To Butterfly: That was a fun prompt to play around with, especially envisioning ways for their abilities to factor into such an unusual situation. Rose and Mylène are seriously sweet; I really haven't used them enough!

To MiraculousReader: Good guess, but no; that happened in the loading yard of a warehouse… and may or may not actually be relevant to this "Patrol Log"…

To yellow 14: I'm not surprised; so far no one has gotten it in a review/comment. The reference is to one of the earliest stories.

Nath finally shut off his laptop just before nine and checked his watch blearily. He still hadn't finished the essay due tomorrow for history, but maybe he would have some time to add the conclusion paragraph after he returned from patrol.

On his nightstand, Orikko flapped his wings in agitation. "Come on, come on," the Kwami whined. "If we don't leave now, we're going to be late!"

"Always so overeager," Nath chided him gently. But with a chuckle he transformed and slipped his bedroom window open to sneak out. He jumped across the narrow alley separating his building from the one next to it, caught the drainpipe with practiced ease, and scrambled up to the roof, following a route he could trace in both directions in his sleep – and had after patrol one night.

Geber arrived at the riverfront just as Carapace jumped down from the roof of a nearby machine shop. "What's up, Turtle Boy?" he called, grinning with anticipation. "What's the plan for tonight? South?"

Carapace affected a carefree attitude and shrugged. "Nah, dude, I was actually thinking about following the Seine upriver a ways…"

Geber narrowed his eyes suspiciously. Something about Carapace's posture and attitude felt… off. He shrugged. "You're the boss-man."

Carapace grinned too widely. "And don't you forget it!" He set off at a brisk pace, racing across the bridge and scrambling up the side of the closest building.

Geber followed closely behind him, jumping up onto the bridge's railing and running across it as a balance beam. On reaching the end of the bridge he jumped out into the street, tumbled over in midair, slammed the end of his spur into the pavement, and pushed off. He landed on the balls of his feet on top of a bus shelter and, without losing momentum, sprang from there to grab onto the upper-story balcony railing of the same building Carapace had climbed up. Less than 30 seconds later he was up on the roof and chasing after Carapace, who was already halfway down the block. Geber grunted and followed him through a half-dozen turns. They left behind the businesses, passed through a residential area, and finally came out into a commercial area with wide streets lined by warehouses. Suddenly, Geber's ears perked up: glass breaking. Something was happening at one of the warehouses. The ground rumbled. Carapace had already taken off in that direction, leaving Geber to chase after him.

"What's going on?" demanded Geber, pulling up next to Carapace on the roof of a warehouse close to the direction from which he'd heard the noises. Carapace didn't answer, standing quietly and staring down into the warehouse loading dock. Geber turned to follow his gaze, and his jaw dropped open.

The warehouse loading yard was crisscrossed with long furrows that had churned up the asphalt in a series of straight lines. Although the wreckage had clearly been removed months ago, he could still make out the signs of where cars had burned, the asphalt under them having melted and pooled from the heat. Shipping containers lay spread out around the area, next to a warehouse with every window shattered, holes punched through the walls, and a very distinctive hole in the sagging roof. And in the center of all this destruction stood Tyran-X.

Geber tensed and flexed his hands around his spur. Finding the button to disconnect the two halves he separated it, one baton in each hand, opening the blade at the end of the one in his right hand. He dropped into a crouch, narrowed eyes focused on the villain. He was just lunging forward to the attack when Carapace placed a hand on his shoulder to restrain him, shaking his head.

"Leave him be," Carapace told him firmly, mouth set in a straight line, his eyes still on Tyran-X.

Geber cocked his head in surprise, staring at him. "Isn't fighting the bad guys kind of what we do?"

"Not this time and in this situation it isn't." Carapace was silent, not turning away from the scene before them. Tyran-X snagged his lasso around the old, burned-out shell of a car, lifted it into the air, and slammed it down into the ground. The buildings around shifted with the crash. A massive crater formed in the center of the yard, with the car in the center. Geber turned to stare at Carapace, eyes narrowed suspiciously. He was about to ask the obvious when he noticed the sad look in Carapace's eye. "This is just something he needs to work out of his system."

"You know why he's here." It wasn't a question.

Carapace nodded quietly. "This is where his wife died." He sighed heavily, shoulders sagging. "And today would have been her birthday."

Geber's eyes opened and he rocked back in shock. "You know who he is."

Carapace snorted. "Did you really think that Rena Rouge wouldn't track that down, with how much information he gave us back in the spring?" he asked, raising an eyebrow at Geber. He let out a soft bark of laughter. "She actually figured it out in less than fifteen minutes when she finally had the time and emotional capacity to follow up on everything he'd said. That was the easy part."

"So if you know his identity, why haven't we stopped him already?"

Carapace grimaced. "That is the question, isn't it…" he asked bitterly. He shook his head, turned to stare down at where Tyran-X was driving his fists through the solid metal shipping containers like they were cardboard. "Unfortunately, it's not quite that simple," he explained, jaw set in a hard line. "He left his apartment without a forwarding address little more than a week after it happened, and he doesn't have any other family in the area that he visits. So we know his name, date of birth, favorite restaurants, preferred TV genres… and we can't really do anything with it. This is one of those situations where just punching the bad guy won't actually solve anything."

Geber raised an eyebrow. "You don't really want to confront him, do you?"

Carapace's shoulders tensed. "We're superheroes. We're not allowed to be cowards." He dropped to sit on the edge of the roof and patted the ground next to him for Geber to sit as well. "Rena Rouge and Miss Pinky still blame themselves for what happened."

Geber let his legs dangle, idly kicking the warehouse wall with his heels. "Was it their fault?"

"Kinda?" Carapace shrugged. "Not really? It's maybe sixty-forty between Lynchpin and them. I mean, they did come here looking for a fight – or at least expecting Lynchpin to react when they caused him trouble. But at the same time, they weren't planning on a civilian being here and getting caught up in a literal firefight. For that matter, they didn't actually know she was there, or that Lynchpin would bring in guys with flamethrowers as fast as he did to remove Miss Pinky's hedges. If they'd known, maybe Rena would have come up with something different to get Lynchpin's attention that night. Maybe Miss Pinky would have gotten her car out of the way first – or pulled her out when the fire started. Maybe they would have called in Ryoku to put out the fire before it got to her car. But they didn't. And a woman died."

Geber sat quietly next to him, waiting for him to continue, staring down into the warehouse loading yard where Tyran-X was continuing his rampage. By now he had smashed one of the empty shipping containers in half. Picking up one half with his bare hands, he spun around and hurled it into the side of the warehouse with an angry bellow. The container slammed through it with a colossal crash of rending metal. The warehouse wall buckled under the assault, bringing down half the roof with it.

"That's the hero gig," Carapace muttered quietly. "We can't save everyone. And when we can't – our responsibility or not – we have to live with the consequences." He turned to Geber, a pained expression in his eyes. "You know Rena put today in her phone? Today, their anniversary, the day she died… She's been completely out of it all week leading up to this. Imagine it: grieving for a woman she never knew." He sighed affectionately. "But that caring spirit is what kept her in this hero gig – for good and for ill. She even wanted to be the one out here on patrol tonight, but I convinced her to let me do it for her."

Geber brought his knees up to his chest and hugged his legs, watching as Tyran-X finally fell to the ground sobbing, slamming his fists into the ground, gouging out deep potholes in the pavement. "It doesn't seem strange to me," he admitted. "I get feeling guilt over this, even though it wasn't their fault that it happened. Hell, if it were me, I don't know if I'd ever be able to face someone who became a super-villain because I killed his wife." He frowned. "So are we just going to sit here and watch him smash the warehouse apart?"

Carapace nodded. "That's the idea," he answered. "It's been abandoned since a couple days after the incident. Lynchpin moved his people out and didn't bother to repair the pavement, and no one has moved into it since then. And on a hunch Pegasus checked to make sure no one was working late nearby – and alerted the police to avoid the neighborhood. So unless Tyran-X tries to hurt someone – himself or one of the neighbors – and unless he does something that could put other people in danger… yeah. We're just going to sit here and watch."

AN: At first I had a whole big fight sequence planned out for Geber to fight Tyran-X and show off all the cool features on his spur (he can actually use it as about 5 different weapons; he'll get a chance to shine with it in an upcoming story), but then I started thinking about why a revenge-motivated villain like Tyran-X would be out for them to fight and… this happened. For those who started reading recently, Tyran-X revealed in "Ladybug's Gambit" that his wife had been killed in a skirmish between the Heroes and Lynchpin's forces. A skirmish that occurred (in "The Queen is Dead: Mission Logs" chapter 3, "Cornucopia") because Miss Pinky planted a hedge maze in front of this particular warehouse to draw Lynchpin's attention, not realizing that one of the "abandoned" cars in the lot wasn't actually abandoned. Today would have been my wife's birthday, so this seemed like an appropriate "Patrol Log" for today.

Don't worry; next week's "Patrol Log" isn't nearly this heavy.