Dane Bromwich, better known to the world at large as EmCee, winced, as the needle punctured his skin.
“Bro, that stings.” Dane complained, as he fought not to jerk his arm away.
“Listen kid, I’m not your bro.” John Wilson, aka Scalpel, didn’t even look up from his work. “I didn’t realise you were under the impression that this was going to tickle.”
“It’s not that. It was just a shock, you know. It’s my first time.” Dane said.
Wilson pulled the needle away from the twenty year-old’s arm. “Did you hear that boys? It’s his first time!” He shouted, to the other two men sitting in the room.
“You’d best be gentle then Scal’, it’s gotta be special.” The largest man in the room, Jack Beck, formerly known as Seizure, laughed, clapping the other man on the back.
“Yeah, a girl always remembers getting her cherry popped.” The fourth man, James Wood, aka Jamais Vu, added.
“Th… That’s not what I meant!” Dane insisted, his eyes going wide as he started to stammer.
“Of course not. Now do you want me to finish this or not?” Wilson demanded.
“Of… Of course. Everyone else on this rock has ink, I want it too.” Dane said.
“Then hold still and stop your whining.” Wilson continued tattooing the young criminal’s arm, as the other two convicts continued sniggering.
“How do you even get this stuff in? I mean, I know the needles are contraband. How come you’re not in The Hole?” Dane asked.
“Half the guards here have tattoos. Free, because they let me keep doing what I’m doing. I’ve got a good business going here. Which reminds me. You’ve got my payment, right?” Wilson stopped his drawing for a moment.
“Of course. Ten boxes of cigarettes. They’re all in my bunk right now. Kinda hard to move all at once, they’re wise to that, you know?” Dane replied.
“The guards don’t know as much as you seem to think kid. They don’t know about my guy who works the mail room, and the guy in the laundry. Between the two of them, I can get anything I want. Ink is easy. One of my guys has connections in LA, he’s an ex-Rocksteady guy. You’ve heard of them?” Wilson paused for a moment. “Anyway, he got caught in his first few months, so the drugs hadn’t kicked in past the point of no return. He’s practically normal, that’s why they allow him to work laundry. Anyway, he knows a guy on the outside, gets me all these homemade inks. Nothing too high-quality, it’s all full of impurities. It gets the job done.” Wilson continues his tattooing. “Beck, go to the kid’s room and get me my cigarettes, I need to get them to Sun Shi Quan before he throws another tantrum.”
“You got it.” The giant replied, heading straight out the door without another word.
“Sun Shi Quan? Wasn’t he on Blackblood’s crew?” Dane asked, between winces.
“I owe the guy a favour. You won’t ask any more questions if you know what’s good for you.” Wilson said, holding his needle in Dane’s arm a little longer than he needed to.
“Got it.” Dane said.
Before the conversation could continue, Beck was back in the cell, empty handed.
“What are you doing back?” Wilson asked.
“Guards’ orders boss, everyone has to be in a cell. They’re moving someone through.” Beck replied.
“I wonder who that could be.” Woods muttered underneath his breath, as the guard walked past, pulling the cell door shut, as he counted the inmates.
“Who else?” Wilson replied, not even looking up from his work.
The door from the maximum security wing opened up, and a pair of guards walked through, armed with their state-of-the-art carbon-fibre tazer guns. Behind them two more guards dragged the motionless body of a man, dressed in the same prison jumpsuit as all the other convicts in the cells overlooking the main walkway. Behind walked two more guards, armed the same as the first.
“Damn! Is that…?” Dane trailed off.
“Yes. It is. They parade him through here every few weeks on some trumped-up excuse. He’s drugged up to the eyeballs, can barely breathe on his own when he’s like that. They think that he’s an example to us. If we step out of line, they’ll do it to us too, that kind of thing.” Wilson explained.
“But still, that guy is the hardest of hardcore. I can’t believe he’s right there, and he probably doesn’t even know it.” Dane said.
“He was supposed to be in Gitmo weeks ago. Guess that’s off the cards though. Turns out it was his old crew that did the breakout there. Maybe they’ll come here next.” Woods said.
“Gauss doesn’t have a crew, James. He uses people. He doesn’t have allies, he has servants. Most of them don’t live to tell the story.” Wilson said.
“Then how do you know?” Dane asked.
“What did he tell you about asking questions?” Woods smacked Dane on the back of the head.
“No. It’s fine. I’m done with his tattoo anyway.” Wilson said, pulling away, revealing a stylised image of a microphone. “You want to know how I know about the way Gauss treats the people he works with?”
Wilson opened up his jumpsuit, revealing his bare chest below. The flesh was puckered, criss-crossed with scars. “We worked a couple of gigs together. I liked to cut people up, he like to hurt them. It seemed like a good idea at the time. Then he decided we were through. Just like that. So he started cutting on me with my own scalpels. If someone hadn’t called the cops, and had anyone but the Boomers shown up, I’d have been dead in a gutter, instead of dragged up into court, and then brought here.”
“Woah. That is so messed up. Worst thing I ever did was boost a couple of stores man.” Dane said.
“Fascinating.” Wilson said drily.
<><><>
Hours passed, as Gauss lay in his cell, waiting for the drugs to wear off. As time progressed, he found himself gaining more and more strength. First, he could move under his own strength, then he could sit up. Once he could stand, he also felt his powers coming back to him. His mastery of magnetism was what defined him, without that, he would just be another human.
Of course, in this cell, he was little better than another human. Built entirely from plastic, and furnished with plastic and rubber blends. Everything they had put in this cell for him was completely useless to him. The cell was encased in an electromagnetic field, that disrupted his abilities, stopping him from being able to affect anything outside of the field. Just outside the field, in the passageway leading to the cell, was a guard station with a metal detector, to stop anyone from taking any metal in. Foolproof. Or so they thought. But Gauss had a secret.
Gauss had metal.
As he felt his powers return, he reached out, searching for his one beacon of hope. One tiny fragment of iron, barely the size of a pea, was all he had. It sat, hidden, inside his mattress. Those idiots had brought it to him. For months, the guards had been coming to him, to feed him, to beat him, to do whatever it was that struck their fancy. And with them had come the precious, precious metal. They brought it in, those arrogant fools. Tiny traces went unnoticed by the metal detectors, but not Gauss. Gauss could feel it inside their bodies. Under their skin, in their tattoos.
It had been easy to extract the iron, the tattoos were always fresh, so the guards didn’t notice the stinging pain, as Gauss slowly but surely drained every molecule from the ink, everything he could use, and carefully moved it from within the guards’ clothes, into Gauss’ ball. For months he had been biding his time, building his ball. Building his weapon. It was time for his revenge.
He looked up, as the door swung wide open, a pair of guards stepped through, tapping their plastic batons into their open palms menacingly.
“Is it three o’clock already gentlemen?” Gauss mocked.
“Damn right it is. Time for another beating, you sick son of a bitch.” One of the guards said, as he lunged forward.
Gauss didn’t move, didn’t even flinch. He let the guard hit him in the solar plexus with his baton, knocking the wind out of Gauss.
“Is that the best you’ve got?” Gauss taunted, as the guard began to pummel at the villain’s body. “Surely a big strong man like you can hit me harder than that.”
The second guard dragged his partner away, before giving Gauss a beating of his own. The second guard wasn’t as careful as the first, allowing himself to take a few swings at Gauss’ head, where someone might see the marks. He didn’t care, the lowlife deserved it. Another hard swing to the head, and Gauss was on the floor.
“Not so clever now, are you?” The guard asked.
Gauss struggled to his feet and looked the second guard in the face, before spitting at him, the combination of saliva and blood dribbling off the guard’s face. “My turn.” Gauss said.
“Wh-“ The guard didn’t finish his sentence, as he felt his flesh begin to tear, as the tiny metal projectile ripped through his body, before continuing on its path, and straight through his partner.
“Lock him in!” The second guard shouted, as the ball of metal split into two, the projectiles slicing through the guards like they were meat in a blender.
“I guess I win.” Gauss said, as the two guards dropped to the floor in pieces.
He looked to the doorway, where another four guards were rushing to get the door shut. He smiled, before destroying the hinges with his iron balls.
The guards rushed at him, but were again thwarted by the shrapnel that Gauss controlled so well. Within moments, they were all shredded on the ground.
Gauss dropped his projectiles, as he stepped through the electromagnetic field around his cell.
“Now the fun begins.” Gauss said, as he tore the metal detector from the ground, and began to break it into smaller fragments.

To the untrained eye, Ben Mosley was your average teenager, precariously on the cusp of adulthood. In the coming weeks, his high school career would be coming to an end. The future beckoned to him. For most young men his age, it conjured shades of college and a vocation. Though slightly blurred, love and marriage loomed beyond those specters. More and more avatars of things to come waited behind those phantoms—each one more indistinct than the last: two-point-five children, late night feedings, mortgages and—God willing—early retirement.
Ben Mosley didn’t think about many of these things, mostly because Ben Mosley didn’t think about the future—or at least, he tried not to. Few would have suspected that the young man was, in fact, a member of the team of super-powered teens collectively known as the Brat Pack. Since donning the identity of Firestorm, he had fought giant apes, ninjas, Arachnophobia, sea serpents, the Order of Darkness, intoxicated jocks, pirates and Gauss…
Still, he would hardly be considered the hero in the family. Though he and the Brat Pack had done so much good since banding together almost two years ago, there was no denying that his reputation was overshadowed by his father’s: to the world, James Mosley’s alter ego—Napalm—was a legend; to his son he was an angry old man who had long ago crawled into a bottle and never came out.
Despite the issues he had with who his father was, Ben Mosley was oblivious to his slow descent into his father’s shoes. He had anger issues of his own and was slowly developing a taste for the spirits. He didn’t have many friends and he kept his teammates at arm’s length with his increasingly-hostile attitude. Kevin and Mosley were perpetually at each other’s throats and Matt seemed to be indifferent to anything concerning the hotheaded hero. Though Katie and Ally were both able to see the path their teammate was on, both were terrified of confronting him about it. Ironically, despite being the one Mosley got along best with, Fisher was most apathetic towards the youth’s metamorphosis into his father. In the end, Mosley’s teammates allowed him to further become the thing he loathed most in this world…
Still, none of them could argue that over the course of the last week, his temper had flared to unparalleled heights…
“What the hell!?!” Firestorm thundered as he looked down at the next wave of figures to be released in the Brat Pack’s likeness. “Would someone explain to me please why my figure turns into a motorcycle?”
“Action figures that, uh… transform into vehicles are very popular,” explained Stan Tuffentsamer nervously. The man was a representative of Kung-Fu Grip, a toy company that put the Brat Pack on toy store shelves across the nation. The middle-aged man knew Firestorm was the Brat Pack’s resident loose cannon. He had been educated the hard way: the last time he had met with the group, the teen’s temper flared and Stan had been forced to sprint down the hall to grab a fire extinguisher to slay the immolation threatening his desk.
That was the catalyst behind his insisting he met them in their home: the stately manor they had dubbed the Brat Cave.
“The idea is that the Firestorm figure turns into a motorcycle and then…” Stan seized another prototype at random. “…one of your teammates could ride you!” The man said it as if it were something for Firestorm to get excited about.
Firestorm did stare at the coupling thoughtfully: the figure Mister Hale had taken up with Belle’s figure from the upcoming “Water Warriors” line of figures that would be hitting store shelves in time for summer. “Belle can ride me any time,” Firestorm said, grinning smugly at his teammate and tossing a playful wink her way.
Belle rolled her eyes but his flirtation earned him the ire of both Mister Perfect and Mister Universe. At present, Mister Perfect was Belle’s boyfriend and Mister Universe was her next-door neighbor and best-friend. “I guess in order to put a ‘Mister’ in front of your codename, you have to trade in your sense of humor?” Firestorm asked, sensing their glares. He chuckled to himself as he turned his back on the other men of his team. “‘Mister Firestorm’? Nah, sounds kinda fruity…”
“Oh, cool,” Pixel said. “I turn into a helicopter!” With her index finger, the youngest of the group idly spun the rotor blades adorning her figure. “Get to ze choppa!” she exclaimed in her best Arnold Schwarzenegger impersonation.
“Seriously?” Firestorm asked as he picked up another figure, only to let it fall from his hands onto the table. Stan gasped at the sight; he was terrified the youth might have broken one of the prototypes. “This makes about as much sense as the figure where I have a freakin’ backpack and arm cannon that shoots water! What about the ‘Battle Damaged Firestorm’ that was sold last year at Comic-Con?” the teen asked. “That one was totally badass!” Most importantly, there hadn’t been a Battle Damaged Mister Perfect or a Battle Damaged Mister Universe. It was a convention exclusive honor given only to him. “Why can’t the new lines of figures be like that?”
“There reaches a point where it becomes hard to come up with new gimmicks,” Stan said. He gathered the figure Firestorm had let fall—it was a figure of Mister Perfect that transformed into a sports car. “After the first wave of figures, we were able to market the ‘Combat Ready’ figures—like the Firestorm that had a spring-loaded mechanism that allowed the toy to eject plastic fireballs?”
That was another figure Firestorm had liked. Mister Universe’s ‘Combat Ready’ figure was magnetic and came with magnetic accessories that could stick to his chest and hands. Mister Perfect’s figure had a ‘rocket uppercut’: when the button his back was pressed, a spring forced his arm to swing upwards. Belle’s figure came with light-up eyes while Pixel—whose powers were difficult to depict in an action figure—simply came packaged with a rocket launcher.
“I fail to see the necessity for my likeness to be forever immortalized in a six-inch-scale piece of plastic,” Fissure said, turning the action figure made in his likeness over. Pressing the button on the back resulted in his conjuring a faint stream of water from the figure that spritzed him in the face. “In my time, children occupied their time with not dying, rather than spraying each other with water…”
“Whatever,” Firestorm growled. “Are we done here? Some of us have places to be…”
He didn’t bother waiting to be excused; he simply marched out of the room and vanished further into the manor.
Mister Perfect rolled his eyes. “It’s good to know that with graduation looming on the horizon, he’s starting to mature.”
“Be still my heart,” Pixel giggled. “You’ve developed a sense of sarcasm!”
“Great,” Mister Perfect grumbled as he turned his back on the youngest member of their group, “he’s corrupted you.”
Belle put down the figure she had been idly toying with and proceeded to follow the trail Firestorm had blazed. “I’m going to go talk to him,” she said.
“You mean waste your breath,” Mister Perfect grumbled as he watched his girlfriend’s back retreating from him.
Belle hurried up the stairs and soon found the room Firestorm had claimed. Her knuckles wrapping on the door caused it to creak open further; in his haste, the teen hadn’t shut the door behind him. “Ben?” she asked as she poked her head in. She cringed at the state of his domicile: purchasing the mansion had siphoned the last of the income she gained from her “Belle-Bottoms” endorsement. The ceiling was singed—no doubt from her teammate’s frequent flare-ups—and the carpet was obscured by dirty laundry, empty soda cans and precariously stacked take-out boxes.
Mosley still didn’t have a proper bed: instead a mattress lay on the floor, under the window. No sheets or blankets adorned his bed—only a pillow sans its case rested on the box springs.
“Be it ever so humble,” the girl muttered before Mosley’s lithe form stumbled out from behind the closet door. He was shirtless and garbed only a pair of black slacks. Immediately, Belle’s face turned crimson and she began to pull back. “S-sorry,” she said. “I was just… your door was open…”
“It’s okay,” Mosley said as he slipped his arms through a white dress shirt. “Lemme guess: Jockstrap is pissed that I left without curtseying to our guest?”
“Kevin,” Belle growled, emphasizing her boyfriend’s name over the soubriquet Mosley had bestowed on him, “didn’t send me up here.” After removing her gloves, Katie pried off her mask. “I was worried about you. You haven’t been yourself lately… Now I come upstairs and you’re wearing this!?!” She picked up the black jacket that was hanging from the doorknob. “I didn’t even know you owned a suit…”
“My dad used to say every man should own a black suit,” Mosley said as he started to do up the buttons on his shirt. “He called it a marry ‘em and bury ‘em suit—only times you need to wear it is for weddings and funerals.”
“See, now I know something’s wrong: I think that might be the most you’ve ever voluntarily told me about your dad.”
“Eh, Oscar Wilde had this saying: ‘The less said about life’s sores, the better.’”
“You don’t strike me as the kind who reads Oscar Wilde.”
“I’m not the kind who reads anybody,” Mosley said as he seized a black tie. “I heard it once—dunno where—and thought it sounded cool.” He draped the tie around his neck and then frowned down at it. “How in the hell do you tie these things?” he asked.
Katie rolled her eyes before walking over to stand before him. She tiptoed through his room as if she were traipsing through a minefield: with all of the litter that congregated on his floor, each step she took was a careful one. “So which of them is it?” she asked as she took the tie in her hands.
“Huh?” Mosley asked, unsure what she meant.
“You said you only wear a black suit to a wedding or a funeral. Which is it?”
“The kind without a cash bar,” Mosley grumbled.
Katie nodded in understanding. “I hate funerals,” she confessed.
Mosley chuckled. “You can’t spell ‘funeral’ without ‘F-U-N’.”
Katie rolled her eyes. “Every funeral I’ve ever been to, the priest or minister or whatever they have stands up and reads from Ecclesiastes. You know: the chapter that the Byrds used for that one song? God, every time I go to a funeral and they read that chapter, I have to fight the urge to sing, ‘Turn! Turn! Turn!’” The brunette chuckled softly and then swept a rogue strand of hair out of her face. “So, whose funeral are you going to?”
“His name is Gavin Eichenlaub; I met him on my first day of junior high. Looking back, it’s hard to believe that was only six years ago—it seems like such a lifetime now… Anyway, I wasn’t always the total badass you see before you. I was shy and awkward and… well, twelve-years-old. Anyway, my first day wrapped up with me walking home and this van pulls up… This grey thing that creaked as it went down the street and screeched when it made a left-hand turn pulled up alongside the road and this kid from my class—Gavin—sticks his head out the window and smiles. His brother, Eddy, was driving and… when Gavin pointed out that I was in his class, he pulled over to offer me a ride.
“I didn’t know who the hell the guy was and… well, you know how we’re conditioned from an early age to not talk to strangers? I took off at a run; I was terrified they were going to grab me and stuff me in the back of the van and I’d never be heard from again.
“After a few weeks of school, I got to know Gavin and… well, one day he invited me to his house after school. I told him I needed to ask permission and that night, I got it. The next day… I walked out of Chester A. Arthur Junior High School and stepped into the van of Eddy Eichenlaub.
“Eddy turned out to be pretty cool. He had graduated high school the year before and was taking college classes during the day. He got home around one—just in time to pick his kid brother up from school. Their dad died a year before and Eddy did everything in his power to keep Gavin from dwelling on what they’d lost. He was always so cool…” Mosley started laughing then and Katie pulled back. She wasn’t used to him expressing pleasure—at least, not when he wasn’t lighting things on fire.
“What?” she asked as she raised an eyebrow in suspicion.
“God, I just remembered this thing that Eddy used to do to girls…”
“Eww,” Katie said.
“That’s not where I was going.”
“I hope not.”
“He would come up to them with a handkerchief, right? And offer it out to them and ask, ‘Does this smell like chloroform to you?’”
“That’s… not a vast improvement over what I was thinking, Mosley.”
“Whatever. Thing is… he did it to creep girls out. He never had any problem getting girls, y’know? He knew he could get any girl he wanted so… when he got bored he would just do stuff like that. He was my hero. I didn’t exactly have a great family life but… Gavin’s family sort of took me in as one of them. Hell, they even took me with them on vacation once. Eddy said he was too old to enjoy Disney World and gave his seat to me. Gavin and Eddy were like the brothers I never had and now… Gavin’s gone.”
“I’m sorry,” Katie said.
“Why?” Mosley asked. “Are you the one that got him drunk off his ass and then let him drive home?”
“N-no,” she stammered. The very mention of alcohol hit a little close to home for the young woman. “I’m just… I’m sorry that you lost someone so precious.” She adjusted the newly tied Pratt knot and smiled sweetly at her teammate. “There,” she said as she patted the breast of Mosley’s jacket. “Now you look dapper.”
Mosley stared at her with his mouth agape. Katie looked up at him and he immediately shut his maw so as not to seem so dopey. Instead, his hungry eyes fixed on her with an intense gaze. Katie turned away and Mosley gently caught her chin in his hand and steered her face back to his. “Mosley…” she said exasperatedly.
“You know how in The Breakfast Club, Molly Ringwald ends up giving her earring to Judd Nelson and not Charlie Sheen’s less successful brother?”
“Don’t forget that Emilio Estevez kicked Judd Nelson’s ass in the movie…”
“Until Judd Nelson pulled a knife.”
“Kevin’s impervious—he’d shrug off a knife.”
“Good thing we’re talking about Emilio Estevez and not Jockstrap then, huh?” Mosley asked.
“Mosley, the metaphor is… Hell, you don’t have to read minds to see what you’re saying…”
“You also don’t have to read minds to see that right now, he’s terrified of who you’re becoming. C’mon, Katie… After we got our asses handed to us by the Assembly, Kevin poured himself into trying to be more perfect and you started…” He couldn’t bring himself to say it—not to her face—so he made a substitution: “You started to become more like me.” That accusation put a scowl on her face and Mosley continued, unaware of the dangerous territory he was encroaching on. “It’s weird how… he dealt with it all by trying to better himself and you dealt with everything by getting worse. You two started to pull apart. All that’s holding you together is a physical attraction—you don’t get each other! I get you though and you… Heh, you’re the only one here who gets me…
“Shouldn’t you be with someone who understands you?”
Katie stared angrily at him. “I love Kevin,” she stated. “He loves me. End of story.”
Mosley moved past her and snatched up his jacket. “Yeah, well, if life’s repeatedly pounded any lesson into my head, it’s that nothing lasts forever.”
Mosley swung the jacket around his body and slipped his arms through the sleeves as he descended the stairs. At the base stood Mister Perfect; his arms were folded across his chest and his foot was tapping impatiently. “Where do you think you’re going?” the paragon asked.
“Out,” Mosley said as his feet touched down on the ground level. “Don’t wait up.”
“You’ve got some nerve storming out of that meeting!” Mister Perfect barked at him. The youth proceeded to walk backwards, ensuring that with each step Mosley took, he was in his face. Mosley didn’t take it that way though: he smirked at the realization that Mister Perfect was backing away from him. “Mister Tuffentsamer didn’t come all the way from La Jolla to have you go slamming doors like a thirteen-year-old girl who’s daddy won’t buy her that pony she wants!”
Mosley stopped and glared at him. “Can I ask you a question, Jockstrap?”
Mister Perfect narrowed his eyes and glared suspiciously at his teammate. “What, Ben?”
“What kind of shampoo does Katie use, because upstairs when I was smelling her hair-”
Mister Perfect swung and Mosley flinched. When he realized he didn’t feel anything connect, he opened his eyes and took in the sight of Fissure’s armored-hand closed around the intercepted punch. “Perhaps I was wrong,” Fissure said slowly, “but I was under the impression that we were teammates and not enemies.”
“Try telling that to him!” spat Mister Perfect.
“Says the guy who threw the first punch?” Mosley asked.
“You wanna start something, Mosley!?!”
“You already started something, Jockstrap, but I’d be more than happy to finish it!”
“Enough!” Katie shouted. The Brat Pack turned and took in the sight of her standing midway down the stairs. “For God’s sake, I am so sick of this endless cycle! You goad Kevin and he goads you and it just keeps going back and forth! For the sake of everyone around you, just stop!”
Mosley adjusted his tie and smoothed the lapels of his jacket. “Whatever,” he grumbled. “I’ve got places to go and people to do.”
“You’re not going anywhere,” Mister Perfect snapped.
“Mommy? Daddy?” Mosley looked from Katie to her beau; his voice was a mock-child’s voice. “Can I be excused from the table and go over to Timmy’s house to play?” He scoffed at them as he pranced past Fissure and Mister Perfect.
Soon enough, Mosley was on his motorcycle, flying down the road towards Jurwicz Funeral Home. There, he tried his best to navigate the labyrinth of faces he didn’t know. It seemed the Eichenlaub extended family was here in full-force. He knew a few of them from the various birthday parties and graduation ceremonies he had been to. Eventually, Mosley’s eyes settled on Gavin’s mother—Amanda Eichenlaub.
As he watched her, Mosley found himself transfixed by his late friend’s mother. Even closing in on fifty, the woman was as attractive as ever. More than anything, Mosley was enamored with her eyes: her tilted, almond-shaped eyes that found him as easily as he found her.
A man in his mid-twenties stepped up to her and offered out a bottle of water. Mosley couldn’t help smile at the sight of Eddy Eichenlaub. His hairline had receded back a bit but he was still everything Mosley remembered—even if he looked out of place in his marry ‘em and bury ‘em suit.
The grieving woman whispered to her son and the man leaned from side to side in an attempt to get a clear view at Mosley. Finally, Amanda motioned for Mosley to abandon his self-imposed post at the back of the room and join them at the front.
As he neared them, Mosley’s eyes picked out the small things he had missed from across the room: Eddy’s face had a hollow appearance and his eyes were red from crying over his baby brother.
“Ben,” Eddy said, as he offered out his hand. Mosley took it and before he could shake it, Eddy pulled the youth towards him and slipped his other arm around the man’s back. “I’m glad you came, Ben,” he said as he hugged him longingly. “I knew you would…”
“Sit with us, Ben,” Amanda said, motioning to the front row that had been reserved for Gavin’s immediately family.
Mosley opened his mouth to protest but Eddy quickly silenced that. “You were always like my little brother,” he said. He quickly corrected himself: “My other little brother…”
“You’re a part of our family, Ben,” Amanda said, ending all further remonstrations. Mosley accepted their invitation and sat down with Gavin’s mother and elder brother and watched as the chaplain emerged and proceeded to begin the memorial service.
“To every thing there is a season,” he said as he began reading from Ecclesiastes, “and a time to every purpose under the heaven: / A time to be born and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted; / A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up; / A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance …”
It took reserves of self-restrain Mosley didn’t know he possessed to keep from laughing and he made a mental note to hurt Katie for putting such thoughts in his head. In the end, he let out a small chortle that he quickly covered his mouth to reign in. He looked to his right—towards Eddy—to ensure he hadn’t disrespected their fallen brother; Eddy’s attention wasn’t on the minister… but on someone standing at the back of the parlor. “Eddy?” Mosley whispered, unsure what had so ensnared his hero’s focus.
Eddy bounded to his feet and turned towards the young man in the back with murderous intent shimmering behind his veil of tears. “You son of a bitch,” he growled. A collective gasp rippled through the mourners while the chaplain simply stared at Eddy with his mouth agape. If anything, Mosley realized this meant he wouldn’t have to endure anymore scripture. “You have a lot of nerve showing up here…”
“Eddy,” the man’s mother said, standing and trying to steer her surviving child back to his chair. “Let it go…”
“What’s going on?” Mosley asked, trying to make sense of everything unfolding around him.
“No, mom—I won’t let it go!” Eddy’s tears flowed freely now. “That son of a bitch shouldn’t be here!”
Mosley’s attention went to the man in the back. He seemed about the same age as Mosley and his teammates—likely approaching his own high school graduation. Little stood out about him—he was dressed like the other mourners and wore the same sad look the rest of the Eichenlaub family wore. Still, Mosley thought he saw something more there than just grief: remorse and guilt and anguish were evident on his face.
Suddenly, Mosley pieced it together…
“Edward, just… just sit down and let the preacher finish…”
“It’s not the time to cry!” Eddy snapped. Mosley looked back to his hero and was stunned to see the tears stop—literally stop halfway down his face. “It’s a time to kill…”
Eddy’s tears shot from his body like bullets and the man in the back leapt clear to avoid being hit by them. As Mosley wondered what sort of damage tears could cause, his ears registered the sound of breaking glass. Though the tears had missed their target, they had pierced the window behind him.
Mosley’s head whipped around when he caught something out of the corner of his eye: Amanda screamed as the water left her bottle and wavered like a serpent above her. Realizing that Eddy had abilities of his own, Mosley sprang to his feet in an effort to keep this from unfolding into the sort of drama he and his teammates regularly descended into. “Eddy, don’t do this!”
“He’s the one!” Eddy snapped. His tears were now floating from his face and joining their brothers in forming a halo that rotated around his head. “He’s the guy who got Gavin the booze! He got him drunk and let him get behind the wheel!
“He’s the one who killed my little brother!”
The halo flattened and became a disc. Immediately Mosley’s eyes sprang open wide. “Not good,” he said as he watched it fly from its master.
It was like a saw blade flying across the room, navigating around those Eddy discerned as innocent and seeking out the one destined to receive his vengeance. Mosley struggled to catalogue his available options: without his costume on hand, he couldn’t risk exposing his identity as Firestorm—not when Gavin’s immediately family were so intimate with Ben Mosley. He wondered if there could be a discreet way to use his powers to stop this chaos from transforming into a catastrophe but dismissed it knowing that water would beat fire every time. For a brief flicker of a moment he lamented that he wasn’t Matt, as the young genius could have formulated a plan that would have saved the day by now…
If he were Katie, he’d know exactly what to say to calm Eddy down—after all, she was usually the one who reasoned with Mosley…
Suddenly, Mosley knew exactly what to do: “Enough!” he shouted. In his mind he could picture the brunette beauty gripping the railing of the stairs, partway between the ground floor and the next level of the Brat Cave. “Don’t you get it, Eddy!?! You’re just going to create an endless cycle!”
Mosley breathed easier when he saw the disc hover in the air, mere feet from shredding through the frightened young man’s flesh. “So what!?! He’s responsible for Gavin’s death so you’ll be responsible for his!?! How long before his big brother comes hunting for you, Eddy!?! Hell, he’d have to beat the Brat Pack or the Boomers to you. Revenge is such a petty thing—it’s not worth this!” He waved his hand towards Gavin’s casket. “Your mother’s buried your father and your brother—don’t make her bury you too!”
“He killed Gavin!” Eddy cried. “He shouldn’t have come here!”
Mosley nodded. “Yeah, it’s pretty tasteless, but Eddy… look at him! He obviously came here because he feels terrible for what happened! He wasn’t trying to kill Gavin! He was his friend! He made a mistake and… and Gavin made it with him! This kid didn’t make Gavin drink with him! Gavin made a choice—a really stupid one—but he made a choice! You wanna start going after anyone who ever made a bad decision? Might as well kill me next; trust me—I’ve made plenty!”
Eddy sobbed hysterically and Mosley watched as the water—both the writhing serpent rising from Amanda’s water bottle and the spinning disc forged from Eddy’s tears—fell to the floor of the funeral parlor.
Mosley turned to survey the damage. Most of the mourners had fled at the first sign of trouble. The double doors they had rushed through to escape opened once again—only this time, to admit the Brat Pack into the chamber.
Mister Perfect scanned the room and glanced over Mosley in the process. He was enough of a professional to not expose his teammate’s identity by showing signs of recognition. “Where’s the fire?” he asked, emphasizing the last word for Mosley’s benefit. Mosley understood what his rival meant: their fearless leader likely blamed him for this incident.
“Wow, the Brat Pack,” Mosley said, trying to feign awe to keep his cover. “You guys got here quick…”
“One of your fellow mourners called 9-1-1,” Mister Universe said. “Lucky for you, Fissure was listening in on the police scanner…”
Fissure shrugged. “It’s not as if I have a social life…”
Pixel watched as the lights from police cars and ambulances spilled through the windows and swept over the walls of the parlor. “Is anyone hurt?” she asked, seeing an opportunity to get Mosley away from everyone else. “Everyone should get checked out just to be safe…”
Mosley watched as the Eichenlaub family made their way out first. Eventually, the young man Eddy had tried to kill left.
Alone with his teammates, Mosley allowed himself to relax. “You mind telling us what the hell you started this time?” Mister Perfect demanded as he watched his teammate tear off his tie and slide out of his jacket. “As soon as I connected Fissure’s ‘disturbance at a funeral home’ and Belle’s ‘Mosley went to a funeral’, I knew you’d be right in the middle of it.”
“You know me,” Mosley grumbled as he slung his jacket and tie over his shoulder. He strode past the rest of the Brat Pack to head out to where the ambulances were waiting for him. He knew that if he was going to keep up the appearance of an ordinary citizen, he’d need to “I cause problems everywhere I go…”

“I’m telling you, this isn’t possible!” Mr Universe shouted, as he dove out of the way of the giant moth’s gaping mouth.
“Well, there’s a thousand ton moth here that would like to argue with you.” Mr Perfect said, as he started pounding the beast’s wings.
“The Square-Cube law says it’s not possible.” Mr Universe argued.
“Well, you can arrest this dude in the name of the Square-Cube for all I care. We need to stop this giant moth-fo.”
“Ugh, terrible pun. And seriously, how am I supposed to beat this thing if the laws of physics don’t apply?”
“You’ll miss my puns when you’re in Boston.” Mr Perfect gave up on the wings, instead flying around the giant moth’s head.
“Pretty sure that’s the last thing I’ll miss.” Mr Universe said.
“Surely the Assembly will be the last thing you miss.” Mr Perfect said.
“Your puns are more annoying than them.”
“Remember when they were our arch-enemies?”
“They still are. Redemption is stronger than you, and he hates you. Helix still tortured Ally, and tried to torture Katie. Anna still hates Mosley and Katie. And Fisher is pretty set on taking down their boss.”
“Yeah, but remember when they were our worthy opponents?” Mr Perfect punched the moth in the eye, eliciting what sounded like a scream. “Weak spot.”
“Why is it always the eyes? And yeah, they were worthy opponents when they had Gauss in their line-up. That guy gives me nightmares.”
Suddenly the moth shot upward, taking both heroes by surprise as it tried to make a getaway.
“Wow, it’s really not that intelligent, is it? I mean, it’s way slower than you, let alone me.” Mr Perfect said.
“Yeah, we should probably catch it. The dumbass is heading inland.” Mr Universe said.
“Good point. By the way, you never know, The Assembly might become worthy opponents again after you guys leave.” Mr Perfect said, as the two followed after the moth.
“I think you guys are going to have to hold auditions then, to find our replacements.” Mr Universe said, as he used his powers to tear a length of fence from the side of the highway they were flying over.
“Dude, hundreds of people crash on the PCH every week, taking away their fence isn’t going to help.” Mr Perfect said.
“Hey, you can punch it, but all I’ve got is the magnetism thing. If you’ve got something better for me to hit it with, then let me know.” Mr Universe said, as the fence began to crumple into a ball.
“I’m just saying… Anyway, I still can’t believe you guys are leaving. We’re screwed without you.” Mr Perfect said.
The ball of metal streaked through the air, striking the moth in the back, right between the wings. The moth dropped momentarily, but just kept flying.
“I’m sure you’ll be just fine, and we’ll be back over the summer anyway.” Mr Universe called the ball of metal back towards him, readying it for another strike.
“Dude, you’re like, the most powerful teenager in the world, and Katie’s a psychic. Or team is like, half as strong without you. Why can’t you guys just go to school in California?”
Mr Universe sighed, as he struck the moth again, barely getting a reaction from the giant insect. “Look, I don’t know about Katie, but I’m not just going because I like MIT. I wanted to go to Stanford.”
“Then just go to Stanford. It’s not that difficult.” Mr Perfect had caught up with the moth by now, and had proceeded to kick it in the face.
“It’s not just about the school man. I have to get out of California, and MIT is the next best thing to Stanford, and it’s on the same coast as Hannah.” Mr Universe struck the moth in the wing with his ball of road-barrier, causing it to do a barrel-roll, as it tried to correct its flight.
“And it’s further away from Tide?” Mr Perfect asked.
“Katie told you huh? I’ll admit; it took her longer than I expected. Yeah, that’s another reason. I mean, I broke it off months ago, but we still talk, and there are still some feelings.” Mr Universe said.
“How can you have feelings for her? What about Hannah?”
“Look, I love Hannah more than anything in the world, but Adrienne… She’s so cute and shy around me… And she’s not like normal girls, you know? And she wanted me, not the other way around.”
“If you don’t want her, then what’s the problem?” Mr Perfect gave the moth another kick in the face, directing it away from the nearby suburbs.
“That’s not what I meant. I mean, you know what it’s like to have girls chase you all the time, Katie made the first move on you and all… I’ve never had that. I mean, before Hannah, girls didn’t even give me the time of day. Even with Hannah, I had to make the effort, I had to ask her out, and convince her I was worth a long-distance relationship. Adrienne pursued me. She convinced me. And she was right there. There was no long-distance.”
“And then we lost to the Assembly.” Mr Perfect said.
“Yeah. Then we lost to the Assembly. Suddenly we were nothing again, and Adrienne, I mean, her sister is Nymphette, so she knows what it’s like to be nothing, when there’s that comparison right there. And she was there, and I was weak. I guess she took advantage, but still. I let her. I’ll never forgive myself, but I went back for more. I initiated it after that.”
“Look, I’m not saying I condone it, but I understand man. We were all hit pretty hard by that loss, and having that douchebag Captain Awesome be the one to pull us out, that was even worse.”
“You still have issues with Awesome?”
“Well, the comparisons are inevitable. We have the same powers, his are just better.”
“At least he’s on our side. Sort of. I’ve got a guy out there with my powers, who is out to hurt people. Gauss can cancel me out, and then kill me without batting an eyelash.” Mr Universe shot his all of metal straight through the moth’s wing, sending it crashing to the ground.
“He is in Alcatraz though.”
“Yeah, but for how long?”