A/N: We're back, now with a return to our favourite sentient STDs!

Read, review, and above all, enjoy!

Disclaimer: Blurgh.

"Mom? What happened to the little glowing things?"

Lila snapped awake, instinctively taking stock of everything around her at whiplash speed: she was still sitting on the living room couch with Gracie by her side, exactly where she'd been for the last seventy-five minutes since the little girl had been awoken by a nightmare of her own. Meanwhile, Diego was sitting next to them, still fast asleep, snoring gently and mumbling the patter from his knife-juggling routine.

Then, just as she was getting ready to pat Gracie on the head and lull her back to sleep, Lila finally realized what the five-year-old had just said.

"What little glowing things?" she asked.

"Didn't you see them?"

"Not really, Gracie, mummy was fast asleep. What did you see, exactly?"

"Two little gold glowing things, about this big!" Gracie pinched her fingers together, indicating something roughly the size of a coin. "One of them landed on daddy, and the other one landed on you, but then they just dis'speared! Was it 'cuz of the men running down the street?"

Lila blinked in astonishment. This sounded uncannily like the descriptions of the "Marigold" that had been exchanged between Viktor and Harlan all those years ago… but if that was so, and if there really had been two particles of Marigold in the same room as them, did that mean that she and Diego had absorbed them? Could it mean that they had their powers back?

Blinking rapidly, she assessed herself as quickly and thoroughly as she could: she didn't feel extraordinary in any way, but then again, it wasn't as if she could sense her own powers. After all, she'd known nothing but their presence her whole life, and when she'd lost them, she'd been consumed with dread over incoming motherhood and fresh from being drained by Reggie, so she'd felt pretty bloody awful anyway. And yet, LIla couldn't help but feel as if something about her really had changed: she didn't feel ready to take on the world or be a superhero or anything like that.

If anything, she felt like herself.

She looked around the room, wondering if there was anything she could throw, just to see if she could mimic Diego's powers as easily as she once had. Of course, she wasn't going to disturb Gracie's sleeptime anymore than she already had, so she'd have to see if she could manage it without getting out of her seat – which, unfortunately, limited her to the palm-sized rubber ball that Gracie had taken to bouncing between her hands in moments of anxiety.

Across the room, there was a tiny plastic basketball hoop taped to the wall, courtesy of Gracie's newest need to find stimulation around the house.

Taking careful aim, Lila snatched up the ball and lobbed it at the hoop; of course, with her right arm wrapped around Gracie, she was using her left hand, so the shot missed the hoop by a good three feet…

…but then she felt the all-too-familiar flex of energy right at the heart of her, followed by the distinctive razor-sharp edge of Diego's own power, filling her head with vectors and angles and forces all waiting to be twisted in any direction she pleased. As the ball bounced off the wall behind the hoop, it suddenly rocketed in the direction of the lounge with improbable speed, ricocheted off the coffee table, and arced right into the waiting basketball hoop with a satisfying whoosh – before bouncing right back into her left hand.

Lila's mind leapt in mingled astonishment and exhilaration. Their powers were back… and if it had happened to them, then it was a one in one chance that the rest of the Umbrella Academy had their powers back as well. She didn't know what they were going to do with them, of course: maybe getting these gifts back would mean a chance to bring down Reggie's regime, or maybe it was just a chance to make the family a little safer than it had been. Either way, the status was most definitely not quo anymore, and even with sleep deprivation and nightmares still nagging at her, Lila couldn't have been happier.

Meanwhile, Gracie was clapping her hands in delight. "Do it again!" she shrieked. "Do it again!"

But no sooner had Lila started looking around for something to throw, there was a muffled thud from somewhere just down the hall from their front door. Lila hesitated, hand very gently creeping over Gracie's mouth before she could say another word, and in the silence that followed, she heard the unmistakable sounds of footsteps making their way up the stairs.

And with a jolt of shock, she remembered what Gracie had said a moment ago: "men running in the street."

If anyone was outdoors this early in the morning with curfew still in full swing, then it was almost certainly Hargreeves Security, the secret police… or a hit squad. And if they were running towards a building, then the safest guess was the hit squad.

Lila gently untangled herself from Gracie, slid out of her seat, and tiptoed towards the front door as quietly as she could, bouncy ball still in hand. It wasn't easy to get the door open without making noise, but all those years of Commission training hadn't been for nothing, and she was halfway congratulating herself for keeping the hinges from squeaking when she saw the two men making their way down the gloomy corridor towards her. Both were dressed in balaclavas, night-vision goggles, and combat gear…

…and with a jolt of horror, she saw that both were carrying silenced pistols.

At once, the two hitmen saw her and quickened their pace towards the door, both men raising their pistols to fire, and behind them, Lila could already see other assassins making their way up the stairs to join the attack.

Acting on instinct, she drew back her arm and lobbed the bouncy ball headlong at the nearest of the hitmen with all the enhanced force she could muster; a millisecond later, Lila heard the satisfying pop-crack of breaking glass as the ball bounced off the target's goggles, and the hitman on the left pitched backwards onto the carpet in a dazed heap. Meanwhile, the ball bounced off the ceiling and flung itself at the hitman on the right, but with a much shorter buildup, it didn't have quite the same impact; however, it was enough to be a nuisance, and that was all Lila needed.

Catapulting herself indoors, she slammed the door shut behind her and hollered, "Diego! Knives at the ready, now!"

Diego obligingly lurched back into wakefulness with a yelp of alarm. "Gah! Yes, ma'am, you're invited, just please don't hurt me!"

"…what?"

"Arg, nothing. What's happening?"

"We need your knives, ASAP! We've got a Hargreeves hit squad coming down the hall and we've got to have everything we can throw at them on hand yesterday." Realizing that Diego was opening his mouth to ask the obvious question, she snapped, "No, we don't need the 38 under the kitchen sink, I'll explain later, now move!"

Diego blinked rapidly. "You think this is something to do with Chainmail? They're wipin' out competitors or something like that?"

"Maybe, maybe not, why the hell is it so important?!"

"Well, if they think we're that dangerous, then shouldn't they have a second team comin' in from the…" Diego's eyes widened. "The windows," he finished.

There was a horrified pause, as both Lila and Diego turned towards the windows – and saw the trio of gunmen lining up on the other side of the windowsill, submachineguns at the ready and taking aim.

For a split-second that lasted for hours, Lila's heart seemed to freeze inside her chest, and the world around her froze along with it. But then there was the muffled click of safeties being flicked off, and suddenly the world was moving again.

"GRACIE!" Diego roared. "DOWN ON THE GROUND, NOW!"

Without hesitation, Gracie threw herself to the ground with hands clamped over her ears just like she'd practiced. Lila was already vaulting over the couch to throw herself in front of her and Diego was charging in from the right to shield both of them, even though both of them knew that it was pointless: even if the bullets didn't cut right through them and kill Gracie anyway, standard assassination procedure was to kill everyone in the building along with the target and not stop until the only sign of life belonged to the assassins themselves. She'd be dead no matter what they did.

But they tried anyway, even as the first deafening gunshots rang out across the apartment.

And it was in that moment that, just as she was getting ready to kiss her ass goodbye, Lila felt Diego's power flare to life.

He'd done this before.

Back in Dallas, Five had mentioned seeing Diego's older self in action during the brief apocalyptic invasion of the United states, deflecting a hail of bullets back at the Soviet troops, and though Diego was certain that Five had been drinking again when he'd told them this little story, it hadn't stopped him from giving the same trick a good old college try when they'd been trying to fight off the Commission. It had worked then, but only just, and Diego had never gotten a chance to try it again: after all, nobody in the Sparrow timeline had bothered with guns, and Diego hadn't felt up to playing trajectory tricks with Jayme's spit.

It hadn't been until much later that Klaus had brought up Reggie's theory about his original self, that the old bastard had deliberately undertrained the Umbrella Academy so they'd be easier to control, and Diego had started to wonder a bit about their full potential: if Viktor and Klaus had discovered their apparent true power months ago and both of them had even more power hidden under the hood, just how far did it go? What were they really capable of? Of course, it hadn't really mattered after that, because Reggie had followed this up by siphoning off their powers and left them helpless in his idea of paradise. By rights, Diego shouldn't have thought about it ever again and gotten used to being powerless.

And yet…

He could feel the power again. He'd been dimly aware of Lila screaming at him to get his knives and he'd briefly wondered why anyone would bother defending themselves with throwing knives unless they actually had superpowers, but it hadn't been until now – with the world slowing to a crawl around him and bullets tearing through the windows ahead of him in slomo – that he'd finally realized what she'd meant by this: his powers were back.

And with the powers came a new sense of a vision: beforehand, he'd merely felt the vectors and angles and forces he used to twist the knives in mid-air towards the target. Now he saw them, every blur of motion and gravity and inertia flowing across his vicinity in multicoloured waves that turned the world around him into a rainbow blush. He could see the rubber ball that Lila had thrown at the secret police in the corridor, now being thrown at the wall by a pissed-off assassin. He could see a coin flipped in the air by one of the assassins two floors above them, sensing it spin in mid-air as the team pondered how to tackle the next floor. And he could see the bullets soaring towards him, creeping through the air at a glacial speed as they punched through the glass and tore the curtains to shreds.

All that motion could be subverted in an instant, no matter what the direction. If he wanted, he could even redirect the motion elsewhere; with the right amount of absorbed inertia, he could throw a knife without even touching it. All of this he knew at once, in much the same way that he knew that he could throw without missing; it was simply a fact that could be read in the vectors and motions of the world.

But that wasn't all he could see between the flow of forces and energy.

There was someone else here in the room with them, standing between one wave of force and another, as if stepping between the raindrops, invisible to all but him in this glorious, terrifying frozen instant. She was tall, slender, graceful, blonde, and dressed all in white, and though Diego was sure he'd never met her before in his life, there was something about the mysterious smile on her face and her faintly ethereal walk that seemed to bring back memories Reggie at the Hotel Oblivion.

"Find me," she whispered.

Then, she was gone.

Ahead of Diego, the bullets were still thundering relentlessly onwards.

Beforehand, redirecting such a storm had taken all his might and he'd only been able to shift it away from him and the others, not right back at the Commission hitmen. Now, though, he was stronger: whatever had brought his powers back had returned them more potent than ever before.

Reaching out with all his might, he held out his hands to steady himself as he seized control of the bullets, redirecting inertia and forward momentum until the deadly storm ground to a halt.

Then, he sent a pulse of redirected force back outwards, swatting the bullets away like a tennis champion… and as he did so, he sent a wave of kinetic energy powerful enough to send the coffee table, the second couch, the ottoman, the dining table, the two metal shelves by the window, and what little remained of the windows themselves rocketing back outwards along with them.

Suddenly, time was moving again, and the gunmen had only just enough time to process the sight of the bullets frozen in midair before the wave of force sent the entire blizzard of lead hurtling back at them, accompanied by roughly half the furniture in the living room. There was a nerve-jangling crash of splintering wood and pulverizing glass, interspersed with horror-stricken screams from the other side of the window.

When the gunsmoke finally cleared, the gunmen were gone – leaving nothing but a fine spray of blood across the windowsill and something that looked uncannily like chunky salsa layering the street below.

There was a pause, as the echoes died away.

Then, Diego heard footsteps hurrying towards the apartment: the corridor, the street outside the apartment block, everywhere within reach of their vehicles was filled with hitmen awaiting the signal to move in, and with the second squad dead, the reinforcements were already en route. A few days ago, Diego would have been forced to flee, knowing there was nothing he could do against that many guns. Christ, he'd have probably done so anyway even in the days when he'd had his powers; after all, he'd done just that when the Swedes had attacked the mental hospital. But now, not only were his powers back, but they were stronger than ever.

Suddenly aware of the adrenaline flooding his veins, he began a brisk march towards the front door, ready to give the hitmen the shock of their lives, exhilaration flooding his brain as he reached out with his powers to every piece of furniture left in the room. He was back and better than ever, and this time, not even Reginald goddamn Hargreeves was going to stop him from setting things right.

And then someone grabbed him by the leg.

"Daddy?" said a tiny voice.

Diego blinked. In all the excitement, he'd completely forgotten about Gracie; to his relief, she was completely unharmed, but there was no mistaking the look of fear on her face – the same kind of worry and dread that had only appeared when she'd been afraid of being left alone. She hadn't been scared by the violence, but because she'd thought Diego was going to walk out on her.

What had he been thinking? He couldn't just go out there and play hero, not when he had a daughter to protect. After all, Diego might be able to stop bullets in flight, and if she'd gotten her powers back as well, Lila could easily do the same, that didn't make either of them invincible, and their powers certainly wouldn't save Gracie if they got carried away and started making mistakes. They needed to play this carefully; they needed to pick their battles… but at the same time, they couldn't just leave everyone in the apartment to die at the hands of the hitsquad.

You know how to handle this, Diego told himself, mind racing. You've been a security consultant for almost five years, you've helped people protect their jobs and their livelihoods, and you can do the same for your family. You're not the same cocky douchebag you were all those years ago; you don't have to go picking fights, but you don't have to stop saving people. You don't have to be a vigilante to be a hero, and you don't have to be stupid either.

He looked at Lila, who looked to be having her own internal debate on the subject, even as she went about gathering Gracie into her arms.

"We've gotta get out of here," he said. "Honey, you think you can shield Gracie the same way I did?"

"Darling, I just took down a grown man with a bouncy ball. I'm up to doing just about anything right now."

"Good. Because we've got to save the neighbours while we're getting out here. We'll have to take this floor by floor: I'll take the lead, you cover the rear just in case they start getting sneaky ; Gracie, you stay between us and hit the deck anytime someone starts shooting. Once we start rescuing people, you show 'em what to do, okay?"

"Where are we going, Daddy?"

"The sewers, Gracie, the sewers. Just as soon as we make sure the bad guys don't try and hurt anyone else on the way down. Because that's what real heroes do, kiddo."

Lila eyed him with a mixture of bemusement and affection. "Tell me you're not going to give up the knives just because you've figured out how to throw furniture," she sighed, shaking our head.

"What, and give up juggling too? Not a chance, babe. Now come on, let's go!"

All told, the hitsquad had not been expecting this.

Reginald Hargreeves had warned them that the two primary targets were highly-trained combatants in the prime of their health and sufficient practice to remain at the apex of their skills, so the secret police operatives assigned to the task had gone all-in. Short of flooding the building with poison gas or just planting a bomb in the basement and calling it a day, they'd used their most thorough approach, complete with a rooftop entry and rappelling gunmen and the windows, and by rights, Diego and Lila Hargreeves should have been dead long before everyone else in the building.

Not only had their rappelling team been reduced to the consistency of bolognaise sauce before the first five minutes were over, but the targets had opted to proceed almost as methodically as the hitsquad: the few survivors that had been in any fit state to talk reported brief glimpses of Diego or Lila from around the corridor, followed closely by a hail of blades, and not just from the target either. Operatives clearing the corridors had found their own knives darting out of their belts and cutting them to ribbons, while those squads who'd paused to execute the other residents found their guns missing their intended targets – and hitting the gunmen instead.

Worse still, for every resident that Diego and Lila rescued, they also gained support: with so many dead secret police operatives littering the halls, it didn't take long for the families they'd rescued to start arming themselves with the hitsquad's guns. By the time they'd reached the ground floor, Diego and Lila stood at the head of a veritable army of dissidents; outnumbered and outgunned and out of reinforcements, the few remaining members of the hitsquad turned tail and ran like hell.

The last they'd seen of the ragtag army, it had been heading through the sewers, bound for the unmonitored sewers of the outer districts. After that, nobody had time to pursue them, because by then, other security precincts across the city were already calling for help…

A/N: Up next - the first two-part chapter!