"He uses his power to torture us, or simulate it at least."
As revelations go...it had been a doozy. Enough of one that Brian was still reeling from it a week later.
Not that he'd ever placed an enormous amount of trust in their mysterious benefactor. Nobody that stupid lasted long in their line of work. No, he'd been careful to ask for payments to be arranged in a manner whereby their boss would only have pseudonyms and aliases. Legitimate income as an anonymous independent contractor, programming qualifications that had come with blank spaces instead of names, nothing to trace back to his family.
"We're just a tool to him, one that he'll happily coerce by force if rewards don't work out."
Lisa had been very clear. She'd never given the boss any of his personal information...but it hadn't taken him long to see the flaw in her recollections. She had no memory of any interrogations the boss had performed, and it was only back in march that she'd even realised he was doing it. So for all they could know, the boss had gotten every detail already. Not just from her either.
Brian wasn't arrogant enough to think he'd remain unbroken under torture, even if he was sure he'd at least be able to keep from betraying anything that would hurt Aisha. He definitely wasn't going to bet her safety on the prospect that none of them had given anything away. Even if the others were proving a lot easier to deal with after, everything.
He snarled and grabbed one of the cushions, tossing it aside in his search for the remote. Alec's habit of leaving it everywhere but on the damn coffee table hadn't changed, but, the usual anger wouldn't come. The bastard was annoying and lazy and...
Aisha was practically living at the loft since the stuff with the Empire. She'd moved into one of the two remaining storage rooms -meaning the last was absolutely crammed full of junk- and even after a week she refused to open the door to him. Forcing a conversation wouldn't work either, not when she could vanish from his very memory at will. Which would have left him feeling helpless and furious and boiling with guilt.
Except for Alec. For some reason, including possibilities that Brian never ever wanted to think about, the two of them got along like they'd known each other all their lives. A friendship that had bothered him more and more before Aisha's trigger, and less and less since. Anyone with powers knew how tough it could be, and where Brian had failed, Alec had been helping his little sister through it.
Hard to hate him for misplacing a remote after that. 'Not,' Brian thought as he shoved a hand down the back of the couch, 'That I'm not willing to give it a try.'
Urgh, was that an old dog biscuit? It certainly felt soggy enough. Rachel was always leaving them in weird places.
Carefully pulling his hand back, Brian considered amputation before deciding hot water and soap would do. Which meant a brief foray into the kitchen. While he was there he poked around for a snack, something to fill stave off the hunger that seemed to gnaw at his insides almost constantly these days.
'Looks like we're out of, well, everything.' Brian sighed and resigned himself to another grocery run. As soon as everyone else woke up he'd ask Taylor to join him. For the moment, he dried his hands and plodded back to the sofa, collapsing in a heap of hunger on something sharp edged and hard and...'Damnit.'
Sure enough he dug underneath himself and found the remote. Which he used to flick the tv on and turn it to the early morning news, one of the local stations turned down low enough not to wake up any of the others.
Just another recap of Chaste's attack on the Empire prisoner convoy. Blah blah, all Gesellschaft members freed, blah blah Velocity lost an arm, blah fucking blah. Amazing how boring the news could become when they repeated it enough.
What had he been thinking about? Oh yeah. The discovery that his biggest secret was probably compromised...only...
The important thing was, and remained, not that his identity might have been compromised to a sadistic villain with every reason to blackmail them. No, that wasn't what he'd been trying to wrap his head around for seven long days and seven restless nights.
The important thing was realising that he didn't give a damn.
At some point, some moment that he couldn't put his finger on, he'd stopped caring about the life of Brian Laborne. A life he'd been fighting and working for, for so very very long.
After they started hitting the Empire so frequently, it had become easier to crash at the loft then trudge back to his half-decorated apartment. The combination of Rachel and Taylor's powers was incredible but overusing it left them all exhausted.
With Aisha hanging out at the loft almost every day, there'd been no spectre of worry hanging over him. No fear dragging him to his mom's battered crack den of an apartment. No obligation to make him visit his dad. She was already close enough to keep an eye on, so the only reason to leave the loft had been errands and work.
Then the days had come when they weren't attacking the Empire, and for the first few he'd fled into the city and found ways to stay busy. Furnishing his apartment, even as there seemed to be less and less of a point. Filing paperwork for Aisha, even as it felt like more and more of a charade.
Until the day he'd been out and about and gotten a call from Rachel. She'd asked in her usual terse fashion for him to pick up some more building supplies. Once he realised she was looking to turn the rough clearing on the factory floor into a proper training space, Brian hadn't thought twice about spending the rest of the week's down time helping.
After that, it had felt natural to focus on training everyone while they were actually willing to go along with it. Even if Alec still refused whenever possible and Lisa whined so much that he was certain she was messing with him.
Before he knew it some line had been crossed. The line that he'd always kept between himself and his team, fonts of chaos that they all were. Only, when the dust of the Empire's fall had cleared and Lisa's revelation forced him to confront the feeling, Brian found himself without any reason to care.
He couldn't tell himself the old arguments for keeping his distance any more. Especially after seeing Daniel Hebert keep control over his own, much larger, crowd of raucous ruffians. All of them men and women that he was close to. Brian cared too much to stay away from his friends, and he couldn't pretend to be doing so to keep his hands on the reigns.
Nor could he pretend to have any other obligations pulling him away. Not any more.
Aisha definitely still needed him, but not as her responsible big brother with the apartment and the respectable job and the squeaky clean record. She needed Grue now, because with the power she'd gained there was no way he'd ever get her to live a normal life again. She needed someone to keep her in line, not to provide for her.
Coil might try to threaten him with his identity, but he'd probably just laugh.
Nobody would be able to catch Aisha to use her against him. His mom and dad could go to hell for all he cared. He didn't need the apartment any more. What was left?
His face being unknown? Rachel and Taylor had no problems going out in public. Was there anything else?
Brian slumped back into the sofa with a long sigh, letting the soothing tones of Stacy the reporter wash over him. The part of his mind that he could never quite get to turn off noted that she'd been promoted to anchor since the last time he saw her on TV, connecting the dots to conclude that it was probably because of her work covering Taylor's rampage and the Empire's attempt at blitzkrieg. A very different part of his mind noted that the low cut tops she favoured looked even better when she was sitting down.
"Well John," said the voice above the cleavage, "PRT sources have confirmed that Krieg was sighted in Europe just hours ago. It is believed that he joined with the Gesellschaft members returning to the old country. Together with Abwehr's disappearance, this leaves the Empire Eighty Eight without a single active cape. Some experts are predicting reinforcements from the Aryan Nation, while others believe the Georgia based supervillain group will celebrate the demise of their compe-"
A flex of his thumb flicked the channel over to some dead-eyed cooking programme. Since he already knew how to make eggs, and watching them fake early-morning cheer was kind of depressing, Brian kept surfing.
Bad cartoons.
More cartoons. Also bad.
Soap opera featuring a blatant rip-off of Legend.
Dull murder mystery.
Not so dull murder mystery...except he'd already seen that episode. Damn.
He hit buttons almost at random. Caring more about having something to focus on then on what he was watching. Unfortunately that meant that when a familiar shape hurdled the back of the couch and cratered the cushions beside him, Brian was staring at the payment screen for a pay per view channel.
"Wow bro. Right out in the open? You're pretty daring." Aisha was dishevelled and her hair was a mess and she was somehow still capable of mustering the energy to be annoying even as she cut herself off with a yawn. She kept going, "You're pretty gross too. Does your girlfriend know you like, mmmph mph mmpph."
Clamping a hand over her mouth worked wonders while he found a less disgusting channel. This time he pressed buttons intentionally, bringing up another news channel -this one showing something tedious about Fortress Construction's parent company launching a takeover of Medhall- and smugly ignoring Aisha's attempts to get free.
"Hey now Aisha, you know I'm not ticklish." She abandoned her attack on his ribs and switched tactics. "Licking my hand grossed me out when I was twelve sis." Her follow up attempt to gnaw at his fingers was easy to repulse, as was her going limp and trying to-
'Hu-?'
-unlike the first few times she'd tried that, Brian only tightened his grip in response to the mental hiccup.
"Uh uh, you know your power doesn't work on anyone touching you Aisha, now what do we say?"
He eased off his hand, not even entertaining the possibility that she'd actually apologise, then the news switched to a new story and both of them froze.
There was a werewolf on the screen. A giant werewolf.
Brian had heard Taylor and Rachel heading down the tunnel an hour ago, and then coming back up and heading back to bed. He even knew why they'd done so. After all, he'd been the one who negotiated the whole thing.
It was still a shock to see the results of their agreement had already made the news. Who the hell had been watching the boat graveyard so closely...
'Okay.' he conceded, 'Maybe it didn't have to be that close a watch.' In retrospect Brian felt a little stupid for not expecting a media reaction.
A hesitant question drew his attention back to the real world, where a television showed a reporter with an eighteen foot tall monster looming over him. The poor bastard was keeping it together pretty well despite a weird lack of PRT agents in the shot. Not that the growls and barks that were answering the reporters questions seemed like much reward for his bravery.
Fortunately for the reporter, a skinny man with thinning hair and fierce eyes wandered into the frame. "Maybe I could answer your questions instead, Mr?"
Credit where it was due, the reporter barely missed a beat. "Steve Wazowski, Channel Seven News, and you are?"
"Daniel Hebert, Spokesman for the Dockworkers' Union. Among other job titles, we all have to wear a lot of hats."
Aisha giggled, smirking at him when he looked askance at her. "Imagine if they were all wearing hard hats."
Brian snorted, but kept his chuckles under control and his eyes on the sudden interview.
"Mr Hebert, could you explain what exactly is going on here?" The reporter gestured outwards towards the boat graveyard as the cameraman panned the shot over at least two dozen more giant werewolves who were busily ripping and crushing and lifting.
Taylor's dad smiled shyly into the camera and said, "What does it look like to you Steve? We're clearing out the boat graveyard." He nodded to the shoreline where a few hulking figures were dipping in and out of the water.
"Um, well that wasn't really what I meant Mr Hebert." Poor Steve took a step back before asking, "Is this legal?"
"Of course it is. We have all our permits in order. In fact we've had the contracts to get all these old ships removed for years now." Danny continued, seeming blissfully unconcerned with the means by which the ships were being removed, even as a great screech of metal forced him to stop speaking until one of the Dock Wolves finished tearing a section of bulkhead loose. "We finally realised that it was much cheaper to hire all this than to get the equipment we thought we'd need." He shrugged. "Quicker too."
The reporter was gaping at him, struggling to find words on live television. Brian wasn't surprised when Aisha broke out into a fit of laughter, clutching her sides and bending over until her face was between her knees.
Then she yelped and stopped laughing, holding her side in a very different way. One that made Brian forget that the television even existed.
Delicately, without waiting for permission that she'd never give him, Brian reached out to probe at her side.
Her wince kindled the same old anger in his gut. The one that heated his stomach until bubbles of guilt boiled out of it. He crushed the anger down where it wouldn't reach his voice. Aisha did no such thing.
"I don't need you fussing over me Brian!" She snapped as she got to her feet, one hand still draped across her ribs.
Before she could use her new favourite method of avoiding him, Brian had her other wrist in his hand and her power was useless.
"No Aisha, what you need is to stop being so stubborn and let Taylor help you."
The betrayed look she fixed him with was almost enough to make Brian let go. Almost.
"We agreed that you'd stop trying to make us get along."
"No, you said we should agree to that. I never said yes."
"Oh so that's it then. You're just going to force me to do whatever you want? That doesn't remind you of anyone?"
Brian ignored the barb, sharp and well-aimed that it was. "When you're hurting yourself? Yes, yes I'll force you to spend thirty seconds with my friend who can and will help you."
"Oh? Your friend?" She rolled her eyes so hard that Brian almost expected them to make a full rotation. "Sure you're just friends. I totally believe that you and your wrestling buddy are just friends."
Embarrassment and indignation yelled in his ears, demanding he deny it. Something else pounded in his chest and gave him very different advice. Pride yanked on his arms and roared for her to stop talking to him like that. However Brian listened to none of them.
Instead, he took a deep breath and let it out slowly. Then he took a few moments to think before opening his mouth to very calmly ask her a question.
"Dammit Aisha will you just talk to me?" He was almost whispering. "I don't know what the hell is going on with you about Taylor but has it occurred to you that you can just tell me?"
Then something amazing happened.
Aisha didn't yell at him.
She didn't struggle and claw at his hand.
She didn't find some sneaky distraction.
She didn't even whine at him until he let her go.
No, his annoying wonderful little brat of a sister didn't do any of the things he was expecting. Instead she took a deep breath of her own and stood very still. Then she looked up at him and opened her mouth to speak.
Which was the exact moment that a thunderous scrreeetch of metal sounded directly above Brian's head.
Instinct had Aisha scooped up in his arms in an instant. It had him diving over the couch in the next.
Yet a line of fire still lanced down his shoulder blade, dampness sticking his shirt to his back as he rolled to his feet.
In his arms, Brian's little sister was stiff with terror. The teenage supervillain found he couldn't blame his latest recruit for that, but he could damn sure blame the man standing on the shattered remains of their coffee table.
Clad in royal blue power armour, holding a halberd with its blade already bloodied, Armsmaster stared back at the two Laborne siblings.
"You're under arrest."