AN: Nothing really to say this time, so let's just get on with it :)

Chapter 2 – Awakening

Matt's return to consciousness wasn't like anything you'd expect if you'd go by books and movies and such. There was no gentle light, steadily growing brighter, or dark shapes slowly taking the form of concerned loved ones hovering over your bed.

No, Matt Garrety awoke with a scream.

Gasping, the young man looked around the dark room, moonlight filtering in trough the ratty blinds in front of the single window, forming a broken shaft of soft white light which provided just enough illumination so that Matt could see without too much trouble. It appeared as if he was in a hospital of some kind, considering the kind of bed he was in and the fact he was wearing a patient's robe.

Both of which were utterly soaked in sweat, he noticed to his distaste.

Wiping his brow, Matt scrutinized the small room again, trying to figure out just what the hell was going on, and where the hell he was. The last thing he remembered was the tsunami of rubble and dust closing in on him, crushing him and Andrew and Steve-

'Andrew and Steve!'

His friends! What happened to his friends! Where were they? Were they okay? Did they get to the hospital too or were they-

'NO! Don't you dare think that, don't even think about it for a second!'

Ignoring his aching body, which he only now realized, despite it being sore beyond belief, didn't show any visible signs of having been crushed under tons of rock, Matt threw away the thin covers and jumped out of his bed.

Only to land flat on his face.

Grunting, Matt raised himself on shaking arms, desperately trying to get his feet to support him. After what felt like hours, but only could've been mere minutes, Matt had managed to stand upright again, albeit very wobbly, and slowly stumbled towards the door.

Rattle

'No, you've got to be kidding me! Locked?!'

Matt rattled the handle again, panic rising in his chest. He started to feel as if he was back in the cave when it collapsed. The walls of the room were starting to close in on him, the roof lowering itself until he could swear his head was brushing the ceiling, metal bands wrapping around his chest, making it impossible to breath-

Click

The air whooshed back into his lungs as he stared dumbfounded at the door handle in his hand… which was no longer connected to the door. Dropping the piece of metal as if it was hot to the touch, Matt swallowed. Deciding to ignore the mystery for now, he raised his hand to the door-

Creeeeek

-Only for the door to swing open without him even touching it. Matt's eyes went wide as he stared at his outstretched palm, mind clawing its way through cobwebs in order to get to a thought Matt knew he should have come up with by now, but simply was too stunned to think of.

Until it all fell smoothly in one place.

'Holy shit! I triggered?! I'm a parahuman!?'

Every single child had of course dreamt of someday having superpowers, even before Scion revealed himself to Earth Bet. Earth Aleph was still hung up on its comic book heroes and movies, while on Bet they had the Protectorate and, perhaps more importantly, the Triumvirate. Every girl wanted to be Alexandria, every boy Legend or Eidolon.

Even Matt had sometimes fantasized of waking up one day to discover he had powers. Maybe an Alexandria package? Or perhaps some awesome Blaster power, that'd be so cool! He knew he had the potential to develop powers; as part of Anti-Stranger protocols amongst PRT-personnel, the Garretys were all submitted to extensive medical tests, which had included a brain scan. It had shown that Matt had a Corona Pollentia, a part of the human brain that allows for the development of powers during a trigger event.

The moment he had gotten the news, he couldn't help but fantasize for weeks on end about developing powers, how he would make an awesome hero costume, get out there, clean Brockton Bay up within the week and have the Triumvirate themselves come and congratulate him. He had grown out of those fantasies of course, but the dreams about having powers and what he'd do with them had always remained.

Those dreams were shattered the moment he opened a door without needing to touch it.

There was no euphoria, or some genius insight into his powers and how to use them for the sake of Good.

There was sheer, all-encompassing, mind-numbing terror.

'Oh shit, Oh shit, I have powers! Shit, shit, shit, Holy Shit, what do I do, I have powers, shit!'

It was like his mind was stuck on a loop, a broken record endlessly repeating itself. This wasn't how he had imagined reacting to his powers, but moving things without touching them… sure, it wasn't unheard of, there were plenty of Capes out there who could do so one way or another, but to do it yourself, do the impossible yourself instead of some costumed stranger on tv?

You'd freak the fuck out.

Which Matt did to his heart's content.

After internally screaming his head off for the last few minutes, sitting down on the ground because his wobbly legs had given up on him, Matt finally managed to calm himself down again.

"Keep it together Garrety." He whispered hoarsely to himself.

After the initial shock of doing something like casually breaking the laws of physics (though to be fair, they've had a rough couple of decades on Earth Bet by now), Matt couldn't help but feel exited.

Being a Cape was extremely dangerous yes, but some of the more common worries were already taken care of for him. There were the Unwritten Rules of course, which (almost) guaranteed the safety of a Cape's secret identity and their family (most of the time). On top of that, Matt's dad wasn't at all helpless, being an experienced PRT-Agent in the roughest Cape scene in North America.

His dad also pretty much secured a spot for him in the Brockton Bay department of the Protectorate, since they worked closely together with the PRT. Sure, he was still underage, and would have to join the Wards, but those guys were awesome in their own right, and Matt was always happy to make new friends.

Of course, the gangs and their Capes were the most dangerous to him if he decided to become a hero; holding back wasn't something that really existed in their vocabulary. Still, if he joined the Wards, then he had a team backing him up, which could provide him with training and equipment, which would go a long way into keeping him safe.

Well, as safe as being a Cape in Brockton Bay can be, that is.

Or just simply being in Brockton Bay to begin with, he supposed.

With the sheer terror from before now having been replaced by tentative enthusiasm, Matt struggled his way to stand on his feet again. Sure, thinking about his future as a superpowered Cape was all well and good, but he still needed to find his friends first.

'Besides, I still don't know what my superpowers even are. It could be Telekinesis like that Nazi Cape Rune, but with all the weird stuff out there, it could just give me some sort of control over doors or something.'

Shuffling through the unlit hallways, an image of Matt fighting the gangs of Brockton Bay with nothing but the powers of doors on his side popped up in his tired mind. Sneaking up to a hideout or something and keep opening and closing the doors, making the gang members freak out, make them think the house was haunted. Or just generally annoy them by continuously making drafts appear.

Next came an image of him riding a tidal wave of doors against a fully transformed Lung, only for the Dragon of Kyushu to be completely submerged under a mountain of doors, with him standing in a Captain Morgan pose on top of his defeated enemy.

'These must be some really powerful painkillers they put me on.' Matt thought to himself as he couldn't contain a couple of giggles from escaping him.

Finally the hallway came to an end, in what Matt guessed was some sort of waiting room with uncomfortable looking seats sporadically lining the walls, and a cluttered reception desk shoved in a corner.

'Bingo.'

Shuffling as quickly as he could, Matt made his way over to the desk, trembling hands desperately riffling through the papers that were strewn about haphazardly.

'C'mon, please let there be some sort of patient sheet or something, anything, c'mon, by Scion's golden left testicle, please-'

Right then, Matt's hand caught on a clipboard. Quickly lifting the thing to his eyes, the young man let out an explosive sigh of relief when he saw that it was a list of all the patients who were staying in this wing, alongside their room numbers.

Matt's eyes quickly scanned the page, intently looking for the name of his best friend and his awkward cousin. Either this was a very small hospital, or there simply weren't that many people required to stay the night, because there were only a few names on the list, making it easy to find his friends.

"Dare, Decan, Desmond, aha Detmer, Andrew, room 281!" Matt whispered triumphantly to himself.

His eyes quickly flitted down the page.

"Mallory, Michaels, Montgomery, Steven, room 283." Matt read aloud.

Luckily, it seemed Steve and Andrew were placed across the hall from each other, which Matt was incredibly thankful for. He didn't think his legs would hold out much longer. He quickly hobbled away, and had almost left the waiting room, before he realized that he still had the clipboard in his hand. Giving a sigh, Matt half-turned back towards the desk and threw the clipboard on it.

He immediately knew he had underestimated just how tired he really was; instead of landing on the desk as he had intended for it to do, the clipboard would land only several feet away from him.

Which, coincidentally, was where a small table was standing.

With a very large vase on top of it.

Not really knowing why he did it, Matt flung out his hand, willing with all his might that the clipboard flew just a little further, that it would clear the vase just enough to not smash it into a million pieces.

In response, there was a faint gust of wind, and a dull 'thunk'.

The clipboard had imbedded itself into the far wall.

Once more staring wide-eyed at his hand, Matt cautiously lowered it to his side, taking great care to point his palm away from him.

What?

No need to take unnecessary risks after all.

Following the signs, Matt made his way towards the rooms of his friends, all the while trying to keep a grip on his racing mind. Any doubt he still might have had about having gained superpowers were gone now. Unfortunately, so was most of his previous enthusiasm.

He had never even considered the possibility of gaining a power he couldn't control.

Ever since Capes had started to appear, there had been tragedies of them killing their loved ones by accident, sometimes during the trigger event itself, sometimes simply because of a miscalculation on their part, or because their powers started acting up.

One of the earlier and more known examples was from the nineties, about a man who could turn his nails into diamond hard explosive projectiles. He wasn't even really a Cape, being considered as a neutral party as he went about his mundane job. One day, after a particularly boring and long day at work, the man went home, not realizing his friends and family had arranged a surprise birthday party.

Man opens door. People jump out at him from out of nowhere. Man activates power out of reflex.

And corpses were all that was left to enjoy the party.

A shudder shot down Matt's spine as he glanced at his hand, palm still facing outwards. What if his power started to act up on him in the same way? What if, every time he raised his hand or something, he would shoot out a telekinetic blast? If his mom were to give him a glass of water, would he accidentally send her through a wall if he raised his hand to accept it?

Slowly the terror from before started to worm its way back into Matt's mind, before he furiously shook his head.

'No! I'm not going to let that happen!' he thought resolutely to himself.

Forget applying to the Wards, or proudly showing his dad his awesome powers. No, first, he'd train. He'd train his ass off, until his powers were under his control, instead of the other way around. He wouldn't come out as a hero, until he was absolutely certain that his powers wouldn't accidentally hurt somebody.

He was so deep in thought he almost missed rooms 281 and 283. In fact, he would have, were it not for a hand clamping down on his shoulder.

Matt whirled around, despite himself already raising his hands with the palms facing outward.

"Whoa! Easy there Matt!"

Standing there, looking just as haggard as Matt felt, stood his friend Steve Montgomery. Matt let out a deep sigh of relief as he slumped a little, letting his hands fall back to his sides.

"You alright?"

Matt looked up at Steve's concerned voice, giving a distracted nod as he scrutinized his friend.

"I should ask you that. You look like hell."

Steve snorted in response, though Matt could tell his friend didn't really disagree.

"Thanks, I missed you too." Steve bit back sarcastically, but his voice was too tired to put any real heat in it.

Matt grinned at his friend, before opening his mouth, wanting to blurt out the fact that he had powers immediately. But he couldn't. Could he? Was it safe? Sure there were the Unwritten Rules, but that didn't mean the Villains wouldn't bend them a little if you gave them even half a chance. If he were to tell Steve that he had powers, he might just end up putting his friend in danger.

Not to mention that he had sworn he would first try to get his powers under control before-

"Dude, you alright? You looked like you choked on something."

Matt quickly shook his head.

"Oh no, it's nothing. I was just thinking about how…" he trailed off, as he stared at Steve, who was looking at him with a raised eyebrow.

"…you're not wounded." Matt finished, wondering how he only noticed it now.

It was true, just like Matt, there wasn't a single scratch on Steve's body, not even so much as a bruise, despite having been buried by tons of rock.

"Neither are you." Steve pointed out drily.

"Well, yes, but that's because I've-" Matt cut himself off at the last second.

He narrowed his eyes at his friend, who was now grinning like a loon.

"Steve. What's going on?"

Was this all a prank somehow? Some practical joke? Were people going to pop up all over the place, pointing at hidden cameras and having a laugh at his expense? While he wouldn't put it past Steve to do something like that, he had to wonder about the scale of it all.

"I triggered."

Wait.

What.

Wait.

What!

"I said, I triggered."

Matt simply stared at Steve, not realizing that he had spoken out loud.

"You triggered?"

"Yeah, man, what's wrong with you? You usually aren't that slow."

Matt could barely believe it. It was incredibly rare for people to simultaneously trigger. The most common occurrences were amongst the survivors of an Endbringer attack, and even then it was more spread out, with some triggering sometime during the attack, and others during the aftermath.

If Steve had said was true though, and Matt suspected it was, if only because non-parahumans usually don't walk away from a cave-in without a scratch, then the two of them had triggered at the same time, which was more rare than seeing Alexandria smile, or hear Scion talk.

"So what can you do?" Matt heard himself ask.

It was if his tired mind had simply given up and was now taking a back seat, letting his body fumble around on auto control.

Steve's grin only got wider.

"Check it out."

He quickly looked around, before letting his eyes fall on one of the dingy seats in the hallway. He stuck out his arm, and with a frown raised it upwards.

And the chair did the same.

The world screeched to a halt, and Matt felt as if his gut hadn't buckled in properly and had been catapulted screaming straight out of his body.

His friend triggered at the same time he did…

… with the same powers he had?

Scratch rare, this was unheard of. While of course there had been Capes with similar powersets, as evident because of the fact that they even had something called the Alexandria-package, just to group together a bunch of capes with similar powers, but nobody had the same powers as another Cape did.

And Matt could tell that Steve was doing the same thing that he had done with the door and the clipboard.

He couldn't really explain it, he just knew that he and Steve didn't have just similar powers, but the exact same one. At the same time, he realized that it was different in some way from other telekinetics, like that Nazi girl, Rune.

It was as if something in his mind clicked into place, and recognized Steve's power as a mirror to its own.

Matt was shaken from his thoughts when he felt Steve's hand once more on his shoulder.

"Seriously Matt, are you alright? You look like you've seen Jack Slash come up and say 'hi'."

Matt nodded mutely, before briefly hesitating. He glanced from Steve, to the floating chair, to Steve again, before coming to a decision. Mentally taking a deep breath, Matt raised his hand towards the gravity-defying chair-

"Matt what are you-"

-And pushed.

CRASH

"-doing…?" Steve trailed off weakly.

Silence reigned in the hallway, as the two friends stood staring at the twisted remains of the shoddy chair, now lying broken on the floor in a million pieces, while the wall was now sporting a peculiar chair-sized dent.

"Did you just…"

"Yeah."

"And it's the same…"

"Yeah."

"…"

"…"

"You know that's not normal, right?"

"Yeah."

Once again, the two friends fell silent, simply staring at the smashed apart woodwork that had once been a seating implement. The silence was broken by Matt, as he turned to Steve with a frown on his face.

"We need to keep this quiet Steve. For now at least. We don't know what kind of attention we might get if this comes out, and honestly, I don't really want to find out."

Steve looked as if he might argue for a moment, before he closed his mouth with a snap, a thoughtful look crossing his face. He nodded.

"Fair enough. I really don't want to draw the attention of psycho's like Bonesaw, you know?"

Matt shivered, before nodding back. While all members of the Slaughterhouse Nine were feared and twisted psychopaths, Bonesaw was a real disgusting piece of work. The longer Matt stayed under her radar the better, because he didn't even doubt for a second the Mad Medic would want to tear him and Steve apart, just to see what made them tick.

And after that, she'd probably sew them back together completely wrong, just for shits and giggles.

Matt gave another shudder before shoving the little psychopath out of his mind.

"For now, we stay low. Don't draw any attention to ourselves. We try to get a grip on our powers, and after that, get ourselves in the Wards. Between my dad and yours, that shouldn't really be a problem. That way, when we go out as heroes, we can count on the protection of the PRT and the Protectorate if things go south. Maybe they can even come up with a way to hide the fact we have the same powers."

Matt saw Steve's face darken at the mention of using his dad, but while Matt could sympathize, he also knew they couldn't afford not to. Steve's face gained a teasing smirk when Matt mention joining the Wards and becoming a hero though.

"So just like that we decided on becoming heroes?"

Matt blinked a few times in confusion.

"Is there any other option?"

Steve just laughed in response.

"With you Matt, no there isn't."

His friend grinned, before sticking out his hand.

"So, heroes then?"

Matt didn't even hesitate in gripping Steve's hand, a matching grin on his tired face.

"Heroes."

Having shaken on it, the two friends turned towards room 281, having forgotten Andrew completely in all the mind-blowing revelations of the past ten minutes. Matt didn't hesitate in reaching for the door, but Steve's voice held him back.

"Think we should tell him?"

Matt paused for a few seconds, mind going into overdrive. Sure he revealed to Steve that he had powers, but that was because his friend literally had the same one. He could protect himself, and was also in a way protected by the Unwritten Rules if he became a hero. His nephew on the other hand…

Turning to Steve, he shook his head.

"No, I don't think that's a good idea. Or more importantly, a safe idea. The Rules only protect Capes so far, Steve, I really don't want to put Andrew in danger by dragging him into this."

Steve nodded, readily agreeing with his friend's reasoning. Nodding as well, Matt pushed open the door, quickly stepping inside with Steve right on his heels, concerned for his cousin's health after the cave-in, because he didn't have powers to protect him, as his and Steve's had apparently done-

"Oh, hey guys."

-and came to a screeching stop, Steve bumping into him due to his sudden halt.

Because sitting upright in his bed, with not a single scratch on him and with his hands raised, Andrew was grinning like a kid in a candy store.

And floating around his head in endless circles were several chairs and some sheets.

Looking at Matt and Steve, who could only stare with gaping mouths and wide open eyes, Andrew grinned even wider.

"You guys will never guess what happened!"

Thud. Thud.

"Guys? Guys, are you allright? C'mon, wake up! Guys?!"

Fun Fact: The screenplay for this film was featured in the 2010 Blacklist, a list of the "most liked" unmade scripts of the year.