"Fuck!"

I set my controller down on the couch, the screen declaring my victory in an assault of blue and gold. Garrison meanwhile beat his controller against the surface of the couch, as though he was trying to exorcise the loose change within.

"Jesus fucking Christ, Red, do you do anything in your free time other than play this game?"

I couldn't help but smile just a little. Garrison and I were the only ones who'd taken to living in the apartments provided by my father. Trevor still stayed with his parents, and Cassie was staying with her uncle. The side effect of this was that we tended to arrive to team meetings a lot sooner than the others, which left us with some time to fuck around.

"You're just being too obvious. Dash then jump, every time."

"Yeah, whatever. I'm done."

I shrugged as he got up and started to walk around the couch, turning to the other figure in the room. "You wanna play, Layla?"

She shook her head. "Cassidy is less than a block away." She paused. "No sign of Trevor."

"Oh, well, alright then," was all I could muster in response. Not knowing how to bridge the silence, I started cleaning up the controllers, wrapping the cords neatly before putting them back under the TV and returning the disc to its original place on the shelf. Neat and orderly, like Kayden would insist.

Things were going better with the team over the last few weeks, if only barely. Since I had him talking on the topic of tinkering, Trevor had began to warm up a bit more, even if only towards me. It wouldn't do much in the way of mending the gap between the two sides of the team, but I hoped it was a start.

True to Layla's prediction, it didn't take long for Cassie to show up. Her long hair was braided, and even coiled around her neck like a scarf, it still draped well past her waistline. This was accompanied by a red leather jacket which looked pretty expensive.

"Hey dumbass, hey Theo, what's up," she greeted. She peeled off her jacket and hung it on a hook by the door, revealing a black tank top.

"Hey, Cass," I greeted.

"Fuck off," Garrison added.

"The fuck crawled up your ass?"

"He's mad because he lost at a video game," I supplied.

Cassie chuckled, and Garrison's cheeks lit up red.

Trying to save face, Garrison sniped, "You wanna try it for real, poindexter?"

"Try that in here and your brother will kill you before either of us throw a punch." In retrospect, maybe I should have ended that there. "Besides, you seemed to take yourself out of the fight well enough against Washout, do I even need to be here for this?"

A girlish laugh filled the air, and it took me a moment to realize that this time it wasn't Cassie.

"You got a fucking problem, shitskin?" Garrison moved across the room, but I was already in his way. I bumped his shoulder with mine, stopping him cold, then faced him full on, grabbing his wrists. I brought them up to either side of his head and squeezed. If he were to use his power, he could've had me on the ground in an instant, we both knew that, but he wouldn't dare try it. He wasn't immune to his own power, and we both knew that too.

When your subordinates step out of line, it's your job to put them back in their place, with words—

"Don't. Don't even think it. I know how you're used to things back home, but now you're here, and you're a member of this team. My team. I'm not saying you have to love your teammates, or even like them, but don't take your anger out on them because you lost at a fucking video game. At least try to act like an adult, for God's sake."

I held his gaze as he glared back at me, his cheeks still red, hands balled into fists in my grip. We were both tall, but I had the advantage in weight and strength, and there wasn't much he could do. Even so, I could tell he wasn't about to back down.

—or with actions.

I stepped forward, right in his face, and hooked my foot behind his heel. By the time he registered what I'd done, both of his feet were already off the ground. I followed him down as he fell flat on his back, still holding his wrists, and planted a knee on his chest, pressing down on him. He wheezed, and I felt the fight go out of him.

I let him go, then stood up and turned to check on Layla, making it a point to let Garrison notice. To keep an eye on him would be to recognize him as a threat, which could only escalate things further.

Layla herself seemed impassive; not as scared as she should've been, but not confident either. Just uncaring.

My thoughts were interrupted by the wooden creak of the door opening; whipping my head around, I saw a costumed Trevor being escorted by Donnie. Both sets of eyes were locked on the grounded Garrison, but both were accompanied by a different expression.

Donnie's eyes met mine and his face tightened into a frown. It felt like he was about to say something but then thought better of it, as all he did was turn and walk away, making no effort to disguise his mood with his heavy footsteps.

The silence itched at the back of my neck.

"Alright," I said, not knowing anything better to do. "Let's get this over with."

I took a seat next to Layla and waited for the team to gather round. Garrison and Cassie sat on the couch across from me, while Trevor took the unoccupied seat to my flank.

My dad had this set up to encourage me to make choices myself, but that didn't mean I couldn't make do.

From the kangaroo pouch of my hoodie I produced a pen, my notebook, and a tablet, an expensive little thing that I rarely elected to use. The perk of 'mobile' didn't mean much for someone with my lifestyle, and I had a more than decent laptop to boot. I selected a slide show app and set it on the coffee table before looking to the group, the screen displaying the words 'Month One' in bright text.

I scrolled down, past the notes from previous meetings. Mostly about who we'd fought. Sixer and Stray, Bonebreaker and Crossbone, Coach and Slapshot, Washout and Highrise, the Turtle, and finally Misericorde. All villains, other than Bonebreaker and Crossbone. So far we'd mostly avoided heroic attention.

"Alright, this is probably going to be a short meeting. Cassie, Garrison—" At hearing their names, Garrison sat up a little straighter, while Cassie remained slumped into the couch. She hadn't said a thing since my brief scuffle with Garrison. "You two said you ran into someone out on your patrol. Who?"

Garrison relaxed a little while Cassie elaborated, a bit sullen. "No idea. My uncle makes me keep up with all the local capes but this punk wasn't someone I recognized. He's new, gotta be."

I frowned. That had the potential to be bad. Up till now we'd had the advantage of being relatively unknown, while all of our targets had been known quantities. It wasn't an advantage that could last forever, but I wasn't looking forward to losing it.

"What did they look like?"

"Some short kid, skinny too. He was wearing football padding to cover it but his arms were fuckin' twigs."

"Got it. Anything else? Colors, defining features..." I kept writing as she spoke.

"His costume was orange, real high-viz shit. Other than that, nothing."

"Powers, then. What did he do?"

"Teleporter. Not just himself, other people and stuff too. Ended up blowing Sparky's pixie dust back in our faces. Can't be as versatile as all that, though. He never got up onto the roofs, and he couldn't move stuff I had in the air."

"So his power is ground based?"

She shrugged. "Makes sense to me."

"Alright, that's good. If Chariot and I know what to build around we can deal with him. Moving on, then."

I finished writing down my notes on the new cape and then tapped the screen, bringing up the next slide. On the screen were three figures, one was a civilian man, Middle Eastern, smiling and holding up his hands in a double thumbs' up. On either side of him was a cape, each clad in a red leather suit. One was an older man, maybe the same age as my father; the other was a small girl, maybe even younger than Layla.

Surprisingly, Trevor was the first one to speak. "That's Bonfire and Hotspot. We fighting them next?"

I shook my head. "Bad idea. They don't have anything to offer, and attacking a kid isn't good for our rep." I reached out to the tablet and zoomed in on the background. "Recognize that?"

I got a few confused looks, but just as I opened my mouth to speak up, Layla beat me to it.

"They're in our territory."

I nodded. "Right. I doubt they were looking for us specifically. We're pretty new and most of our fights haven't gotten any media coverage, so they might not even know we exist yet. But if you guys come across them, do your best to spook them off. Again, it's an issue of reputation."

"Great. Can we get the fuck out of here now?" Garrison said as he braced his hands on his knees and moved to stand up.

I raised a hand, and he sat back down, still scowling. "One more thing. If you guys want any gear, just give me a list and I should be able to get it for you. My father has connections, so don't worry about quality."

"What sort of gear are we talking, here?" Rune asked. "Like, body armor and shit? Or are we talking machine guns and rocket launchers?"

"Those are possible," I said, and Trevor straightened up slightly. "But probably bad ideas. We've been doing pretty well so far, and now's probably not the time to escalate. I was thinking more like—" I searched for words. "Stuff to help us be better at what we're already doing."

"Like, I dunno, more stuff for me to drop on people?" Rune asked. "It's a bit of a pain having to find shit on-site every time. Especially stuff that won't just squash them."

"Sure," I said. "And maybe something to hold Garrison's dust, so he can make some early, or so that we can all spread it around." Garrison just grunted. "Or yeah, body armor too." I spared a glance for Layla. She was, as always, dressed in her costume, the yellow material almost thin enough to see through. "Maybe warmer costumes. We're getting close to winter."

"That all?" Garrison asked again. I gave him a look, but he wouldn't meet my eyes.

"That's all," I said. "No plans for tonight, either. Keep going out when you've got the time. Show the flag. Do some tagging if you want."

"We should get people for that," Rune said. "I'm shit with a spray can."

"I'll think about it," I said.

"We'll need money, first," Garrison muttered.

I bit my lip rather than respond, and he got up, walking to the door and leaving, slamming it behind him. Rune gave me a look, questioning, and I just shook my head. Her mouth twisted a bit, but she didn't say anything either, choosing instead to get up and leave more calmly, without the slammed door.

Layla ignored it all, staring off into space.

I turned to Trevor. "Something else you wanted?" I asked him, pushing down my irritation with Garrison and the whole situation. "You're usually the first out the door."

"I am," he agreed. "You guys have a fight?"

"Just a matter of discipline," I said. "Nothing you need to worry about."

"'Kay," he said, shrugged. "Whatever. But yeah, I wanted to ask if we could maybe move today's patrol back a day or two. I got plans for tonight."

"I'd rather not," I said, thinking. "I've got a thing the day after tomorrow that I can't miss."

"Yeah? What?"

I shrugged. "Social thing, with my father. Gallery opening, I think. Command performance."

"Huh," he said. "Tomorrow?"

"Cassie and Garrison are covering tomorrow," I said. "Cassie's got a family thing tonight, and I don't figure you want to swap with Garrison."

He frowned. "So, what? I cancel my plans?"

I looked at him. Trevor, in some ways, had given me the least trouble so far. He didn't push boundaries like Garrison, or blow things off like Cassie, and he paid a lot more attention than Layla did. That was something I wanted to reward, if possible, even if most of the reason he gave me so little trouble was that he was never around except to tinker or patrol.

"We could push it up instead," I suggested. "Go out now, and finish up before whatever you've got planned?"

He nodded, the frown smoothing out. "Works," he said.

"Alright. Just let me get changed and we can head out."

Our territory had grown in the weeks we'd been active. Not as much as it had at first. That level of growth wasn't sustainable. We were one of the biggest teams in the south end of the city, and by far the biggest near the water, but that didn't mean we were invincible, and more territory meant more neighbors, which meant more possible fights.

More enemies, too, considering that every time we expanded our territory it meant kicking someone else out of theirs. Not all of them took it well, and reprisals were a constant threat.

Just last week Garrison had gotten it bad from Washout, his own power only serving to backfire once he'd gotten drenched. He'd been out of action for days, and I'd worried things might snowball from there. More injuries inviting more attacks that we'd have to face with less people in fighting shape. It hadn't happened so far, thankfully.

But it did mean we'd had to step up our patrols. Get more organised. Layla was incredibly helpful there, of course, but no matter how effective she was as an early warning system, we still had to be seen to be around and active.

For a certain value of 'seen', anyway. Most of our patrols were at night, with most of our effort going to tagging our borders.

In fact, thinking about it, this was probably the first time I'd actually seen our territory during daylight hours.

Not that there was too much to see, of course. Any area that got too busy was dangerous to claim in this part of the city, where police response times weren't measured in hours and PRT times were even quicker. Residential areas were out, for similar reasons. So was anywhere close to a school or hospital. In the north end, and even downtown, the police basically ignored any calls complaining about gang tags or graffiti. Here, enough of them could invoke an actual response, and without tags there wasn't any way to know who really held an area.

Fighting the police, of course, was just out of the question.

So our territory had ended up as something of a blobby, uneven 'x' shape, stretching south and east from the Falmel, deeper into the commercial part of the south end, skirting the busy area around the Weyland mall, then expanding outward in three directions, bounded mostly by suburbs.

"Hey!" Chariot called, and I pulled myself out of my thoughts, looking in his direction.

He was standing at the end of an alley, pointing at the wall. I joined him, and it didn't take long to figure out what had caught his attention. Someone had painted over our tag. Messy, uneven black spray paint, totally covering it and the wall around it. There wasn't a new tag, though.

"Probably Washout and Highrise," I said.

"Or just some dumb kids," Chariot countered. "I mean, I doubt Washout's out of the hospital yet, and Highrise is kinda pathetic on her own."

I shrugged. "Maybe," I said, then nodded to the wall. "Doesn't really matter. Clean it off and re-tag it."

He glanced at me for a moment, looking down at my belt, at the lack of spray cans or tools there, but he didn't complain. He just got to work, pulling a can of stripper gel off his belt and loading up a brush, then scrubbing at the bricks. His nose wrinkled at the smell, but it went pretty quickly.

One of the advantages of patrolling every day. The paint didn't really have time to set.

"So, you looking forward to it?" he asked.

I blinked. "Looking forward to what?"

"Your thing," he said. "Gallery opening, or whatever it was."

I hesitated. Should I answer? If so, how honestly? Chariot wasn't the sort to talk much, so this was clearly some kind of invitation. Or something.

"Not really," I said, maybe too quickly. "Not my kind of thing."

He shot me a look, impossible to determine between his domino mask and bandana. "Oh yeah? So why go?"

"Command performance," I reminded him. "My father didn't exactly give me a choice."

He pondered that for a moment. He knew what I was talking about, of course. Everyone on the team knew who I was. Knew that I was Kaiser's son.

It was why, in the end, I wasn't afraid of Garrison leaving the team, or of Donnie deciding to kick us out of the Falmel. He might have been a power nullifying brute that could probably take on any cape in the city, but Kaiser was Kaiser. You didn't cross him and expect to get away with it.

I fought off a scowl, keeping my expression neutral with some effort.

"Does it bother you?" I asked.

Chariot looked my way again for a moment, then flicked his eyes back to the wall he was scrubbing. "So, if I say yes, you gonna put me on the ground too?"

I did scowl that time. "No," I said, shortly.

""Kay," Chariot said. "So, what'd he do to deserve it?"

None of your business.

"He went after Layla," I said.

"Oh yeah?" he asked, stopping his scrubbing to look at me.

"Got mad that I beat him at a game, and Cassie laughed at him," I elaborated.

"Harsh."

"Of me, or him?"

He shrugged. "Both, I guess. Doesn't seem like you, though."

"Do you think you know me well enough to say what is and isn't like me?" I asked. Snapped, almost. "You're never around."

"Guess not," he said, going back to his work. "Thought you might have been worried or something, though. You know, taking it out on Turismo."

I paused again, then slumped slightly.

"Yeah, fair," I said. I probably should have stopped there. I didn't. "I just... was hoping to have made more money by now, is all."

"We short on cash?" he asked. "Thought we still had some from the whole thing with Turtle."

"No, we do," I said. "Just, my father expects a certain cut, and this gallery thing... It's not a deadline, per se. Just that it's the first time I'll have seen him in a while. It'll probably come up."

"Shitty," Chariot said, finishing up his work on the wall.

The black paint was gone, but most of our tag had gone with it. He tossed the brush aside and slid over a few feet, wheels whining softly, then pulled a couple spray cans off his belt. Red and gold. He started working, spraying a big triangle of red paint on the wall, filling it in, then moving to the gold. He glanced at me a few times as he worked, or at least at my costume. Copying the wing-like pattern from the front of my mantle onto the red triangle.

I was quiet while he worked, but it didn't take long before he tossed the cans aside, into the same pile of garbage the brush had gone in. Chariot worked fast. He did everything fast, really.

"So," he said, wiping his hands off on his already dirty jeans. "Money, yeah? I've maybe got a suggestion."

I raised an eyebrow, invisible behind my mask. "I'm listening."

He nodded a few times, then cleared his throat. "So, we're not doing drugs or anything, yeah? No girls either, I hear."

"That's right," I said, not quite able to hide the distaste I had for the idea. Not least because as the weeks had gone on with no real money coming in from the territory we'd taken, the idea had become... not appealing, or anything close to it. But less unappealing, at least. It wasn't like we'd have been selling bad quality product or anything, after all. My father ran a pharmaceutical company. We'd have access to the best drugs in the country, barring power-made stuff.

But I knew if I went that route, it wouldn't be the end. It never was. It was a slope I didn't want to start down, if I could avoid it.

"Well, I know some guys, right?" Chariot said. "I could probably find a good target to hit, someone with cash on hand. A quick smash-and-grab and we'd be in the black for a good while."

"Hitting other villains?" I asked. "Or someone else?"

He shrugged, a quick jerk of his shoulders. "Someone else, probably. Bad people, though. Not like, a business, you know? Not a legal one, anyway."

It was, in a lot of ways, a bad option. I didn't bother to ask who the 'guys' Chariot knew were. I doubted he'd answer if I did. Beyond that, though, it showed desperation. Villains, by and large, took the easy road to make money. Selling drugs, or guns, or fencing stolen merchandise, or selling girls, or even running a casino or fighting ring; all fairly safe options. On any given day, the worst thing you'd face was a person with a gun, and any cape would have an easy time dealing with that. People knew it, too, so even the most angry or disgruntled customers tended to keep it to themselves.

A smash and grab was different. Even if the risk wasn't that high, it showed that you needed money now, rather than later. That implied a weakness of some kind, even if nobody knew exactly what it was. It was something that other teams would take note of. Overall, a bad idea, especially for the long term.

Except, we did need money. I needed money. The thought of showing up at the gallery, walking with my father and having to tell him that I had nothing to show for nearly a month's work and half a dozen fights?

Not something I wanted. Not by any stretch of the imagination.

Thinking over the possibilities, I said the first thing that came to mind. "It'd be dangerous. If Rune gets taken out of the fight, we'd be stuck."

Trevor nodded. "So a getaway van or something? Think your dad can get that done for you?"

"Maybe," I conceded. "Had something else in mind, but I'll have to talk to you about it. See if we can work something out. How soon can you have a target for us?" I asked.

Chariot grinned. "Tomorrow."