Story Title: Yin and Yang Excerpts

Chapter Title: Sewers

Series Title: Yin and Yang

Author: Mathais

Rating: T

Fandoms: Glee, The Legion of Extraordinary Dancers

Warnings: None.

Pairings: None.

Summary: Brittany wasn't lying when she said she spent the summer in the sewers.

Disclaimer: I don't own the characters and elements of Glee and The LXD; I'm just here to play.

Notes: Because The LXD canon is so sparse and piecemeal, there are certain liberties I'm taking with people, timeline, and whatnot. This universe is only canon up until S2 of Glee and the LXD.

OoOoO

"This is disgusting," Matt murmured.

Mike hummed his agreement. Then again, Mike had always loved his footwear, and wading through the muck of the sewers was not conducive to clean shoes.

He would suck it up though; he'd been trained that way.

"I don't know; I think there's a certain charm," Brittany mused.

On the other hand, Brittany was just that weird.

"I found Lord Tubbington down here a couple of years ago," she said. "I was with the others. There's an open space not too far away from here."

Matt looked at Mike, who nodded.

"All right then, take us there," Mike said. "Hopefully, this necromancer didn't go too far."

"Is it really a necromancer, though?" Brittany pondered. "I thought he just made puppets."

"Puppets of dead people," Mike argued. "Hence, necromancer."

As Mike and Brittany bickered over the proper terminology of their target, Matt was carefully extending his senses. He was the Ra sensor for this mission, and even if it took direct sight to tell if someone had the Ra, sometimes Matt thought he could feel glimmers of the Ra in the air, in the wall, in the very space where the Ra had been worked.

Thus, he kept his senses out for the puppeteer (necromancer, Mike insisted, but Matt sided with Brittany in this case) and their work with the Ra.

This was their second week casing the sewers, but this was their first true lead on someone who had been taking dead bodies from the cemetery and animating them. Mike and Matt had undertaken the mission due to their proximity, and Brittany had joined them because she was just that good.

"This still isn't as bad as our first mission," Mike said even as his shoe squelched and he scrunched up his nose.

"No," agreed Brittany, picking out a slug that had dropped in her hair.

Matt frowned. Their first mission together had been during one of their few vacations back in Lima, after Brittany had joined one of the groups of the Ra users who naturally formed. The LXD generally acted as a police force for a majority of the dancers, and Brittany's group was one they had especially good ties with.

So the first mission hadn't been so much a mission as all three of them getting caught in the wrong place at the right time, and they'd taken out a group who'd been performing experiments using the Ra. The beginning had gone completely horribly wrong though, and they'd been among the test subjects but hadn't been put through any of it because of Brittany's special abilities.

"It shouldn't be as bad as that," Matt finally said.

"I can always dance us away from his strings!" Brittany cheered.

Her abilities involved rejecting the use of the Ra on her. Most of the manipulation-based Ra abilities simply slid off of her, though she could do the same thing with weaker attack-based skills. Hopefully, this puppeteer's abilities didn't extend to living beings, but Brittany could probably break that, which is why they'd requested her help.

Besides, in his very private thoughts, he enjoyed the missions he ran with the two of them. Mike's bounciness meshed well with Brittany's cheer, and, though he never really voiced it, he liked the way Brittany's competence showed on the battlefield. It helped remind him of the razor-sharp dancer beneath the bubble.

Matt never doubted Mike's power, though. He would never, not on his life—

Matt cut his thoughts and their chatter off with a raised hand. There was a twinkle across his senses, and slowly his eyes sharpened.

They didn't need words for this.

Mike tilted his head, and Matt nodded. Brittany quieted and tied her sneakers tighter. Matt made sure that his own shoes were all right, and Mike scraped some muck off of his.

As one, they moved in.