ALL CHARACTERS AND EVENTS IN THIS FAN FICTION — EVEN THOSE BASED ON FICTIONAL PEOPLE — ARE ENTIRELY MADE-UP. ALL DANTE REFERENCES ARE RESEARCHED… POORLY. THE FOLLOWING STORY CONTAINS LEWD SEXUAL HUMOR AND DUE TO ITS LONG INTROSPECTIVE MONOLOGUES IT SHOULD NOT BE READ BY ANYONE. _|_|_|

Butters

By the time Mysterion and the Guardian Angel returned to the base, a few of us had already changed out of uniform and back into our street clothes. I was glad I hadn't been working that night, since the Second Coming of the Lame-Ass Ginger Rebellion (as some asshole on the team decided to call it—guess who…) was the first huge test to my personal League involvement. This was my chance to get more official with how I had chosen to become a hero.

I'd been on call, and was more than happy to help when Red Serge sent out the order for me to join Mosquito's half of the team that evening in pushing back the group Bebe had nicknamed the Infra-Reds. I did still feel a little intimidated by Mosquito—Clyde in general, really—and Craig, especially when we were out on the field. Those guys really knew how to fight. So did the Coon: he was a seasoned pro. But I was placed right in beside them and darn it, I was working hard to prove myself.

Mysterion hadn't voiced any major complaints about me so far, so I knew I was doing something right.

More along the lines of my feeling intimidated by other League members, though, since I was one of the few just sitting at the table in jeans and a sweatshirt, the entrance of the brother and sister duo helped to remind me just how new to League involvement I truly was. Craig, Cartman, Ike, and Timmy were the others out of uniform, while Clyde, Stan, Kyle, Wendy and Token were still mostly dressed for action… masks and goggles the like had been cast aside for the time being, but in a flash, Clyde could be Mosquito again, or Stan could be Toolshed.

It had been Wendy's idea to, almost at the last minute, swing around and pick Red up while Toolshed's half of the team was on the way back, and her presence was probably the only reason Mysterion looked even slightly relieved when he entered the room and removed his hood.

"Hey," the iconic hero greeted all of us as his sister took her seat at the long meeting table, "so, guys, we're dealing with something pretty fuckin' weird this summer."

"Figured that kinda went without saying," said Clyde, who was currently stationed at the whiteboard at the head of the table. "Dude, that attack came out of fucking nowhere."

"Yeah, and I have no idea where they're going, either," Kenny grumbled, joining Clyde at the head of the table. "Ike, you get anything?"

"Timmy and I are going back through the video feed right now," Ike said. I glanced over at where the two technicians were stationed. Ike, always on the move, stood bent over the shiny white tablet—complete with a red Canadian maple leaf decal at the center—that had just last year replaced his previous laptop as the primary source of all of our digital League files, and his black eyes darted back and forth as the fingers of his right hand hovered over the touch screen.

"Timmah!" Timmy exclaimed, pointing at the screen.

"What's up?" asked Karen, removing her mask and giving the two a hopeful stare.

Ike's face lit up a little, and he tapped the screen. "Daaaaamn, guys," he commented. "The hell was up with that helicopter, eh?"

"Eh?" Karen mocked him across the table. Ike just shot her a smirk before looking back at the screen in front of him.

"Care to share with the class?" asked Kenny. "Guys, what've you got?"

"Well, a decal on the helicopter for starters," said Ike. Timmy grinned and plugged an HDMI cable into Ike's tablet, then wheeled himself over to the main computer behind where the two usually sat to turn the overhead screens on.

The tech at the base was something that never ceased to fascinate me. Then again, we were on Token's parents' property… we were pretty fortunate to have access to the good stuff. Over the past couple of years, Karen, Ike and Timmy had apparently made it their primary project to give the meeting room a facelift. Clyde and Bebe's filing cabinets still lined the far left-hand wall, and on either side was a cork board for current cases. Kyle and Red's letters and envelopes were tacked up on one of them now, as was a little slip of paper Ike had explained to all of us earlier was a ticket he'd been sent in the mail. Rounding out the findings were two posters, one from Clyde and one from Craig, which the two had found earlier, being plastered around town by Ginger Separatist activists.

Ike and Timmy had indeed found a decal: on the tail of the helicopter was a broken outline of a circle, divided into six small pieces of the round border. Within the border were three rows of three filled in red dots, not unlike those on the Infra-Reds' arm bands. As methodical as the design appeared on camera, something about the design still felt archaic, and made me shiver. Timmy printed out two copies, and Ike ran one over to pin up onto the cork board next to the poster.

The poster itself was simple in design. A black 11-by-17 sheet of thick paper declared in big, Depression-era-style letters: CARNIVAL. Infernal Majestic Management. Details to Come, Six by Six. Circle up, now, step right in. If the GSM and whoever the heck that Management company was meant to shock with that poster, they had certainly succeeded.

"Thanks, guys. Okay, so first order of business…" Kenny took up the marker and wrote at the top of the whiteboard, First GSM Fight. He ran a line under that and began his bullet points. The first thing he wrote down was, Infra-Reds. "We've got ourselves a new fuckin' group to deal with."

"And they have a helicopter," Ike mumbled, still hunched over his iPad.

"Yup." Kenny wrote WTF HELICOPTER underneath the first bullet point.

"Oh, my God, really?" Kyle asked when he read that, trying not to laugh.

"Dude, tell me that wasn't the first thing that went through your mind when that thing appeared," Kenny mock-argued.

Kyle rolled his eyes. "Right after holy shit, I guess you're right."

"Sweet. And Ike, man, thanks for pulling that decal."

"Huh," Craig commented.

"What?" Clyde asked.

Craig shook his head. "Nothin'."

"Did you just think of something?"

"Nope. It's not related."

Clyde and Kenny stared Craig down, while Ike and Timmy both hovered on standby to add more to the tablet. Craig merely shrugged. "Decal reminded me of tattoo reminded me of this other thing that's totally not related to this at all," said Craig bluntly. "I'll tell ya later. Keep going."

Kenny and Clyde looked unconvinced, but pressed onward. "Right," Kenny said, clearing his throat. "What else've we got?"

"More photos," Bebe offered.

"Take the floor," Kenny nodded to her. Bebe smiled, glad to be acknowledged, and stood to join the two already stationed at the computers. Clyde followed her with his eyes and gave her an encouraging grin.

"This was the first visual," said Bebe. She plugged a retractable USB cable into her lemon-yellow iPhone and nodded to Timmy to call up the image in question.

A full-scale, if blurry, photograph of a man in the tight black GSM uniform appeared on the HD screen overhead; underneath was a text from Clyde which read, Guess I'm working tonight.

The way the Infra-Reds had chosen to outfit themselves was interesting: the skintight clothes worked well for their mobility and a bit of identity concealing, but their faces were mostly exposed. No caps or full masks… just those goggles.

"D'you think those goggles do anything?" I wondered. The group gave me their attention; I hit on subjects like that so rarely it took me a second to gather my thoughts before I could continue.

"How d'you mean?" Clyde prompted me when I didn't keep speaking right off.

"I mean," I started, "w-well, they glow, right? Bebe, I think callin' 'em Infra-Reds is good, cuz I'm guessing that's how they see through those things. But, like, why? You know?"

"Keep it rolling," said Kenny. He spun his left hand in a circle as he nodded and wrote on the whiteboard in reflection of my idea. Infra visuals? was the new bullet point underneath WTF HELICOPTER.

"I'm just kinda… I mean, think about the Cult," I said, softening my voice somewhat, though inadvertently. Everyone at the table either nodded or completely froze. Karen glanced at Kenny before giving me her attention again. Red looked at Kenny and did not look away. "They had hoods on their cloaks, y'know? They hid their whole faces. It's almost like the GSM is just begging for us to learn their identities."

"Who'd do that, though?" Kyle wondered.

Cartman grunted and leaned back in his chair. "Scott Tenorman," he said blankly.

Stan and Kyle let out a synchronized heavy sigh and leaned forward on the table in the same manner, but it was only Stan who said, "Care to elaborate, dude?"

"Yeah," Kenny added. "Cartman, if there's anything at all you know about Tenorman… I mean, like, apparently he keeps sending letters to your mom—"

Cartman merely rolled his eyes. He was soaking in the attention while it was granted to him, but for the most part, he appeared dismissive. Which was strange. I had a feeling he was hiding more, though I hated that I could still call him so well. It wasn't too hard to guess, though. If there was one person on Earth that Cartman cared about almost as much as himself, it was his mother. She provided for him, she encouraged (and enabled) him, she gave him an almost overwhelming sense of security.

So the fact that he was not reacting much to her essentially receiving threat letters on a schedule from the son of the man who'd also fathered Eric Cartman himself was… unnerving at least. He had to have been hiding his true concern. The look on Kenny's face told me that the leader of the League agreed.

"Seriously?" Cartman said with a mild shrug. "I don't see those letters. Ever. Mom always throws 'em away."

"Raid her trash, then," Token suggested. "Dude, I'd go through my parents' discard piles if I thought there was incriminating shit in there."

"She shreds 'em."

"Oh, yeah, that'd be a problem."

"And you never thought to tell us this why?" Kenny growled.

"Because."

"Not good enough!" Kyle snapped. He stood, slamming his hands on the table, which got all of our heads to turn. Stan set a hand on his back to try to get him to sit, but Kyle wouldn't have it. Interestingly enough, the one focusing the most attention on his outburst was Red, and I understood why. Red and Kyle were still, at the moment, the only ones of us who had received letters from the GSM. "If another one comes, inter-fucking-cept it!"

"Kyle," Kenny warned sternly.

Kyle groaned and rubbed his temples. "Sorry, I'm just… I'm just still really pissed about…"

"Everything?" Cartman jabbed at him.

Kyle flipped Cartman off with one hand and kept rubbing his temple with the other. "Skipping the part where I still want to blame you for some of this," he said, "the main thing that's getting to me right now is that radio broadcast. As if this Carnival shit wasn't enough to try to wrap our heads around…"

My heart skipped when Kyle mentioned the broadcast. Prior to the Infra-Red attack that evening, every station, on every radio in town, had been hacked, right down to satellite and internet radio, and a voice had given a PSA. "So everyone did hear that?" Kenny said, writing Radio interference as his next bullet-point. "Not just me?"

"Loud and clear," Karen confirmed.

"You guys heard him call me out?" Kenny asked.

"Y-you?" I stammered. "I'm sorry, Kenny, I—well, I heard something different."

"Yeah, dude," Stan said. "Maybe I missed something, but… do you mean after the general 'stay tuned' bit?"

Kenny's face paled. "Yeah…" he said, looking nervous. His eyes shifted to Red for a second, then back to the general table, only to go back to Red. "Baby, you hear anything?"

Red nodded tersely. "I heard someone saying 'consider the offer,'" she said in a near-whisper.

"I heard 'mind over matter if you oppose us,' or something like that," Kyle spoke up nervously.

"Wait, seriously?" Stan nearly yelped.

"Ike, you getting these?" Kenny checked in. When Ike nodded and typed away at his tablet, Kenny encouraged Stan to continue. "What'd you hear?"

Stan blanched. "I dunno, man, it was like a riddle or something. 'Which tool opens the urn?'"

"I heard a riddle, too!" Token said, astonished. "Something about, 'what's worth the gamble' or…"

"That voice used my name," Kenny informed us. "Well, he called out Mysterion directly, and mentioned my curse. Which I've broken."

My chest tightened, and I stared down at my hands. I did not want to speak aloud the words that I had heard. Luckily, in all the din that then erupted once everybody got talking about the fact that the voice on the radio had somehow made sure that each of us had gotten a different message, I was not asked directly what words I had heard. It was confirmed through recollections of the voice that we had all heard the same person, so it had to have been a recording, we figured… a very, very precise one.

Conversation then turned to the posters, and to the ticket that Ike had received in the mail. The Carnival was some kind of front. Whether or not an event ended up happening was up for debate, but it was something we needed to investigate, as a team.

The very last thing to come out in the open before the meeting could draw to a close was Cartman's recollection of what the radio voice had said to him, which were words that had been lost during the initial discussion. "How specific was it?" Clyde wanted to know when Cartman wove a long-winded story about how he was quite sure that his version of the broadcast was most important. Idiot.

"Here's what I heard," said Cartman, almost smugly. "'You're the main attraction, Coon.' Oh, and then I think it was, 'We're waiting,' or somethin', but it got all crackled out."

"Oh, God," Red started whispering under her breath. "Oh, God, this is getting really weird. Ugh…" Wendy and Bebe were instantly with her, providing support on either side, while Karen cast her a sympathetic look across the table. Kenny gave her a loving nod, probably to signify that he would talk more quietly with her later, then turned back to the whiteboard.

"All right, guys," said Kenny, now that all the evidence had been presented, printed, and put on display. "Here's what I wanna do."

"Recon?" Clyde grinned. "Add to the data pile—"

"And start up a big ol' game plan?" Stan added. The two former football teammates nodded to each other in what I can only describe as an acknowledged fist bump. (This was confirmed by Bebe shooting Kyle a look and making the 'they're nuts' circular motion with one index finger hovering to the side of her head.)

"You got it," said Kenny—all business, and with no time for turning business into sport. "Tomorrow night, everyone. A-team: Clyde and Craig, you guys see if you can follow that poster trail on the East side of town, and covering the West side'll be B-team of Cartman—"

"Fuckin' B-team."

Kenny pressed on. "Cartman, and Butters."

"The fuck?"

Kenny shot him an awful glare. "Do you mind?" he spat, playing the strict teacher to Cartman's bickering kindergartener.

"Ech. Do you?"

"You and Butters are on recon together. Suck it the hell up or you're on fucking probation."

"Oooh, pro-baaaaaa-tion."

"Moving on," Kenny growled. I gave Cartman a glare of my own; the idiot wasn't impressed. "Token," Kenny continued, "and Kyle, I know you guys both have other obligations or jobs tomorrow night, so Stan and Wendy, you're on backup." The two nodded amicably, and I saw Kyle try not to react. Stan and Wendy were, to my understanding, pretty good friends, still, when it came down to it. Wendy had even spoken to me once about how she felt that, between me and Stan, she was 'collecting brothers.' I kind of assumed Kyle was on the same level as Stan with her, but, then again, I didn't pry or yearn to know too much.

"Ike," Kenny went on, "you're here. Me and Karen'll do another sweep of the asylum after I go pick up whatever it is Henrietta's got for me. Stan and Wendy, start out at Tenth Circle. I trust you guys alone if you've gotta split from there. Same goes for you two," he added, gesturing to Clyde and Craig.

"Uh, hi?" Cartman complained, lifting a hand a couple inches off the table.

"Nothin' against you, dude," Kenny said to placate him. "Other than the whole… you might be a target and need immediate backup thing. If you heard 'main attraction' on the radio, that's probably as good as you getting a fucking letter. It's just—look, I need you to keep an eye on each other. Okay? Butters, man, I gotta say, we're glad to have your help the past couple years, but…"

"It's fine, I understand."

I wasn't trusted alone yet. I didn't blame Kenny for that. I didn't blame anyone for that. I hadn't been in the League very long, and even then, my involvement came and went just as much as my days as Marjorine did.

Because, well…

Marjorine was the hero.

She'd saved me back in middle school; she'd saved and saved me again, so as far as I was concerned, she should be the one fighting for justice… not the guy who'd tried to crush the world. Marjorine could wear a mask over makeup and still be every bit me. I just couldn't go through with potential relapses, or the waking dreams I still sometimes had about how badly I'd let myself go as Chaos.

Many things that had been a big part of my life were people or concepts I had now abandoned. It had been four years since I had spoken with either of my parents… and on and off, I would wonder if perhaps that was the only truly good thing I'd done for myself. It had taken me seventeen years to work up the nerve to leave home, and when I'd finally done it, it had been a last straw situation with Chaos, as well.

Professor Chaos was a name the town had once spoken as frequently as Mysterion, but these days he was hardly even a whisper. I had wanted it that way. Chaos had gone from an outlet for me to work out my frustrations and take on the things that scared me into a victim of terribly dark circumstance. He'd been a part of me born of a product of a weak will, and no matter how much I tried to strengthen him, I got pulled down. Down, down, further and further into the worst of my own thoughts, until I'd attempted to drive mad or kill many of the people I counted as friends.

The friends who helped to save me. I'd gone down the path of Chaos on my own, but the guys in the League had understood me to be a help to them at times. But when I discovered my own Necronomicon, my supposed partner in crime, General Disarray, had silently taken over, offered me up to lose my own sanity as a price to wake others like Cthulhu, and ultimately died in R'lyeh. Which was a fate I knew I'd have suffered had I strayed just one step further.

From then on, I had left Chaos behind. I had not died in R'lyeh, but I told myself that Chaos had. I didn't need him anymore: I wanted to repair things.

So I created someone new.

I'd always been my own little trinity: myself (Butters), Marjorine (the female me, who I'd kept up pretty consistently since eighth grade), and Professor Chaos. I didn't feel very balanced without that third identity, so when I asked Kenny if I could stay on in the League, when I started going over ideas for alter egos with Wendy, I came up with another side to Marjorine.

To combat Professor Chaos, I called her Agent Harmony. My personal agent of change. Someone who could heal and do good. I kept on the defensive for the most part, and was a self-appointed (and much-needed, the guys often stressed) medical aide. Harmony was the opposite of Chaos.

And yet my personal life was still all sorts of scrambled up.

Oh, things were fine living with Wendy… I had one more year renting a room from her parents—who are the sweetest people, let me tell you—and options to travel a little after I graduated, but if there was one thing not even Harmony could repair, it was this stupid fight I was having with Eric Cartman.

At the end of the meeting, though, I was given some hope. Once most of the others had dispersed to get out of uniform, Kenny took me aside by the cork board for a more personal check-in. "Hey, man," he said, patting my back a couple times. "How's it going—you ready for a recon mission?"

"Well, sure I'm ready," I assured him. "I'm really feeling like I'm on the team, now, after tonight."

"Good for you. No slip-ups, right?"

I shook my head. "No more Chaos."

"Hmm. Yeah," Kenny said after a second. "And, hey, about that guy…" He ticked his head back toward where Cartman stood arguing with Wendy about something (most likely trivial). "You get the feeling he's being—"

"Silent for a reason?" I offered.

"I was going to say stubborn, but you're right, too," Kenny agreed. Red called for him; Kenny called over that he'd be right back, then got my attention in order to say before he could leave, "Listen up. You've got a great name, Harmony. I hope you can put it to use. You understand?"

"I sure do."

And I did. I had to make sure that we maintained some kind of League status quo while we were still in the breadcrumbs portion of our summer mission. So maybe I was playing the part of a glorified babysitter; I didn't much care. As long as I could have a hand in League success, I would do whatever it took.

I'd do whatever I needed to do, in order to finally be 'good.' In order to stay ahead, and not lag into the pit of Chaos again.

– – –

I woke in the middle of the night from a horrible dream.

It wasn't even a dream so much as my brain playing back an earlier part of the day. To the broadcast. To the words that I had not told Kenny, Clyde, or the rest of the League that I had heard: "You, dear, dear Agent of Harmony… don't you know that control demands disorder?

"You can rebuild."

Chills went down my spine again as I thought about it. I knew what it was talking about, of course. The Tower. That damn Tower that had helped me on my downward spiral into true, terrible Chaos.

Unable to sleep, I rolled out of bed, pulled on a thin blue sweatshirt, and slipped out of my room and down the stairs to the kitchen. Wendy's parents were very kind to share their kitchen with me; I'd gotten rather good at cooking meals, since I insisted upon doing so in exchange for having to pay hardly anything for the food they provided. I'd felt guilty to eat more than my share for the first couple of years, but nowadays a midnight snack or two was never something I bypassed if I felt I needed it.

I stuck two slices of squishy multigrain bread into the toaster oven and heaved a sigh as I leaned against the counter to wait for it to crisp and brown. "You can rebuild." Not the Tower. Not that pillar of evil, no. Not Chaos. No, I was done, I wasn't going back; I couldn't. I couldn't.

Maybe I could twist the words, I thought. Make them allude to something I could stand to rebuild.

A friendship, maybe.

My eyes stung somewhat.

Eric Cartman hadn't said two words to me directly during that meeting. He'd barely acknowledged me as a teammate during the attack after the broadcast. I wasn't even sure if it was his fault or mine anymore. I'd stayed angry for a real long time. Short enough to still not want to call him by his first name again, but long enough for us to maybe be on speaking terms again.

Senior year of high school, and the greater part of freshman year of college, we'd still been tight. Oh—yes… yes, I remembered. It was his fault. And I was sick of his abusive little games. I'd tried to bring balance into my life by adopting harmony as a very literal force of the actions I now took. It wasn't very comforting that I felt like I wasn't doing a very good job of that.

The toaster oven beeped. Slowly, methodically, I removed the toast, slid butter along the surfaces of both slices, and sat down at the square kitchen table to snack alone with my thoughts.

Cartman was being kind of weird lately. I wanted to be concerned. I really did. Part of me would always feel some concern for him. For the guy that had occasionally shown concern for me. Prom came to mind. Four years had passed, now, and I was still thinking about that stupid dance. Well… about what had happened to me during the event.

About the porch of the Community Center, about Wendy cheering me up in the bathroom, about what Craig saw, about a big set of hands I fought to hold, about the most sincere apology I'd ever heard in my life…

My brain stopped short when I heard footsteps. I knew right away it was Wendy, so I didn't feel too nervous. I welcomed her in, and gave her a tired wave as I bit into my toast.

"Hey, hey," Wendy said, mussing up my hair before she slid into a seat beside me. She wiped dripping beads from the side of her glass of water, took a sip, then gave me a tired but sweet smile. "Can't sleep?"

"Not really. You?"

Wendy shrugged, rather regally. "Not really," she admitted. "Some summer vacation, huh?" We weren't even midway through May yet; I hoped we could relax at least a little before August. I mean, heck, we have our last year of college coming up."

"No kidding," I tried to grin. "So why can't you sleep?"

"Lots on my mind," said Wendy. "How about you?"

"Kinda the same."

"Yeah? Like what?" Wendy wanted to know.

"I mean… GSM stuff, and all," I told her. "So I tried to get thinking about normal stuff, but it's way too late for that kind of thing, so my head just started going into its stupid playback mode…"

Wendy knew what I meant. We'd talk about high school a lot when we got together, even though we had plenty of college stories to share. It was out of a want and need to remember how far our roots stretched; how firm the foundation of our friendship was. We could always bet that high school or even middle school would come up at least once in any conversation we had. And this time, she nailed the topic right off after I repeated, "Really… really stupid playback…"

"Oh, honey, you're not still thinking about prom…?" Wendy prompted me. She reached over the table and took a gentle hold of my wrist. No use fighting it. Dang prom, wreckin' up my social life for the next few years for having been such an odd—though oddly memorable—evening. One evening, and things had all seemed changed, and balanced, and good. Only to all fall apart in the end, as some good things do.

"Jesus," I mumbled, covering my face with my hands. "I should be over it, Wendy, I really should."

"I thought you were dating again," Wendy said optimistically. I did have a tendency to be less backward-glancing when I was in a relationship. "That girl… Jo? Jordan?"

"No," I sighed, "we broke up."

"Oh… Butters, I'm sorry," Wendy offered.

I managed a smile. "No, it's fine. We're still friends, it's all good. Man, I just… two people, Wendy. I've dated two people from my college and I'm still being a total idiot."

"If it's any consolation," Wendy said nervously, "I'm still not over Token."

"Let's just marry each other," I laughed.

"If we're still clinging and clawing when we're thirty, please," Wendy said with a tiny giggle.

Wendy and I had a deep understanding and respect for each other, but we were, we'd both agreed, almost too tight to date each other. Plus, she liked protests and publications and getting her voice out there… I liked being who I was in my own quiet way. My ex-girlfriend—a girl I'd met in college by the name of Jordan Kowalski… and when Cartman had heard her name he laughed in my face and sent me stupid Polack spite over Facebook for a while—had liked that, and was a good match for me for a while, until the mutual breakup. That was the thing about Wendy… I didn't want to hurt with the breakup we both knew would happen if we ever dated. So we just went right on being honorary siblings and safety nets.

After we'd sat in silence a little while, I ventured to ask, "Any chance of you and Token starting it up again?"

"Oh," Wendy half-lamented, "I don't know. I wish we could, hon… so bad. I just… I was the one who fucked up. He needs time. How about you? You okay?"

"I kinda don't like being single," I admitted.

"Is Cartman single again?" Wendy ventured.

"Cartman's an asshole who is never, ever going to admit he's always been at least bi-curious and who's never, ever gonna like anyone as much as he likes himself, so I'm done trying," I grunted.

In her sweet, collected way, Wendy smiled, scooted over, and placed her hand on my back, where she rubbed a little circle. I sighed and murmured an apology. She'd probably heard me rail about these things hundreds of times by now.

Wendy was so well aware of my history, it was pointless to bring it up. I'm not the luckiest person on the planet, and maybe it's partially because of that fact that I enjoy hearing about and encouraging other people's happiness. Wendy's in particular—I did love that girl. She was the best form of family I'd ever known.

Because Wendy believed in me, something that not even my own parents had done. I mean, for crying out loud, my father—my bi-curious father, I'll add—sent me to a camp to try to 'fix' me and make me straight, before I was even ten years old. My roommate at the camp, a nervous wreck under a pouf of dark blonde hair named Bradley, had almost killed himself in front of me before both of us were given leave.

I'd told Wendy right off when Bradley re-entered my life in college. It was funny when I saw him again, all grown up and sure of himself… I ended up head-over-heels, and was enamored when we finally started going out. We were easy roommates for the first two years of school, and dated for three-quarters of that time. In the end, though, he'd shown his true colors and accused Marjorine of being a 'fantasy' of mine. So I'd called him an ignorant bastard and walked out. It still made me sad sometimes to think of him and how we'd ended up, but it was necessary.

Then there was Jordan, a friend of my current roommates' that I'd met at a party. I had two roommates at school now, both passing acquaintances from high school—Sally Turner and Heidi Turner; no relation as far as I knew… Heidi was Kyle's first ex and was still kind of weird around him, even after so many years of being broken up, which unfortunately was one of the reasons I hadn't ended up hanging with the guys that much. Jordan was a nice breath of fresh air for me. We went back to her place after the party and stayed up talking and watching old cartoons over a shared bottle of white wine, then got to tipsily baking cookies and ultimately, in her words, eating each other once the cookies came out burnt. Later that week, we were a couple. She even called me 'Leopold.' No one had ever called me by my real name before, so we let that be her thing, and I liked it. We broke up amicably after she admitted she was more comfortable being polyamorous (and I'm not… I mean, heck, one person outside myself is all I can handle at a time), and remained friends, which was nice… but it still left me single.

So now here I was again, uncomfortable with my on-the-market status, back home, and being a damn fool for clinging to what I thought I'd had at prom. Junior prom. Wendy had been a vision. I voted for her and Token for the royalty—and, gosh, they sure looked it; he went all out for her—but Clyde and Bebe had won… which I'd kind of expected, and was ultimately glad that they had: that was when Clyde had proposed. Four years, they'd been engaged. I was jealous, but too happy for both of them to care about how I yearned for just one returned 'I love you' here and there.

Cartman hadn't given me that, but he'd at least put up with me when I blackmailed him into being my date for that dance. So maybe he'd hung by the buffet table for most of the night. So I was mostly just enjoying myself with the girls and gushing over Wendy and Bebe and wondering how the heck Stan had convinced Kyle, notorious for hating school dances, to go. I didn't care. I had what I wanted. I had the excuse to say that I'd had at least one date with the guy I'd stupidly fawned over since I was a kid.

I should have accepted it as puppy love and moved on, but I didn't. I pushed. I pushed and pushed and pushed and tried so damn hard to win. Eric—I'd still called him Eric, then—and I had been at odds for years. I did almost anything he'd ask me to, since, don't ask me why, I cared about him so much. I thought he must have been kind of lonely… kind of like me. When I started throwing my own punches, both figuratively as myself and literally as Professor Chaos, he'd started to push harder. All that ultimately worked itself into a friendly rivalry, and, on my part, an almost annoying crush.

Wendy had told me over and over before prom to tell Eric how I felt, so at that stupid event, I'd pushed him as far as I figured he could go: I'd kissed him—grabbed that guy and just plain full-on kissed him. That jerk kissed right back, and for a little over a year he let me keep doing it. Were we dating? Who knows. If we weren't, him dumping me (as a friend or as a date, it really, honestly didn't matter) by denying he knew me was kind of a wakeup call. Then I'd gotten with Bradley, and he went right on being a royal dick to me, and pushed and pushed and pushed again until I snapped and stopped calling him Eric.

The thing was…

I'm pretty sure Cartman missed Chaos. The glares he gave me, as himself and as the Coon, were clues enough for that. When we were fighting the Old Ones in R'lyeh (well, they, the League… I'd been kind of on the problem side, then), I had saved his life, and he'd told me he owed me one. And by 'me,' I was still quite sure that he meant Chaos. I'd never cashed in on it. The Coon owed Chaos a favor.

Cartman owed me nothing. Which was kind of what I was getting. I missed having him as a friend, though, and Wendy knew that.

She knew that, so I didn't have to say a word.

I did, however, ask her a question.

"Hey, Wendy?"

"What's up, Butters?"

"D'you really think Harmony was a good idea?"

Wendy shifted in her seat again, and turned my head so that I was facing her directly. Her eyes were bright and sad all at once. I wanted to ask her more about Token. I felt awful… Wendy went to school in California; we stayed in contact all the time, over the phone, online, and on vacations, but sometimes I felt that I missed the really important things. I missed her—her sisterly advice and our friendly banter. I just wanted that girl to be happy.

"Here's the thing," Wendy said to me, when she'd made me look directly at her so that she knew I caught every word she spoke. "Harmony is right for you only if you think she is. If you're having other thoughts, you can still turn things around."

I shook my head. "I stopped being Chaos," I affirmed. "I don't want to mess up that bad again."

"So give Harmony a real try," said Wendy. "This is your chance, you know. You do want to stay in the League, right?"

"Y-yeah," I nodded.

"So this is what I think. You want to be in the League? Then give it your all, sweetie. Commit to what you know you can commit to. If harmony is the force you want to fight for, then stick with being Agent Harmony. You know I'll be the first one to agree that you pushed Professor Chaos a little far, but that's the thing about being in the League—we're friends. No matter how you want to be involved, don't lose sight of the fact that we're friends, and we're here for each other. All of us."

She really did know how to make me feel better. I thanked her, coupling my words with a tight hug, and followed her back upstairs once I'd disposed of the dregs of my midnight snack. Wendy linked her arm with mine and lay her head on my shoulder as she walked me down to my room. When I glanced down at her, I saw a faraway look on her face that she did not show very often. Wendy was deep in thought about an issue she rarely brought up on her own, so I took the liberty.

"Hey, Wendy?" I said, cautiously so as not to shock her out of her thoughts.

"Hmm?"

"You sure you're okay?" I wondered. "I know what you mean about all of us being friends, and all… a-and I think I'm gonna do my best to get back on speaking terms with Cartman, but what about you and Token? I really hope you two are okay."

Wendy sighed. "It'll be fine, Butters, we might work it out, we might not," she said modestly. "We're partners in the League, so… I-I don't know. Sorry if I'm projecting anything."

"Don't be sorry, honey, I just want you to be okay."

"You're awfully sweet." We'd made it to my door, where Wendy stood straight and hugged me goodnight. "Thanks for being my on-call brother, Butters. We'll both find something soon."

"We sure will, Wendy," I agreed, hugging her in return.

At least, I hoped so.

– – –

I did enjoy being Agent Harmony. I liked going through the motions of applying my makeup and brushing out my hair as I always did on days when I felt like Marjorine, and then going the extra step to put my hair up in a twisty bun, secured with bobby pins just behind the army-green nurse's cap I wore as part of my uniform. Green was still my vigilante color, I couldn't deviate all that much.

Besides… I was about balancing myself out, these days. Keep things even, keep the peace. What better name to keep the city feeling safe than Harmony, I thought. And if I wanted to continue healing—healing the city; wounds; old scars that I myself may have caused—then I'd heal.

I wanted to work with the team instead of against them. I had had a partner before, but even before I found out he'd been using me, our union was mostly based on necessity, the simple fact that each of us was physically incapable of executing our plans if we'd been a one-man army. This time, I wanted a group of people who I could undoubtedly trust. And, hopefully, who would trust me in return, though I knew that would take a lot of work on my part first. Still, most of all, I wanted to be a part of something bigger than myself. Instead of fighting for selfish reasons, I wanted to fight for a common cause, one that would benefit not just me, but others as well. Do a little good in the world, you know? Positive energy and all that.

When I'd decided all of this, I'd gone to the person who I knew would be immediately supportive and encouraging – Wendy. I gave her all my reasons for wanting to make the change, and she was nothing but kind words and uplifting hugs. Then, she'd squealed with delight at the prospect of designing an outfit.

We set to work right away. Keeping with the theme of healing, and fulfilling the role of the team medic, we'd decided to base the design off a nurse's uniform, circa-World War II to give it the soldier feel as well. A button-down green dress, cinched at the waist with a utility belt and opening out to a knee-length pleated skirt with a few useful pockets—that was the basic outline we'd chosen. Wendy had been the one to suggest I keep a cape, not unlike a rain cape, and still green in color, draped over my shoulders. (When we'd added it, both of us had made the obvious, it kinda hides the fact that I'm completely and understandably flat, comment, too.) While most of my arsenal was based around my theme, I did have a little secret: my thick green gloves were, in a slight nod to Chaos, sewn around sets of metal knuckle caps. I wore spandex shorts under the skirt, and high green socks under brown lace-up boots to complete the outfit.

I was proud of it, at least; so was Wendy. She and Karen had welcomed me, as Marjorine, onto the team wholeheartedly, saying there was always a need for more girlish energy around on the field. The guys all respected the fact that I was always quick with first aid, too, and in that respect had given Agent Harmony the nod to be the new probationary field member.

I took Kenny's words to heart as I dressed and set out that evening. Put my name to use. Agent Harmony. Be just that, I told myself: do just that. Promote and fight for harmony. Leave Disarray to the dead and gone dimension in which he'd met his end; leave Chaos to my convoluted past.

Start looking forward, be a positive member of the League.

Which, I've gotta say, is really hard to do when your mission partner is being a dick and sighing every five seconds because he was on B-team and not the one going to the asylum to fight Scott Tenorman head-to-head. I knew he wanted it. I knew that the Coon could not wait to sink his talons into Tenorman, but I had the feeling that there were plenty of reasons why Tenorman himself hadn't yet reared his Ginger head. There truly was much more at play here than just a Movement, than just some kind of threatening activity.

We had to find out what that Carnival was, why the Gingers were using it, and what that Infernal Majestic Management company truly was—if it (or they, perhaps) had anything to do with the radio, the helicopter, and the GSM in its present insurrection.

The Coon and I were stationed on top of a five-storey apartment building, which looked out over a street full of businesses and office buildings… a fair bet for a place that activists might try to slap up posters to be noticed. Our building was on a street corner, too; far below was an alleyway to the right that emptied out closer to where Craig and Mosquito were stationed, and then two plain old two-way streets, the traffic lights flashing red on all sides to indicate that the time of day was too late for go, slow and stop to be of much major concern.

While the lights flashed a metronome, the Coon groaned and sighed out of tempo. I glared over at him. He'd taken one side of the building to watch the horizontal cross street, while I stood near a large silver duct that smelled of a hundred laundry dryer sheets, watching the vertical cross street. But when he made a scene, I couldn't help but try to call him out for it. So I kept on staring, hoping that it would shut him up, and that maybe we'd accomplish something that evening.

Sure enough, he caught me glaring. "What?" he hissed out.

"What?" I snapped back, keeping my eyes out mostly on the streets. It was such a stupidly quiet night. We were both obsessing over the same thing for a second: Mysterion set this up on purpose.

I knew what everyone else thought. I knew that the Coon and I had a lot we had to get the hell over in order to operate as teammates again. I just wanted it to come from him. Because he was a jerk. The end.

"Move over," said the Coon. "Nothin' fuckin' happening out there anyway, go patrol the other side of the roof."

"You're just as capable of moving as I am," I bit back.

"I chose this spot first."

"What are you, eight? Shut up," I snapped.

"You're being just as much of a dick about this as I am," he grumbled.

"At least you admit it," I pointed out.

The Coon whirled, and grabbed me by the front of my uniform. I'm pretty sure this was the first time he'd forced eye contact on me in at least a year. It had gotten to the point at which I'd nearly forgotten that his eyes were brown. A kind of hazel-y brown, that shifted character as much as he did, that, like the man himself, had the potential to be something really nice and maybe even attractive if they didn't otherwise make you feel like shit. No, sometimes I'd forget about those eyes, and sometimes even assume that the Coon's eyes were indeed yellow, animal yellow, as they had been in R'lyeh.

Sharp, focused, like the nocturnal creature from which he'd taken his name; his eyes were indeed that, color aside, and though they could not pierce through and glow in the dark as they had been able to do in that other dimension, they sure could burn.

I hadn't thought to ask Cartman if he hated me. At the height of my own utter abhorrence of him, yes, I'd stopped calling him by his first name, and he was still holding a grudge against me for that. But hate me? I had no idea. He was a hard guy to read. And did I hate him? A little, still, I guessed. I hated the fact that he refused to talk, for one thing.

And I really hated what he said next.

"God fucking dammit, Harmony, shut up if we aren't gonna actually do our fucking job tonight!" he snapped. Not that part. This part: "Sometimes, swear to God, that name pisses me off, you know. At least Chaos made sense."

I grabbed him by the shoulders and kneed him in the gut, then threw him aside. "Shut the fuck up, Coon!" I hollered at him. "We're supposed to be on the same team, here! I'm done with Chaos, and you know that, and you need to get over it!"

The Coon spun where he'd fallen, righted himself on his feet, then darted behind me and held me in a head lock, his thick arms choking me just from their size more than the force he put behind his grip. "Get over it?" he scoffed. "Get over it? I'm sorry. I'm sorry, that's not something somebody just gets over."

"What the fuck are you talking about?" I yelled, gasping for breath. Even at the height of our relationship (or whatever it was, we had never really given it a name), there were still times that even I had trouble discerning what Eric Cartman meant with his convoluted personal logic. And, since we'd been out of sorts, those moments had only increased. "If you're still holding a grudge against Chaos, well that's too bad, Coon, cause he's not around anymore. I've changed!" To drive home my point, though perhaps negating it a little as well, I elbowed him in the chest.

With the Coon the one sputtering for breath now, I was able to free myself. Stepping back, I held my arms out to my sides, exposing myself to him against the light of the full moon. "Harmony means balance, Coon," I said, strongly as I could. "I told you a long time ago and I'll tell you again now, I'm here to repair things. Chaos did too much damage, and I'm gonna serve like this till I clean all his shit up, so don't you make me have to wipe the floor with you, too. Maybe I'm doing too much, or maybe I'm not doing enough, but I'm taking strides to make things better, and if you can't see that, then you really do suck as a teammate. You do know that we're the ones holding everyone back, right?"

"Shut up," the Coon snapped, coughing a little.

"No!" I hollered. "No, I won't shut up until you say something that you and I both know makes sense! There's something evil out there that you and I can help do something about, but if we don't suck it up and act like civil human beings, and not just human beings, but heroes, as we say we are, then the League is gonna move on without us. You get that, right? I wanna keep serving and I wanna keep doing good, okay? Don't you fuck that up for me, Coon, don't you dare fuck that up for me!"

The hamsters somehow started spinning that rusty old wheel inside his brain again at that point, and the Coon grinned. He folded his arms across his chest, gave me a look over, and said triumphantly, "There you are."

"What?" I wondered, still not comprehending his thought process.

"Just sayin', you're not so different after all."

"From what?" I guessed. "Chaos?"

The Coon just shrugged. Then, glancing around a little, he stepped forward and held out a hand. Okay, I was really not expecting that. For him to be the one to so quickly initiate the truce. Then I looked down. "I'm not shaking your hand, idiot, you're just gonna scratch me with those claws," I said, calling his bluff. And then he'd laugh about it.

"You're wearing metal gloves, bitch."

"You'd still try."

"Fine!" The Coon tossed his hands up in the air.

"But do we have a truce?" I hollered as he turned his back on me.

"Yeah, whatever."

"Do we have a truce?"

"Yes, a'edy!" he barked, whipping his head around to look at me.

I stared him down for a minute. I did miss our League interactions from time to time. It was one of the best ways we'd ever played off of each other. His incorrigible stubbornness and my talents for trapping him by using his strengths against him. His weird way of being able to untangle himself all the same. That was what the Coon and Chaos had had, and, sure, I was done being Chaos in order to atone for plunging half the town (or more, let's be honest, not that that was an achievement) into insanity and nearly killing myself in the process, but no. He was right. At night, in uniform, I still had the same strengths I always had.

What I did not tell him was that, not too long ago, I had nearly brought Chaos back. That I had been so fucking angry at him, at Cartman, that I had been so fucking angry at myself and at everything wrong with my life that I had nearly plunged myself back into that old mode of thought. That the world was out to get me. That I had to strike back first.

But I hadn't. I chose instead to continue working toward my goal of reparations, of striving for balance instead of anarchy. Either way, I was fighting for something.

So maybe I was a fighter. Maybe that was what the costume was all about now. Just don something that gave me the courage to fight back in some way. I just didn't want to be in a fight with someone who was supposed to be a teammate. And I did want my teammates, and that was something I'd talked about before with Wendy. Chaos had been all about being alone; I didn't want that. I wanted my team. My friends. And if at all possible, a competent patrol partner. We didn't have to be anything more than that. Just competent teammates, partners, and friends. Fuck the rest as long as I could have that and stay sane, and keep healing.

"I mean it," I said, more quietly. "Please tell me we can work this out."

The Coon turned back around and coolly regarded the view of the surrounding rooftops. I saw and then heard him sigh in what should have been a casual manner, but which he still managed to pull off as if doing me some sort of favor. "We'll see."

I narrowed my eyes at the back of his head, but said nothing. I knew that was the best I would get out of him for now. The Coon, or any version of Eric Cartman, never did anything the easy way.

For a little while, there was no activity from the street. The Coon complained of boredom once or twice, but we held our positions. After about half an hour, our patience was rewarded when I noticed a figure slinking about on the street below us.

"Wait a second…" I said, grabbing out a pair of army-grade binoculars from my utility belt.

"What?" the Coon wondered. "You see somethin'?"

"I… don't know if I should be…" I admitted.

"What?"

"Ssshh!"

"Ech."

I shrugged off his last stupid grunt and adjusted my binoculars. There it was again—a thin figure moving from one side of the street to the next, stack of posters in hand. From the pocket of my skirt, I drew out my camera, just in case. I had had that old pink thing since middle school, but it served me all too well… it had the best zoom out of anything I'd used before, and since I couldn't afford a new one for Harmony purposes, it made do.

"What is it?" the Coon hissed at me again.

"Just stand watch," I instructed, getting low against the large silver duct that belched industrial smoke every now and then. I had to get a close look at the person on the street while the timing was good; before that steam could shoot out from the bowels of the building we were borrowing. "And be prepared for a go on my signal."

"Harmony, what?" he demanded, getting down on the other side of the duct.

"Just be rea—oh, my gosh!" I exclaimed.

With the binoculars, I zeroed in on the figure. Definitely female, and probably a young woman around our own age; I decided give or take about five years, in my head. She was dressed all in black, and sported the gleaming goggles like the other Infra-Reds, but she appeared not to be armed. Instead, she had only her stack of posters. Well, one could bet that the Coon and I would be doing a little propaganda clean-up once she finished her rounds.

"See that figure?" I whispered.

"That chick down there?" the Coon guessed.

"That's her, with the posters."

"Huh. Not exactly the best time of day to put up posters."

"Exactly… unless you had to do it in secret," I nodded. "Somethin' about her is buggin' me, though. So I'm gonna stay up here for a minute and talk to you through the wire. Take my camera."

I held it out to him, and the Coon just stared at it. "What?" he said flatly.

"You heard me, take my camera," I instructed, shoving it toward him.

"I'm not touching that faggy little thing."

"Oh, for fuck's sake."

"That's not a camera the Coon would use, asshole!"

"Keep it up and you're never gonna reach twenty-one," I mumbled at him. "Take the gosh darn camera."

"Fine." He made a show of grabbing it out of my hands, taking it up into his taloned fingers and glancing at it for the zoom and exposure buttons before he slipped it into his own belt. The Coon could complain all he wanted, but when things got down to the wire, not even his puffed-up ego could stop him from wanting to be the same thing he'd aimed for since fourth grade: a hero. His methods were questionable. His tactics were sometimes not exactly 'for the good of the team.' But he did want to try, there was at least that much. I just knew that he hated these little missions. Give that guy a giant monster to battle, though, and he'd go all out.

It all just had to do with the fact that Eric Cartman always had to be fighting something. The only person he hadn't ever really opposed was himself.

"What'm I doin' with it?"

"Huh?" I wondered, tracking the figure's movements.

"What'm I doin' with the camera?" the Coon snapped.

"Oh. Get down onto the street and stalk that girl. Try to keep her around here and I'll try to trap her."

The Coon grinned. "Nice. I can keep her busy."

"But," I added, "if she gets away, at least get a picture of her. We might be able to identify her if Red Serge gets a picture and run possible matches."

"So long as this thing can take a decent shot without infusing everything with rainbows."

I rolled my eyes behind my binoculars and sighed. "Just get down there."

I heard him leave, making his way to the opposite side of the roof where there was a fire escape, and which he could climb down without being seen. With the figure occupied down a side-street and the Coon off, I set to work.

No matter what roads I took, no matter how I chose to ever re-invent little details about myself, some things are just nature, and cannot change. I've tried, in my venturing into other walks of life, to at the very least honor where I came from. Hey, everybody starts somewhere. And the places I'd started and tripped and fallen and gotten right back up had all granted me a unique set of skills, which I put to darn good use in the League.

That was what I loved about it, really. Each on our own—yeah, we were hero material. (Well, Kenny did bring up the good point that I was still pretty darn new, and had to tag along in order to not slip up, but still.) But together, we were a team. Our small groups were suited to complimentary skills. All together, we were a well-rounded force. I loved that. Mosquito and Craig teamed well together because of their understanding of each other's long and short-range attacks; Toolshed and the Human Kite were synched like twins, and could use one another's weapons for one combined blow; TupperWear and Marpesia were our unstoppable armored defense. As for Mysterion and the Guardian Angel… well, I looked up to them every day. Theirs was a kind of teamwork I'd never know: they were true siblings, after all.

So I understood why I was still partnered with the Coon. I knew how to hold him back or let him go at will without his feeling like he was being scolded or, worse, manipulated.

Because I am a negotiator. And a healer.

I am also, still, after all this time, the best at setting traps.

I was glad that the guys had enough faith in me that I wouldn't falter, to allow that skill of mine to continue. If I did slip at all, well, that's where the Coon came in. He knew best how to stop me.

He's still very much a personal gain kind of guy, which was why I sent him out ahead of me. He could get the credit for the capture, but I'd be the one who set it up.

As soon as he had gone, I got to work. My utility belt was stocked with all manner of helpful first-aid, but I had no rules saying a gauze bandage could just be a gauze bandage. Plus, I carried extras. I liked to think of myself as resourceful, these days.

I wouldn't be a trapper without being able to use found objects, though… and I discovered just what I needed, lying off toward the other side of the building. It was a faded green beer bottle, the label long since scratched and rained away, weathered down to nothing but a weighted glass. Perfect. I took it for myself and peered back over the side of the building from which I'd seen the girl. On the street directly below me was a lamp post, casting a yellow glow on the street and sidewalk. Using my best judgment, I positioned the bottle to be roughly lined up with the lamp post, then dug into one of the pouches I'd strapped to either side of my belt.

In that pouch, I kept, at all times, at least two rollable mesh nets, and I drew one out now. The net could fit into my fist when rolled, but could extend to trap a man of my current recon partner's size: I knew; as Chaos, I'd done it plenty of times. I tied a length of surgeon's thread, also kept in that pouch, to the end of the net, and tucked the thread under the bottle, to hold it in place. I then lowered the net down to a window a couple floors below me. Marking my spot and double-checking my bottle weight—oh, it'd hold up just fine—I made for the fire escape down which the Coon had earlier disappeared.

I could hear the Coon rustling off in the distance. I had time. Very cautiously, I climbed down the fire escape until I was two floors down, and tried the window. Luckily, it opened, and I found myself in a hallway of the industrial apartment building. Padding quietly along the sickly floral carpeting, I avoided apartment doors, but stole a wooden door wedge from outside one of them, until I found a T-shaped break in the hallway, leading down a smaller one that went only to two elevators, one on either side. One window divided them, and outside that window hung my net.

I grinned and slid the window open. I tied another length of string to the net, pulled some of it in through the window, and tossed the rest of the string to the ground. I tucked the bit I'd kept under the doorstop I'd stolen—borrowed, I mean—and closed the window on the wooden wedge. Everything in place, I went back to the fire escape and continued my descent until I was on the sidewalk. I rushed right around to the lamp post, took up the rest of my string and a few small rocks I found on the ground, and shimmied up to the top, where I tied a loose knot. The net hovered above me as I got myself balanced on top of the lamp post. All set.

"Good to go," I said to the Coon through the wire. "Bring her around."

"Nah," he responded, "I got this."

"Two sets of eyes're better'n one," I argued. "Get her over here."

"Ugh. Touchy. Fine."

"Thank you."

"Don't say 'thank you' on duty, fuckin' fa—"

I cut my transmission and heaved an awful, annoyed sigh. Lately it seemed like sighs like that finished up all of my conversations with or about that guy. Oh, well… petty things later. Right now, this was business.

And, oh, business was good: I was barely on that lamp post a minute before the Infra-Red woman came darting down the street, with the Coon in hot pursuit. I had to give him credit: despite his stature, he could keep up quite well, better each year he stayed in the League, really.

The girl was quick, but I was ready. I counted to five, then chucked one of my rocks up toward the roof. I don't have the best arm in the League, that'd probably be Toolshed or Mysterion, but when I had to do something, darn it, I'd try. My first couple rocks missed, but my third hit and smashed the bottle I'd left on the roof, thereby releasing the net.

The Infra-Red noticed and moved to run, but the Coon darted forward, tackled her, then kicked her back into the target area just in time for the net to extend and cover her. The girl did not cry out when she was trapped, nor did she fume, or curse, but she did struggle against the net.

"Heh, I don't think so," the Coon snickered, walking up to step down on the net so she could not get out. He then crouched and held up an object I'd failed to notice: the girl's signature red goggles. "Lookin' for these, bitch?" he taunted her.

She narrowed her eyes at him and spat in his face.

"Aye!"

"Even if I don't finish my job tonight," said the girl, "somebody will."

"Why?" the Coon demanded, wiping the spit from his eyes with the back of one hand.

"Because we must."

I sashayed down the lamp post just in time to catch the goggles my partner threw back at me. He then grabbed the girl with his taloned finger armor and snarled threateningly at her when the two were more or less nose to nose. "What's the job, lady?" he demanded. "What're you guys up to, huh? This is my city and I hate your Goddamn propaganda foulin' it up."

"We're only spreading the word," said the girl. "A Carnival is coming to town. It isn't one you'll want to miss."

"I fucking hate Carnivals."

"Oh, no," the girl grinned. "You'll love this one. You'll want to circle up fast."

"Like fuck. Smile pretty." The Coon grabbed my camera out from his belt and snapped the girl's picture, twice.

When he did, though, he stepped back from the net, which allowed her room to get out from the trap. The Coon slid the camera back into his belt fast so she couldn't steal it, but the girl turned on me, her red hair falling over her face for a moment before she flipped it back, revealing her patterned freckles under her eyes and on her forehead.

My breath caught.

Didn't I know her?

No way, no way—the girl she reminded me of didn't have freckles. Still… she looked just like…

No time to think about that. She made a grab for her goggles. I yelped and tossed them back to the Coon, then, in self-defense, punched the girl across the face with my brass-knuckled gloves. She did not make any kind of vocal reaction. Unaffected by her scuffed cheek, she made a swipe at me, and when I backhanded her, she grabbed my arm, possibly intending to flip me. She got one hand back on my shoulder, then twisted herself around me and shoved me back against the wall of the building.

The Coon hung the goggles around his own neck, then brandished his talons and ran at the girl. Our opponent sprang like a gymnast over him, then turned back to strike him again. I was well over my daze by then, and darted behind her, where I crouched and punched her hard in the small of her back with both of my armored fists. She stumbled into the Coon, who slashed off both of her black forearm gauntlets, each of them marked with three rows of three red circles.

Only then did the girl scream. Her retaliation that time was not to attack either of us directly, but she pulled two guns out of her boots and trained one on each of us. "Sorry, boys," she said, giving special attention to me at that point, "I've really got to go. I was going to have you deliver a message to one of your little teammates, but—"

I fiddled with the rocks I still had in my hand. Good… good… Before the girl could go on, I cocked my right arm at the elbow and flicked a rock up at just the right angle to hit her in the face. She reeled back, stunned, which gave me room to steal one of her guns, and for the Coon to take the other.

"Nice," he commented, holding his out to threaten the girl.

"I'd appreciate you knowing I fight like a girl," I commented, tucking the gun I'd taken into the back of my belt. "And that that's just fine with me."

The girl glared at me, then at the Coon, then made a run for it.

"No you don't!" the Coon shouted after her. He raised his gun, but I shoved his arm down. "Chao—Harmony, what gives?"

I sneered at him briefly for nearly calling me Chaos, then glared after the young woman that had been our opponent. "Let her go."

"Why? Mysterion's gonna—"

"Mysterion'll be fine. We shouldn't kill her, and besides, we got her photo," I said. "Lemmie see that camera."

"What's going on?"

"I just… I think I know her."

The Coon handed my pink camera back to me, and, eager as a kid on Christmas (maybe eager as the child of a bomb technician on Christmas, given how quickly yet nervously I was going about the usually simple task), I called up the photo library on the back screen until I could view the photos he had managed to take. He's no photographer, but there were five shots on there, all of them actual photos of the subject, rather than missed exposures. So maybe three of them were blurry, but outlines of people were better than nothing.

One of them stopped my heart up for a second, though. I scrolled past it at first, then went back. Shit… shit…

In a clear exposure, I zoomed in on the girl's face. Her red hair was off swept to the side as she ran to avoid the shot that the Coon had still managed to take. Freckles dotted under her eyes and on her forehead; she looked to be around our age.

Those freckles threw me, but I did know that girl. I knew her pretty damn well. We'd gone to school together for a long time. Back in elementary school, some people would get her and Red confused, since they were the only girls in class with red hair, so she had proudly worn barrettes for many years, which later became variations of headbands, clips and ribbons.

Nowadays, though, she liked wearing flowers. I'd even helped her pick some out on a shopping trip not long ago in downtown Fort Collins. I hadn't known her well here in South Park, but we'd been in a couple classes together at CSU that got us talking and becoming friends.

Her name was Sally Turner. She liked to be nicknamed Powder. She was one of my roommates.

And she'd just pulled a gun on me, somehow had freckles—had she been covering them up with makeup all this time?—and was part of the Movement that was sending threats and leaflets to folks across town.

"This doesn't make any sense," I whispered to the air.

"What's up?" the Coon wondered.

"I do know her, Cartm—Coon." Dang it, we were both slipping up all over the place tonight.

"Lame, dude."

"Sorry, I didn't mean to," I apologized. "I just, thinkin' about other stuff, I forgot we were on duty for a sec."

"No, I mean it sucks if you know her." Well that was unexpectedly nice, coming from a guy who'd tried to pull his own punches against me earlier that evening. "But I guess it's also kinda good."

"You think?"

The Coon shrugged, and glared off in the direction in which she'd run. Maybe this new version of the GSM was being vague and difficult, but their reiteration of certain thoughts and themes was enough to give us in the League a fairly good start in terms of what we needed to do to hunt them down. The Cult must have been easy for the guys in terms of tracking: they had always met in the same location. The GSM was still operating from an unknown location, and under a leader who had gone underground before and who was probably not afraid of switching things up to confuse us.

The GSM was pushing that strange, similarly locationless Carnival. They had hacked radio waves. They had a spokesperson who knew exactly what to say to make every member of the Shadow League uncomfortable.

I really thought that I'd gotten to know Sally. That she was better than this. She and Heidi and I had become quite good friends over the past year, and never once had she let on that she knew about me, or any of us, being in the League. She was soft-spoken; that was also throwing me. The girl we'd just hunted down and let go had been very much on her voice, using it proudly and in a way that Sally never did.

Honestly, what hadn't I noticed in my friend? Had she been a part of the Movement the entire time? What on Earth were they after, and how much did they know?

"Hey!" The Coon's voice, a raspy undertone of Cartman's usual, slightly slurred, speech, snapped me out of my thoughts. I gave him my attention, and he held up the goggles. "Check it out."

"What?" I wondered, stepping up to study them.

The Coon wiped the lenses clean on his signature red cape, then held the goggles up for me to see more clearly. "These fuckin' things are computers."

"What?"

I grabbed the goggles from him and stared at the insides of the lenses. Oh, I could not wait to get these back to the guys at the base. For us to have recovered these (and, okay, yes, entirely to the Coon's credit, but still) was huge; an event that could see me becoming a solid addition to the team for sure. The Coon was right: inside of the seemingly standard goggles, the red lenses were equipped with flickering screens. On the sides, I noticed, was the same circular decal that the helicopter had displayed, and a switch on the outer right-hand side shifted the lenses' modes.

"Jeez," I breathed out. "We'd better only ever handle these in uniform."

"Why?"

"In case they're bugged."

"Good point."

At that moment, my wire sprang to life and Mosquito's voice came through: "Guys, how's it going? We're with Marpesia, where are you?"

"Apartment building across from the drug store," the Coon replied. "I just found somethin' awesome."

"Well, good. Let's rendezvous and head back. Marpesia got word that Movement activity got called off for the rest of the night."

"Maybe cuz-a this thing I found," the Coon boasted. I rolled my eyes, but kept on admiring the goggles. Until he snatched them back from me. Fine, I thought and almost said. You can do the show-and-tell, that's just fine. Honestly, he was still such a kid.

"We'll see. Hold your position."

I yanked the Coon back toward the alley behind the apartment building so that we could hide in the darkness, and we stood where we could still view the street, our backs to the walls of the buildings on either side so that we faced each other and had a view from both sides. While I kept my eye out diligently, the Coon continued fiddling with the switch on the side of the goggles, then started swinging them around with one hand as he, in a haughty show of irritation, thunked his head back against the brick wall of the building behind him.

I rolled my eyes but approached the situation. "What now?" I wondered.

"I just fuckin' hate waiting," the Coon complained. "Mosquito drives me fuckin' nuts. It's all, do this, then meeting, do this, then meeting. I got problems with Scott Tenorman, a'ight? I called that the Goddamn Gingers were gonna strike again. I should fuckin' lead a motherfuckin' mission!"

"Coon, look, Mosquito does a good job," I said in the sub-leader's defense. "And besides, we gotta be methodical, or—"

"Methodical?" the Coon scoffed. "Fuck that. This is pissing me off."

"What doesn't?" I muttered.

"Shut up," he glowered back. I took a good, long look at the emblematic black C on the front of his white uniform, just as he continued, "This used to be my thing. Now it's like we're the Goddamn UN or somethin'. Rules and meetings and shit. I just wanna go kick Scott Tenorman's ass."

I almost snapped at him, but told myself to keep things collected. "But don't you understand why we can't just burst in and do that?" I said. "If Mysterion had burst in and beat up Jim McElroy first thing, you guys' mission against Cthulhu mighta ended up real badly."

The Coon heaved a forced sigh. "I guess."

We did have to stick to strategy. Besides, going after the head of the GSM and bringing him in wouldn't necessarily bring an end to the uprising. In some cases, bringing down the leader could only make the group worse. I had a feeling that the Coon understood that, but I also understood his impatience. However, where there was impatience, there had to be counter-strategy. The Gingers did, at the very least, have a plan. We were just following breadcrumbs now. Soon, we'd find the end of the trail, and that would make the wait worth our while… and hopefully stop a city-wide battle before one could truly break out.

We weren't waiting on our own for long. Craig, dressed in his very simple attire of black jeans, a blue shirt, a black bulletproof vest and dark sunglasses, walked by and discovered us, then waved us out onto the street, where we joined with Mosquito and Marpesia and began our walk back.

"So fill me in," Mosquito requested, as respectfully as his nasal tone could allow. The wash on the street from the lamp posts cast broken shadows along his Mardi Gras-style mask, his signature for several years, which he had updated after the damage done to his old one during the Cthulhu crisis, with Bebe's help, to bear almost baroque swirls of gold foil. Beside his left eye, Bebe had painted, in Roman numerals, the date that the R'lyeh madness had ended. "What'd you find? Didn't you say—"

"Yup. Look what I got," the Coon boasted, holding up his stolen item for the others to see.

"Wait, hold up," said Mosquito, staring in amazement at the goggles. "Are those from—?"

"Yeah," I said. "The Coon got these off of the girl we were chasing."

"You arrest her?"

"Little Miss I'm-too-nice-to-kick-ass-anymore here let her go," the Coon muttered, jabbing one taloned thumb in my direction.

"Oh, excuse me," I griped back, elbowing him in his thick but armored gut. "You let her out of the net."

"She spit in my fucking face!"

"Shut up!" Mosquito commanded. "Don't cheapen this discovery, guys. Can I see those goggles? Did you test them? What do they do?"

The Coon gave me another glower, then surrendered the goggles to Mosquito as we continued our walk. "There's a switch on the right eye," he told our teammate. "When you flick it, it shows stuff."

"So they're computerized. Red Serge has got to hack these. Nice work, you two."

"How about you guys?" I asked Mosquito and Craig. "You catch your culprits?"

"Yup," said Craig. "You, Marpesia?"

"Toolshed got called in to help Mysterion and Angel kinda fast off," said Marpesia, "but we did end up fighting off a couple guys with Angel while Mysterion was in talking to the Goths."

"Man, I hope he got some stuff outta them," Mosquito commented. "I'm looking forward to this recap becau—"

He stopped short, and spread his arms out to get the rest of us to do the same, when a set of headlights appeared on the road ahead of us. "Shit…" he hissed.

"D'you think it's—" Craig began.

"Cops," said the Coon.

"How do you—" Marpesia and I spoke at once, and were similarly cut off when we noticed the Coon's little trick.

He'd held the goggles up to his eyes, over his mask. For a second, Mosquito looked absolutely furious that the Coon would try a trick like that, but gave in almost instantly, especially when the Coon said, "He's not goin' too fast; we can leave if we don't wanna talk to this guy."

Craig gave a nod, and I was the first to agree. I wanted to get away from the action for a little while, and hear whatever it was Mysterion and the Guardian Angel had come across that evening. "I'll distract whoever this is, just in case he did see us," Mosquito offered. None of us argued, not even the Coon. It was simple fact that Mosquito was one of the fastest runners in the League. He'd hold his own in a very literal fight or flight situation much better than any of the rest of us.

"Good call," said Marpesia. "Let's move, boys. We'll regroup and figure out what's next once we get back to the base."

Craig and Marpesia continued on, dutifully, as instructed, but as we walked, the Coon put a hand over my mouth to stifle any yelp I might make, and yanked me down behind a bush on the roadside as the headlights dimmed.

"What're you doing?" I hissed at him. "We've gotta get back."

"I'm not waitin' for the short version of this," he whispered harshly back.

"Mosquito knows what he's doing," I argued, shoving the Coon in retaliation for his roping me into an unorthodox spy mission.

"Ech. You go back, then."

"No way! They'd see me, now. You just—"

"Totally messed this up, I know, I know, whatever," the Coon muttered, rolling his eyes behind his furry mask. "If you're stayin', shut up and listen!"

I had very few other options, so I sat back and did just that.

The car squeaked to a halt, and I peered out through the prickly green branches of the bush to look on as Mosquito stood firm and resolute, waiting for the officer to come to him, rather than lower himself to approaching first. Only one door of the car opened, and Sargeant Yates stepped out. If Mosquito was put on edge by the Sargeant's arrival, he didn't show it.

"You out alone tonight, Mosquito?" Yates asked. "Not your usual game."

"Nor yours, Sargeant," Mosquito noted bluntly. "Where's Murphy?"

"Never you mind, kid." The cop dug into the back pocket of his pants and held up a slip of paper, which got me to tense and got the Coon to let out a hum of disapproval. "You mind letting Mysterion know I'm not too impressed wi—"

"What the hell is that?" Mosquito snapped at the sargeant. His quick reflexes found the hero placing his right hand immediately on the stun gun affixed to a holster at his hip, while he grabbed Yates's wrist with his left hand. My eyes widened, but I had to not react. Yates had received a letter from the GSM, being a redhead himself, and Kenny had brought up the fact that he'd warned the man against it. The stubborn man had not listened. "You got a—you opened it?"

"I know what you're thinking," Yates said, attempting to pass the event off. "Mysterion—"

"Is not going to be happy," Mosquito warned, getting his face as close to the cop's as he could without cutting him with the 'stinger' of his mask, in order to drive his point home. "I thought you trusted us when it came to things like this! I really did."

"Pass him a message, would you?" Yates said, unaffected.

"Don't you dare take any action with that letter, Yates," Mosquito warned. "You'd be putting this entire town at risk if you do."

"Just let me talk with Mysterion."

Not without backup, I was pretty sure all three of us League members were thinking at once. Mosquito grudgingly agreed, and I saw him eyeing the damned letter as Yates folded it back up into his pocket and returned to his car. The engine started up, and the headlights flashed on, blinding us for a moment. When the car had gone its way, so had Mosquito, well on his way back to the base.

"Shit," said the Coon, hauling me up. "Let's go, we gotta run if we're gonna—"

"We can't outrun Mosquito and you know it," I mumbled. "Let's just—"

"Come on!"

There was no point arguing with him now. I gathered my breath and broke into an instant jog alongside the Coon. We took back roads and forest trails back toward Token's property. I could not have been happier that we weren't in the dead of winter… the path would have been much more impeding if we had snow to deal with.

"So?" the Coon said to me through huffs of breath as he kept his pace.

"What?"

"Glad we stayed and spied?"

"We shouldn't have."

"Buuuuuuuuut…"

"Just keep running."

Even if the Coon couldn't actually lead a mission, he seemed wholly unconcerned with doing things his own way within the regulations of the missions he was on, regardless. And yes, I had to admit: I was glad that I had seen the conversation rather than heard about it. Besides, who was to say Mosquito wouldn't have gone directly to Mysterion, and Mysterion to Yates, before any of the rest of us knew?

So I was trying to redeem myself and keep balances. But some rules could be bent, I supposed. Either way, I was glad things were looking up for me. Rebuild, the voice on the radio had suggested.

I decided that I wanted that to mean my reputation. Use my old skills in new ways. Lay traps, listen in, be observant. That night proved to me that I was off to a good start. The goggles were a good find; learning about Yates's letter was a setback. But we had identified a GSM member that night, and we were soon, all too soon, about to discover more. Because we weren't the only ones with information to show and tell.

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Authors' Notes:

South Park is -c- Matt Stone and Trey Parker!

That does it for introductory chapters! :3 Now that we've caught up with everyone, it's time to get into the meat of the story, which will truly start in Kenny's chapter next week. ^^

I miss writing Chaos, but he's still got plenty of influence on Butters, it seems. (Much of this chapter was Rosie Denn's influence/contributions, too; I just wanted to make a note, since I'm always so happy to get her Butters stuff~! And who, so she tells me, is more than happy to write it! ^^)

Happy Fourth of July to anyone in the US! Off to go watch fireworks and Team America. See you next Wednesday, July 11th! :3

~Jizena, and Rosie Denn

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