Brockton Bay was kind of a shithole.

Now, that wasn't to say there weren't worse places to live (there were), or that it had always been that way (it hadn't). Hell, you could even ignore it most of the time, as long as you kept your head down, took a few precautions. Pretend that all the villains and gangs were still just background noise. Pretend that everything was normal.

Of course, it was a little harder to pretend things were normal when you had military checkpoints stopping up traffic through the Docks, or regular evacuations from the areas surrounding blast-sites in case there was some secondary Tinker-tech effect that could turn the nearest buildings into sludge, or something.

Nope. Couldn't really ignore that sort of thing. Which made it hard to figure why Arcadia waited two weeks after the start of the bombings to bother canceling classes.

Not that Dennis had been ready to complain about not having to go to school. No school meant no reason not to sleep in a couple extra hours. Because hey, it'd been a long month, so there was nothing wrong with a little break.

Then he'd gotten up and realized that just because school wasn't happening, there might be other large, controlling organizations jonesing for a little of his precious time. It really was one of the common sense things; the kind that you kicked yourself a few times for missing. But hey, you lived, you learned...you checked your email. That was just the way of the world, wasn't it?

Also a way of the world; running into impatient co-workers the second you walk in the door.

"What, were you watching the security feeds or something?"

"You're late." Chris didn't bother to answer, which meant he probably had been. "Vista's on console, and I'm going out with Shadow Stalker."

Ouch. Dennis felt a lot of sympathy, in that moment. Patrols with Sophia were never fun. Still, he couldn't just let something like that go without some kind of comment. "I dunno, man. She doesn't really seem like your type." He gestured vaguely with his helmet. "Also, kinda violent. That's usually a warning sign, you know?"

Chris pulled a face, and Dennis had to duck a half-hearted swipe. "That isn't a thought I needed. Just...go get suited up. Gallant's going out in twenty and he needs the backup."

Of course he did. "What, we don't get a Mover?"

"Should have gotten here earlier." A pause. "Can you move?"

"Right, sure." Dennis made way, Chris left, and it got really quiet in the Wards' HQ. Which was fine. Didn't seem like he'd be hanging around for long anyway.

Patrol with Gallant, with no Mover support.

"We're going to be doing so much walking."

xxxxxxxxxx

Walking was as time consuming as he'd expected. Being on a team with the littlest Shaker had to have warped his perception, because it felt really weird just walking. Not being able to just step up onto a rooftop, or cross a city block in a couple of steps made the whole 'patrolling' thing sort of drag.

Not that Gallant seemed to mind. In fact, he was annoyingly unbothered by just how little progress they were making on their route. Even with Clockblocker thinking some very mean things in his direction.

"This can't actually be productive."

That finally got a response, even if it was just a smug smirk. "Since when do you care about whether something is productive or not?"

"Hey, I love being productive." Clockblocker defended himself, slowing for a moment to look down the alleyway they were passing. "I try to be productive with the least amount of effort, yes. But it's productivity all the same."

"Uh-huh."

"So, I mean, putting in a ton of effort into something and not seeing results is kinda the opposite of what I'm about."

"Maybe you should have gotten in earlier, then. You could've gone with Aegis, and I would have had Browbeat."

"What, you'd rather have the new guy along?"

"I don't think he'd complain nearly as much."

"Ouch."

"Now are you done?"

Clockblocker stopped to consider that with all due seriousness. "...maybe." Gallant turned to frown at him, and he shrugged defensively. "Look, what do you want from me here?" And it looked like they were back to walking. Or was it trudging? It seemed more like trudging, now that he thought about it.

Also, while he'd only managed to glance at their patrol route on the way out the door, he was pretty sure that there weren't any alleyway detours. "What's up? You feeling something over here?"

"No...well, nothing that we can really do anything about, anyway." Gallant rolled his shoulders, his armor clicking along with the motion. "We're going up, here."

Up. Because that made a lot of sense. "Gonna scope things out, huh?" No response, but it wasn't really necessary, seeing as Gallant was already pulling down the fire-escape ladder. "Been working on your vertical jump, I see."

"Just get climbing?"

"Yeah, yeah." Climbing. Climbing was worse than trudging. "So, seriously, why are we going to the roof, exactly? Seeing as we'll just have to come back down?" Another conspicuous lack of answering...he stopped, halfway up the second ladder. "No. Please tell me this isn't a cape-date with Glory Girl."

"Meeting up with her doesn't automatically make it-"

"Oh my God, it is. You brought me along on your cape-date." He started climbing again, intent on catching up so he could properly convey his irritation to his idiot teammate. "What the hell, man?"

Gallant stopped, once he'd reached the next platform, turning to look down at him. "It's not a date. She asked for help."

"And what, you didn't figure you could just take a solo patrol off to do this? Had to invite me along?" For all that he loved to joke about their weird, dysfunctional relationship-thing, the last thing he wanted was to actually be wrapped up in it. "Come on, I could be having a day off right now."

"You like patrolling."

Clockblocker rolled his eyes as he pulled himself onto the platform, tilting his head from side to side to make it obvious even with his helmet. "Yeah, with the team." Well, most of the team. The...greater majority of the team. Not that he'd name any names. "I'm a little less enthusiastic about playing catch-up with Our Lady of Collateral Damage."

"It's not…" Gallant stalled. "Wait, what?"

"'Our Lady of Collateral Damage.'" He repeated, rolling his shoulders. "Kinda rolls off the tongue, right?"

"She's not Catholic."

"Details." He waved it off, brushing past Gallant to start making his way up again. Because as annoying as the situation was, he wasn't exactly in a position to demand they keep on track. "Come on then, loverboy. Don't want to keep her waiting, do you?"

Gallant's irritated grumbling was a very rewarding sort of thing.

But then it was back to climbing. And more climbing. Climbing wasn't really a skill that he tended to think of as important, but he'd been wrong before. Maybe it was something to practice, at some point. Climbing drills. They could make a whole 'thing' out of it. Maybe some kind of ladder setup in the gym.

And there was Glory Girl. Looked like she'd been waiting for a little while, and also not like she was paying attention. The fire-escape wasn't exactly quiet, so that was a little confusing...nope, wait, no it wasn't. Those were headphones.

"Clock…"

"Shhh." He waved Gallant off without bothering to look back, and started to creep forward. It wasn't easy to sneak on gravel, but he did a decent job. Soon enough he was very nearly in arms' reach; close enough that he could hear whatever it was she was listening to. Close enough that he had a few options with what to do. A basic jump scare could be funny. Freezing her, too, even if Gallant would complain. Maybe both? Both could be funny-

"What the hell are you doing?"

Clockblocker jumped, and spun around (reorienting to better face a potential threat, of course), only to come face to face with holy crap what was that? His back hit something solid as he stumbled back (withdrew, tactically), and he had all of a second to wonder what it might be before Glory Girl's elbow caught the side of his head and sent him tumbling to the roof.

"Ow."

"Clockblocker…"

"Jesus Christ, what was that?"

"My doofus teammate making an idiot of himself."

It was so great to be appreciated...

"Gallant! We've been waiting for, like, half an hour."

"I should have called ahead-"

"Hold on, you invited the Wards?"

So that was scary-mask-girl. She sounded friendly, didn't she?

"Hey, you agreed that we needed backup…"

"I thought you meant your cousins."

"Well, they were busy."

That was enough of that nonsense. Even with the way his head was spinning, he knew it was probably best to break it up before things got weird. "So assuming murderface over there isn't here to cause problems, can anybody help me up?" A pause, and he smirked. "My legs are kind of tingly. Is that a bad thing?"

"...I shoulda hit him harder."

"She's beauty, she's grace, she'll punch you in the face…"

"Don't tempt me."

The sudden and overwhelming urge to run the hell away chased off the next part of the joke, and he nearly froze his costume in response. But then Gallant was there and the feeling left. Just in time for him to be pulled to his feet and have to not fall over in front of everyone.

"Is he always like this?"

"Pretty much."

Back upright, and with a few seconds to make sure his balance was fine, he had a chance to get a better look at the stranger that had decided to crash the party. Although maybe she hadn't 'crashed' so much as...been there in the first place? And he'd managed to miss her standing there, on the empty rooftop. Somehow. "You know, I really didn't come here to play fourth wheel and punching bag."

Glory Girl snorted. "You seem to be doing alright."

"Hey, Clock? A little professionalism, please?"

Okay, so Gallant was already starting to go mediator on them. Had to be a new record. "Hey, I think we can all agree that most of us here are completely professional." He grinned, tilting his head as he faced Glory Girl's new friend. "Am I right, hoody-girl?"

She didn't move. Just sort of...stood, and stared. It couldn't have been more than a couple seconds, but jeeze. "Oh yeah. Professional enough to completely freak out and take an elbow to the face."

A little stilted, but it was an honest to god joke. And (probably) not just because she was mad! He grinned, but made sure to look properly affronted. "Okay, first of all, how dare you." Gallant's palm smacked into his helmet, but Clockblocker ignored it. "Second of all, only one smartass per patrol. It's in the union charter, okay?"

No hesitation. She just crossed her arms, the lenses of her mask catching the light. "What are you going to do? Break my legs?"

"Nah, we've got Vista for that."

Glory Girl cleared her throat, then, stepping between them. It was a pretty decent distraction. "Okay, guys? Can we get this show on the road?" She turned to hoody-girl and got a shrug. "Gallant? How long are you gonna be here?"

"About three hours." Gallant with a snappy answer, of course. "Can I ask what this is all about, now?"

He was a little curious, himself. Since this was, apparently, not a cape-date...and, actually, Glory Girl was looking kind of cagey. That was new. "It's a long story. But basically? We going villain hunting."

Oh...right. They were going after actual villains. That was definitely something.

"Be vewy vewy quiet-"

Gallant shut him up with a perfectly executed dope-slap. He would have laughed if it hadn't set his ears ringing again.

xxxxxxxxxx

"So…"

Mask-girl ("She's Crow." "I'm not Crow.") tilted her head just enough that he could tell he'd actually gotten her attention. "What?"

"Glory Girl said you can do more than teleport. So that means more powers, right?"

She snorted, but didn't stop walking. Balancing on the edge of the building, because apparently that was just how she do. "I've got a few, yeah."

"So? What are they?"

She didn't respond right away, reaching out to grab his shoulder. There was a pressure, a moment of disconcerting nothing, and then they were on the next building over. She didn't miss a step, of course, because why would she?

"I can see in the dark, for one." She tugged at her hood, looking down over the edge. "Control bugs and rodents with a little effort." A pause, as she turned to look at him in full. "And I can make rats."

"..." He'd heard of stranger powers...powers that were more strange. Teleportation, night-vision, and rats didn't exactly constitute a 'stranger' powerset. Stranger than most, though. Heh. He'd have to remember that one. "Seriously?"

"Maybe you'll get a chance to see later." A shrug. "Have the others spotted anything?"

He rolled his eyes, reaching up to tap the side of his helmet. "Nothing from Gallant yet. And we haven't been called away on anything, either, so it must just be an actual quiet day."

"Hard to believe."

"I know, right?" There were plenty of people talking about how crazy things had been lately, but it sure didn't seem like enough sometimes. "I actually got to sleep in this morning. That hasn't happened in over a month, I swear."

"I definitely...know…"

When she wavered, his smile dropped. When she started to tip over the edge, he didn't even think before reaching out to grab her arm and stop. Only instead of freezing in place, she kept falling. Which meant that he was pulled over after her. And then they were falling, and his power hadn't worked, but there was no time to panic.

With the ground right there, he squeezed his eyes shut and froze his suit.

The sudden stop hurt, and he heard a cry of pain...or two? He wasn't sure which of them was hurting more, at the moment, but when he opened his eyes again, Not-Crow was hanging at an awkward angle, supported only by the frozen glove locked around her wrist.

"Hey!" He hadn't had the chance to do his usual thing before stopping his suit, so there wasn't as much room as he would have liked to catch his breath. He did his best, anyway. "Hey, are you okay!?"

"W-what…?"

Shit, she sounded pretty out of it. "Crap, okay…" Couldn't use his comm, and she didn't have one. Probably wouldn't have time to wait for the others to decide something was wrong and circle back. "Okay...hey, listen. You need to go back up to the roof." She looked up at him, that creepy mask making it really hard to tell just how lucid she might be. "Can you do that? Teleport yourself back to the roof? And hey, if you've got some kind of signal or something to get Glory Girl in on this, that'd be cool. I don't really want to take half an hour to make my way down from here."

"...huh?"

Dammit. "Just get back up to the roof, okay? Or, hey, you can go to the alley, too. I don't really care, at this point, but holy crap your hand is turning purple." The glove was cutting off circulation. That wasn't good. "You should go. And not fall again."

There was an agonizingly long moment of quiet before she nodded. "R-right."

She vanished, a cloud of dust swirling down to the alleyway below. Not veryfar below, but still far enough that it was weird to just sort of hang there. But hey, at least one thing was taken care of.

The universe had a really sick sense of timing, because his suit chose that moment to unfreeze and drop him another few feet. He reapplied his power quickly enough, but the surprise of it might have taken a couple years off his life. "This is ridiculous. Why have we never practiced this shit?"

He hadn't really been expecting an answer, which is why Glory Girl choosing that moment to speak up from behind him came as so a wonderful surprise. "Probably because they assumed you were smart enough not to take a swan-dive off a building."

"Ffffffffff...udge." He was still short of breath, and surprises weren't helping. "If I could turn my head, I'd give you such a dirty look right now."

"Yeah, well, my friend is freaking out upstairs, so I can't really bring myself to care too much." She grumbled. He heard, more than felt, as she slipped her arms under his, and when she spoke again it was from right beside his ear. "How long is this gonna take?"

"Dunno. The last one was really short, so maybe not long?" He shifted as much as he could to relieve some of that discomfort that came from being encased in a completely immobile bodysuit. "Where's loverboy gone?"

"He's keeping an eye on her. Also, shut up."

"Yeesh, okay…"

The awkward, quiet waiting was best not thought about, and the moment when his power had finally run its course was a relief, despite the pain in his shoulders as he was yanked up into the air. It didn't feel like more than a second before he was wavering on his own two feet again, Glory Girl off to worry over her bestest friend that nobody else had even met before today apparently.

She was propped up against one of those big AC units, Gallant living up to his namesake with the old 'comforting back rub' routine. Seemed like she was...better, maybe, but obviously there was still something up.

"Is it too soon to ask what's up with the whole 'falling off buildings' thing?"

Glory Girl shot him a very unpleasant glare, that damn aura pressing all those nasty 'flight' buttons at once...he couldn't really focus on anything else until after her attention had shifted again, and at that point he'd already missed...something, apparently, since Gallant was standing up and looking purposeful.

"You sure?"

"Yeah." Not-Crow pulled herself up, wobbling for a moment before steadying again. "I can lead us there now."

"Alright then. Let's go."

Gallant didn't seem to be arguing. So it looked like they still had places to be.

xxxxxxxxxx

Okay, so Glory Girl's friend was acting weird. Nobody seemed to be commenting on it, either, which was also weird. But hey, weird seemed to be the flavor of the month, so who cared, right?

"Down there."

"You sure?"

He didn't flinch away when she reached out to grab him, this time. Seemed she'd gotten grabby, along with everything else. And absent-minded, because Gallant just barely got a hand on her shoulder before she teleported them all...into the old factory that she'd led them to.

There was a B&E joke on the tip of his tongue when he realized that abandoned factories didn't usually have power, or work-lights hanging all over the place. The lights were on, too, which meant that somebody was around thatneeded light.

He looked to Gallant, got a slight head-shake, and allowed himself to relax. Just a bit. "This is definitely a hideout." Which meant they'd found something. "Is this the Undersiders? Or stabby guy?"

"Probably the second one." Glory Girl muttered. "Crow?"

"Yeah…"

She started forward, and when the others fell in behind her, so did he. Wasn't really much else he could do at this point...though, curiosity may have played a part in it.

They'd appeared in a far corner of the main floor, from the looks of things. Didn't seem like there'd be anywhere else with enough room for all the old crates and pallets that had been stacked up...no, they weren't just stacked. Somebody had used them to close something off. That meant something long term. Which...well, it was a hide-out. So that made sense.

It took a little time, but Not-Crow eventually brought them to a gap wide enough to serve as way through. And then…

Well, it was kind of a mess. Tables covered in scattered tools and scrap metal. Trash and dirty clothes all over the floor. The mattress jammed into the corner of the space was just more confirmation that somebody had made themselves at home.

"This guy's a Tinker."

Which explained all the crap on the tables. Clockblocker glanced over to see Gallant standing at one of the tables, holding what looked like a ski boot...there was a sharp crack, and everyone jumped. Gallant included, which was understandable since it was the boot in his hands that had done...whatever it was. It looked like the back half had snapped out of place.

"...we're not about to explode, right?"

Gallant shot him a look, but shook his head. "Looks like it's spring-loaded." He set the whole thing down with obvious care. "Should probably leave the unknown Tinker-tech alone."

"Gee, you think?"

"Crow?"

He glanced over, saw Glory Girl hovering over her friend, who was hovering in front of...a mirror? Actually, it was a pretty nice mirror. Not really something you'd expect to see in a Tinker villain's workshop...oh, shit.

"Guys, we're standing in a Tinker's workshop."

Gallant stiffened, but it was Glory Girl that actually responded. "A little late to worry about that, don't you think?" She glanced back. "Come take a look at this."

Because that wasn't ominous at all. Still, she was right in that it was way too late to worry about tripping any defenses. Besides which...nothing ventured, nothing gained. They'd already ventured a lot in the past couple of hours. So he could walk over and look at a mirror, no big deal…

"...huh."

"So I'm not the only one seeing that?"

"Definitely not."

Gallant drifted over, and he made room for him to get a good look, too.

"Well...that's...different?"

Definitely different. Nice and creepy, with the way it wasn't reflecting them. The factory area behind them reflected just fine, of course. Or parts of it did. There were big chunks of it that were straight up missing, leaving nothing but bright light and lots of blue in the empty spaces.

The stuff was only missing in the reflection, at least. Or it seemed that way when he turned to check. So...the world hadn't gone all weird, and creepy Tinker mirror was now a thing he could say he'd seen. Awesome.

"Hey guys? I vote we get out of the creepy lair and call in the big boys. What do you say? All in favor?"

"Not happening."

"Hey, listen, GG, I appreciate that you and your family have this sorta love-hate thing going on with us government-types, but this is sort of a thing that's happening, and I'd like to pass it off on them now."

Gallant cleared his throat and shot him a warning look, before shaking his head. "He's right. If this is the guy you're looking for, then we've found him. We should call it in."

"What, so they can pat us on the head and send us back to the kiddy-table? 'Hey, good job, now let the grown-ups handle it'? Hell no…"

"We're not exactly little kids. They're not going to treat us like it…"

Clockblocker snorted, and Glory Girl rolled her eyes. "My mom grounded me a couple weeks ago for being out after curfew."

"You said it was because you almost got blown up."

"Like that's never happened before…"

And hey, there was the bickering. He'd been wondering where that went. Still, better to step in before they got on a roll. "Guys? A little focus, please?" And with that, he was sounding like the voice of reason. What was the world coming to? "Is your friend here normally this spacey?" Because she was still staring at the mirror, and it was starting to worry him.

"Shit." Glory Girl leaned in waving her hand in front of Not-Crow's face. "It's happened a couple of times. She'll snap out of it. Or I'll snap her out of it…" She chewed her lip, turning to look into the mirror. "Seems like freaky shit just follows her around."

Alright, there were so many signs that something was going on that nobody was talking about. Which was fine. Seriously. Who cared. "Are we going to call this in or what?"

The fact that Gallant didn't answer meant he was probably going to cave. Par for the course, really…

"Hey, did you see that?"

Okay, time to move away from the creepy mirror. "Didn't see anything, let's go."

"No, seriously, there's something out there...in there. Whatever. Look, it's just past the wall."

"Gallant, please tell crazies one and two we're leaving."

"It's so bright…"

"Don't look." He flinched away from Not-Crow as she finally broke her silence. It looked like she agreed with him, at least, reaching out to pull Glory Girl away, and give Gallant a shove when he hesitated. Clockblocker very studiously avoided looking back once he'd turned away. "I'm going to find what he did with my blood, and then we're leaving."

"Finally, someone sensible." Leaving sounded like a good...plan. "I'm sorry, did you say blood?"

"Told you he stabbed her with a giant needle." Glory Girl shook her head, scowling at nothing in particular. "Just...look around for anything that looks like a test tube or something, I don't-"

"I've got it."

He hadn't even seen her go looking for it, but. yep, that was a big, glass thing. Yep, it had blood in it. "Yay, go team. Can we leave now?" Because really, this was at least three kinds of crazy. Maybe four. And he really just wanted to get back to the HQ so he could punch Gallant for dragging him along. "Please."

When Not-Crow offered her hand, he didn't hesitate to take it. There wasn't any conversation, when they appeared outside again; Glory Girl muttered something vague about taking Gallant, and then they were flying off, which just meant more teleporting for him.

He didn't realize just how shaken up he'd felt, until they'd made it back to their patrol route. Didn't realize until after some muttered 'goodbye's that that unsettling feeling hadn't followed him out of the factory.

And when Gallant made him promise not to take things up the chain, he agreed, readily, without thinking anything of it.

They hadn't seEn anything worth reporting, anyway.

Definitely not…