So I was halfway through when I realized that Frank was an OC. It had honestly never occurred to me because in my mind he is so not a major character. Anyone who gets annoyed by OCs, DON'T PANIC. The entire chapter is focused on Hivey types.
Disclaimer: I own nothing (but I guess I own Frank, oh, and one other guy)
Warnings: 1 curse word… oops.
It had been Frank's third day on the job when he had met Seymour. He had slowly been growing used to the fact that he was guarding a meta-human prison, that hadn't been the problem. However, when some other guards had ushered a skinny slip of a kid into the holding cell, he was a little shocked. Frank was a good cop, so he covered up the surprise admirably, but that hadn't stopped him from glancing as the kid was being pushed by him, just once. The child had given him the widest smile he had ever seen.
Frank looked away.
About an hour later a voice called out from behind him. "Heeeey mister cop!"
Frank looked around out of the corner of his eye and once again saw the tiny black boy who could have couldn't have been a day over seven, maybe eight. He turned back, facing the wall once again.
"I'm Seymour! Do you have a name, mister cop?"
Frank didn't answer. Child or not, he was still in a jail cell, meaning that he had done something wrong. Seymour tried to talk to him a few more times, before huffing and going deeper into the cell. A few minutes later Frank decided to turn around, because he couldn't trust the other criminals with a kid as small as that one, metahuman or otherwise.
Most of the others in the cell had slumped over in despair. Seymour, however, was bouncing around from person to person excitably, and not the least bit scared. On one of his bounces around the room, he turned and saw Frank staring. Given a gasp of delight, he bounded over.
"Mister Cop, you have a face!" The little boy beamed at him again. "And here I was all worried." He laughed.
Frank crushed a smile before it came out. This kid was a criminal, remember that. "What do you want kid?"
"Do you have a name, I don't wanta keep callin' you mister cop all the time. It's weird."
"Yeah, I have a name kid." Frank replied stonily.
"Wanna tell me what it is?" Seymour asked, keeping his grin.
"Hey kid, shut the fuck up!" Another inmate called from the other side of the room.
"Aww, is the poor widdle baby sad because he's in jail?" Seymour crooned back. The other man growled back, but didn't move. The metahuman prison eventually made everyone weary. It would only be a matter of time before Seymour was feeling its effects.
At the very least, it would calm the kid down.
Frank sighed, and was about to turn back to his post, but all of a sudden there was a whirl of black. A skinny pale boy with a shock of violet hair appeared. He jumped to Seymour's side.
"Just a sec Elliot, could we-"The boy's voice tapered off. The other boy, presumably Elliot, nodded shortly. Just as Frank lunged for the cage in order to stop what he suddenly realized was going to happen, the two vanished just as he feared.
Then from behind him he heard the little boy's voice again. "Frank Mason, huh? Nice to meetcha Frank Mason, 30 years old, from Arizona."
Frank whirled around and just barely caught the wallet that had been thrown back at him. "See you!" Seymour cried happily. The two little boys disappeared again.
Frank had, understandably, panicked and rushed to find one of the other guards. They just laughed and told him not to worry about it, there was no way to keep kids from the Hive for long.
That had been Frank's first time really hearing about the Hive. And now he had two skinny faces to match with the name.
He didn't see Seymour for a while after that, and while he never really forgot the boy, the memory went to the back of his mind. He had bigger things to do, after all.
The next time he saw Seymour the boy looked like he was eight years old. But Frank couldn't be sure; he was even skinnier than he was the last time.
Unlike the last time however, the boy sauntered right into the cell, not waiting for the cops to escort him there. The newer cop who had been positioned to stand with Frank, Ron, looked bemused.
"Is that normal?" He asked Frank confusedly. Frank shrugged, and sent over a half-hearted smile.
"Frank!" He heard joyfully from behind him. "I didn't see you there!" Seymour came over the edge of the cell confidently. "How have you been?"
"All right." Frank said dryly. "I see you've been caught again."
Seymour laughed. "Yup. I don't know what happened, one minute I was robbin' a bank real nicely, then all of a sudden, I get a pair of cuffs slapped on me." He laughed again. "Oops."
"When are you getting picked up?" Frank had grown used to criminals escaping all of the time, and was slowly becoming indifferent to it. He had to admit, the fact that criminals escaped so easily still bothered him. But there wasn't much he could do about it.
Ron had never witnessed it, and looked confused. He would find out soon enough.
Seymour appeared to be considering it. "Well, Angel said if I'm gonna be dumb enough to get caught, I ought to stay there a day and reflect. Baron said they'd break me out soon enough. And Elliot'll probably come for me, unless he's having one of his bitchy days. So I don't really know, could be any time!"
"Break you out?" Ron cut in, looking scandalized. "What're you talking about brat? You're here until the end of your sentence!"
Seymour looked at him pityingly before turning back to Frank. "New recruit?"
Frank nodded shortly, wincing as he prepared himself for what was to come. Most criminals took great pleasure out of the game 'break the newbie'. As adept at making friends as Seymour was, Frank had a feeling that he Seymour was no exception. He could only hope that the boy's natural charisma would gentle the blow a bit.
Seymour sighed and, sure enough, turned back to Ron and said, in a conversational tone "Look, Ron was it? Let me explain something for your own personal peace in mind. See those guys in there?" He waved an arm carelessly at the near-comatose criminals decorating various sides of the room. "Well, I'm different. Those guys, they aren't the real criminals. They're the ones who tried stealing once, using their powers, and got their asses kicked because they didn't properly train. They're the ones who wallow here for a while, because they're too stupid to know that you guys drug up the food. That's not me, I've trained. Sure, I got caught, but I could get out of here right now if I wanted. I just don't want to blow up the jail-house. Do you kind of get my meaning?"
Ron's face was slowly turning red in anger. He whirled on Frank. "What is the point of cops if they can't even hold an eight year old in prison?" he hissed.
Frank sighed, feeling a wave of pity for the new recruit. "I dunno Ron, I can't understand it much myself."
Just then, like Frank knew he would, a tiny boy appeared in front of them. He looked up and Frank and the scowling Ron, before sending back his own scowl fiercely. Seymour giggled from behind them. Frank put a pacifying hand on Ron's shoulder so that he wouldn't lunge at the little boy in an attempt to keep the criminals in jail. It wouldn't do them any good.
"C'mon Elliot, I wanna go!"
The other boy's scowl only got fiercer and his hands flew through a series of motions.
Seymour laughed again. "Because you're the only guy that can teleport, of course."
Elliot rolled his eyes, but appeared in the cage anyway, and with a flash Seymour and he were gone.
Frank turned to Ron, worrying that he had lost another recruit. Most new cops, unable to cope with the terrible reality of the city's police situation and their inability to keep the ones they really needed to in jail, would quit right away. He had begun to like Ron, but if the other man wanted to quit that was too bad.
"They're both so young." Ron said to him, his face transfixed.
"I know." Frank said back, and he did.
Ron quit a few days later.
A couple of months later, Jonathan Sikes was somehow caught and was transferred to Frank's jail cell. Honestly, the teenager hadn't made much of an impression on Frank. He had seen criminals go and come, and despite Johnny's grey skin and hard-rocker attitude, Frank wasn't all too affected.
He hadn't expected the metahuman to stare at the back of his head for a couple of seconds, before confidently coming over.
"Hey, you Frank?" Johnny said, his voice unconcerned, but vaguely interested.
"Yeah." Frank responded.
"Cool. Seymour's mentioned you a couple of times."
"You know the kid?" Frank turned to face Johnny, a little more interested in what he had to say. It wasn't that Frank was particularly attached to Seymour; however, the boy had been his first glimpse of what it felt like to have a criminal escape from your clutches so easily. Frank sometimes thought, that if it hadn't been a little boy escaping, he might have left the force like Ron. Seymour was his first escapee, so Frank was semi-emotionally invested in the child.
"Obviously." Johnny snorted. "He likes you, but then, Seymour likes pretty much everyone," he paused, then added as an after thought, "and expects to be liked in return."
Frank gave him a thin smile. "That does sound like him. How old is he anyway?"
Johnny scrunched up his forehead in thought. "Maybe nine? I dunno."
"He's small then."
Johnny scoffed. "They're all small. You've probably seen Elliot too, right? Little pale guy who Seymour always hitches a ride off of? They're all about that size."
"I take it you're not part of the Hive then."
Johnny snorted. "Hell no, I don't need that school. What they do to those kids is sick."
Frank wanted to ask what he meant, but there was really nothing he could do about it, even if he did know. They sat in silence for a couple more minutes, before Johnny sauntered over to the other wall, smashed a hole in it, and fled the prison.
Frank wouldn't have chased after him even if he thought he could catch him.
Seymour started coming to prison more and more frequently as the years went on. However, Frank was almost positive that the thief let himself be caught nine times out of ten. He was getting skinnier and bags the size of dinner plates decorated his eyes. With a weary grin, Seymour never could stop from smiling, Seymour told Frank that he needed a break, and jail was the best place to get one.
On that particular occasion, it had been a day and a half before his friend had come to pick him up. Maybe he had taken so long so that Seymour could rest? Elliot looked just as thin and tired as him.
Seymour had slept with his back to the wall and had one eye open at all times. What was the Hive doing to those kids?
"Do you have kids Frank?" Seymour asked him, on one of his numerous jail 'visits'.
"Yeah, a little girl and boy."
"Twins?"
"They sure are." Frank gave a small smile, a proud look overtaking his face. "They're good kids."
"Not gonna sell 'em?"
"No, I think we'll keep them."
From then on, Seymour always asked him about his kids. Frank wondered if it was because he wanted to look in on a situation where a family was working, just for a second. But that might not have been true. Maybe he was just interested in his kids. Frank never knew what to think with Seymour.
He saw some of the other Hive kids too, but they were less willing to talk with him. He did remember their faces though. Billy was skinny, like the rest of them, and had a big attitude to make up for his short stature. Hank stuck to Billy like glue when they were in jail together, and alone seemed to have a knack for making an enemy out of everyone in the prison cell. Frank saw Baron, Mikron, and Jinx one time, and only recognized them from Seymour's description. A little boy who was bald and angry, a pink haired girl that was skinny as a rail, and a strong boy in his early teens that took on the responsibility. Elliot was there almost constantly, for jail breaks and sometimes just because he was bored and felt like getting caught.
Although Frank never really talked to them, he grew fond of them in the way one grows fond of a person they always see on the subway. A detached affection.
He found himself looking forward to the time Seymour spent in jail. Since there was no way in hell he was going to subject himself to spending time with the Hive boy outside of his job, Seymour was enough trouble when he was working (And Frank wasn't masochistic), the only time Frank saw the kid was when Seymour was in jail.
Frank looked back to the time when he had hated the fact that criminals escaped from the jail, and laughed. Sometimes it still bothered him, that the people seeking to harm the city got out and could harm others, but now that the villains had a face, it didn't bother him so much,
Franks image of a villain was Seymour, and honestly, that wasn't such a terrible icon to deal with.