So, first of all, an apology. I truly never meant to leave this sitting so long. I have learned that all my writing tends to reflect actual events or emotional upheavals in my own life. So when the stuff that inspired this story got somewhat resolved, the fire in me to complete it went out. However, I came back to it a few months ago and found that there was more than one story here, more than one thread to follow, and sticking with it I have at last finished it. I'll be posting it a chapter at a time just so I can do some last editing, but the story's done. You'll have it all in a matter of weeks.
Secondly, a thank you. A lot of people read this story early on and loved it, and many of you came back again and again to plead for updates. The fact that you subscribed and commented and everything kept me from ever forgetting that this story meant something to people. In the end, I didn't finish this for myself or because I was inspired, but because I wouldn't, couldn't let you readers down. Every word from here on out, this is for everyone who ever favorited or left a review or set an alert.
Thirdly, as always, I don't own these guys. Sad but true. But honestly? I'm not really worthy of them. Oh well. I also don't own Batman, Harry Potter, or anything else that gets referenced here. Just sayin'.
Again, I am humbly sorry for the long wait. I hope this proves worth it to you.
Enjoy!
Static patrolled Dakota with a fair bit of restlessness nagging at him, as it had been every night for the last week or two, really. It wasn't anybody's fault exactly. It was just that, with Richie now tutoring that friend of his, plus doing all his usual tinkering, plus, you know, homework, his partner-in-crime-fighting had taken a little break from hero-ing to the same extent. He knew Gear would back him up if he was needed, but he also sort of figured maybe his friend needed the space. After everything else, he couldn't blame Richie for wanting an extra hour or two to himself every day, especially when he took that time to help himself with his fragile control.
Focusing on improving the chaos in Richie's ridiculously enhanced brain was starting to have an impact, he could tell. Richie didn't always seem like he was walking around in a busy fog, and sometimes he even left off the constant pondering and relaxed. Virgil wouldn't trade his best friend for anything, but sometimes he remembered the old Richie, the pre-Bang-Baby Richie who was a normal kid and could get low grades and be bored and do something mindless and sometimes forgot things. That Richie might not have had a brain the size of Texas, but he'd seemed happier.
But now that they were starting to work on Richie's feelings (and may Sharon never find out how much girly talk he and Rich had been doing lately in the attempt), he was more at ease, though not a whole lot had changed yet. On the plus side, they'd stumbled onto an unbelievable stop-gap measure that at least took the edge off the pressure of 300 IQ points of genius. Of all things, eating a ton of heavy food tended to slow Richie's mind down for a while, like his brain went quiet trying to figure out what to do with all the sleepy-making contents of his stomach. Richie had stressed himself to the point of resembling a stick figure lately, so chowing down on whatever they could find wasn't the end of the world yet. And it wasn't like Virgil would say no to joining him for a double burger with onion rings and the biggest malt this side of Gotham.
"And anything that helps is okay by me," Virgil thought to himself, swooping low over the park. "But if he comes out weighing 200 pounds I'm gonna have to make him take over the patrols for a while."
He grinned a bit at that. Richie on solo patrol always made him pretty proud, and usually highly amused. After all, Richie didn't have super powers or ridiculous strength or even a suitably dramatic outfit. When Gear was in the sky, the baddies tended to think they'd have it easy since he wasn't a "real" superhero. And then when they were neatly trussed up and hadn't even seen him coming, when they were watching their eyes roll around in their skulls because Gear had so badly outmaneuvered them, when they had been somehow manipulated into confess not just one night's work but the last six months of wrong-doing all captured on video that was helpfully labeled and left for the police, they didn't scoff. Gear wasn't a hero like Static, but being different didn't make him any less of a hero.
He was still snickering at a particularly excellent memory of a huge mountain of a guy crying like a baby while Gear calmly rattled off all the promises he'd made to his mother and subsequently broken (and how Richie had known about it Virgil would never even be able to guess – something about a Mother's Day clip on YouTube maybe?) when something caught his eye below.
Dipping close to a nearby rooftop, Static found himself not just launching forward, but creeping carefully. Something in the posture of the figure before him suggested that he might want to watch and see how things were playing out before he made his move. But that didn't stop him from clicking on the Shock Vox and calling Richie. Even if he didn't know what was going down yet, he'd want Gear in on this one.
Because that was definitely Seraph down there, crouching at the edge of a low roof, looking over the street below.
"So much for the 'he uses solar power' thing," he thought to himself, slipping a little closer.
"You've done so well so far," Seraph's voice, soft but intense, surprised Static almost into an attack before he realized the Bang Baby was speaking into a cell phone. "I know you suffer trepidation that this is not the right course, but I assure you, our God wishes for nothing but the Truth to be revealed to all. How better to reveal His glory and righteousness than by striking those who do Him injustice?"
"You are SO crazy, dude," Static thought to himself. He adjusted his position so that he could keep listening to the conversation, but was out of direct line-of-sight.
"No, there is no danger to innocent believers," Seraph continued. "The building should be well emptied of all those we would seek to protect. We shall harm no one with this. We are merely the messengers of God upon His people."
Static checked his watch. If the usual timing held right, he had another 6 or 7 minutes before Richie finished getting into his costume and made it to his location. Not that he had given Richie a location; he knew that either his ridiculous intellect would figure it out or, more simply, Backpack would just track him using his phone or the Shock Vox or something.
"Have no fear for your safety either. Nothing will happen until I will it."
"What exactly are you doing?" Static wondered, daring to lean out a bit from the shadows. He looked not at Seraph, but in the direction Seraph was looking. The street below was mostly deserted, but one lone figure on a cell phone was mounting the steps of the convention center. He walked with his shoulders hunched under the weight of a sturdy backpack and his head was down. Something about him, even from this distance, felt familiar. Like Static, or Virgil, had seen him before.
"Enough. You must make no more room for doubt in your heart, Timothy. Now do as our God has commanded. You will find the convention center's front door unlocked."
Timothy? Static considered, running through Bang Babies, but none of them were named Timothy. Then he started running through classmates. There was T-Jam, the basketball player. No, way too tall. There was that quiet guy in his math class…was his name Timothy? No, he was Ted. What about an underclassman? And then it hit.
"But that makes no sense," he snorted. "The only Tim I know that fits his size and weight is the one who can't walk without a walker."
"Anyway," he shook himself from his thoughts. "If they're breaking into the convention center, there's no way I can let them do that. Time to get going!"
As the adrenaline washed through him, Static moved quietly from his vantage point so he could come up fully behind Seraph and get the true extent of surprise. He was practically on top of the angelic-looking but definitely not angelically-minded Bang Baby before he crossed his arms and smirked.
"Now, I know you're all God-fearing and such, but do you think you can summon up enough humility to fear me, too?"
Seraph whirled around in alarm and immediately brought up his hands.
"You! You will NOT interfere in our great work!"
"No, see, I think I will have to interfere. It's kinda my thing."
And then the fight got started.
-==OOO==-
In retrospect, Static should have seen the whole thing coming. He didn't need Gear's immeasurable intelligence to be observant, and it wasn't as if he hadn't been a successful hero in his own right for a long while now. Static's instincts had always been top-notch, and he had a knack for knowing how the bad guys thought – too many bad movies, Richie always said. He'd be kicking himself later for missing it.
If they survived that long.
For a while, things had been going pretty well, actually. Static had tried to zap Seraph to pin him in place, Seraph launched himself off the building to dodge. He'd opened his wings just long enough to glide to the ground before landing easily as a cat. Static had charged ahead, noticing as he went that Seraph was using his power sparingly. Maybe Rich'd been right and there was a solar component to his energy sources.
They'd danced and weaved in the deserted street for a few minutes, Static not quite able to catch Seraph, who deflected his electromagnetic blasts with his own sparse bursts. It was one of the most polite fights of Static's career, since Seraph didn't seem able or willing to unleash all his powers; therefore, the street took a lot less damage than usual.
Then Gear had arrived and it had gotten somewhat more fun.
"It matters not if there are two or two hundred! You will never bring down a servant of God!"
"Um, since we're almost beating you just ourselves, I think two hundred might be overkill, bro," Static laughed, weaving easily to the side of a punch Seraph had thrown.
"I don't know about that," Gear had returned. "You and me for Seraph, the other 198 for his ego!"
"God will crush you for your insolence!"
"Which one of us just knocked over the bench with the sign for the church down the block on it?" Gear asked.
"Um, that would be 'Sirrah' down there," Static grinned.
"Sheriff?"
"Set-Bath?"
"I am SERAPH!" he had bellowed.
"Oh, right," Gear had winked. "Skin-Graft."
They'd egged him on for several minutes, trading insults and jibes. And the truth was that neither of them had really been giving the fight their all – since Seraph was basically grounded and not trying to blast them to smithereens with every flick of his fist, the fight just didn't seem like a challenge.
Way too late Static remembered there'd been another person on the street.
It was almost impossible to say how it happened. One minute Gear and Static were both hovering a yard or so above the asphalt, carefully avoiding Seraph's half-hearted attacks. The next, both were flat on the ground, fighting to breathe.
"You see? God strikes those who thwart His will!" Seraph crowed as he came up.
"Stat…" Gear tried, rasping and clutching his fists to his chest in a near-panic.
"I can't…" Static's mind flashed to a day he'd spent as Virgil at his dad's center the previous summer. There was a kid there who sometimes had trouble breathing if he got worked up, and after a basketball game he'd collapsed, dragging in air and trying not to hyperventilate. He'd later described it as feeling like there was a foot on his throat and his chest pushing down, burning, and that every breath he took hurt as much as it helped. Static fought the instinct to gasp and tried to breathe slowly, evenly.
"What you have failed to comprehend," Seraph loomed right in Static's face, "is that I am quite literally on the side of the angels. What power is yours against the will and might of God?" He waved an arm and gestured. The form Static had spotted on the street earlier shuffled near.
"It is done," said a familiar voice.
Next to Static, Gear gasped in surprise, then choked on it. Virgil wanted so badly to reach out for his friend, to somehow tell him not to panic, that fighting made it worse, but he couldn't. He could only hope that information was already somewhere in Richie's big brain and that he'd have the ability to go find it.
"Timothy, look at the evil ones and know that your gift is truly God-given," Seraph said, drawing the boy nearer. "God would not permit you to punish any who did not rightly deserve it. But here you stand, unhindered by your weakness, and our enemies are fallen. It is a miracle, a miracle that proves our righteousness."
Static could feel his eyes widening as he got a better look at the kid. It was definitely Tim, but somehow he carried himself as if he had never needed a walker, as if he had never been less than a healthy, whole teenager.
"Tim…" Gear began. But his voice was dry and hollow and he could not manage more.
"How do you know my name?"
"Trade your focus, Timothy," Seraph ordered. "Let us see what he would dare say to us."
There was a strange, almost inexplicable feeling that washed over Static, like he'd just passed through a cloud. When it was over, he felt no change, but it had given him a moment in which to gather himself, and so he redoubled his efforts to keep his breathing shallow and slow. But to his amazement, after Tim shook once and seemed to falter, Gear sat up, his breathing entirely normal. Then he cried out in surprise.
"Well done, Timothy," Seraph said. Then he loomed over Gear, grabbing his helmet in one big hand and jerking his head up. "And blind you shall remain until we wish it otherwise. Now speak."
Static wanted to do something, anything, to help, but his whole battle was against his breathing; there was no room to move or jump up without risking everything. He saw Richie bring himself visibly under control, though he knew his best friend should be pretty freaked to be suddenly struck blind. But when Gear spoke, his voice was even and focused.
"Tim…you're a Bang Baby, aren't you?"
"He is a chosen vessel for the glory of God!" Seraph snarled, and his fist impacted the side of Gear's visor. Gear rocked from the blow, completely and totally unprepared, but sat himself back up a moment later.
"It's not real blindness. It's your eyesight. You project your physical limitations onto other people. Static isn't hurt, but he's suffering your asthma. And if I tried to stand up right now, I bet my legs wouldn't work. It was never Seraph. I knew it. It was always you doing this to people."
There was something cold and sad in Richie's voice and Virgil would have winced if he'd had the energy. He did, however, spare a thought for wondering why Gear was talking so much. Monologuing was something they usually left to the bad guys. Unless Richie was waiting for him to do something…
"It's not…it's harmless," came Tim's voice, wavering only slightly. "It just gives me a chance to do God's will unencumbered. That's all. It is a punishment for you, but it won't hurt you."
"When I got here, Backpack picked up a signal. There's a bomb in the convention center, isn't there?"
"Of course!" Seraph laughed. "We shall rain fire down upon those who are wicked, those who are sinners. We shall show them the error of their ways. It is our great work in His name."
"But we're not setting it off when there's people there," Tim put in quickly. "It's just a message."
"And who decides what that message is and who needs to receive it?" Gear demanded.
"The Word of God is absolute!" Seraph spat. "Question it again at your own peril."
"Listen to me, Tim," Gear moved as if he would get up, then wobbled dangerously and plopped back to the ground. "You sound like a good kid. I'm willing to bet you think you're doing the right thing. But you can't do the right thing the wrong way. You can't do something right by doing something even worse. The ends can't justify the means, Tim. You've got to know that!"
"The path God asks us to walk is not easy," Seraph said, and Static watched him turn his attention to Tim. "Do not let such unbelievers turn your mind. You know well what our task entails. I know you are brave enough to be called to this path of war against those who would bring evil into our world."
Virgil realized all at once that Seraph was nervous. Not sweating-and-fidgeting nervous, but nervous. He wondered suddenly exactly how much influence he had over the kid, and if it was enough.
"No! I know you don't believe that!" Gear countered. Seraph raised his arm and hit Gear again, hard, enough so that the hero tumbled backwards and sprawled against the curb, legs almost totally limp and flailing like a rag doll.
Protective fury burned through him and then Static wondered what exactly he was doing. Or wasn't doing, to be specific. Yes, he couldn't breathe, but Gear had just told him exactly WHY he couldn't breathe. Tim was the Bang Baby behind it. If he could distract Tim, get him to drop his powers, even for a minute, this whole thing could be over. And he was just lying there like a loser tied to some train tracks. Totally not his style!
And nobody hurt his best friend. Not ever.
He'd only get one shot at this. Static gathered himself, grateful that neither Tim nor Seraph were experienced enough to know how to really shut him down. No water, and Tim hadn't thought to take his sight either – if he'd been blinded like Gear, he couldn't have done this without running the risk of frying everything on the block.
Static breathed in once, long and slow, as Seraph stepped over him and stalked towards the unmoving Gear.
And a bolt of pure, furious, brilliant electricity flashed from Static to Tim and threw the kid hard away from where he stood over Static, pinning him with his face to the wall of the opposite building.
"Timothy!" Seraph raced back.
But the damage was done. As soon as Static had surprised Tim and completely broken his line-of-sight, he felt the constriction in his chest and throat vanish as though it had never been. He wasn't going to give the kid a chance to hit him again without getting something accomplished, so he jumped to his feet and drew his board to him.
"I think we've had enough of your help for one night," Static practically growled. He reached out and his powers caught a nearby street-sign that had been broken off in the earlier fight. It was simple to coil the metal around Seraph's broad torso, pinning his arms to his sides. That done, he blurred across the street and dropped to where Gear was stirring.
"Gear? You okay bro? Come on, say something so I know he didn't scramble your brains."
"Static, the rush at the theater for the last Harry Potter movie was worse than that," he shook his head and pushed himself to his feet. "Give me a little credit, man!"
Virgil fought a smile. Heroes shouldn't grin like a maniac even when their best friends were okay.
"What are we going to do with them?" he asked instead.
Gear handed Static one of his second-edition Zap Caps. "You go make sure burly and big-mouthed over there isn't going anywhere. I'll…I'll see about Tim."
"You sure?"
Gear nodded and started moving towards the wall of the convention center where Tim still hung, pinned. Static watched him nervously, but his partner was doing a good job of staying away from Tim's face. Probably Tim could do his thing to people only if he knew where they were. That was the hope, anyway.
Something in Richie's face told Virgil that his friend wanted to try to talk to the kid a bit before everything got all messed up with the cops and everything else, so he decided to give them a minute. Almost lazily he walked back towards where Seraph was wiggling against the street-sign. Between grunts of effort he was maintaining a running litany of insults and lofty statements about the "great and unforsakeable will of God." It was annoying.
"Look, just give it up," he sighed. "You're finished. We win. You lose. Can't you just…stop it?"
To his surprise, Seraph stopped entirely and sat down on the ground. Then he grinned a little maniacally.
"The will of God is absolute. I told you that. You have dared to thwart me. Now you will see the holy fire of God!"
Too late Static remembered that Tim had planted a bomb. Too late he saw that Seraph had wiggled until he'd been able to reach his back pocket. Too late he realized that Richie was a yard from the very building, and Tim was pinned to it. He lashed out with all his power, but too late.
Seraph pushed the button. The convention center exploded.
Static instinctively pulled his power around him like a shield and withstood the blast. But even before the smoke had cleared, he was moving. He forgot about Seraph. He just ran at the fire and rubble and the collapsed stone where a wall had been. And he screamed.
"GEAR!"