[noted]:

Wow, so last chapter showed us what a few of the heroes fighting method's are - Rouge's is surprising strength, Lux is completely cocky in the best way possible and Bolt just wants to have fun but can end a battle - literally, that chapter ending was not expected not even by me, I honestly just went with it. Also, I apologize to the authors whose characters didn't really get their little chance in the spotlight, but I assure you, there'll be more of them.

Moreover, go to the comments and tell me what you think of the last ending and what you think of this chapter cause this one's more development than action - sorry action lovers! Anyways, jump down there and leave a little something cause you know how much I love those things. Also, as a heads-up, I'll be updating every Sunday, though this story might have a bit more lag than Volatile.

KingKatsu: how on earth did you guess this like, twenty minutes after I posted chapter three? You're on fire.

DarkRed101: I'm not sure if I'm doing OC pairings, but I'd have to talk to the respective authors about that because technically, I am writing their characters and it wouldn't be fair to spring this upon them with no heads-up. But, if authors do want an OC pairing with another OC, I'd be glad to contact the other author and ask them for their opinion and see if I can work it in if both agree.

Guest: no, she's not hurt badly - if she can stand to be touched, it's mostly something minor compared to what Bolt could have done.

[ chapter three ]

disculparse

Translation - apologize

Appropriation - "Yo...yo quería disculparse por lo de antes."

"That freaking...I'm not gonna swear around you, but for god's -"

"Hey," her hand is soft and warm on his arm from where he leans over the chair onto the hospital bed when she places it there, and brown eyes are staring at him with the softness that has been bred from years of loneliness and cruelty and it has only made her kind. His anger eases slightly when Tempest smiles at him and when she pulls back, he shuffles the chair closer. "I'm fine, okay? Look, all I have to do is just have to rub this salve on and I'll be good, Iron Fist even helped with -"

But her words are cut to a close, when Nova's mouth slots over hers and Tempest instantly responds, hooking an elbow around the back of his shoulders and shrugging the helmet off of his head. His hand digs into her hair for a moment, keeping her hostage for a blessed second but she doesn't seem to mind. The kiss descends into laughter when he tries to snatch his helmet back, missing prematurely and settling for kissing her again before dropping back into his seat. "Shut up, okay? That asshole hurt you."

"I thought you said you wouldn't swear around me."

"Whoops, I'll put a nickle in the swear jar when you get out of here," he said, sneakily folding her hands off of the dome of his helmet and placing it back over his mess of dark hair. She whined at the action through her laughter and Nova's face split into a pleased grin. Her eyes rolled like marbles and she turned back towards the salve that was half-spread across the burns on her arms, but as she molds it into her skin, there's the tell-tale sound of a door opening.

Their heads snap upwards and Nova's on his feet before Tempest can blink, arm arching slightly around the space she occupies when he can make out the figure at the door. Shark slides through the door, hips swinging with a playful attitude that cuts against the drear that marks the hospital room with iron arms that arch over the ceiling and teeth made of bed sheets. They sit in the gullet of the hospital's mouth, and Tempest swallows deeply when Shark raises his arms to cross at the nape of his neck.

"They said you'd be here," he comments, looking around the cosmic hero to connect his eyes with Tempest's, brown meeting in the middle and his smile widens - though there's a curve to the edge that betrays something, and Tempest, for the life of her, can't decode it. "Bolt really did a number on you, didn't he?"

"No thanks to you," chews out Nova, yet his fists soften slightly when Tempest pats his arm. Shark raises a brow, unhooking his fish-hook arms and he stands a few feet away from Nova, warily watching every step he makes so he doesn't step on any trap doors that will drop him into a yelling match.

"Easy Sparky, not my fault Bolt didn't hold back."

"He's your teammate!"

"And she's yours," Shark shrugs a shoulder towards Tempest, who flinches under the accusation like glass has picked at her skin, pulling it apart and letting the words damage her insides. Shark notices, and for all his jovial personality traits, stays still in his accusations. "Or something more, I don't even know. But I didn't come to argue."

The dark-haired boy steps forwards, hesitation like ellipsis in his toes, and Nova overshadows her even more at the action. He sighs around his irritation, and holds his hands like white flags to the enemy. "I said I didn't come to argue."

"And how can I trust that?"

"Well, for one, your little girlfriend seems far more open to me sitting down since she's trying to get your attention," and when Nova turns, the statement's true - Tempest is scraping herself from beneath the blankets, ushering Shark over with one hand whilst holding herself up with the other. Nova's mouth turns down at the action, and he subtly steps aside, all the while keeping a keen eye on the boy. Shark swallows around his words, and joins Tempest, sitting on the bed opposite hers. Whilst she tucks her legs into a lotus position, Shark is straight-backed and staring forwards in a room he should be more than used to being in.

"D-Do you have any water?" His once-confident stature seems to crumble around his words, disintegrating as he, almost shyly, looks towards the helmeted Hispanic boy. Nova stills, before retrieving a bottle of water off of Tempest's sheets, tossing it towards him. Shark catches it on instinct and leans forwards, collecting Tempest's arm like broken puzzle pieces between his fingers, even if she hesitates. He unscrews the water bottle and slowly, like puppeteer strings are tied around his bones, uses a pulling motion at the neck of the bottle. It vibrates, as if shaken by a force no one else felt until, he starts to draw it out when a circle of water hangs in the air, turning twice before it touches down on Tempest's skin. She hisses slightly at the pain of sizzled skin mixing with the tranquility of water, and Shark flinches before flattening it out like a sheet of paper, so that it arched up her arm and covered all visible areas of the burn wound.

It sunk into her skin, leaving nothing behind - no droplets of water and no burn marks. The wonder in her eyes bled into a smile, digging her cheeks upwards as she flexed her muscles, finding no stabbing pain in her biceps when they moved. Looking up, Shark was pulling her other arm towards him to repeat the action and as he mulls over it, he coughs around the hesitation in his chest. "We aren't bad people," he starts, looking up to meet inquisitive brown eyes, staring at his handiwork, "And, we aren't good. We're just people. But Bolt, he's...he's just so inherently good, so I can say, with full honesty, that he didn't mean it. He would never hurt you on purpose."

Tempest slaps Nova's arm when he snorts, and she turns to Shark, and he's startled. The complete understanding and openness that sits in the curve of her cheeks is strange - yes, he's seen understanding in the kindly bend of an old man's arms when he pulled him into his home years ago, but she doesn't know him. Has no idea if he's speaking with honesty crackling in his lungs and still, she looks at him as if he has nothing to apologize for.

His thoughts are cut off when the sound of the door opening again, and it's as if a bell has been rung for his entrance, when Bolt pushes through the threshold, nervously circling his fingers around each other like bumbling, orbiting planets, soon to collapse against each other when he see's the circle that's gathered.

Slowly, his footsteps echo like falling rocks and he approaches the bed, dropping gingerly beside Shark, who has once regained his laid-back stature in the return of his teammate; Tempest narrows her eyes at this, the sudden flip of character in different presences, but says nothing. Beneath the visor that sits over his head, they can see the way he chews at his bottom lip in anxiety, a trait they don't know if he's discovered yet.

"I...I wanted to apologize for earlier."

He pauses around his voice, wondering where it's disappeared to inside his body from where he stood outside the door a few moments ago. It's not in the creak of his knees that remind him of broken haunted houses on days when the world is far too shallow, but somehow, it's slipped into his hands as they jitter and jump like insects on his lap and they still when he peers up.

Tempest is leaning forwards, hand outstretched like an open invitation that he doesn't know is for him and her lips are turned in the slightest smile, somehow picking up his own with rocks at the corners, to hold it firmly in place. He can see the pride pulling itself from Nova's body at the action and the faint, mild surprise from Shark when Bolt slides his hands around her small ones, shaking it.

"My name's T-Tempest, if y-you wanted to know," and she isn't incredibly perfect herself, as she stumbles over her fear of touch to try and let this foreign boy know that she's fine, that he doesn't have to stumble himself over apologies when she knows how hard it is to control powers that seem to leak from every part of you, bidden or not. His lips part at her, as if to say his own name, but she beats him too it. "And yours is Bolt, I-I know that much. But you don't have to apologize, I'm fine."

"I-I didn't mean too -"

"She knows," comments Nova, and Tempest smiles at the effort he displays for her - his usual cheery nature is hidden under his dislike for the electricity bearer, but he pushes past it to ease the boys tidal wave of worry. He relaxes further, his shoulders untightening when her fingers slip under his on the hospital bed when she sits back. "We both know, you don't have to worry."

They can see the physical effect on the boy as his own body unwinds, uncurling the fear and guilt in limitless thread and, although he knows it won't end for a while, he's glad that it's not so tight around his drawstring heart. But something tugs at him further and slowly, his hands pull up towards the circular helmet that hides his features and pulls it off with a slide, sitting it in his lap and leaning forwards on it. Blue eyes stare at them both in slight sharp wonder, blonde hair messed long on the top of his angular features. "But I feel bad. So, yeah...this is me. My name's Lucas Schultz."

He slides his eyes over towards Shark, who pauses around the edges and releases his leg that he's pulled up towards his chest with a slight, whiny toss. "Seriously, do I have too?" When he's met with silence, the shark-themed hero gives a tug of his lips and pulls the diamond shaped black mask from his features, ruffling his hair free from the headband. The same brown eyes greet them, with black spikes falling over arched black brows. His skin is pale and slight freckles sit over the bridge of his nose. "Vance Oliver."

There's a pause between the four before a unanimous decision is made and surprisingly, it's Nova pulling off his blackened Nova helmet, black hair styled messily due to the pressure of the helmet and green eyes blinking away some loose strands, though his hostility is gone to receive this secret of theirs. Beside him, Tempest shrugs off her own blue bandanna, scratching at the bridge of her nose idly. "Sam Alexander."

Tempest chews on the edges of a nervous smile. "Actually...I don't have much of an alias to give you, if any. So I just go by Tempest."

Bolt pulls his helmet back on as they all stand, but she can feel the wave of curiosity press against her chest like a wave of water or a spark of electricity. But his nervousness is gone as he approaches her side as they move to leave the hospital room, after Tempest signs herself out. "Why don't you have a secret identity?"

"That's a story for another time, Bolt," presses Nova, subtly humming that he shouldn't ask. She doesn't miss the narrowed gaze of Shark beneath his black diamond mask, the way his mouth turns down as he stares at the brunette and she ruffles it off, but tucks it into her chest to ask about another day. She hooks the bandanna around her eyes once more and the hospital room door slides shut behind them all.

The world is dark around the edges when the doors to the briefing room open. Static light bleeds godlike onto the table top, half-silhouetting a sunken in figure, shoulders pulling at the threads of sleep as her fingers tap a tune across the smattering of files around the head of the desk. They're tossed across the surface like broken toys, flicked open to blocks of text and pictures and diagrams.

The one beneath her fingers is the thickest, telling exploits and legends of a life made in running and hiding, until two years ago, the girl was found by SHIELD. It details the day, now set in history for New York City, when the Triskellion fell and the world believed SHIELD was desecrated by a terrorist group. She wants to snort at the assumption - the group was minuscule compared to others she's seen.

"Stalker."

Neither twitch at the new sound that crackles through the room like electricity in the airwaves, and Stalker only peers up, red eye panels blinking away exhaustion like she's been taught. Her body straightens, as the presence of the person sits down beside her, glancing over the mess of files.

"Angela, it's late."

"Which means what?" She glances up at her Latina teammate, bare without her superhero costume is a pair of loose pajamas for the night. Across her left shoulder, falling down, she can see a thick blanket that she must have carried with her towards the briefing room. It's childish and silent, but Stalker says none of it, because she knows that Lux will see it as failure and Lux hates failures.

The Latina sighs, tucking up her knees and glancing over the file briefly, seething slightly at the width. But she peers back, smirking like she knows every secret suddenly and it bristles the leader's skin. "...You remember Vermont? And Connecticut?"

It's the only time she tenses, paused like her toes were threatening to slip off a buildings edge. Then, she's flicking the page again, as if the moment of weakness was just a stutter in her chest. "Please don't talk about this, especially at this time of night. This isn't -"

"Do you remember?"

The blanket's fallen off of her shoulders. The sleep in her eyes has melted into the fear that wraps iron claws around both their chests as the words are spoken slowly. Lux, for all her brash-ness and tough attitude, is probably the most sensitive of Paradox 13 - Stalker knows, as both her teammate and how her hand shakes with it's grip on the table. Thank God the only light present is artificial, or else knives would find themselves in the ceiling.

Stalker closes the folder and pushes it to the side, waiting a moment for Lux's chest to stop humming with fear, for her lungs to deflate slower as she fears the brunette may edge into a panic attack if she keeps remembering. And yet, Stalker can taste the fear on her tongue. The anger. The loss. It threatens her emotions, and she can feel the darkness in the absence of the light curl around her toes. Yes, there may be no light for Lux to make knives from but darkness is far more dangerous to Stalker. Night and Day have never been so torn.

The dark-clothed girl nods, silent and gentle compared to her companion who folds back into herself, calming her breathing and closing her eyes as the exhaustion folds itself like a cape across her shoulders, clipped tightly. "G-Good. I thought, since, we don't get on...you'd forget. That you didn't care."

"I'm the leader of this team - I would never forget."

"But are you my friend?"

The question takes Stalker by surprise, and in her pause, Lux takes her answer like a pill and stands, pulling the thick blanket around her shoulders again and gathering the files on the Ultimates and pulling them into her arms. She doesn't look Stalker in the eye, eyes downcast to her feet. But somehow, noise filters back and Stalker can hear the music from the headphones that perpetually hang around Lux's neck and the cough that disguises her disappointment.

"Layla, I -"

"Don't worry, I got my answer anyway from back then," she says, and a memory filtered in static and fuzz bleeds it's way into existence, remembering how she'd asked a question once and the horrid answer that followed days later. Lux gestured towards the files in her arms, stacked and thick and telling stories that Lux doesn't know, that Lux hasn't read but there's more emotion tied to them than Stalker will ever allow herself to feel. "If you're the leader, than make sure these guys never know that answer while we're in this with them."

The world goes quiet when she leaves. It turns dark around the edges. Sleep finally lets Stalker disappear inside of it for a while, and for once, she feels alone in the dark.