Note: This assumes that the direct-to-whatever movies never existed, because quite frankly, they shouldn't have.
.
.
.
Josh hadn't bothered to tell anyone where he was going, but Kat found him anyway.
Her partner was in one of the secret sublevels beneath N-Tek's public headquarters. Specifically, the agents' gym. Specifically, the boxing ring.
It was easy to find him. If she'd been in his shoes, that'd be exactly where Kat would go.
When she came in, Josh was the only person there, and the lights were lowered except for the few directly over the ring. He was in Max mode, facing the mirrors and shadowboxing himself. It was a pretty good show, even for someone who'd seen him in real combat for the better part of ten years, so she hung back and watched.
God. As Max he was fast. She forgot just how inhuman he really was sometimes. She'd kill for a fraction of that speed.
Not that she'd ever let him know it, of course.
"Something wrong?" he said after a minute, still facing away from her. He wasn't breathing hard and there was no sheen of sweat on his exposed skin – of which there was quite a lot, because he was exercising his demons sans shirt.
Even if he'd been in full gear, nanoprobes equaled no sweaty gym clothes. Lucky bastard.
"Nah," she said, coming closer. "Just watching your back. Berto said you bailed."
He chuffed, dropped his gloved hands, tapped the biolink to switch out of Max mode, and then raised his hands again. "Yeah. Only so much of Dad's 'great idea' I can take at one time."
Kat snorted. She didn't mind cartoons, as a rule, but she definitely minded this one. "You got that right."
"You saw it?" Josh asked, throwing jabs at his now-blond reflection. "I thought you said –"
" 'I'd rather get bitten by Biocon again.' Yup." She shrugged and leaned forward, against the edge of the ring, left hand on the mat and right hand hanging loosely on the ropes. "No big deal. It was only twenty-three minutes of my life that I'll never get back."
He paused just long enough to smirk at her over his shoulder. "You look good as a blonde."
"Careful," she said, smirking right back, mostly to cover the seething rage. "You're barely sixteen now, Jailbait."
Josh scowled and went back to shadowboxing. As a regular plain-vanilla human, he was already starting to work up a sweat. He also looked his age, which Max didn't. Max was an eternal blue-eyed nineteen; Josh, despite being in excellent shape, was on the other side of thirty.
Kat had gotten there first, and so far she wasn't sure what she made of the view. Beat the alternative, though.
"So is that what sent you down here?" she asked. "The sheer, unrelenting horror of having to be a teenager again?"
"Nope," he declared. "Three guesses, Ryan. You've got two left."
In the otherwise silent gym, his quick, soft exhales on each punch were deafening. Kat studied the tight line of his shoulders – tension that had nothing to do with a workout.
Quietly, she said, "Your mom."
The words dropped like stones, solemn and heavy in the dim light. Josh froze, arm extended, hips twisted into the punch. Then he sighed and straightened, his shoulders slumped. "No. I mean, not really."
It had been before she'd signed on to "Team Steel", but Kat had heard the scuttlebutt: how Max had flipped out on a mission that brought back one too many memories of his mother's death.
Of course, that was all she'd heard about his mom, or his real dad, for that matter. He didn't talk about Molly and "Big Jim" McGrath. Like, not ever. Under any circumstances. Ever.
She got it. There was a lot of her childhood (and young adulthood) that she was diligently failing to mention in an ongoing fashion.
"I was ready for it, I guess. Dad told me from the beginning that the show was going to use her," Josh said. He turned to face her directly for the first time, fiddling with the Velcro on one glove. "Not like they could use him."
"A little too close to the truth," she agreed.
Theoretically, everyone near and dear to Josh McGrath and Jefferson Smith were already clued in to the fact that the latter moonlighted as the head of a secret counterterrorism agency, and the former was his best secret counterterrorist employee.
Still, it was not the goal of N-Tek's hot new revenue stream – pardon, children's entertainment programming – to go putting ideas into people's heads.
So overweight, balding, middle-aged Jefferson Smith, N-Tek CEO, had been (at his own suggestion) reconfigured as a young, hard-bodied ace pilot. And Josh McGrath, college dropout and ex-extreme sports star, was turned into a sixteen-year-old kid named Maxwell, who'd fused with a smartass space robot instead of a few trillion nanoprobes.
And Kat herself had ended up as a blonde piece of background scenery with less to do than the chicks in those old scifi shows who repeated everything the computer said, but dammit, she was not going back to jail, so murdering everyone involved in the production of Max Steel: The Animated Series was more or less off the table.
"Yeah. I dunno, the whole thing is pretty surreal," he said, finally removing the glove altogether. He stripped off the other one and met her eyes. His were troubled. "That's my life on TV – and it's not my life. You know? My mom's the least of it."
She nodded.
He raked a hand through his hair, looking down at his feet and signaling that he was done with this line of conversation: "One guess left."
Kat cocked her head to one side, calculating. "Berto's hair."
Josh laughed – a short, sharp sound of genuine amusement. She'd surprised him, and he didn't mind. The last of the tension left him. He grinned at her, relaxed and easy. "Nah, but that's a seriously disturbing look for my bro."
"Damn straight."
He ambled over and dropped to sit on the edge of the ring beside her. "Still. Better a mohawk than those Hawaiian shirts he wears."
She shook her head and said in half-mocking sadness, "Super genius and fashion tragedy. That's our Dr. Martinez."
"I think he actually likes the show," Josh said. He leaned forward, resting his arms on his knees. "Otherwise, why keep dragging people in to watch it?"
On the big screen in the monitoring room, no less. Way more of that cartoon than anyone needed.
"Super genius, fashion tragedy, evil torturer," Kat said. "Go figure. Well, he can like it, but I'm erasing it from his hard drive as soon as I get the chance."
"Fair enough," Josh said. He extended a fist, which she obligingly bumped.
They sat in silence for a minute, contemplating the empty gym or the weirdness of life or the grand motions of the universe or some shit like that. Personally, Kat was contemplating dyeing her hair blue again.
Maybe she could pretend the chick on the show wasn't her. Clearly, any Kat Ryan who did not have blue hair, multiple earrings, and various other punked-out accessories had to be an imposter, and a sucky one at that.
"It's my fault," Josh eventually said.
"Probably," Kat agreed.
He cut her a half-hearted dirty look. "I mean about the show. I asked Dad to make sure you and Berto were on it. Non-negotiable, I told him."
"Okay." She waited a beat, then said: "Because… why?"
Josh sighed. "Look, it was my idea to quit the sports stuff when Mari Keita got this up and running again."
He gestured at the room around them, and the secret underground installation at large beyond that. Kat felt a bit of pride for her agency. The FBI had tried their Feebie best to shut N-Tek down, and they'd only come back stronger than before.
"Yeah, but Berto and I were totally on board with that, 'cause saving the world is more important than outscoring Tony Hawk," she said. "And it's hard to say no the UN Secretary General."
"But we were the public face of N-Tek, and when we quit… I get why Dad needs to generate more revenue. I get that sales in North America are pretty much dead. And I also get that it's partly because of me." Josh pushed his gloves away from him, frowning at them. Bitterness momentarily edged his voice: "That's why I didn't complain about him teaming up with a toy company to make a show that is and isn't based on the worst day of my life."
His fingers flexed against the boxing ring's surface. Twitching. Like the nanoprobes, bonded to every cell in his body, were trying to get out again.
Kat watched this with narrowed eyes, then nudged the discussion away from Brooding Hero Time. Again. "So this involves Berto and me how…?"
"I thought," Josh said, suddenly impatient, "that I could make it about all of us. You, me, Berto. Not just 'Max Steel'. That's why I told Dad to make sure you guys got parts. Of course they managed to screw it up anyway."
She snorted. "Nice try, but we all know about your amazing ego, Sport. Or were we not Team Steel on the extreme-sports circuit?"
"Team Steel," he corrected. She frowned at him. He shrugged, a little sheepish, very sincere. "Team. We are, and that's... I can't do what I do without you and Berto. You guys have my back, always. All the nanoprobes or alien 'ultralinks' in the world can't beat that."
Ugh; she was actually in danger of tearing up. Too many years hanging around with bleeding-heart Boy Scouts. She reached into one of the pockets on her spy belt and tossed the keys at him. "Here. You get a prize for being such a sap."
He caught the keys neatly. "What's this?"
"Car keys, Turbo Boy. Try to keep up."
"Ha ha," he said drily. He examined the logo on the fob. "You don't own a car, Kat, let alone a BMW. Whose is this?"
She allowed a slow, satisfied smile. "The guy in Marketing who signed off on the show -? Is the same guy who thought I should wear pink on the circuit."
An echo of her smile began to tug at Josh's mouth. "Huh. Small world."
"Turns out he's a lousy poker player." Especially against someone who regularly out-bluffed world-threatening supervillains.
He chuckled and handed the keys back. "Have mercy on him. He's an idiot; he can't help it."
She dropped the keys on the floor next to the ring and began removing her boots. "I'm keeping his money, but the car's going back. Right after I have Marshak slap on a new paint job."
They grinned at each other, then said, "Pink!" at exactly the same moment, which for some reason was hilarious enough to make both them laugh like crazy people. Kat didn't know what Josh's excuse was; she was still reeling from being reincarnated as blonde wallpaper.
Same color and function as Rachel Leeds. Ugh.
Kat suspected that her cartoon self's hair was Jefferson's idea. Sure, he seemed steadfast and morally upright, but the boss could be a troll of epic proportions.
For example, when he'd first partnered her with Max, all those years ago, with nothing except a gimlet gleam and a mild, "I think you two would really complement each other."
Of course, he'd been right.
Speaking of: as fun as it had been to use her incredibly awesome spy skills to fleece that Marketing chump, it hadn't involved punching. And she needed to do some punching. ASAP.
Kat left her boots on the floor, grabbed a pair of gloves, and hoisted herself into the ring. She bounced up on the balls of her feet, warming her muscles as she strapped on the gloves. "Wanna go a few rounds with an opponent who hits back?"
"Depends," he said, rising to his feet. He put his gloves back on and smacked his fists together with a solid thwack. "Are you gonna let me win?"
She raised her gloved hands and took a stance. Winked. "You might get lucky."
Josh grinned. He took a stance of his own. They touched gloves, and came out swinging.
.
.
.
Extra Note: Not that Original Max was Shakespeare or anything, but New Max has some fairly large issues. Beyond Nerd Corps' standard overuse of shaky-cam, I mean.
However (as I hope I have demonstrated via some fluffytimes with my bestest OTP), all of them can be instantly fixed with the simple idea: The new cartoon exists in-universe.
Original Max fans – you're welcome. ;)