on his finger ring now, right after a sighting of Silver Skull in his apartment, it would be… way too suspicious. "Yup," Nico said. He tried to push past Will, but his friend stopped him by grabbing his wrist. His right wrist.

"Wait, you have to tell me about it! I wanna knowwww."

"I have to get to class," Nico growled, yanking his hand away harshly. He quickly speed walked around the corner, pulling his sleeve down again to hide the ring. Maybe I should just take it off, Nico thought. But then, no, he couldn't just leave himself open to attack like that. The ring was basically his only defense. The only thing that let him be Silver Skull.

Nico remembered when his older sister, Bianca, gave him the ring. Back when she was alive, she had been the crime-fighting hero. But when she was 12, she decided to give it up to join a band of rebellious young girls, who formed a close-knit team aiming to fight criminals and the government alike. Bianca had handed off the ring and the title to Nico, and then left.

Less than a month later, Nico was standing in front of her grave.

Ever since she had died, Nico hadn't taken the ring off. He wore it to sleep, in the shower, always. Even back during the years directly following her death, when Nico had been too scared to become the Skull, he still wore it every day. He wouldn't let a little too much attention scare him into taking it off.

It's fine, It's fine, Nico tried to assure himself. No one even knows that the Skull wears a ring. I'm overreacting.

And he could believe it, for most of the day. By keeping his hand in his pocket and politely deflecting his classmates' questions, Nico slipped by unnoticed throughout his classes.

Now, school was over, and Nico was kicking down the street idly when a scream echoed from an alleyway. Immediately, Nico was running off towards it, twisting the ring on his finger. He felt the fabric of his suit crawling up his arm- black fabric, with silver accents tracing his veins- as he shrugged his backpack off. Rounding a corner, the source of the scream came into Nico's view. A huge, broad-shouldered man with a monstrous black hairdo had a teenage boy in a pizza delivery outfit at gunpoint. The pizza boxes were spilled across the ground at the boy's feet.

Nico instantly noticed that the gun the man was holding wasn't normal. And that his thick hair and beard looked horribly matted, glistening with oil. The gun had a domed glass top, and was dripping with the same grease stuck in his hair. Nico decided to stop the man before he could find out what exactly the gun did.

The silver accents on Nico's suit dulled so that he could melt into the shadows, literally. The darkness wrapped around his shoulders, letting him slip behind the man undetected while he twisted his ring and summoned a knife.

The man's hand twitched, his finger tightening on the trigger. Nico leapt out and pulled the man's arm down just as the gun want off, turning a chunk of asphalt into thick, steaming slime. Nico barely had time to notice it before the man, who'd dropped his gun, grabbed Nico's left shoulder. Nico's right hand flew up, and he pushed down hard on the man's wrist, making his hand slip. Nico yanked the man's arm down, and tried to pull him into a headlock, but the grease on his hair and beard made it almost impossible to get a good grip on him. Gross. He tried to plunge the knife into the man's neck, but his slimy squirming made it impossible to get a good shot, and the knife buried harmlessly in the man's arm. Nico glanced over and saw the pizza boy standing there, staring at them in shock.

"What are you doing? Run!" Nico growled at him, trying desperately to keep his hold on the man. The pizza boy scrambled away, tripping over his pizza boxes as he went

The man roared, twisting out of Nico's grasp. "You lost me my guinea pig!" He grabbed Nico's shoulders and slammed him into the wall.

"Guinea pig?" Nico asked, squinting through the enormous amounts of spit that the man produced. As he spoke, he tried to maneuver his arm in a way that he could twist his ring again to summon another weapon, but the man's body was pressed against his arms, too, rendering him nearly immobile. "What, are you running an experiment or something?"

The man roared again, which didn't really answer Nico's question, and wrapped his hands around Nico's neck. Nico's eyes flew open as he tried to tug the man's hands off. He pressed himself back, willing the shadows to wrap around him and transport him to somewhere, anywhere else, but the man's hands tightened. Nico flailed, his concentration broken by the panic induced by not being able to breathe. He tried again to fall into the shadows, but spots were now dancing in his vision.

"Hey, Slimeball!" A voice cut through the air. "Get off of him!" A palm-sized stone clonked the man right in the head. He released Nico and turned towards the source of the voice. Nico didn't even pay attention to who it was; he was on the ground now, clawing at his own throat and trying to take in more oxygen than he needed. When his head had cleared enough to see again, he turned and saw a boy with blond hair wielding a chunk of wood like a baseball bat, standing opposite the man.

Wait- that wasn't just any blond boy, that was Will!

The man stomped over to Will, who readied his makeshift weapon, tensing his muscles. But the impact he seemed to be expecting never came, as Nico jumped in between the two of them.

"Don't," he growled at Greasyman.

Greasyman snarled back, pointing his gun that he'd snatched up from the ground at Nico's chest. Oh dear. At the last second, Nico twisted his ring and summoned a shield- not really his fighting style, but the ring didn't seem to care. The shield turned to hot, oozing slime in Nico's hands. As soon as he could feel it burning his flesh, he did what any sane human would do and chucked it away from him.

He did, however, throw it back Greasyman's way, and it landed on his face with a disgusting shlorp. Greasyman laughed a little, the slime sliding down his face and getting absorbed into his beard. Nico gagged.

"This guy is getting grosser and grosser by the minute," he mumbled. He summoned a dagger and launched himself at Greasyman before he had time to cock the gun again. Greasyman jumped out of the way, but Nico grabbed onto his long hair and swung himself around, aiming the blade right at the center of Greasyman's back. Greasyman turned around quickly and knocked the dagger off course. Nico seized the gun, but stumbled, and tried to compose himself before Greasyman could get his disgusting hands around Nico's neck again. To his surprise, though, Greasyman didn't go after him. Instead, he retreated, grabbing hold of a backed-up-to-the-wall Will. He turned to Nico, his hand instead curling around the back of Will's neck.

"One more move, Skull, and your civilian friend's spine is in two," Greasyman growled. Nico froze. Slowly, Greasyman backed around him, then turned around and started running down the alley. Nico followed. Straight, left, right, and then Greasyman, Will in tow, jumped through a few wooden planks boarding up a hole in the building next to them and disappeared.

Nico did the only thing he could think of. He jumped in after them.

The room was dim and worn down, with the persistent drip of a leak in the corner. It was, of course, covered head to toe with that awful grease. Nico was careful to not slip as he hid behind a hunk of metal that might have once been a car.

Will, for his part, was putting up a fight. Even though he was slung over Greasyman's shoulder, he was kicking and pounding, yelling: "Let go of me, you oleaginous Hagrid!"

Oleaginous. Nico made a mental note to add it to his list of SAT prep words.

Greasyman ignored Will's shouts and jabs, instead carrying him over to a huge glass tube with the same green slime as before bubbling inside. He strapped Will down to a table (with difficulty), then pulled a lever on the side of the machine attached to the tube.

Nico wanted to jump out and attack as soon as Greasyman started restraining Will, but stopped himself. He needed to know what Greasyman had up his sleeve.

So he waited until the slime zombies appeared to fight.

Yes.

Slime zombies.

Honest-to-god undead people dripping with the green ooze, stumbling out of two doors on either side of the room- and heading straight towards Will.

Nico summoned a gun- the bullet kind, not the slime kind- and a knife. He popped up and started shooting, but the bullets barely seemed to deter the zombies at all. It slowed them down, sure, but didn't stop them on their path to do… whatever it was they were trying to do to Will.

Speaking of Will, Nico hopped over the once-car and sprinted over to him. He quickly sliced the straps holding Will down off, then tossed him the gun.

"Uh," Will said. "I don't know how to use this."

"Then figure it out," Nico grunted, summoning a sword now instead. Greasyman had noticed what was going on and was now hanging over them threateningly. Nico ran at him, trusting Will to fend off the zombies himself.

Before Nico could even get close to Greasyman, the man had already made his first move. He cast another layer of slime on the ground, which slid under Nico's feet. He slipped, falling off balance enough for Greasyman to punch him square in the jaw.

The next thing Nico knew, his cheek was stuck to the ground, held there by the disgusting slime. He took a moment to thank whatever powers that be that his mask was still on, and as he peeled his face off the floor, he noticed that the slime was cold, not burning like the stuff that had come from the gun. Well, that was nice.

Nico blocked another attack from Greasyman using his sword, and then looked around rapidly, trying to come up with a plan. Will had worked out how to use the pistol, and was now successfully keeping the zombies at bay, but the ammo wouldn't last forever. Nico glanced at the tube of slime, remembering how Greasyman had absorbed the slime into his beard earlier, and how it had puffed out his hair and beard a little more.

And Nico had an idea. A terrible, stupid idea, that might have ended up giving more power to his enemies rather than defeating them, but it was an idea.

He eyed the lever that had brought the zombies out, then edged to the left to get a better angle. Greasyman turned to face him, lunging again. Nico dodged, then slashed at Greasyman's face. Greasyman howled, backing away from Nico. And backing towards the tube. Nico ran at Greasyman, this time using the slime to pick up speed, and launched at him in a full on tackle. The two of them crashed into the tube, breaking it open and spilling slime everywhere. Nico jumped out of the way as soon as he could, relying on his suit to somewhat protect his skin from the boiling liquid. Greasyman, however, was not so lucky. He laughed at first, starting to absorb the grease, but soon stopped laughing. Nico didn't look back at him; instead, he lunged at the lever. He pulled the lever back up to its original position, then jerked his head over to the zombies, hoping it would retract them. His hopes were answered, as the slime zombies walked dejectedly back into the holes they had popped out of, and a grate shot into place in each one, locking them away.

Nico ran towards the exit, grabbing Will along the way. When he spared a look back at Greasyman, he saw that the excess slime had done exactly what he intended. His beard was now a sphere, having been filled to bursting with oozing oil. But the grease, determined to be absorbed somehow, had found its way to Greasyman's other hair. His arm and leg hair were puffed out so much that he couldn't stand up, and his mustache was thoroughly obscuring his vision. He wouldn't be following them anytime soon.

Nico and Will burst out of the room, back into the alleyways, and the first thing Nico said was: "I don't think I've ever defeated a bad guy in a more disgusting way."

Will nodded, looking like he was using extreme effort to keep his lunch down.

After a quick call to the police to round up their new villain (and figure out what the heck those zombies were), Nico and Will sat against an alley wall, catching their breath. Nico rested a hand on Will's arm. "You ok?"

Will jerked his arm away, looking at Nico with wide eyes. Oh. Right. Nico had forgotten that he was still wearing his mask- a mask with an intimidating skull obscuring his real features. Perhaps intimacy wasn't the best trick to try right now. Will cleared his throat awkwardly, standing up.

"Uh, did you see where my friend went? He ran into the alleyway and you told him to run away, but I don't know where he's gone," he told Nico.

"You're friends with the pizza boy?" Nico's brows furrowed.

"Huh?" Will shook his head. "No, the boy who you told to run. He's a few inches shorter than me, messy black hair, olive skin?"

Nico paused to consider his options for a minute, then silently willed his mask to peel off of his face. Will's eyebrows shot up, and he made a strangled noise.

"Nico?!" Will was staring at him, glancing down at his suit, shaking his head slightly. "You- You're- Oh my god, I'm an idiot for not figuring that out sooner."

Nico reached out and grabbed Will's arm. "This is a secret. You can't tell anyone." Will stared at the gloved hand resting on his sleeve with a bewildered expression. "Will?" Nico tried again, stepping closer. "Do you understand? You can't tell anyone. Not even your parents."

Now, Will's eyes met Nico's. He nodded curtly, his expression solemn. Nico stepped back and twisted his ring once more, and the suit's fabric retreated from his body in the same way it had climbed up, leaving him in his school clothes. "I need to find my backpack," he said after a moment of awkward silence.

Will didn't say a word the entire time they were retracing their steps, searching for the bag. When Nico finally found it and swung it on, he turned around to find Will smiling faintly and staring at the clouds, as if in a daydream.

"I guess this means…" His eyes flicked to Nico's- starling blue eyes, so blue that it seemed like he had stolen the color from the sky he had just been looking at. "...that you saved me."

That was the last thing Nico was expecting to hear. "What?"

"You saved me." Will stepped closer, laughing a little. "I got saved by Silver Skull. That's amazing. That's-" He had that airy smile on his face again. "That's kind of what I've been daydreaming about for months now." His expression turned sheepish, and he laughed nervously, putting a hand on the back on his neck. "I hope that's not weird."

"I didn't save you, Will. You fought just as hard as I did in there. And actually-" Nico's head tilted. "You saved me, didn't you? When he had me in a choke hold."

Will shook his head, taking a step closer. "That's not what I meant," he said softly. "It's just- one amazing person that I know turns out to be another amazing person. That's- well, amazing!"

Nico felt heat rising to his cheeks. "Do you even know any other words?" he grumbled.

"Nope." Will grinned. Nico felt himself smiling in return, without even thinking about it.

"Well," he said, "apparently you know oleaginous well enough to throw it into casual conversation, so maybe I shouldn't be critiquing your vocabulary. I don't even know what that word means."

"It means greasy, idiot."

"Oh, of course." Nico shook his head, clasping a hand over his heart sarcastically. "How could I commit the crime of not knowing the extremely widely used word oleaginous."

Will laughed. They'd reached the main road now, and awkwardly hung next to each other, not having any more to say, but not wanting to leave, either. Will checked his watch, then gestured vaguely down the road. "I, ah… I should probably head home. Parents'll be worried."

"Oh. Yeah." Nico couldn't help himself from sounding disappointed.

Will paused for a moment, looking at Nico as if trying to decide something. Then he smiled again, leaned forward, and pressed his lips to Nico's cheek.

"Thanks for saving me, hero," he hummed into Nico's ear. Then he straightened up, turned, and walked away.

Nico stood there, staring at nothing for another solid hour before he could process what had just happened.