Project ROWDY 2-5

The world was a blur and his ears were full of Cecil’s voice, the director calm and flat in his tone as he ever was. Unfortunately, speaking in dulcet tones was a piss-poor idea when it came time to compete with the wind screaming past his face. 

Luckily for the director, though, his hearing was good enough to account for that.

Mach 1 over New York and already slowing down, Brick cut through the skyline with his red trail lighting up the sky behind him, glass and steel rushing by close enough to kiss his cheeks.

“—Doc Cancer’s torn through three city blocks. Capes Inc is getting their asses kicked down there, son.” Cecil’s updates were pretty unnecessary, considering he could pretty much see everything already as he came to a quick stop, enough inertia to wipe out a city block halted in an instant. 

Below him, the scene was pretty much a perfect little diorama of incompetence. Some idiot in a lightning bolt costume (Dick Dynamo, that was his name, because of course it was) got swatted aside with one car-door sized mammoth of a hand, the yellow-suite super’s pathetic little zaps doing absolutely nothing. 

His fault for thinking he stood a chance against the hulking, seven-foot tumor-monster currently using a city bus as a baseball bat.

“What about Kid Thor?” Brick asked, words carried on the comms as he kept one eye on the fight.

“Unconscious.”

“Commander Capitalism?”

“First one out of the fight.”

“And Invincible?” Mark’s supposed to be the heavy-hitter now. Invincible might not have been the best at multi-mega fights but the guy was still at least as strong as any one of them and way way tougher. The fuck is he up to?

The sigh on the other side of his comm told him all he needed but Cecil, in all his kindness, still chose to clarify. “Busy with that idiot Doc Seismic at the Washington Monument. You’re our best available.”

Our best available. It was no small fact that Trinity were literally the Global Defense Agency’s biggest weapon, and that included all their technology and weaponry. Still, Brick wasn’t sure if the old man was just saying that to play to his ego or…

“Look, I’d call anyone of your brothers in too, but with the invasion damage and the repairs already…”

“You’d rather not risk the collateral, I get it,” Brick finished for him, the words flat and dead.

“...Butch did put the elephant into traction back in March.”

Brick rolled his eyes. Well, he shouldn’t have sprayed him with water. His little brother was a little like a cat in the way he didn’t really like to get wet. Well, that and the random bursts of dissociation into rampant violence.

Still, the truth hung there in the static between them, thick and heavy. It was just a fact. The sun rises in the east. Peanut butter and jelly is gross. Butch and Boomer break things.

Which just left… him. Brick closed his eyes for a second, holding back a sigh. Lucky me.

Down below, the cancer man hurled a taxi with a screamed grunt, a four thousand pound projectile spinning end over end in a yellow blur right towards a screaming fleeing family.

Come on. Brick was already moving before his brain caught up to his body. Swooping in, one hand caught the vehicle by the undercarriage, momentum barely even shuddering his arm as he hung in the air. Mother and child stared up at him, both still caught in half-screams; sound trailing away as they realized street pizza was no longer on the menu. You’re welcome.

Nodding at them as they went back to running for safety, the Rowdyruff set the car back down on the asphalt with gentleness that felt like a lie before turning back around to deal with the main event.

Said main event was still screaming, voice a wet, gargling roar that echoed off the surrounding skyscrapers. “IMMORTALITY! LIKE MY BEAUTIFUL WIFE!”

Like your wife, huh? You sure about that? Holly Winters looked all of twenty-five years old and the pretty blonde lady had looked exactly the same for the last thirty years. Unlike his wife, Thomas Winters was… a mess.

To say the least.

Skin exactly how Brick remembered it from their last fight months and months ago in that abandoned factory, the man was a walking screaming billboard for what mad science, insecurity and bad life choices would do to you. Everything about him just screamed abomination; arms the size of two people each, veins bulging blue and red and black across every inch of visible flesh, and did he mention the tumors?

Brick pulled a face, watching one bubble up, explode and then regenerate in the span of a second. God, this fucking g-

The first punch caught him across the face the second he darted in. Fast. Faster than something that size should be. The impact snapped his head sideways with a wet crack, and the world went white for a split second, copper taste flooding his mouth as something hot ran down his face.

He floated there for a second, half his vision blurring into a watery useless mess. The pain was nothing he wasn’t used to, a dull throb, barely an annoyance above all else. That was nothing, but at the same time it was everything.

My eye. He could tell it was fucked up already, feeling the swell and bruising spread across his cheekbone. He hit my fucking eye.

That familiar hot spark that had been stronger since Omni-Man flared in his chest, rage and pride and seven years of instincts screaming hurt him back hurt him back HURT HIM BACK.

As useless as his eye was for sight right now, that didn’t mean it still couldn’t burn.

Twin beams of focused raw heat lanced out, the kind of surgical precision that would take his brothers months of practice to get close to coming naturally to him. No wasted energy. No collateral. Just two perfect searing points of light that hit their marks, burning clean holes where Doc Cancer's eyeballs used to be.

"MY EYES! MY BEAUTIFUL EYES!"

The scream was wet as his roars were, saliva and phlegm in that fucked-up voice box doing nothing to keep the mammoth’s voice from going high-pitched with pain. Misshappen hands clutched at his face, blood and eye jelly leaking between fingers as the seven-foot behemoth staggered blindly around.

As Doc Cancer stumbled over a mass of rubble, Brick moved. No wasted motion. 

Gloved hands closed firm around the monster’s throat, grip tighter than a hydraulic press. It took all of a half-second for Brick to regret doing exactly that as a bulging fleshy tumor popped like bubble wrap beneath his fingers, black pus leaking all over. …I’m gonna kill him.

Without a word, without a warning, he rocketed skyward. Straight up at maximum safe velocity, his maximum anyway, with a still-screaming Winters dragged along with him. He couldn’t exactly make out the words, but he was pretty sure Cancer wasn’t having as much fun as he was before.

The city shrank beneath them, the sounds of screaming and sirens fading into a dull hum, then nothing but silence as they broke through the cloud cover. Doc Cancer’s struggles grew weaker, his massive fists beating uselessly against his arm as the atmosphere thinned.

“Wait… wait… can’t breathe…” 

“That’s the point, fuckface.”

They reached the edge of space in seconds and Brick shot up even further, past sattelites and space garbage until all that stared back at them from the blackness of the void was the cold indifferent light of everdistant stars. Satisfied with this height, Brickford Mojo finally let go and leaned back, arms crossed over his chest as the spinning globe below them stood out as a patchwork of white and blue. Doc Cancer’s face was already blue as the former scientist grasped at his throat, but the color only deepened and darkened, eyes rolling back as the man’s massive frame started to go limp. 

He watched with half-lidded eyes, almost counting in his head as time went by. Sixteen… Eighteen… Twenty…

Seconds passed him by, the time nearly reaching a minute as eyes that were once hot stared with all the coldness of the void around him. Wouldn't it be more convenient to just... leave him up here?

After all, no witnesses this high, right? No cameras. No drones. Not even any satellites. Just him and a crazy superpowered mass murderer who'd killed at least fifteen people in the last hour alone. Right? Would anyone even blame me?

Brick rolled his eyes, pushing back the instinct with a long sigh. Murder's rarely on the menu these days. Besides, Cecil wanted the guy alive for whatever fucked-up containment facility the GDA kept these types in. Probably wants to study the regeneration or some shit.

By the time they dropped back down past the troposphere, Doc Cancer was still unconscious as Brick dragged him with one hand. Unconscious, yes, but he was breathing again, the lucky bastard. The same spot Brick had taken off from had been repurposed as a landing site, a GDA VTOL already hovering in place, agents in tactical gear standing ready outside with containment cuffs and a massive stretcher.

Brick tossed the mass of cancerous meat down to the waiting team, body hitting the pavement hard enough to crack it further.

"Clean takedown, sir." A salute came his way, a younger agent probably fresh out of college nodding up at him. 

Brick just looked his way, eye still throbbing, and sighed before taking off back to Virginia.

“Whatever.”

– o – o – o – o – o – o – o –

Barely five minutes later, Brick walked back into the GDA training complex, super-suit and comm system returned to storage. The thirteen-year-old stood in nothing but a muscle shirt, bright red the way he liked it, as he took in a deep breath of the over-recycled GDA air.

The massive mega-door slid open with a hiss of air that sent his mullet fluttering back, Brick blinking in as he took in the GDA state of the art training complex after its twelfth redesign in almost as many months. The big gym, as Boomer called it, was for people who could punch through mountains (and Butch), a place designed to keep them from breaking the rest of the base by accident. 

As always, his brothers were doing their best to test those limits.

Butch was already at least a dozen reps in on a bench press designed for what the GDA was starting to call hyper-humans, people classed on the level they and Invincible were (which was as few as you’d expect, but scientists liked categories). Said press was loaded down with what looked like half a tank but Brick was sure it weighed something close to at least a hundred times more and probably still cake for the boy using them. Butch was still bugging the scientists to install a gravity room against their best wishes, but his little brother was sure Dragon Ball Z style-training would work.

Boomer, on the other hand, was playing to his strengths; his other sibling little more than a blue afterimage on a treadmill designed for the sort of speeds that would turn a normal human from biology into physics.

Their reactions were as immediate (and predictable) as both blue and green eyes locked right onto him the second he cleared the doorway.

“Wow, somebody fucked you uuuuu~uuuup, big bro,” Butch said, a grin just this side of manic on his face as he racked the weight back with a deafening clang. “Did you cry?”

Instead of answering that question by making him cry, Brick simply clicked his tongue as Boomer shot to his side in a blue flash, the Blue Ruff sucking in air through his teeth with a loud hiss. “Ooooh, man. Does it hurt? It looks like it hurts.”

Brick held back a growl, not feeling the need to deal with the five-minute long reassurance to a pouting Boomer that would consist mostly of, ‘no, I’m not mad at you. I’m just mad’. “Doc Cancer hits like a truck. Unfortunately for him, I don’t brake.”

Shaking his head, Brick took in the rest of the room, glancing at the other three who had just noticed his appearance. The Grissom kids… he tilted his head. Well, some of them.

Tall and jacked to the gills like a linebacker’s linebacker, Butch’s student advisor at Grissom Academy, was hard at work manipulating a small mountain of weights. Telekinesis formed a blue aura around his hands and the objects, his blue eyes shining just a bit brighter than usual, almost glowing as he carefully began to set each weight down one at a time. Brick doubted he was straining though, barely even seeing a hint of sweat on the caramel-skinned teenager’s face.

Not too far from him, a blonde girl in an over-sized t-shirt and leggings was clearly in the wind-up of something that was probably Pilates, not like Brick knew exactly what that was anyway. Elizabeth Armstrong, blonde and focused, was his student advisor at Grissom, the girl a new fixture in the GDA as she was sorta-technically an intern. As much as Brick didn’t mind her around, Liz managed to get on his nerves a little. Not for anything large, but she always seemed to turn everything into something school-related, even down to the way she trained. For someone that could throw around five tons, the older girl was oddly restrained when it came to actually using that. He really didn’t get why the daughter of Super-Patriot always focused more on testing her limits than pushing them.

Justin Armstrong, her twin brother, leaned up against a weight rack as he chugged down a Gatorade like he was actually training hard. Judging from the lack of sweat anywhere on his body, Brick knew that was a hard no.

He held back a scoff. The usual.

Still, though, Brick wasn’t at all surprised to see the three, all having showed up not too long before Cecil called him away. He was a little surprised not to see Hannah, though, Boomer’s student advisor nowhere to be found. Brick was sure she was some kind of meta, even if he’d never seen her powers in action.

“Brick! You’re back,” Elizabeth looked up from her weird stretchy routine, wide blue eyes tracking to his face. “How was Manhattan?”

“Handled.” The word came out half a grunt, Brick grabbing a towel from the steam rack and pressing it up to his still throbbing eye. 

"Lil bro, your eye looks brutal," Damien paused his telekinetic lifting as he raised an eyebrow Brick’s way, weights still hovering. "You sure you're good?"

Fucking Cancer… The swelling was still a problem, lumped-up flesh pushing his vision into a narrow slit. Still, though… “I’ve had worse,” He let the towel drop from his hand as he grabbed another one, the thing dropping to the floor stained red and black from dried blood and whatever other fluids had leaked out. Much worse.

"Yo, D, you ever try juggling these things?" Butch asked, nodding at the hovering weights, toxic green eyes bright and eager for mayhem. "Like, for real juggling? Bet you could do it."

"Nah, man.” Damien chuckled, the sound low and easy. “Too much work. Plus, Liz would probably write me up for improper equipment usage."

"And you know it, so don’t test me, Damien." Elizabeth didn't look up from her stretches, voice clipped and certain as she sounded off like a drill sergeant who did photoshoots. "There are protocols for a reason."

"See?" Damien shook his head, still grinning. "She's always watching."

"Always," Justin echoed as he pushed himself off the weight rack, stretching arms above his head. “I remember our first day in Grissom, she was l-”

"I've been thinking about our training schedules." Elizabeth spoke over her brother, ever the planner, cutting Justin off mid-word. "If we’re gonna actually do this and spend all this time in here, we might as well… like, coordinate and get some idea of what we’re doing in this whole thing. Feels less like we’re just wasting our time, you know?"

"Still treating this like an AP class, Buffy?" Justin smirked at his twin.

“This is about how our lives are going to go, Justin. If you don’t take this seriously, you’re not getting into any college worth our time.” Elizabeth's expression suddenly went as brittle and sharp as her voice. "And what have I told you about calling me that?"

"Did you forget who that is? No one’s gonna turn down the kids of Super-Patriot,” Justin barelled on like he didn’t hear the last part. “Not unless they want Fox News, CNN and MSNBC to blast them as un-American. We’re good on college, sissy. Chill."

"Yale?"

"...You always gotta get the last word in."

Elizabeth smirked back at him. “That’s ‘cause my last words are usually the right ones.”

They're always like this. Brick watched the twins banter, his one good eye tracking between them, finding it as familiar as he did annoying. New day same shit.

"College… huh…" Damien's expression grew more serious as he watched them, massive weights still hovering in the air around him, rotating slow. "Ain't even think about that."

Justin shot a look his way. "What do you think about, D? Tell Uncle Justin all about it."

Damien shot his same-age uncle a look, rolling his eyes before the oversized teenager finally spoke up. "I dunno… sometimes I wonder if this is what I actually want, you know?"

The casual conversation stopped dead as even Butch paused, looking over at Damien with confused frown. "What d'you mean?"

"All this." Damien gestured vaguely around at the whole gym, at the base, at them. "Like, I can lift fifty tons with my mind, but does that mean I should?"

"It's about responsibility, isn't it?" Elizabeth said, tone becoming more academic, because everything's a lecture with her. "After Yale, I think I might travel to Iran or Myanmar… you know, they're still recovering after that nuclear attack in 2013. I could do something there, charity work, something to use our abilities for the greater good, building a better world…"

“Fucking please, Buffy,” Brick couldn’t help himself as he scoffed out the words, the sound loud and derisive in the sudden quiet. “You think anyone gives a shit about your good intentions?”

Even to his ears, the room was nearly completely silent, nothing but the hum of the filtration system and air-conditioning pumping full blast as every eye in the room landed firmly where he stood. It didn’t do a thing to phase him as he stood up from the weight bench.

“You guys want to know what res-pon-si-bi-li-ty looks like?” His head tilted to the side with every syllable in the word, making it clear exactly what he thought about it. “It’s making the hard fucking choices. It’s about doing shit when nobody else will.”

“And what’s that supposed to mean?” His student advisor and friend may have been intimidating to others in school when she had that edge to her voice, but she’d never once scared Brick before and that wasn’t going to change. “You think we don’t kno-

“I think you don’t know shit, yeah.”

“Brick,” was all she could even say to that, blue eyes looking stunned his way.

Boomer looked much the same, his brother’s eyes wide in his peripheral, while Butch…

His other eye was too fucked up still for him to see Butch off to the side, but he could still hear his brother egging him on under his breath.

He didn’t really need the motivation, though. “What it means is,” he continued, crossing his arms tight across his muscle shirt, “is that while you’re in here debating the ethics of it all and whether you actually want to do anything or what you could do, there’s a guy in Manhattan who turned about two dozen civilians into what Butch would call street pizza.” 

Butch let out a low hum. “...yeah, sounds like me.”

“And someone had to stop him. Three guesses who?”

“Was it me?” Boomer chimed in.

Butch shot him a one-eyed glare that had his baby brother immediately shrink back.

“...I’ll be quiet now.”

“We get that, man,” Damien shrugged his massive shoulders, the older boy clearly unsure of what to say, “But like… that’s not our job.”

“Why not?” The question was flat and simple. “You got something better to do?”

Damien’s mouth worked silently, the big guy seeming much smaller than usual all of a sudden as Brick put him on the spot again. “I… I mean, we ain’t… we’re not… like Invincible, or anything. It’s not like… our jobs.”

Brick blinked red eyes slowly. Not. Your. Jobs. “Damien… your mother is Liberty. She’s been a hero since she was sixteen. That was twenty-one years ago.” He let the math sit for everyone to think over for a second or two. “Who made it her job?”

The big guy blinked.

Brick shook his head. “I mean, come on. Don’t piss me off. Your tactile TK makes you twice as strong as your mom and uncle put together, at least twice over. ‘It’s not our jobs’, the thirteen year-old mocked, pulling a face. “Then whose job is it?

“Brick’s just had a long day, guys,” Boomer said, voice tight and clearly trying to smooth the whole situation over. “He… he doesn’t mean it.”

Butch clicked his tongue. “I’m thinking he does.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning to stare each one of them in the face. “I’m thinking I do. I’m just being realistic right now.”

“Realistic? Come on,” Elizabeth started up again, once again trying to sound like the oldest one in the room. “You’re being a jerk.”

“No, you come on,” he snapped, voice cracking past his forced calm. “You all get to sit here and whine your asses off about whether you want to be heroes because someone else is out there doing the actual work.”

A single thumb jabbed upward, aimed right at his chest. "Mark's out in the field. We're out in the field. While you—"

“Hey, we’ve done our share—” Justin started, the slacker’s defensive tone immediately grating on Brick’s last nerve as if he didn’t spend more time gaming than on anything else.

“Of what?” he cut him off. “You’ve done publicity events and training exercises. You’re Grissom students, but none of you ever even suited up for real. Hell, I know some other kids who have, and they don’t have legacy like you.” Brick pulled in a low hiss. “Like… like, what if a villain pulled up right now, broke out of GDA containment?”

Justin blinked slowly, eyes flicking between the three Ruffs like the answer was obvious. “I… I mean… I… you guys… are here though? You’d save us… right?”

“What if we weren’t here, though?” Brick answered back, voice tighter. “What if… we were the ones you needed saving from?”

“Wait a minute, w-wait,” Elizabeth strode forward, hands forming an ‘X’ over her chest. “This is ridiculous. That’s a pointless hypothetical. You guys are heroes. Good ones, some of the best even.”

Brick held up a hand. “The best. Don’t disrespect us in our house, the best.” He shot Elizabeth a firm look to make that point clear. “And second, yeah, we’re heroes. Now. Before last year… not so much.”

Three sets of eyes widened. “...oh.”

Yeah. Oh. “Liz, you can treat this like extra credit until someone splatters all over you and you could have done something to stop it.” His jaw tightened, teeth grit as he felt that spark in his chest build up again. “Until your family’s dying and you feel pathetic and worthless, like a fucking joke.”

“Is that what happened to you?” 

What?

Damien’s question made Brick freeze, bright red eyes flickering over to the black teen’s light blue as he continued on. “With Omni-Man?”

Brick’s gaze locked tight where he stood, his one good eye and one swollen bruised eye fixing firmly on Damien. A low growl rumbled in his chest as he took to the air to meet Damien at his eye level, and behind him, he could feel both his brothers tense up. 

Butch and Boomer floated up to his sides, toxic green and cobalt blue auras flaring at the sides of his vision the same way he knew he was surrounded by blood-red.

Damien raised both hands, palm up as the big guy took a half-step back. “You… you got it, lil bro.”

"But surely there has to be a balance—" Elizabeth started, ever the diplomat, trying to bridge the growing divide with her academic bullshit.

He cut her off, gaze shifting to Justin. "You cool with your sister dying?"

Justin just shook his head, face pale. "No, man, I d-"

"Do you want to see your brother get a hole punched through his chest?" Brick didn’t even let Justin finish before he cut to his twin, another similar question aimed at her.

Blue eyes met blue eyes as Elizabeth Claire Armstrong looked over at her suddenly very quiet brother "...no?"

"Then put on some pads and get in the fucking ring, Buffy."