“And you’re sure?” Azure Avenger asked one more time, knowing it was futile. “Nothing else?”
Spelljam glared at him, “You want me to run through it again? The Scroll was a stable artifact. In case you don’t know, that means it was enchanted so that it wouldn’t absorb any magical energy surrounding it. Reddins verified that. And like I’ve been over, three times now, nothing I cast that night would’ve caused it to start leaking magic like that. It. Wasn’t. Me.”
The two stood opposite each other while the rest of their teams looked on in apprehension. Azure couldn’t rightly ask the questions he actually wanted to ask here and knew he was going to be picking at some very fresh wounds, but he couldn’t help it.
The footage from the museum, grainy as it was, had him leaping at shadows, so to speak. Those red sparks from this new villain, Tech Crash, which shot out of his hand shortly before the explosion kept haunting him. Even if the reports from both members of the Elemental Aegis on the scene, Ice Hawk, and ArachNed all painted this guy as some barely-above-a-nobody with just enough skills to be a headache to a solid team who got lucky or unlucky that night, Azure couldn’t help seeing the same red sparks from the moment Dr. Maniacal went up in smoke. He’d been seeing those same sparks on any villain rocking red super powers these days, but the fact that Tech Crash had come out of nowhere made that suspicion stick to him more than all the rest.
Voicing those concerns without proof though was a great way to have every cape in the city hunting for this Tech Crash and ignoring everything else. Hell, until his helmet had cracked open on the scene and didn’t end up leaking ooze, a simple rumor had pulled everyone who had been looking for the still missing Ikor away from tracking down actual credible leads. When it turned out that he wasn’t under the new mask, the heroes had returned to find that every avenue they’d abandoned had run dry in the interim.
Maybe those had always been dead ends, but it irritated Azure to no end that no one had kept pursuing them while they had the chance and there was a very real chance that Ikor might’ve just made it out of Victory. If Tech Crash turned out to be a second red herring, especially if Azure was the one to point the finger in the first place, then any hope of trying to get Victory’s heroes centralized would probably be gone. Even though his vision of a centralized authority would be one where he wouldn’t put all his eggs in one basket, he needed them to trust his leadership and judgment.
It was the perfect paradox: he needed everyone under one umbrella so they could coordinate and not all be stepping on each others’ toes, and to get them to see the value in that, he had to focus them all on one goal to prove the value of working together. Adding to that backwards logic was the fact that he couldn’t even just approach one team with his suspicions to keep an eye out because while no one would coordinate to make sure they weren’t all repeating each other’s work, they sure would talk to one another to spread rumors. The only way to get this ball rolling correctly was to be a strong central pillar for everyone to rally around, all so they could work as individuals effectively.
It didn’t help that the heroes were being run ragged dealing with a bunch of villain activity lately. While thankfully, even as riled up as the villains were to try and show off, they’d also been keeping to some of their own “unwritten rules” and no hero had needed more than a day or two in a medbay so far and not a single civilian casualty had occurred, that still was a lot of fights and a lot of heroes being pulled away to back up teams they didn’t know or might not like. A lot of teams were having to abandon their backyards to race across the city to bail out someone else and hope that a different villain didn’t trash their home while they were away.
Any false positives on someone like Maniacal’s killer which pulled everyone away at once would probably cause the teams to retreat in on themselves, wanting to stabilize their neighborhoods and losing trust in the other heroes around them. They were already beginning to get upset that this crime spree had only seemed to escalate, gods know they’d probably be infuriated if they were promised the solution to at least one big problem on everyone’s mind and it turned out to be a bust.
He’d love to be able to just do some analysis of the blast site, but A: Reddins was pissed at Amberheart at the moment and demanded they be allowed to do their own analysis, and B: that analysis came back with the news that between Spelljam’s massive amount of spellslinging, a group of the empowered first-responder firefighters using their own magic to contain the damage, and several magical artifacts being vaporized by the explosion, the resulting area was basically saturated in a mash of raw chaotic magic that told the experts nothing more than “a lot of magic happened here”.1 That useless result had further soured relationships between the museum and Amberheart since it didn’t exonerate anyone, and as a result Spelljam had needed to go through no less than three extended debriefs where he had to list every spell he had cast on the scene to prove he wasn’t responsible for the blast. The final one had even required him to cast the spells in front of a panel of experts to see if there were any interactions which could’ve destabilized an artifact like the Scroll of Silence or accidentally enchanted Tech Crash’s gauntlets. It was hours of interrogation with a lot of media attention on Aegis as well as the Knuckledusters for their decision to swap the reins over early.
Oh, and C: Azure’s go-to magic expert was still not returning his calls. The fact that Secret Keeper had been and was still hurt by what he’d forced them to do ripped at his soul. Worse, he couldn’t figure out how to explain what had happened to his team, who were currently watching their leader seeming to tear into a hero who already had been put through the wringer just to confirm what everyone else already knew.
It was obvious that the tech villain’s gauntlets had malfunctioned. If he wasn’t allowed to bring up the possibility that this villain was the mysterious OC3002116, then there was really only one obvious answer for everyone to see: the tech villain’s fuck up was caused by tech of some kind. Given that Tech Crash had declined to use any magic powers during the following chase, it was incredibly difficult to imagine that the guy who was inches away from getting webbed to the wall wouldn’t have broken out that secret trick with how hard Ned and Hawk had pushed. Hell, assuming the blast had been kicked off by accidental power usage due to stress given how surprised the villain had seemed, that chase definitely should’ve made it go off again. Shutting down that theory, both Ned and Hawk had reported the only sparks they’d witnessed was when Tech Crash had been hammering on his remaining gauntlet to get it working again.
Azure had literally nothing else to go on for a connection between Maniacal’s death and Crash’s self detonation than “both involved red sparkles”. But even if he could prove his theory that the museum blast was a magical mishap, he also knew the whole deal about “altered magic’s emitted color” thing from the initial investigation. Red light was an incredibly common color emission to start out with and because red light was on the largest wavelength of the visible spectrum, when you got a lot of magic effects going off at once, the red coloration began to override the surrounding light emission unless those magical effects producing them were more powerful. Hell, he already sort of knew this just from working with Ruby. When the two of them combined blasts or merged constructs, the results would turn out red almost as often as they ended up purple (especially if he wasn’t putting his all into it).
So even if he could prove that Tech Crash had some hidden magic power or that the scroll was destabilized, that would basically just prove that one of those two emitted a visible red light. Rationally, he knew that he should back off this point, especially since all the questions he could ask without anyone catching on were just going to make Spelljam look bad. Worse, if it turned out that the reason the explosion went off was because Reddins had put up an unstable artifact, this could turn into an entire legal issue between the museum and Amberheart that would likely see a lot of other contracts for other hero teams canceled across the city. Heroes blaming you for their failures to protect you was a surefire way to chase a lot businesses into hiring private sector security instead, as they tended to get less cameras on them even when the job went sideways. He should just drop it and accept the obvious conclusion.
But that damn suspicious part of him just wouldn’t let it go. Azure needed to know for sure. Worse, if he was being honest with himself, he knew that all he actually wanted out of this was a name to use instead of OC3002116 or Roger Stevens, especially since investigations had turned up that Stevens was definitely a pseudonym. “116” felt more real and it was still a fucking filing code. He needed one of these villains tossing red blasts around to be the guy and Tech Crash just happened to fit the bill better than Carmine Cyborg or Burgundy Burglar.
He rationally understood he was walking his own tightrope here when it came to accusations but that temptation to flag anyone with a hint of magic that glowed red as the suspect just to finally give him a target was damn strong. Hell, he even reminded himself that no one knew if OC3002116’s magic was actually red, or if it was also being overridden by Dr. Maniacal’s storm. The case file didn’t mention any colors in it. Yet another reason to just drop this and wait and see if the bastard left another clue. He squeezed his eyes shut, trying to will himself to just walk away from this.
Find something else to chase, man, anything… he told himself.
He opened his mouth, not really sure what was about to come out and hoping it would be him dropping it. At that exact moment, someone landed heavily on the balcony outside, drawing everyone’s eyes from the argument in the penthouse.
Thana Alsdottir stood from the crouch she landed in, shaking off her mantle before she began to stride inside. Upon seeing her, that rational part of his brain finally took the wheel.
If you imply that Tech Crash is this 116, she will kill this guy before the day is over. Can you afford to be wrong about this?
“Thank you, Spelljam,” Azure chose to say. “I’m sorry for how that sounded, I was just… I’m sorry.”
Spelljam still looked upset but was willing to accept the apology with a nod. He sulked back to the rest of his team, a heavily bandaged Blazeshot clapping him on the back, causing both of them to wince. Azure turned back to his own team, taking in their worried expressions.
Most of them were looking at him with some form of trepidation, clearly thinking the stress of the past few weeks was getting to him. Radiant Ruby was bouncing on her heels, clearly trying to figure out what she wanted to say. Sable Sneak was hanging back, as usual, but the wisps of shadowy clouds he emitted seemed to be coiling around him protectively. Amethyst Archer's hands were clenching and unclenching nervously while Star Opal’s jaw was gritted. Only Green Guardian didn’t seem nervous or concerned, instead wearing an intense, measured expression that carried a small amount of judgment.
Before he could reassure them, the Stormdaughter had come up to him, “Azure Avenger, I wish to petition your aid.”
Azure didn’t get a chance to respond as Guardian strode up to place himself between Azure and the Vikor hero, “Give us a moment, alright? We need to have a chat.”
Azure heard a strong note of irritation dripping from his friend’s voice and didn’t like the venom it carried. He put a hand on Guardian’s shoulder and gently pulled him aside, quickly nodding to Alsdottir and telling her, “One moment please.”
Based on the look his friend was giving him, Azure already knew this was going to end with at least one of them shouting and tried to lead his teammate away. Guardian shrugged off his hand but mercifully followed him towards the elevators, the rest of the team lagging a short distance away. Azure sighed and thumbed the call button before turning back.
“Okay,” he simply said as the two waited for the lift, inviting what he knew was coming.
Guardian glanced back at the Stormdaughter, who was watching them from the center of the room. No one made any moves to approach the visiting hero, and there was a palpable tension in the air.
His friend leaned forward to whisper conspiratorially, “What the hell is going on, Az? Are you finally going to explain to us why we’re babysitting one of Orion’s bigwigs or why you’re giving Aegis a full on interrogation?”
Azure checked the lift. The number up top was only halfway to the penthouse. He gazed back to the center of the room and saw more than a few heroes carefully watching his group, including the Stormdaughter.
“The situation’s a little complicated right now-”
“The hell with that canned garbage,” Guardian spat. “You’re laying into Spelljam like you’re already the leader of all of us and our sparky friend over here is strutting around like she owns the place. She’s jumped into six separate fights this week alone and has made a whole production out of meeting everyone in this town who’s wearing a cape that she can. We know she’s here for the guy who killed Maniacal, so I want to know: Is Orion poaching this from us? Are we being benched?”
That wasn’t an unfounded fear. On occasion, some of Orion City’s villains would flee and kick up a crime spree elsewhere, often with super tech or stolen magic artifacts they picked up on their way out. The guilds would often send out heroes familiar with them to bring them to justice and more than once that had ended up with them “pulling rank” in Victory, Washgreen, or other cities in the AU. The worst part about those incidents was that, almost always, Orion’s visitors did actually wrap things up quick, showing up the other cities and embarrassing their heroes.
“We are working with the Stormdaughter,” Azure hissed, trying to keep his voice low. “We’re not being taken off this. She’s here because this is her case too.”
“Yeah, I’ve heard. Orion dropped the ball years ago and let him get away. You know what I haven’t heard is? Why the day you called for her was the same day that Secret Keeper vanished after they went with you to go find out who this guy was!” Guardian demanded, his voice getting uncomfortably above the whisper the two of them had been maintaining. “A meeting you won’t tell us shit about!”
“We can discuss this back at our base,” Azure growled, glaring at the floor number above the elevator and trying to force it to move quicker.
Guardian clamped his hand on Azure’s shoulder and Azure immediately threw it off, spinning to face him. The two locked stares at one another.
“No. I want to know, right here and now,” Green Guardian ground his teeth. “What the hell did you do?”
“Me?! Secret Keeper and I made a deal together with an expert they recommended,” Azure struggled to keep his voice level. “We promised a favor for a favor so long as it wouldn’t break the law or hurt anyone. They helped us find our mystery killer and we helped them out in return.”
Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.
Guardian just glared at him, not satisfied in the least.
“What did they ask?” Ruby asked.
Azure turned his attention towards her and his heart almost broke again. Guardian was the unflinching backbone of this team, the guy Azure depended on when things got rough. It made him stubborn as hell and had caused a clash like this more than once. Meanwhile Ruby was the heart. She was the one who made this team feel like a family, the person you could always go to with your problems. Despite her boundless energy, she’d sit there and listen, and then she’d probably cook a huge meal and invite the whole team over with some sort of plan for the evening that would make every worry fade away. She had been the one to welcome Secret Keeper into the New Aurora Champions and had led to the Librarian hanging around them so much.
And now, she was looking at Azure with expectant eyes, her mask doing nothing to hide her kind gaze that ripped Azure apart or her worried frown that cut into his soul.
All he could do was respond honestly, “They asked Secret Keeper to forget everything they knew about them.”
The team’s horror was evident. The New Aurora Champions all wore masks that left their eyes and mouths exposed, their humanity visible for all to see to reassure the world of their worth as heroes. It hurt Azure to see them this way, to see the news hammer into them what Secret Keeper had been asked to do.
“But, that…” Opal stumbled over her words. “They can’t... just, like, forget things! They’re living knowledge!”
The others let out their shock and surprise as well. When Azure had first heard Scarlet Sorcerer’s request, he knew what was being asked. The whole team knew since SK had told them that every story, every scrap of knowledge that the monks gathered over their lifetime was etched into their forms, those books floating around the gestalt being actually part of their body. While their personality was made up of the minds of the various volunteers who gave up their physical forms to join the bond, it was the knowledge they were tasked by the Library to gather which somehow bound them together. To remove even the smallest fragment, Secret Keeper had told them, would be the equivalent of tearing out your own ligaments and risked harming the bond as a whole.
His team struggled to process this, except for Green Guardian, always quick on the uptake.
“You didn’t…” he said with horror, causing the rest of the Champions to snap their gazes first to Guardian then to Azure, mounting horror beginning to rise.
“Keeper… refused, attempting to renegotiate to classify the knowledge,” Azure explained. “The contact requested me to ask Keeper to do so instead, calling upon our bonds and the debt that they owed us.”
The words had barely left his lips when Guardian hoisted him off the ground and slammed him bodily into the wall. Azure heard sounds of surprise ripple throughout the room but his eyes were fixed on his friend, seeing the righteous anger in his eyes and knowing he deserved every bit of it.
“How dar-!”
“And that deal,” a calm voice interrupted, “led you to unraveling the mystery of our villain.”
A hand gripped Guardian’s wrist as another held Azure’s shoulder. Unimaginable strength pulled Guardian away from Azure and lowered him to the floor. It should’ve been crushing to peel away an angered hero like that, but he noted that his green friend seemed just as surprised at the gentleness of the grip as he was.
Thana stood between them, her eyes flicking back and forth, judging them.
“I cannot claim to fully understand the magnitude of this sacrifice but I honor its gravity,” she calmly intoned. “I shall seek to make the most of it in my quest here.”
Guardian snarled as she released him, “Quest?! Oh I’m sorry, I’m sure this will be worth it for your little adventure!”
“Gar!” Azure tried to intervene.
“No! I’ve had enough of running around with no one explaining anything!” he shouted. “Secret Keeper’s hurt and all for us to help crack a cold case for Orion that no one is saying anything about while we’re trying to keep the city safe as every villain in the damn city is practically rioting! We don’t have a name, a face, or anything about this guy but apparently they’re important enough to justify Stormdaughter here taking a vacay to Victory for some honor shit!”
Azure bit his lip. When Thana had first arrived and met with him and a few other team leads and several of the more important departments in Amberheart, she had been very deliberate in her wording to leave out a lot of details from the OC3002116 case other than that the perpetrator had been wanted for years and had escaped Orion without anyone knowing. She didn’t even finger the suspect as Roger Stevens, the demigoddess constantly referring to him as “a nameless dastard” and insisting that he be tracked by the magical essence alone. The message had been unspoken but clear: don’t say a word, so Azure had stuck to that.
“The dastard’s true name was never recorded. Nor was his face ever captured,” Thana stated calmly. “My heart shares your concern for the plight for your city and I hope to assist you. I was attempting to speak with the Azure Avenger about assigning myself to your teams now that I know their natures.”
That only seemed to make Guardian even more angry.
“No name, no face, and you’re here to just scoot on in?” he spat. “How the hell does Orion not have anything else to go on if he’s important enough for you of all people to drop everything and come on over and apparently just slot yourself right into our teams?”
Several heroes shifted around uncomfortably, not really sure what to do. Azure noted more than a few that seemed to be in agreement with Guardian though, more than he’d expected. He saw Thana’s face twist as she carefully considered her words.
“This villain was sworn to another and wore the garb of his troops. Likely he has discarded this costume in the ten years hence.”
Guardian’s anger blew over fully, “Wait! A fucking henchman?! That’s what this manhunt is about? Oh sure, he’s a threat now! But if he actually had you guys worried then you guys would’ve sent a full team, wouldn’t you? Or at least searched for him in the damn decade since! SK was hurt but it’s worth it just so you can swing by to collect the final collectible of your set to tuck a case away nice and neat! But no, you need to run around and shake everyone’s hands before you figure out who to chaperone before doing anything! Clearly he’s such a big deal!”
“Enough!” Azure shouted, only to find himself pushed back into the wall by Thana’s hand as her calm expression melted away to a mask of absolute fury. All ambient sound in the room went dead as Green Guardian backed off, his righteous rage over his friend’s pain forgotten as the demigoddess' hatred spilled over him.
Stormdaughter closed her eyes and her face returned to a false serenity. Her arms fell to her sides and Azure leaned backwards as he saw her ball her fist, visible veins in her arm appearing to glow.
“This man was presumed dead after his actions, which is why we did not pursue him. I am sorry your Secret Keeper suffered to bring us news of him, I seek not to dismiss the pain but to honor it, though I chose my words poorly. I have sought to learn your city’s ways before I was brazen enough to conduct my search here. But I would have you know some things.”
Her eyes locked onto Guardian’s, ice cold hatred blazing in them.
“I would kill to have these villains you fight in the City of Orion,” she said in a way that didn’t make that sound like just a figure of speech. “I have seen your foes in Victory seem to adhere to a sense of honor in their eternal battle with you. Most seek not to inflict harm upon the helpless and even seem to shun it, merely wishing to slake their thirst for wealth and glory. When they turn their unjust eyes upon the populace, they prefer to sow fear for sport as opposed subjugating them to barbaric acts of violence. In Orion, the black hearted suffer no qualms of the depravity they will inflict upon the city to harm its protectors and feed their bloodlust. They seek not just to end heroes in battle but to shatter any moment of quiet peace they can find. Victory’s villains mingle and dance in their free time! They do not plot every day to see its towers fall and champions truly laid to waste. This man I chase is a villain of such breed, such malign hate in his heart. You ask my reason for being here? What crime he inflicted that warrants my chase? I shall have you know this, and also have it be known that my hand is not simply enough for him, but know that it is the fate deserved by him!”
Her words were deliberate with a sharp edge piercing through her restraint in each one, filling the air with an electricity, quite possibly literally as Azure knew the storm inside of her was no doubt roiling.
“His crime is simple: he intruded upon the home of Marcus Lake, and restrained him. Then he laid in wait until I arrived, and proceeded to detonate an explosive right before my eyes, killing my betrothed and disguising his escape,” Thana coolly remarked. “He did this to harm me more than any plot or weapon has harmed me in centuries.”
Her speech wasn’t delivered with passion and her voice barely rose throughout it, and yet it still trailed off like the distant sound of thunder, leaving a silence to rush to fill the void. Azure was one of many heroes to realize he was holding his breath as Guardian retreated.
“Azure Avenger, I apologize for causing such strife amongst your team and the heroes of this city by my being here. I shall endeavor to make my inquiries of you at a later point. For now I believe it is best for me to leave you to re-foster the kinship of your Champions,” she told him before turning on her heel and departing, moving through a small circle of stunned heroes who parted to let her pass.
A clap of lightning signaled her departure. Moments later, the elevator dinged.
Azure looked over at his team, half of them looked at the empty spot where the Stormdaughter had vanished while the rest stared at him, unreadable but intense emotions on their faces. He felt the weight of what he’d done fill the room again.
Then, after a few heartbeats, Ruby rushed past him, into the elevator. Amethyst and Sable silently followed. Opal lingered for a few moments, staring at the empty terrace before shaking it off and slipping by herself.
Guardian stared at him. It wasn’t anger, but Azure struggled to tell if it was hurt or… worry? His friend squeezed his eyes shut and moved to the elevator door. Azure closed his own eyes, feeling the moment as the finality began to creep in. An emptiness began to spiderweb through him, his limbs beginning to go numb.
A thick hand on his shoulder yanked him out of it and pulled him into the lift.
Azure looked over his shoulder as he was guided inside and was surprised to see Guardian holding onto him, though the man wouldn’t meet his eyes, instead quickly prodding the “Door Close” button in silence. Azure couldn’t bring himself to turn around and face his team, so instead he settled for looking at them in the reflection of the golden doors. He saw their pain, each of them processing what had been revealed in their own ways.
It was another stone on his heart, and this one almost broke him. If a small, red gloved hand hadn’t tugged at his own glove, he might’ve collapsed to his knees under the weight of it.
“We need to talk,” Ruby’s voice cracked. “At home.”
At home. It was a small and somewhat torturous thing, twisted by the pain. Azure wasn’t sure if he deserved any of the kindness it might offer as much as he deserved the scorn he was owed. Nevertheless, those two words still offered a spot of hope. He didn’t know if it was right to try and hold onto that or to accept what felt like the inevitable. He didn’t see any way this conversation would end with the Champions still together. Not like they had been anyhow.
Instead of trying to think of a way to hold onto it all or try blunt what was sure to be the pain of what was about to occur, he pushed the possibilities aside and tried to refocus his thoughts on how to make the various plans he'd started in the past few weeks come to fruition.
I need to make sure this is worth it, Azure thought on that ride down. I can’t lose my family again for nothing.
this particular gap. I was expecting one down the line and for different reasons. I'd like to blame the insomnia, the whole "playing grindy video games specifically for the rewards while job-hunting and still doing a 9-5 accidentally makes it feel like you're working 3 jobs a day" thing, and having other real life stuff happen for not being able to write out a chapter.
1. Chaotic, primal, pure, unbound, or free magic all are various ways to refer to mysterious energies which are not bound to a vessel of some sort. This can be the result of intense spellcraft in a localized area, releasing sealed energies from artifacts, or by strange arcane phenomena not yet fully understood
