"I'd try to describe it, but as stupid as it sounds, you really just can't. One day you're a nobody and the next your podcast has over two million subscribers."

"I still can't believe you interviewed yourself." Billy smirked. "This superhero thing better not go to your head."

"Hey, my idea was genius!" Freddy grabbed a chip from the bowl placed between them. "And making it sound like there were two people naturally having a conversation together was a lot harder than it looks, especially if your mom is trying to break into your room every fifteen minutes."

"You're not the one who has over ten million hits on YouTube."

"You didn't even make that video!" Freddy smirked. "And I thought you said you weren't going to rescue cats from trees."

Billy shrugged. "Duty called."

He had to admit, being a hero wasn't as bad as he first thought. Getting hit in the face with a bullet was no worse than a bee sting. Running two-hundred miles per hour gave him a seemingly endless adrenaline high. And flying? There was nothing in the world quite like it.

"Hey, Billy?" Freddy's face was buried in his bowl of salsa when he spoke, but something about the tone of his voice made his stomach tighten.

"Yeah?" He swallowed, bits of pointed dough scratching at the inside of his throat.

"You know those things you mentioned - The Seven Deadly Sins?"

"Yeah?"

Freddy looked up to him. "Whatever happened to them?"

"I don't know."

Freddy's frown deepened. "Are you sure?"

"I don't think I'd miss them." His voice dropped. "You've been at this superhero thing longer than I have. Why don't you know something about them?"

"Hey, I'm not trying to start a fight!" He ran a hand through his hair, his gaze falling back on the kitchen table. The longer the two kept this thing up, the more likely Freddy would wind up a legal citizen of California. If his place was crowded, Billy's always seemed on the verge of being abandoned. They really needed to get an actual lair. "I'm just..."

"Just what?"

"Just scared, okay? There's got to be more to this than just stopping bank robberies and helping to catch jumpers off the Golden Gate bridge. Right?"

"Are you saying you want us to deal with an alien invasion or giant monster attack?"

"Of course not! But..." He waved his chip absently in the air. He'd been holding the same one for almost two minutes and still had yet to take a bite from it. "But that kind of stuff is kind of inevitable in our line of work, right?"

"And you thought I was too scared to do this."

"Come on, that has to freak you out!"

Billy snorted. "Don't you watch the news? Everything should freak you out."


His bruises vanished almost as quickly as they appeared, blood retreating back into his skin as his veins knit themselves back together. Yet the shock of pain remained, his heart racing as he struggled to pull himself to his feet.

Thaddeus could feel the Sins crawling inside of him. Their voices no longer echoed in his brain. Now, they were practically the narrator of his own thoughts.

Perhaps he would have been more concerned about how hands-on they had started to become if he wasn't already used to taking hits until he ended up moaning in a heap on the floor. Not that the blows held much meaning. The Sins could leave him half-dead in a crushed and bloody heap and his broken body would still stitch itself back together when they returned to him. And, like it or not, that was what they always had to do. Without him, they had no hold on this world.

Oh, they might rush him. Whisper to him of a life of pain and powerlessness if he kept holding himself back.

The longer you wait, the stronger he becomes.

Not that Thaddeus needed them to remind him. Every time he turned on the news, that blue bolt of lightning was plastered across some news channel for helping to rescue a sinking cargo boat's crew or for helping to put out a fire. Even the political talking heads were going on about him endlessly - a sad but inevitable consequence, he supposed, for becoming the main topic of the president's latest Twitter ravings.

Oh, the anger was still there. He wanted to rip the hair from that bright-eyed boy's scalp as he held him down, listen to him beg and plead and cry. Beneath that shiny veneer of perfection, that purity of heart that had forever alluded Thaddeus, was someone malleable. Though he did not kill the wizard, he could at least still make a sobbing shame of his champion.

No, Thaddeus wasn't worthy. But he was more than able to leave the champion squirming in a broken heap, begging for his pathetic life. Apologizing for all that he had taken from Thaddeus. And when the champion's power was his own, when he finally had the gifts that had evaded him for over forty years...

What then?

It was that question that had held him back. The Sins had offered him the world on a silver platter. And not just as it was now but better. A world where petty strife had finally been beaten into submission, a world that valued logic and fairness - a world that made sense if only its inhabitants could be made to see reason.

A world without men like his father and brother.

Oh, he might have to get his hands dirty remaking it, but that world was possible. He could practically feel it on the edge of his fingertips.

No.

That wasn't his world, not really. He'd made his own, carved it out of blood and sweat and pain. The Sins might have offered their running commentary, but they had never gotten him through university or landed him a job. He was the one who'd stayed up all night studying and worked through grueling lab shifts the day after thanks only to black coffee and unrelenting anxiety. The one who'd refused his father's offer for a position at the family's company and the millions a year that came with it if it meant remaining his own boss. The one who'd gotten his name cited in over two-hundred papers.

If he were to fully submit to the Sins, that world would slip like sand from between his fingers.

He'd lose William first. One mad, rambling speech about rebuilding the world in his image and the feds would have his son halfway across the country and sporting a new name within 48 hours.

And that was why, even with the ability to send hundred of volts of electricity from his fingerprints and summon the beasts of hell at his command, he held back.

Thaddeus wouldn't abandon the boy. Couldn't.

Not even if the Sins took his head for it.

And yet... What did that old life matter? It wasn't the Sins asking himself that question. Why hold onto the last pieces of his world when everything else was already broken?

His coworkers still believed that they were investigating mass hysteria. What would they think if the sketches of demons that they had spent hours examining suddenly burst to life and ripped through the streets? What would William think if he saw Thaddeus' face on the news, his bandages forgotten?

They wouldn't understand, Thaddeus reminded himself. No one ever had been able to.

But maybe in a better world they could.


He'd set up ten different phone alerts, one of which went off about every five minutes. They were no doubt sending his blood pressure to levels previously unseen by medical science, but he couldn't stop himself from reading every news article that came out and rewatching every bit of video footage he found.

"I'm Freddy, your host, and today, listeners, we're lucky enough to be joined by a man of many names. You may know him as Maximum Voltage or Lightning Lord."

"I much prefer Captain Marvel," the champion interjected. Even his voice gave Thaddeus a headache.

"I think that's already copyrighted."

The two laughed at that. Had Thaddeus clutched his phone any harder than he might have crushed it.

It was one thing to gain the wizard's powers and another to shove that fact in the entire world's face.

Thaddeua paused the podcast, taking in a deep breath. Ever since the episode had first dropped, he'd listened to it about once every four hours, poring over every second. At forty-five minutes, it far surpassed any other interview he'd ever given. The champion's arrogance had to count for something. Surely the wizard had been desperate and moments away from death to choose someone like this. He couldn't really have been worthy. No one who posted his face all over the internet could be.

And that was the funny thing about the world wide web. Thaddeus had never cared for more than a sparsely updated LinkedIn page. This alleged champion? He was on everything.

Why, all that was left was for the champion to put up a glowing neon sign advertising his location. And if he didn't do that? It would be easy enough to bring him into the light.

Thaddeus was about to hit play again when his phone pinged. His heart stopped when he read the headline. The full article made it race so quickly that he half expected it to burst forth from his chest.

So there was another.

All those years of being less than nothing and the champion had already roped in a partner to his mad quest. The idea that the wizard could find even one person who was truly virtuous and pure of heart was laughable. That somewhere out in the world there was a second?

Implausible.

The Sins were silent as he ripped his bandages away and opened the window of his study. There was no time left for games or hypotheticals.

This madness had eaten away at his life for decades. It ended tonight.