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“No!”
“C’mon, it’s cute!”
“And who says I wanna be cute!?”
“Can we press pause for a second, are you actually doing this!? I was still convinced you guys were gonna say you were messing!”
Grian’s apartment floor was scattered with papers, and Pearl was sitting crisscross on his couch, leaned forward so her raven-black wings were emerging over the back of the couch from the back of her black halter top. She had her sketchbook held up proudly, practically beaming. Grian was standing in front of her, across from the coffee table that had the remnants of a dozen doughnuts and three oft refilled cups of coffee. He also had a halter top on, white, which left his back and shoulders completely exposed and kept any sort of irritating rubbing or pressure away from his large wing roots. He had his arms folded and was glaring daggers at the page Pearl was displaying to him, her chest puffed up proudly.
Jimmy, who’d called a timeout on the conversation, was standing behind the couch, massive golden wings flared out, the set on his head beating frantically to mirror his confusion with the entire scenario. He was wearing a white tee shirt with slits seamed into the back for his wings. Considering it was hot enough to be wearing a halter top instead, Grian wasn’t sure why he bothered, but whatever. His enormously oversized blue, red, and white striped sweatshirt, which he’d was his usual item to sport on preening nights when they all gathered together, was tossed over the back of the kitchen table chair alongside Pearl’s oversized red zip hoodie.
The trio of avians had convened for a preening session, but one thing had led to another which had led to this. All on the offhanded mention that Grian had made about his recent rescue at the hands of Hot Guy. He’d been explaining to them how Hot Guy had been so caring toward him, carried him back to his apartment and everything, and they’d been prodding at him because the way he was talking made it sound like he’d developed an instantaneous crush on the superhero. Then things had taken a turn.
People love him…maybe they could love us too…?
It had spiraled from there.
“I’m not joking, Jim; get on board,” Grian replied flatly, making a chopping motion of one hand into the other.
His younger cousin’s cocoa-colored eyes lit with concern. “I-I…look, I know you’re insane on a good day, but this is…this is…”
He raked a hand back over golden hair, wings shimmering even in the dim light of the side table lamp. Then he huffed, arm dropping to slack, shaking his head.
“Grian.”
“Where’s the harm in trying?” Grian asked, but it was clear his heart wasn’t in the statement, he dodged his dark eyes to left to avoid Jimmy’s face as the blonde sputtered.
“Are you hearing yourself!? Pearl, come on!”
Pearl twisted her torso, hooking an elbow over the back of the couch. Her raven black wings flexed and half folded in to accommodate the motion.
“I’m not thrilled, but I’m not gonna try to stop him.”
“Why!?” Jimmy stopped a foot, and Pearl sighed. “Because if we did, do you think it would actually work?”
Jimmy looked up at Grian flatly, then his shoulders slouched, and he groaned. “…no.”
“I feel like I should be insulted…” Grian grumbled, before he planted his hands on his hips.
“You gonna help me or what? You’re both in journalism, I mean, this is a hell of a lineup!”
“How are you gonna do this on top of being a professor?” Jimmy tried to swing for a different point, and Grian snapped back without thinking.
“W-Well, Hot Guy does it!”
“We don’t know what his day job is! Maybe he doesn’t even have one!” Jimmy exclaimed furiously.
He figured it would be tough.
But Scar can do it.
He hadn’t meant to discover Hot Guy’s secret identity. It had been a ridiculous coincidence, he’d been rescued from a mugging, hugged so tight to the hero’s chest, and he’d looked up. He was shorter, and from such a close angle, he’d been able to make out from beneath the small gap in his visor, the scar running over the bridge of his nose. Add that to the fact that Scar…that Hot Guy apparently put on a voice when he was on hero-ing duty, and said voice had slipped when he’d seen Grian in danger, well…Grian wasn’t stupid. He’d put it together. Other little tells had become more obvious after that.
He hadn’t mentioned it to Jimmy and Pearl. It wasn’t his secret to tell.
Yet Pearl was staring at him with her dark eyes wide and then scrambling for her phone.
“What?” Grian asked in a flat tone as Jimmy started pacing, grumbling under his breath and huffing, his feathers puffing up from anxiety that they were actually considering going through with this.
Pearl, meanwhile, had pulled up something on her phone. Grian took a few steps closer, leaning over her. “What are you doing now?”
She was looking at photos of Hot Guy.
Then, Grian felt his veins go icy when he saw her switch over to the university website and immediately pull Scar’s profile from the architecture department.
“W-What are you looking him up for!?” He demanded, trying to keep his voice level, and Pearl snapped her fingers once.
“Jimmy, what’s the timeline on Hot Guy, you’ve done write-ups for him.”
“Timeline?” Jimmy looked back at her tiredly and shrugged, crossing his arms over his broad chest.
“Um, well…he arrived on the scene nineteen years ago, and appeared sporadically as the previous generation of heroes faded out. Then like…I think it was seventeen years ago was when he became a mainstay, once the old generation was all gone, and he hasn’t gone anywhere since.”
Pearl made a series of keening noises in the back of her throat, which triggered Jimmy to come rushing up behind her from his pacing.
She thrust the phone about an inch from his face, and he leaned back a bit to let his eyes adjust. “W-What…? What am I supposed to see!?”
“Degree dates.”
“Degree dates…” Jimmy squinted.
Grian fumbled. “Look, can we forget about my hopeless crush for like five minutes and focus on this outfit you drew, Pearl? Can’t you gimme something a bit more…”
“Stars, Grian, no way!” Jimmy shouted, looking up, and Pearl slammed her phone down onto the couch cushions. “See!? See!?”
“What are you two talking about!?”
“It’s Scar! That’s why you think you can do it! Because it’s Scar!”
“Oh stars, oh stars, this is so bad, we shouldn’t know this, we shouldn’t…”
Pearl was screeching, Jimmy was panicking again, and Grian sputtered.
“W-What? No! No…no it’s not! Can’t be! You’d both met Scar; he can’t be Hot Guy; he can stand with a cane at best; how could he b-be…”
Pearl narrowed her eyes to her brother. “Grian.” She said his name almost disappointedly.
“You know you can’t lie to me.”
Grian groaned, opening his wings up as he dropped to the ground to sit heavily on the carpet, burying his face in his hands and then bringing the colorful macaw-banded wings around himself.
“Nuh-uh!”
“What do you mean ‘nuh-uh’? It’s him, isn’t it?”
“Shut up!”
“That’s not a no!”
“Ugh!” Grian opened his wings a crack to glare out at both of them.
“Do not tell anyone!”
“As if we would!? Grian, this is mad! Scar clearly has some kind of biotech or something!”
“And I’ve got glamor! I’m good at it, always have been! This is a chance, Jimmy, can’t you see that?”
He glared out at the younger man with a sudden ferocious spark in his chest.
All his life he’d lived knowing he’d never fly beneath a blue sky.
It had been a simple, easy fact.
Yet here he was, being confronted with the reality that things could change.
Jimmy fisted his hands against the back of the couch. “But Grian, if they catch you…”
“I won’t get caught.”
“You can’t promise me that.”
“Jimmy, I’ll be fine, I…”
“No! No, this is stupid! If you try to go through with this I’m telling Doc and Etho!” Jimmy insisted, and Pearl swatted him in the stomach with her sketchbook, causing him to jump from the sudden contact. She turned her eyes up to him, and when she spoke it was removed from the fires of frustration in Grian’s tone.
“Jimmy, he’s gonna fly.”
A moment's pause.
“And if we pull this off, maybe one day, we can fly, too.”
Jimmy’s face went through several expression, and Grian beat his wings out halfway to rise to his feet again. He tried to school down the anger, tried to remember that Jimmy was just scared of something happening to him.
A few deep breaths.
“Jimmy, I can’t do this without your help.”
Jimmy keened weakly. His shoulders slouched, his massive golden wings followed the motion, flopping outward halfway as he hugged his elbows, shaking his head a few times.
“I-I…” He sighed heavily, squeezing his eyes shut for a moment. “This is so stupid…fine. Fine. But you need to be careful, and if it seems like too much, you quit. Understand?”
“Deal.”
Grian beamed, which only seemed to make Jimmy even more concerned, and meanwhile, Pearl held her sketchbook up again.
“Anyway! Now that that’s taken care of! Costume time!”
“Pearl, why does it have to be pink?”
“Because A, you look good in pink,” Pearl said, her two sets of tiny wings fluffing self-importantly. “…and B, you should try to go with something that’s nothing like your usual colors or outfits; that way, it’s harder for people to recognize you!”
“To be fair, that’s what Scar’s done.” Jimmy mused as he looked at the costume Pearl had sketched out, placing his knuckles against his lips a moment.
“Huh?” Grian made the noise disconcertedly.
Jimmy looked up at him. “Think about it. Scar always wears layers and long sleeves; he covers up. He also uses a wheelchair, but I doubt that’s just for the disguise, more likely I’ll bet he’s got some sort of limited-use biotech.”
“Since when were you the expert?”
“Have you met Doc?”
“Fair point.” Grian conceded before he pointed at the sketchbook again. “Even still! Why does it look like that? I’m going to look like a stripper, not a superhero!”
“You could always pick up a third gig for the spare cash.”
“Hilarious, Pearl. No. You can design the costume, but it’s not gonna be that.” Grian insisted with a flat glare, and his sister puffed her cheeks, turning her sketchbook to thrust it into his face again.
“Think about it!”
“I have thought about it, and I’ve decided that ribbons and hearts are not going to be my brand!”
“We’re assuming you’re gonna end up with a brand? PR potential, huh…hmm…maybe I could write up something for that…” Jimmy mused as Pearl and Grian continued to bicker.
Pearl set the sketchbook aside, the rough outlines of the costume on display. A black skintight halter top with short puffy shorts, ribbons, garters, and a thick belt for holsters. Grian had already pitched them the plan of using prop pistols for his glamor bullets, just to be safe, considering humans at large had no idea glamor even existed, and a hybrid suddenly appearing on the scene was already going to be shocking; much less one who could shoot glowing projectiles from his bare hands.
“No means no, Pearl! That outfit is so embarrassing, I wouldn’t wear that in a million years!”
“That’s why it makes the perfect costume, the perfect disguise! No one would look at this and think, oh yeah, that’s my architecture professor!” Pearl insisted, and Grian hated that she made a good point.
“I also think it’ll be disarming.” Jimmy suddenly butted in, and Grian looked up at him tiredly. “How so?”
“Pink and hearts and ribbons…who could claim that’s a monster?”
Grian twisted up his expression further. “But I don’t…”
“For the good of the people, Gri! Just let me design it! Give it a test flight!”
“No! No! No!”
“If you don’t try it, I’m not helping.”
“Jimmy!?”
Two Weeks Later.
Ugh…almost done with patrol…here we go, here we go…
Scar hurtled between another two sets of buildings as he passed near the university. There had been a few endermen to take care of, he’d stopped a couple crimes in progress, chased down a carjacker, and now he was winding down. He used the biotech in his eyes to seamlessly connect with his orange visor, checking the time.
If I pick up the pace I might be able to squeeze in an hour of sleep before I have to get ready to leave for work.
He concluded, and just as he did, his visor lit up, a series of alerts in the corner of his vision.
Monsters, again!? What is with the rifts, lately!?
It was difficult, sometimes, to pinpoint where monsters emerged since the bedrock was so full of cracks. Scar rushed toward the scene, his bracers humming as they triggered from the biotech implants in his legs. He pulled his bow from his back as he skidded to a halt atop a building over the street where he’d gotten the alert. Looking down he spotted several zombies shuffling their way out from an alleyway, and knocked an arrow, drawing back. The muscles of his shoulders and back burned with the familiar work, he took his aim, his visor working alongside the biotech in his eyes to narrow in on the targets vulnerable points.
Just a few…I can wrap this up nice and…
Wherever that was headed, Scar wouldn’t find out, because before he could loose, a series and brilliant flashes burst through the dark of the alleyway. He replaced the arrow into his quiver and took a few steps left, squinting into the alleyway with a skip to his heart, trying to figure out where that light had come from.
Then a blur of color hurtled upward from the alleyway, and his heart skipped for entirely different reasons.
The figure came for a landing on the same rooftop as Scar, on the opposite side. Heeled boots clicked gently as he landed with grace on the very edge, above a four story fall. He lifted his chin, glowing purple wisps that must’ve been his eyes through the dark shadow over his features fixed onto Scar.
“Oh…I was wondering when I’d finally run into you, Pretty Boy.”
Scar swallowed, his grip tightening around his bow as he dug the toes of his bracers downward against the cement beneath his feet.
“You aren’t allowed up here.”
“Why not?”
Scar felt confusion hurtle through his head, completely without any sort of response to that, still trying to figure out how he was even here.
The man was petite, wearing a skin tight black halter top, short pink shorts with black ribbons and bows lacing the sides. Black thigh highs with pink garters, pink heeled boots. Arm length fingerless black gloves that seemed to shift subtly with pink and black. A set of odd looking pink pistols were in the holsters on his hips. He had a mop of light brown hair that was windswept and messy, which made sense, because Scar assumed he had been flying around.
Wings.
Scar had never met a hybrid or a mutant. He’d never met someone from the under-city, whom he’d always been told were separated from the monsters he killed on the daily, and yet were still monsters themselves, in their own right. Unable to resist their natural thirst for chaos, and with the same violent tendencies as the monsters they shared the underground with, they were kept sealed below both for their own safety and for that of the folks of the over-city.
Yet here stood someone with beautiful wings, black feathers bleeding into pink, and the same coloration on the two sets of wings on his head. When he moved his head, the tiny wings moved with him, it was obvious they weren’t any sort of adornment. They were real. This was real. This was really someone of the under-city.
“W-Why…because it’s illegal.” Scar finally managed, reaching for his quiver again.
Just as fast, the winged vigilante pulled out one of his pistols and pointed it at Scar. Scar hadn’t actually been expecting him to react violently. He couldn’t tell you why, considering he’d been taught his whole life that the under-city folks were naturally violent toward humans.
“Don’t. I don’t want to hurt you.” The voice was smooth and easy, it sounded oddly oozing, oddly flirtatious, and Scar felt his ears burning.
It wasn’t hard, considering the outfit this guy was wearing, on top of how he talked, on top of how gorgeous he was even with the shadows that concealed his face.
What!? No! Stop that!
Scar mentally slapped himself, then lowered his arm from reaching for his arrow.
“Alright. Don’t shoot.”
The vigilante lowered his pistol, but didn’t holster it. He watched Scar with the purple glow through the darkness over his features, tilting his head back and forth. The motions were bird-like, which made sense, Scar supposed.
“How did you get up here?”
“You think I’d tell ya that?”
“No. Figured it didn’t hurt to try.”
Scar took a few deep breaths, trying to decide how to proceed. “Look. I’ll give you a warning tonight. But you need to go back beneath bedrock, right now. Don’t come back up, and there won’t be any trouble.”
The vigilante watched him for a few seconds, though Scar couldn’t see his expression, he seemed to be considering.
“…you don’t want to see me again?”
“No.” Scar replied instantly. “For your own safety and for that of the over-city. You need to go.”
Another few seconds.
The tiny wings on either side of the vigilantes head pulled downward at the points. Scar wasn’t sure what that meant, but judging from his body language which Scar could understand, it looked almost…disappointed.
“I see. Yeah, I should've figured that. It’s a shame…I was kinda hoping maybe you’d come around straight away.” The vigilante turned his gaze away from Scar, looking up at the starry sky above their heads. Inky black with pinpricks of white twinkling, and pale moonlight that filtered down amidst the lights of the city around them.
Scar saw him tighten his grip on his pistol, and he instinctually pulled an arrow and knocked it, moving fast. It was a net arrow, he wasn’t shooting to kill. The vigilante beat his wings and hurtled into the air, aiming his pistol downward and pulling the trigger. Pink pulsed up the black of his glove on that arm, and a crackling pink bullet of energy shot from the barrel. Scar dodged, rolling left over his shoulders and landing on one knee, lifting his bow again, he fired. The arrow burst open into a net halfway through it’s trajectory, but in another massive sweep of his wings, the vigilante dodged, flying further and further upward.
“Sorry, Pretty Boy! I can’t take your advice!” He shouted as he twirled through the night sky, then kicked out his pink heeled boots once as he billowed his wings out.
Scar felt his breath catching again as he watched the display.
He moved like a dancer in the air, his body fluid while his wings worked powerfully, and when he folded his wings to flip backward, Scar thought he heard some sort of chortling noise, just barely.
Why not?
That was never something Scar had considered. He was a puppet on strings…loosened strings, especially after his best friend had helped him escape the Institute’s clutches, but he was still beholden to the Council. Or at least, he knew he ought to be, and so he carried on with it, even if this was ringing something in his mind that he couldn’t believe he hadn’t once considered.
Why not?
He straightened up as the vigilante landed on the very corner edge of the rooftop again with a series of taps from his heels. He planted his hands on his hips. “The big fight over?” He asked, sounding almost teasing.
Scar could make out a mirthful grin through the shadows, and felt his ears burning again.
“This is your warning, Birdie. Go home”
“Birdie? Aw, that’s cute…but seriously, you’re no fun.” He waved his pistol at Scar dismissively as if it were nothing but a toy. He pitched his weight to one side, hips jutting, head tilting. The tiny wings atop his head flared forward and opened up.
“No. You’re just gonna have to get used to me.”
Scar winced. “Y-You’re gonna get hurt!”
“What do you care? You’d rather me be sealed up underground!” The vigilante shouted, and he beat his wings out once.
“Don’t try to sell me the pity!”
“It’s not pity, it’s…”
“What? What is it, huh?”
The silence was deafening. Scar opened and closed his mouth a few times, but no words came out. The vigilante vaguely shook his head.
“That’s what I thought.”
“Go home.”
“I can’t do that. I’m gonna make you, make them all, see me, doesn’t matter if you like it or not. See ya around.”
The vigilante beat out his wings again and then turned and swan-dived off the roof. Scar let out a half-caught gasp, but of course, it was no concern that he would fall. His wings billowed in the air and he beat them hard twice, shooting upward into the sky, up, up, up till he had vanished amidst the city lights.
Scar slowly clipped his bow to the harness on his back, emerald green eyes wide behind his visor. Then, he raked his hands into his hair a few times, heart thumping erratically as panic consumed him to the bones.
Why was he so cute!?