To armadas: Anne is too fun! The friendship with her and Bri is awesome. She does get much more to do in "The Darkest Night," which will come after "Fear Itself."
To Butterfly: Bri definitely doesn't need her suit to be a hero! Anne is going to get more development as we continue exploring the London heroes.
To yellow 14: Not every technological innovation the Heroes develop will find a commercial application, but when they can help people and fund their operations simultaneously, that's pretty awesome! Anne has kind of been assuming that Bri has a boyfriend because she's disappearing so much to work on her suit. At this point it's such a running joke with them that Bri kind of just rolls with it!
Replies to Reviews of "Guys' Day Out":
To Butterfly and StarDaPanda225: I don't have any further plans with XY at the moment, but you never know. There will be plenty more of Felix in "The Darkest Night"; you can count on that (only a sharp reader will note that)!
"I'm just saying," Kim insisted, grinning, "there's no way to know for sure until we try!"
Ondine snorted and gave him a dubious look. "You don't actually need to try first to know for certain," she told him. "There is no way you're swimming all the way from here to Source-Seine without stopping!"
"Aw," Kim moaned. "But if I do it you'll come with me, right?"
"Of course," she agreed. She sniggered. "I'll drive alongside the river and fish you out when you pass out from exhaustion!"
The two of them were walking along the path by the Seine, almost directly underneath the Eiffel Tower. It was a warm early autumn afternoon, one of the last before autumn would begin in earnest. Although he still had homework to do for classes tomorrow, it was much too nice out to spend the rest of the day trapped inside. He would bug Max to help him tonight. Max always insisted that one of these days he would refuse to help him, but so far it had proven to be nothing but empty threats. Kim draped his arm over Ondine's shoulder, and in response she looped her arm around his back.
"We need to do this more often," she told him, turning and kissing him on the cheek.
He grinned. "When the swimming season is over, we can–" A distinctive chime came from his pocket and he froze, eyes widening. Kim fished around in his pocket for his phone, only to nearly drop it when something on the far side of the park exploded with a seismic BOOM! The ground beneath them shook.
Without thinking, Kim pulled Ondine close and pushed her down, placing himself between her and the explosion. "Dammit!" he shouted, holding her head down and glaring in the direction of the disturbance. Ondine pressed into his chest, covering her ears with her hands. Xuppu phased his head out of Kim's sweatshirt hood and met his eye, the Kwami's face set seriously. "I guess we know what the alert's about," Kim muttered. Despite the ringing in his ears he could hear the discharge of energy weapons from near where the explosion had happened. He glanced down at Ondine, wrapped his arms around her tightly and pulled her up. Looking around, he saw a restroom near the river, surrounded by bushes on three sides. "Come on!" He grabbed Ondine's hand and half-dragged her behind the restroom. Traffic screeched along the streets, and over it he could hear something else he didn't recognize.
Kim crouched behind the restroom, pulling Ondine down next to him, below the level of the bushes. He took a slow and steady breath and finally became aware that his phone had been going off this entire time. He looked down at Ondine and grimaced before straightening up.
"Wait… Kim!" She stared at him in shock, eyes wide open. "Where are you going?"
"Stay here!" he told her, holding a hand out as she started to rise. "I'll be back soon." Another explosion rocked the building behind them.
"Please! Don't leave me!" she begged, grabbing his hand, clutching it tight.
Kim blanched on seeing the pleading look in her eyes. He could remember, back during Hawk Moth's reign, there had been one time they'd been forced to take shelter together when an Akuma appeared at one of their swimming meets. She had been terrified, flashing back to the Syren aftermath, when she had awoken to discover what she had done and tried to do. That time he hadn't left her side until Ladybug fixed everything. But now… "I–I'm sorry," he said, wincing with every word. "I… I have to go to the bathroom!" He pulled his hand away, jumped out from behind the bushes, and sprinted toward the street where he could still hear repeated energy blasts going off.
"You realize that was the absolute dumbest excuse you could possibly have used, right?" Xuppu asked him, raising an eyebrow in amusement as he drifted out of Kim's hood and floated along next to his ear. "You were standing right next to a bathroom!"
"Not now, Banana Breath!" grumbled Kim, finally silencing his phone as he read the alert notification. He furrowed his brows in confusion. "'Superhero Liaison Department officers engaging unidentifiable threat.' What the hell does that mean?"
The ground under Kim's feet shook with another explosion.
"At a guess, I'd say it means you gotta get over there and figure out what that means, Chief!" observed Xuppu wryly.
"We'd better get this over with and get back quick!" Kim ducked behind a line of bushes, checked in both directions, and shouted, "Xuppu, Show time!" The moment he was transformed, King Monkey raced out of his hiding spot and launched into the air, grabbing a branch of the closest tree and throwing himself across the gap to the next one, angling higher into the trees' branches with each jump. Reaching the edge of the park he took another enormous leap, cleared the street, and landed on the roof of a building opposite the park. Below him the street had been mostly cleared. Four police officers had arrived already: one stood near his car at the far end of the block, stopping traffic and clearing out the civilians. Another officer was doing the same thing on the opposite side of the block. Of the final two officers, one was carefully picking her way down the street, moving between cover toward the source of the disturbance. At the same time the other, whom King Monkey recognized from the Heroes' briefing on the new department, had taken shelter behind his police car and was exchanging energy blasts from his prosthetic arm with something that took up most of the street. King Monkey stared at the massive blob, his jaw hanging open in confusion. Wide, round, and semi-transparent, it resembled nothing so much as a jellyfish merged with a beach ball. On top of it were two protrusions that could have been eye stalks. Long spindly arms extended from its sides and sent electric shocks coursing down the street in all directions. One arm landed on a nearby parked car which exploded, sending molten plastic and metal in all directions.
King Monkey extracted a communicator from his staff, rammed it into his ear, and pressed a button on the end of the staff to shift to the preprogrammed Liaison Department frequency.
"Ray, Roux keep the streets clear!" a gruff voice shouted. "Gouger, for heaven's sake, don't let it see you!"
"Lieutenant Ramus," King Monkey began, "what's the situation? What the hell is this thing?"
"Who is this?" the same voice responded instantly. Ramus ducked behind his car to avoid a flying arm.
"King Monkey. I'm on the building above you, looking down at something that probably escaped from an acid trip somewhere!" As he watched, the lieutenant shot the tentacle over his head with an energy blast. The tentacle retracted, and he came back up, resting his arm on the car's hood and sighting down it.
The other officer dove for cover behind a car close to the creature's back, extracting a pair of batons from her belt. "I'm in position, LT," Sergeant de Gouges reported. "Just give me a signal."
"Stay there!" Ramus ordered. "A genetics lab reported a sample missing a while back," he quickly explained, firing at one of the creature's eye stalks. "Prefect already put in a call to find out if this could be connected." Another car exploded. Lieutenant Ramus dove to the other side of the car and raised his prosthetic arm over his head, deploying a small metal fan-shield from the prosthetic to block flying debris. "We could really use the cavalry right about now!"
"Well, so far it's just me here," King Monkey told him, watching the creature closely.
"You're not the only one, Monkey Brains," another voice called as Sk8r Girl skidded to a stop next to Lieutenant Ramus, wearing a green-and-black exercise suit. She gasped audibly over the communicator. "Um… What kind of shit did you get us into!?"
"It wasn't me!" retorted King Monkey.
"Uh huh." She snorted. "Are you telling me this isn't the result of that bet this morning that you could eat 63 tacos and 3 gallons of ice cream in under 10 minutes?"
"Hey, I won that bet fair and square," King Monkey insisted, grinning.
"You still didn't answer the question, Jo–" One of the creature's arms shot out at Sk8r Girl, who batted it away with her baseball bat.
"Can you two focus!?" Lieutenant Ramus demanded as the arm almost struck him in the side.
"Pity we didn't get Cat Noir and Geber this time," de Gouges groaned, hitting a button on her batons to test the taser.
"Hey!" King Monkey scoffed indignantly. He narrowed his eyes, examining the creature closely. "Can you try talking to it?" he asked Sk8r Girl. "Maybe your thing will work on it."
"Hey, gee, why didn't I think of that?" she responded sardonically. "Does this look like my normal gear, dumbass? My usual helmet's back home."
"Oh. Right." He hummed as another electrical discharge connected with the streetlight behind the creature. The bulb exploded, sending a cascade of sparks over the street. De Gouges dove to one side to avoid falling glass. "Maybe I can disrupt its electric power long enough to subdue it," he finally suggested. "Keep it distracted so I can get close."
"You got it." Sk8r Girl sprang to her feet, planted one hand on the police car's hood, and swung over it, holding her bat over her head with the other hand. Landing on the other side of the car she put on a burst of speed that took her to the right. De Gouges broke from cover, dove forward, and jabbed the creature in the back with both batons, sending an arc of electricity emanating through its body from that spot. At the same moment, Lieutenant Ramus ran out from behind his car, angling to the left and firing a steady stream of energy at the creature's middle. The energy beams struck the creature and dissipated across its body, shifting its colors through the full light spectrum. The creature moved forward, swinging its arms in all directions. Sk8r Girl ducked the first one and smacked the second away with her bat. One arm caught de Gouges off-guard, struck her square across the chest, and launched her backward. She slammed her back into the brick wall of the building behind her, on the opposite side of the street from King Monkey. The bricks crumbled behind her as she fell to the ground, but she pushed herself to her feet, shook her head once, and frowned at her broken batons.
King Monkey lowered himself over the edge of the roof, holding on by his fingertips, and lined himself up with the ground-level awning beneath. Taking a deep breath, he let go and dropped the three floors to the bottom. He coiled his legs as he hit the awning and bounced off of it, springing up into the air and sailing over the creature. "Uproar!" he shouted, holding his staff up. One of the creature's eye stalks turned to look at him and a tentacle reached for him. Lieutenant Ramus shot the tentacle, and the creature let out a roar. Kim Monkey looked up, and a flyswatter appeared next to his hand. He grabbed the flyswatter out of the air, landed on his feet behind the creature, flipped over a swinging arm, and smacked the creature with the Uproar-flyswatter.
The creature let out a bellow and burst apart in a shower of pinkish-grey goo.
King Monkey held up his arms to block the goo from hitting his face, but that was all he saved. Looking around, everything visible was covered in it. Sk8r Girl had taken cover behind a smoldering car to escape the worst of it. Lieutenant Ramus and Sergeant de Gouges, however, had both taken direct hits; their uniforms were coated in sticky goo. "Or… um… that… could happen…" King Monkey blinked hard.
With his good hand Lieutenant Ramus wiped the sludge off the front of his uniform and tried to flick it off. "Thank you both," he finally said, making a face and staring at his gooey hand. "We'll… vacuum all of this up and let you know what the crime lab comes up with."
King Monkey chuckled ruefully. "I can't exactly say I'm excited to find out, but you've at least piqued my curiosity."
"Pegasus will hear from us as soon as we have anything," Lieutenant Ramus promised, nodding.
King Monkey nodded in return and jogged away, Sk8r Girl keeping up with him easily. Once they were back in the park, Sk8r Girl picked up her backpack from behind a bush, slid her baseball bat into its compartment, and retracted the darkened face shield on her helmet. She shook her head from side to side and stretched her shoulders. "That was a workout and a half," she observed.
King Monkey de-transformed. "I'll say," he agreed, groaning. He turned back toward the bathroom where he had left Ondine. She was not going to be happy with him for leaving her like that.
"Did you know you could make things explode?" Alix asked as she followed him.
"That's the thing," he replied, pulling a bag of dried fruit out of his sweatshirt pocket for Xuppu. "I can't. Uproar disrupts abnormal abilities; it doesn't disrupt the one using them. Right?"
Xuppu furrowed his brows. "It burst? That's not normal. Musta been awesome when it happened, though!"
"It was something, all right," Alix agreed. "So does that mean the whole thing was abnormal?"
Kim shrugged. "Maybe? I don't know. It sure seemed pretty abnormal to me…"
"Whatever it was, that's a hell of a story to tell!" Alix laughed.
"Alix?" They had arrived in front of the bathroom building, and Ondine stood in the bushes, a worried look in her eyes as she hugged her chest.
Kim walked straight over her and pulled her into a hug. He could feel the tension in her muscles. "Hey," he whispered soothingly. "Everything's okay now."
"I was worried," she whispered back, her hands snaking up his back. "You were gone and there were these explosions and–" She stopped. "What's this in your hair?"
Kim leaned back slightly and grimaced on seeing the goop on Ondine's hand. "Yeah…" He chuckled in embarrassment. "I might've gotten caught up in that incident. But everything's fine now."
Ondine narrowed her eyes at him and pursed her lips, her eyes darting over his shoulder, before leaning in and giving him a quick peck on the lips. "I'm glad you're okay," she whispered.
"Me, too," he agreed fervently.
"You should probably wash that out," she told him, pointing at his hair.
"Yeah, probably."
She gave him a deadpan look. "That wasn't a suggestion."
He grinned and released her. "Yes, ma'am."
AN: Lieutenant Ramus has made a couple previous appearances. He's the officer who got shot in the arm in "The Battle for the Seine" (that's why Pegasus made him the prosthetic), and in "A Bees' Life" he's the one who responded to Chloe's emergency call. The other officers mentioned are members of Roger's Superhero Liaison Department. I have a bunch of ideas for that series (probably a series of three-shots, but I'm not sure yet), with two written so far. The first will be published after "Fear Itself."