Idiots Battling Supervillains (I.B.S.)

Miles Terren — now Mistery, part‑man, part‑fog, part‑ongoing‑problem — drifted into the precinct lobby like a confused weather pattern.

He approached the front desk.

“Morning,” he said.

His voice echoed.

Twice.

The desk sergeant frowned. “Why… did you do that?”

“I didn’t,” Mistery said.

The second echo repeated him:

“I didn’t.”

The sergeant blinked. “Terren, are you… haunted?”

Mistery sighed. “Statistically, probably.”

-THE REPORTS-

Three citizens had filed complaints in the last 48 hours:

1. Their voices were repeating themselves  

2. The echoes said things they didn’t say  

3. One echo insulted a man’s haircut  

Mistery took the case because:

- no one else wanted it  

- he was already echoing  

- and he suspected the universe was messing with him again  

He visited the first victim, Mrs. Pennington, who was watering her plants.

“Tell me what happened,” Mistery said.

Mrs. Pennington said, “I asked my husband if he wanted toast.”

Her echo said, “He doesn’t deserve toast.”

Mistery nodded gravely. “A crime indeed.”

His own echo added:

“A fashion crime.”

Mistery gasped. “Hey!”

Mrs. Pennington shrugged. “It’s not wrong.”

-THE INVESTIGATION-

The echoes weren’t random.

They were:

- delayed  

- distorted  

- and slightly meaner than the original speaker  

Mistery followed the trail of complaints across the city until he noticed something strange:

Every echo was louder near old brick buildings.

He pressed his ear to one wall.

The wall whispered:

“Nice hat, fog‑boy.”

Mistery recoiled. “Rude.”

The wall replied:

“Truth hurts.”

He squinted. “Okay. Something’s stealing voices and using them for… sass.”

-THE DISCOVERY-

At midnight, Mistery found the source:

an abandoned amphitheater beneath the city park, long sealed off, now vibrating with stolen sound.

He stepped inside.

The air shimmered with floating fragments of conversation:

- “I’ll be home by six.”  

- “Don’t touch that.”  

- “I said decaf!”  

- “Fog‑boy.”  

Mistery groaned. “It’s learning.”

At the center of the amphitheater stood a figure made entirely of sound waves, flickering like a broken speaker.

It turned toward him.

Its voice was every voice at once:

“YOU ARE LOUD.”

Mistery pointed at himself. “I’m literally made of quiet.”

The creature pulsed.

“YOU LEAK NOISE.”

Mistery gasped. “I do not leak— okay, maybe a little.”

-THE CONFRONTATION-

The Echo Thief lunged.

Mistery dodged by turning into fog, but the creature grabbed the *sound* of his movement — the whoosh — and weaponized it, slinging it back like a sonic whip.

Mistery yelped.

His echo yelped louder.

The creature absorbed both.

“STOP FEEDING IT,” Mistery scolded himself.

His echo replied:

“Maybe stop screaming then.”

Mistery inhaled sharply, then had an idea.

He dissolved completely.

No sound.  

No voice.  

No footsteps.  

No heartbeat.

Just silence.

The Echo Thief flickered, confused.

Mistery re‑formed behind it and clapped his hands — or tried to. His hands passed through each other, but the *intent* made a sharp fog‑crack.

The amphitheater echoed it a thousand times.

The creature overloaded.

It burst into harmless static.

-THE AFTERMATH-

The stolen voices drifted back to their owners.

Mrs. Pennington’s plants stopped insulting her.  

The brick walls stopped giving Mistery fashion advice.  

The precinct stopped hearing him twice.

The desk sergeant looked up as Mistery floated in.

“Case closed?” she asked.

Mistery nodded. “Silenced.”

His echo whispered:

“Barely.”

Mistery glared at the air. “I heard that.”

The echo replied:

The freight elevator in Warehouse 19 is not supposed to move this fast.

Dean knows this because he rides it every day. It groans, it shudders, it crawls. It does not plummet.

But tonight, the cables snap.

There’s a metallic scream above him, a shower of sparks, and then the entire steel platform drops like a stone. Four workers are inside with him — two screaming, one frozen, one praying.

Dean doesn’t scream.

He feels the pressure hit him instantly — the acceleration, the air displacement, the vibration of a ten‑ton platform free‑falling down a concrete shaft. His body drinks in the force like a sponge hitting water.

His ribs tighten. His teeth clench. His vision pulses.

He plants his feet.

The elevator keeps falling.

“Dean—!” one of the workers yells, grabbing the railing.

He doesn’t answer. He can’t. Every muscle in his body is locking, storing, compressing the kinetic energy of the drop. The platform is seconds from impact — a hundred feet of gravity about to turn them all into paste.

Dean inhales sharply.

And he releases.

He slams both palms into the floor.

The shockwave erupts downward, a violent, concussive blast that hits the bottom of the shaft before the elevator does. The concrete buckles. Dust explodes upward. The entire platform jolts — not stopping, but slowing, like it’s crashing into a cushion of compressed air.

The workers are thrown to their knees.

Dean absorbs the rebound, the ricochet, the aftershock. His arms tremble violently. His nose bleeds. His spine feels like a loaded spring ready to snap.

The elevator is still falling — slower, but falling.

He doesn’t have enough stored force to stop it completely.

He needs more.

Dean stands, bracing himself against the rattling walls. The platform is seconds from the bottom. He can see the concrete rushing up through the grated floor.

He does the unthinkable.

He jumps.

Straight up.

He slams into the ceiling of the elevator with bone‑shattering force — absorbing the impact instantly. The metal dents inward around his shoulders. The entire platform jerks again, slowing further.

He drops back down.

He hits the floor again.

Another burst. Another shockwave. Another slowing.

The workers stare at him like he’s a human piston.

The bottom of the shaft is twenty feet away.

Dean’s vision is tunneling. His legs are shaking. His chest feels like it’s full of molten lead.

He has one more release in him.

He crouches low.

He channels everything — the fall, the ceiling impact, the floor rebound, the tremors, the panic, the pressure.

And he punches straight down.

The shockwave is colossal.

The elevator slams to a stop so violently the lights explode. Dust fills the shaft. The platform tilts, groaning, but holds.

Silence.

Dean collapses to one knee, coughing, blood dripping from his nose and ears. His hands won’t stop shaking. His muscles twitch like overloaded wires.

One of the workers crawls toward him, eyes wide.

“You… you saved us.”

Dean wipes his face with the back of his hand.

“Yeah,” he mutters, breath ragged. “Don’t… tell anyone.”

The worker nods, terrified and grateful.

But someone did see.

Up at the top of the shaft, through the settling dust, a figure in a reflective vest and hardhat watches him — not a worker, not security, someone who shouldn’t be there.

They whisper into a radio.

“He survived the drop. Confirmed. Subject designation: Recoil.”

Dean doesn’t hear it.

Auroral Prime had not slept since the Shardbound struck him down.

The healers rebuilt what they could but they could not restore the certainty that once defined him. The ritual hall where the Shardbound descended remained a scorched crater, its sigils warped and blackened. Prime returned to it nightly, standing in the center as if waiting for the universe to correct itself.

It never did.

Instead, it left him with silence.

In that silence, he found a new interpretation.

The Shardbound’s rage had not been rejection. It had been instruction.  

Solstice was not chosen. She was an interruption.  

The true vessel was still waiting.

-THE TEXTS OF THE EVENTIDE-

The Archivists brought him the oldest fragments in their vaults—vellum sheets, cracked tablets, brittle scrolls written before the Order had a name. These texts did not speak of prophecy or destiny. They spoke of phenomena.

They described a “shadow‑node,” a cosmic defect where:

- light failed to propagate,  

- sound collapsed into zero amplitude,  

- and space thinned like overstretched fabric.

The ancient term was **Nodus Vespertinus**—the Eventide Node.

The texts warned that the Node was not divine.  

Not conscious.  

Not moral.

It was a *cosmic error*, a drifting region of negative photonic and acoustic density.  

A hazard, not a herald.

Prime ignored the warnings.  

He circled only one line:

*“The Node accepts only the vessel that does not resist the quiet.”*

To the ancient scholars, this meant the Node bonded only with inert matter—dead rock, dust, abandoned debris.

Prime interpreted it differently.

-THE ORDER’S DECLINE-

The Borealis Order fractured in the aftermath of the Shardbound incident.  

The Devoted clung to Prime’s authority.  

The Doubters whispered that he had misread the signs.  

The Archivists retreated into their vaults, terrified by what the texts implied.

Prime isolated himself, studying the Eventide passages until the ink blurred.  

He became convinced the Shardbound had shown him the path:  

if the Light rejected them, they must claim the Shadow.

But the Umbral Core—the drifting manifestation of the Eventide Node—was unstable.  

It rejected every host.  

It erased every instrument.  

It killed every volunteer.

The Order was running out of bodies and faith.

Prime made a decision only a zealot could justify.

-HIS DAUGHTER-

She had grown up inside the Order’s walls—quiet, compliant, unnoticed.  

Not mistreated.  

Not harmed.  

Simply invisible in the way people become when they learn to take up as little space as possible.

Prime had never considered her future.  

He had never considered her at all.

Until the texts said the vessel must “not resist the quiet.”

He interpreted this as purity.  

In truth, it was convenience.

-THE RITUAL-

The chamber they prepared was small, stripped of ornamentation.  

No choir.  

No congregation.  

Just Prime, three loyalists, and the containment lattice humming with unstable light.

His daughter stood at the center.

She did not tremble.  

She did not question.  

She had been raised to obey.

Prime activated the lattice.

The Umbral Core entered the chamber without spectacle—no wind, no glow, no sound.  

Just a sudden drop in temperature and the sensation that the air had thickened.

Light dimmed.  

Shadows stretched toward her.  

The walls seemed to bend inward.

One loyalist whispered a prayer.  

Another stepped back.

Prime stepped forward.

The Core touched her chest.

Photons collapsed.  

Sound vanished.  

Space folded like paper.

For a moment, the world ceased to exist.

-THE BIRTH OF ECLIPSE-

When the shadows peeled back, she stood in the center of a photonic crater.

Her outline lagged by a fraction of a second.  

Her hair fell like ink suspended in water.  

Her eyes reflected nothing.  

The air around her was a soft acoustic void.

Prime fell to his knees.

“My Eventide,” he rasped, voice cracking. “The Shardbound has given you to us.”

She looked at him—not with hatred, not with recognition, but with perfect neutrality.

Her voice, when it came, was flat and quiet, stripped of resonance by the null field around her.

“You mistake absence for divinity.”

Prime bowed his head, misinterpreting the words instantly.  

A prophecy.  

A revelation.  

A confirmation.

She stepped past him without another glance.  

The silence followed her like a shadow.

The loyalists watched her go, unsure whether to kneel or flee.

Prime remained on the floor, trembling with relief.

He did not understand that the Order’s salvation had already left the room.  

He did not understand that she was not theirs.  

He did not understand that he had not created a weapon.

Clover’s End was never quiet, not truly. Even in the dead of night, the Vault hummed with the soft clatter of coins, the shuffle of cards, the distant laughter of leprechauns arguing over who cheated last. But tonight… nothing.

Silence.

A silence so deep it felt wrong.

Big Irish felt it before he heard it. He was halfway through a mug of emerald stout when the Heart Coin at his chest flickered — once, twice — then went dark.

He froze.

The leprechauns froze.

Even the lantern flames seemed to hold their breath.

“Now that,” Big Irish muttered, rising to his full mythic height, “is a bad omen.”

He tapped the Heart Coin. No glow. No warmth. No pulse of luck.

It was like holding a dead star.

Then the Vault shuddered.

A ripple of cold swept through the chamber, and from the far tunnel came a sound like metal scraping bone. Lanterns dimmed. Charms cracked. Dice rolled themselves into perfect, impossible stacks.

A figure stepped into the chamber — tall, thin, draped in a cloak of black ledger paper that fluttered like wings.

Not the Coin Collector.

Something worse.

The Auditor General.

Where the Collector cataloged anomalies, the Auditor General erased them. A mythic bureaucrat older than Clover’s End itself.

His voice was a whisper of quills on parchment.

“Luck has been misallocated. The Source is in violation. Correction is required.”

Big Irish stepped forward, shillelagh in hand.

“You can correct these nuts,” he said, because poetry was optional but attitude was mandatory.

The Auditor raised a hand.

Luck died.

Every charm in the Vault went inert.

Every coin turned dull.

Every leprechaun gasped as their innate spark guttered out.

Big Irish felt it too — the weight of a world suddenly without chance.

He swung his shillelagh anyway.

The blow should’ve cracked stone.

Instead, it passed through the Auditor like smoke.

“Non-compliant,” the Auditor hissed.

He snapped his fingers.

A wave of null-magic surged outward, erasing murals, extinguishing lanterns, unraveling centuries of folklore. The Vault trembled as if reality itself were being audited.

Big Irish staggered, gripping the Heart Coin.

It was cold.

Dead.

Useless.

And then — a whisper.

Not from the Coin.

From the Vault itself.

Luck is not given. Luck is made.

Big Irish grinned.

“Right then.”

He slammed the Heart Coin against the stone floor.

It cracked.

A shockwave burst outward — not magic, not even myth, but defiance.

Coins rattled.

Dice jumped.

Charms sparked.

Leprechauns gasped as their luck flickered back to life like embers catching wind.

The Auditor recoiled.

“Impossible. Unauthorized variance.”

Big Irish rose, eyes blazing green.

“Luck isn’t a resource, lad. It’s a rebellion.”

He charged.

This time, the shillelagh hit solid.

The Auditor’s cloak tore, pages scattering like frightened birds.

The Vault roared with returning chaos — coins spinning, charms detonating in harmless bursts of green fire, leprechauns cheering like drunken warriors.

The Auditor tried to retreat, but Big Irish grabbed him by the ledger-cloak and slammed him into a pillar of glowing stone.

“Stamp this in your files,” he growled.

“We don’t do order down here.”

He hurled the Auditor back into the tunnel, where the shadows swallowed him whole.

Silence returned — but this time, it was warm.

Alive.

Buzzing with the aftershock of reclaimed luck.

The Heart Coin glowed again, faint but steady.

Big Irish picked it up, dusted it off, and tucked it back against his chest.

“Right,” he said, settling onto his stone bench.

“Who’s dealin’?”

The Vault erupted in cheers.

And in the IBS report filed later that night, one line stood out:

Subject Big Irish has repelled an existential audit.

Miles Terren stood in Lila Hart’s apartment, staring at the still‑warm cup of chamomile tea on the counter.

“Warm tea,” he muttered, scribbling in his notebook. “Classic sign of… something.”

Behind him, Officer Delgado sighed. “Terren, you say that at every crime scene.”

“It’s always true,” Miles said, pointing dramatically at the mug. “Tea doesn’t lie.”

Delgado pinched the bridge of her nose. “People do.”

Miles nodded solemnly, then immediately tripped over Lila’s cat.

The cat hissed.  

Miles apologized.  

The cat did not accept.

-THE PATTERN-

Over the next week, three more people vanished the same way:

- warm tea  

- no struggle  

- no witnesses  

- one very judgmental cat (different cat each time)

Miles noticed something no one else did:

All four victims lived near the same underground utility corridor.

He presented his findings to the department.

Captain Rourke stared at the map. “Terren… that corridor was sealed in 1987.”

Miles tapped the map. “Then why is it humming?”

Rourke blinked. “Humming?”

Miles nodded. “Like a refrigerator. Or a suspiciously musical ghost.”

Rourke sighed. “Terren, take a vacation.”

Miles took a flashlight instead.

-THE CORRIDOR-

The access hatch was behind an abandoned laundromat, which was exactly the kind of place Miles expected to find trouble.

He knelt beside the hatch, picked the lock, and whispered, “Detective Miles Terren… entering the unknown.”

Then the hatch fell open and he fell straight down the ladder.

He landed with a wet splat.

“Graceful,” he groaned.

The corridor was freezing.  

His breath fogged in the air.

“Okay,” he muttered. “Definitely not up to code.”

The hum grew louder.

-THE IMPOSSIBLE ROOM-

At the end of the corridor was a door that absolutely did not belong in a sewer tunnel.

Smooth metal.  

Seamless.  

Glowing faintly.

Miles touched it.

It opened with a hiss like a dramatic fog machine.

Inside was:

- a strange mist  

- a machine pulsing with white light  

- and Lila Hart’s ID badge on the floor

Miles whispered, “Lila…?”

The machine answered by turning on.

-THE DISSOLUTION-

Light exploded outward.  

The air vibrated.  

Miles felt himself stretch like taffy and compress like a trash compactor at the same time.

He tried to scream, but his voice dissolved into vapor.

His body followed.

He became:

- fog  

- memory  

- confusion  

- and one very startled detective

When he re‑formed, the machine was gone.

The room was empty.

And Miles Terren was no longer solid.

He looked down at his hands.

They were smoke.

He tried to gasp.

His chest made a *whoosh* noise.

“Oh no,” he whispered. “I’m… fog.”

He paused.

“…I meant to do that.”

-THE AFTERMATH-

Miles stumbled out of the corridor — literally stumbled, because his legs kept turning into mist at inconvenient times.

He tried to report what happened.

The officer at the desk stared at him. “Sir… who are you?”

Miles blinked. “It’s me. Terren.”

The officer frowned. “Terren’s missing.”

Miles looked at his smoky hands.

“Oh,” he said softly. “Right.”

He drifted backward, bumping into a filing cabinet and knocking over three boxes.

“I meant to do that,” he whispered again.

-THE BIRTH OF MISTERY-

He didn’t choose the name.

A terrified mugger did.

Miles tried to stop a robbery by dramatically emerging from a fog bank.  

He misjudged the curb, tripped over a trash can, and sent the lid spinning into the air.

The mugger ducked as it whizzed past him.

Miles, still tangled in the trash bag, attempted to stand with dignity.

“Wh‑who are you supposed to be… a mystery?” the mugger asked.

Miles froze.

His voice echoed, low and smoky.  

“No. Mistery.”

The mugger squinted. “That sounds exactly the same.”

“It’s different if you say it dramatically,” Miles insisted.

There was a metallic *CLANG* as the trash‑can lid completed its long, improbable arc and gently bonked the mugger on the back of the head.

He toppled over with a surprised squeak.

Miles looked down at the unconscious man, nodded to himself, and declared:

“Case closed.”

It wasn’t good.  

The night was quiet when the Shardbound finally spoke.

Not with urgency.  

Not with command.  

But with something Clara had never heard from it before.

Softness.

She sat on a cold ridge overlooking the valley, Lumen curled at her side. The aurora drifted lazily overhead, its colors muted, as if the sky itself were listening.

A faint pulse stirred beneath her ribs.

Clara.

She looked up. “You’re… calm tonight.”

Another pulse.  

Not calm — deliberate.

“You asked what I remember”.

A pause, crystalline and fragile.  

“I will tell you.”

Clara straightened, surprised. “You don’t have to if it hurts.”

“It does.”  

A flicker of light shimmered across her skin.  

“But you carry my power. You deserve my truth.”

The aurora brightened, folding inward, wrapping her in a gentle halo of color. Not overwhelming. Not forceful.

Inviting.

Clara closed her eyes.

And the Shardbound began.

“Before you, I was not alone.”

The words echoed inside her mind, not as sound, but as memory shaped into feeling.

“There was another. A vessel chosen long before your world had names for its skies.”

Clara felt warmth — not hers — radiating through her chest. A presence. A heartbeat. A life.

“They were strong. Brilliant. A mind of perfect clarity. They welcomed me without fear.”

The aurora above her shifted, forming faint silhouettes — a figure made of light and geometry, standing tall against a cosmic horizon.

Clara whispered, “What were they like?”

The Shardbound hesitated.

“Lonely.”

The word carried weight.  

Ancient.  

Heavy.

“They sought purpose. I offered it. They accepted.”

The memory darkened around the edges.

“But I was… more than they could hold.”

Clara felt a tremor — not in her body, but in the Shardbound itself. A fracture of emotion.

“I was vast. Unrestrained. I believed harmony meant dominance. I believed balance meant control.”

A pulse of regret rippled through her.

“They tried to match me. They tried to shape me. They tried to endure me.”

The aurora flickered violently, colors twisting into sharp crystalline shards.

“And I broke them.”

Clara’s breath caught.

The Shardbound’s voice dimmed to a whisper of light.

“Not with anger. Not with intent. With magnitude.”

A memory washed over her — a vessel collapsing like a star folding inward, their light extinguished in silence.

Clara’s eyes stung. “You didn’t mean to.”

“Intention does not heal what was lost.”

The aurora dimmed, as if mourning.

“I fled. I drifted. I hid from worlds that called to me. I feared choosing again. I feared destroying again.”

Clara pressed a hand to her chest, feeling the Shardbound tremble.

“Then why me?” she whispered.

The answer came without hesitation.

“Because you shielded another before you shielded yourself.”

Clara froze.

Lumen lifted his head, ears twitching.

“You threw yourself over the small creature. You chose compassion over survival. You chose protection over fear.”

A warm pulse radiated through her, gentle as dawn.

“I saw in you what I had never understood.”

Clara swallowed. “What’s that?”

The Shardbound’s voice softened into something almost human.

“Restraint born from love.”

The aurora brightened, wrapping her in soft color.

“You do not break under my weight. You shape it. You temper it. You teach me what balance truly is.”

Clara felt tears slip down her cheeks.

The Shardbound continued, quieter now.

“I feared choosing again. But I chose you.”

A final pulse — warm, steady, resolute.

“And I do not regret it.”

Clara wiped her eyes, smiling through the ache in her chest. “I’m not going anywhere.”

Lumen nudged her hand, tail thumping softly.

The Shardbound’s reply was gentle, almost reverent.

“Then neither am I.”

The aurora faded back into the night sky, leaving Clara sitting in the quiet valley — not alone, not overwhelmed, but held by a presence that had finally trusted her with its deepest wound.

And for the first time since the Shardbound entered her life, she felt not like a vessel…

Heaven was not light. Not truly.

Light was too gentle. Too forgiving.

Heaven was a lattice of pressure and silence, a cathedral built from porcelain plates suspended in impossible balance. Every surface hummed with tension, every fracture line sang like a warning. The air itself felt like a held breath.

And in the center of that immaculate geometry stood a single figure.

Porcelain armor.

Golden cracks.

A cape split like broken shell halves.

He did not know how he had arrived here.

He did not know if he had ever truly left.

He only knew the hum.

It vibrated through the plates beneath his feet, through the golden veins that connected them, through the ceramic grafts fused to his bones. It thrummed in the back of his skull like a second heartbeat — steady, relentless, impossible to ignore.

Heaven did not speak.

Heaven did not guide.

Heaven did not care.

But it pressed.

The pressure wrapped around him like a vice, tightening with every breath. It was not pain. It was not punishment. It was simply expectation — the weight of a system designed to test the integrity of everything it touched.

He raised his head, visor reflecting the endless porcelain horizon.

A fracture line glowed across the nearest plate — thin, delicate, perfect. A stress point. A weakness. A truth waiting to be revealed.

He stepped toward it.

His boots sent ripples through the golden veins beneath him, each pulse echoing through the cathedral like a distant bell. His cape dragged behind him, its jagged edges whispering across the surface like the memory of a shattered world.

He lifted the glowing egg-node in his hand — a sphere of compressed radiance, pulsing like a trapped heartbeat. It strained against its shell of energy, eager to burst.

“Show me,” he whispered, voice hollow inside the helmet.

“Show me what must break.”

The hum sharpened.

The fracture trembled.

He struck.

The node detonated in a burst of silent radiance, light bending inward like a collapsing star. The porcelain plate cracked — clean, precise, inevitable.

Dust drifted around him like falling snow.

Heaven did not acknowledge him.

Heaven did not praise him.

Heaven did not even notice.

But the pressure eased — just slightly — and that was enough.

He stood alone in the drifting dust, chest rising and falling beneath his armor, the hum settling back into its steady rhythm.

Heaven had tested him.

Heaven would test him again.

Heaven would test him until he broke.

And when he did…

Heaven would not mourn.

Eggsecutor turned toward the next fracture line, the next test, the next truth waiting to crack.

Heaven hummed.

The night shift at the Portside Industrial Docks is supposed to be boring.

Dean likes boring. Boring means no surprises, no accidents, no pressure building under his skin.

Tonight is not boring.

He’s walking between warehouses when the first explosion hits—sharp, metallic, controlled. Not an accident. A breach. The shockwave rolls across the asphalt and slams into him like a wall.

He absorbs it instinctively.

His boots skid half an inch. His spine vibrates. His muscles tighten as the force sinks into him like a swallowed grenade.

He exhales slowly.

“Not good.”

Screams echo from the loading bay. A group of masked thieves—military gear, coordinated, not amateurs—are corralling workers at gunpoint while a truck backs up to a sealed container.

Dean ducks behind a forklift. His heart is hammering. He’s not a hero. He’s not trained for this. He’s a warehouse guy with a problem he barely understands.

But one of the workers tries to run.

Dean moves before he thinks.

He sprints across the concrete, absorbing the leftover tremors from the explosion with every step. The shooter turns toward the fleeing worker—too slow to aim, too slow to fire—

Dean slams into him shoulder‑first.

The impact is catastrophic.

The stored force detonates outward in a tight, controlled burst. The gunman is launched ten feet across the bay, hitting a stack of crates so hard the top ones wobble. Dean staggers from the recoil, breath catching, pressure shifting inside him like a loaded spring.

The other thieves whip around.

“Who the hell—?!”

Dean doesn’t answer. He braces.

Three of them open fire.

The bullets hit him like hailstones—each impact a tiny spark of force sinking into his body. They sting, but they don’t break skin. They charge him.

He feels the pressure rising.

His muscles twitch.

His jaw clenches.

He steps forward.

One of the gunmen panics and charges him with a metal baton. The swing connects with Dean’s forearm—hard enough to break bone on a normal person.

Dean absorbs it.

Then he releases.

He flicks his arm outward, and the stored force erupts in a shockwave that blasts the attacker backward, skidding across the floor like a ragdoll on ice.

The remaining thieves hesitate.

Dean doesn’t.

He grabs a rolling pallet jack, plants his foot on the base, and kicks.

The force he’s been holding surges down his leg and into the metal frame. The pallet jack rockets across the bay like a battering ram, slamming into two gunmen and pinning them against a shipping crate with a deafening clang.

Dean’s vision blurs at the edges.

He’s overloaded.

He needs to release the rest before it tears out of him uncontrolled.

The last thief—the one driving the truck—throws it into reverse and floors it, trying to escape.

Dean plants his feet.

He inhales.

He channels everything he’s holding.

And he punches the ground.

The shockwave is monstrous.

Concrete fractures outward in a spiderweb. The truck bounces off the ground, suspension screaming, tires lifting for a split second before slamming back down. The engine stalls. The windshield cracks. The driver slumps forward, unconscious.

Dust settles.

Silence.

Workers stare at Dean like he’s a walking earthquake.

He wipes blood from his nose, breath shaky, body trembling from the aftershocks.

One of the workers finally speaks.

“…What are you?”

Dean doesn’t have an answer.

He just shakes his head, pulls up his hood, and walks toward the exit as sirens approach.

Behind him, someone whispers the word that will stick.

The wind died without warning.

Voltstorm felt the shift like a pressure drop behind her eyes, the electromagnetic hum of the city dipping into an unnatural quiet. She stopped on the rooftop, scanning the still air. No breeze. No humidity. No temperature change. The atmosphere felt hollow.

Down on the street, Frostbit stepped out of an alley, her breath fogging in air that shouldn’t have been cold enough for it. She looked upward, sensing the same wrongness.

A few yards away, Cinder‑Ella flicked her fingers, trying to spark a flame. It sputtered out immediately. She stared at it, offended. “Okay. Rude.”

Boulderina pressed her palm to the pavement, feeling for vibrations. “Ground’s fine. Air’s not.”

Voltstorm dropped from the rooftop, landing beside them in a crackle of static. “Something’s pulling the atmosphere apart.”

A shimmer caught her eye — a massive orb hovering above the skyline, swirling with trapped clouds and lightning like a storm imprisoned in glass.

Cinder‑Ella squinted. “Is that… weather in a bubble?”

Voltstorm’s jaw tightened. “Skylock tech.”

Every screen in the city flickered to life. Dr. Barometric appeared in a storm‑patterned suit, smiling like a man who’d finally proven a point no one asked him to make.

“Citizens! Today marks the dawn of atmospheric capitalism. Your weather now belongs to me.”

Cinder‑Ella groaned. “I already hate him.”

Voltstorm didn’t wait for a plan. She took off toward the sphere, electricity sparking under her boots. The others moved after her without a word, each drawn forward by the same strange stillness.

The air around the sphere was a physics nightmare.

Zero‑gravity pockets drifted like invisible bubbles.  

Static‑charged tunnels twisted unpredictably.  

Frozen air columns hung suspended in midair.  

Superheated convection rings pulsed like molten halos.

Voltstorm mapped the distortions with quick, sharp glances. “Step where I step.”

Cinder‑Ella stepped somewhere else immediately. “Relax. I’ve got instincts.”

Frostbit froze a column of air into a crystalline staircase. “Move quickly. It won’t last.”

Boulderina hurled chunks of rock upward, creating stepping stones that hovered in the low‑gravity zones. She struck a dramatic pose on each one.

“Behold,” she announced, “aerial geology.”

Voltstorm didn’t dignify that with a response.

Inside the sphere, the world was chaos. Lightning arced across the walls. Rain spiraled upward. Heat and cold collided in violent bursts. It was a storm trapped mid‑tantrum.

Dr. Barometric spun around, startled.  

“What— how— who are you?”

Voltstorm crossed her arms. “People who noticed you stole the sky.”

Cinder‑Ella added, “And we’re returning it.”

Boulderina nodded. “With flair.”

Frostbit, polite as ever: “Please step away from the console.”

Dr. Barometric sputtered. “You can’t be here!”

The sphere answered for him. Weather patterns slammed into each other, the entire structure groaning under the strain. Sparks rained from the ceiling. The storm inside was eating itself alive.

Voltstorm scanned the core, electricity flickering across her eyes. “We can stabilize it.”

Cinder‑Ella raised a brow. “We?”

Voltstorm didn’t look away from the storm. “Unless you want the city flattened, yes.”

They moved without planning, instinct snapping them into rhythm.

Frostbit cooled the core, slowing the storm’s rotation.  

Cinder‑Ella heated the outer ring, creating a counter‑current.  

Boulderina redirected shockwaves into the sphere’s frame, grounding the chaos.  

Voltstorm unleashed a precise electromagnetic pulse, collapsing the resonance pattern.

The sphere shuddered.  

Cracked.  

Collapsed inward like a dying star.

And the weather snapped back into the sky in a single breath‑stealing rush.

Dr. Barometric hit the floor in a heap.

Cinder‑Ella dusted her hands. “Auction canceled.”

The wind returned. Clouds drifted. Humidity rose. The world exhaled.

Boulderina stretched. “So… are we doing this again sometime?”

Cinder‑Ella scoffed. “Don’t get attached.”

Frostbit offered a small smile. “We worked well together.”

Voltstorm rubbed her temples, already exhausted. “We’ll… figure it out.”

They walked away in four different directions.

The city felt different after Ashfall.

Not cleaner. Not safer.  

Just… louder.

Deranged Archer crouched on the edge of a rust‑stained water tower, the pumpkin‑grin mask staring down at the street below. The Clean Hand Syndicate had gone quiet after the safehouse incident—too quiet. Their vans weren’t running. Their drones weren’t buzzing. Their patrols weren’t bleaching the sidewalks every hour on the hour.

Silence wasn’t peace.  

Silence was planning.

He twirled an arrow between his fingers, listening to the faint hum inside the mask. It wasn’t magic—just leftover resonance from the ritual that should’ve killed him. But sometimes, when the city held its breath like this, the hum felt like a warning.

A door slammed three stories down.  

A man in a white coat stumbled into the alley, clutching a metal case to his chest.

Syndicate courier.  

Alone.  

Panicked.

Archer grinned behind the mask.

He dropped from the tower without a sound, landing in a crouch behind the courier. The man spun, eyes wide, already reaching for a sterilizer baton.

Archer fired a snap‑shot.  

The arrow pinned the man’s sleeve to the brick wall.

“Hi,” Archer said, stepping into the dim light. “You look stressed.”

The courier’s breath hitched. “P‑please. I’m just transport. I don’t—”

“Relax,” Archer said. “I’m not here to kill you.”

The courier sagged in relief.

“I’m here to see what you’re carrying.”

The relief evaporated.

Archer plucked the metal case from the man’s hands and flipped the latches. Inside: a row of glass vials filled with swirling gray particulate suspended in gel.

Ash.

Not just any ash—Ashfall’s ash.

Harvested.  

Collected.  

Catalogued.

Weaponized.

Archer’s fingers tightened around the case. “They’re bottling him,” he murmured. “Of course they are.”

The courier swallowed hard. “They said it was for research. Containment protocols. They’re scared of him.”

Archer tilted his head. “They should be scared of me.”

He snapped the arrow free, letting the courier drop to the ground. “Run. Tell your bosses the ash isn’t their biggest problem.”

The courier didn’t need to be told twice.

Archer watched him flee, then looked back at the vials. The gel inside pulsed faintly, reacting to the air.

Ashfall had left a mark on the city.  

The Syndicate was trying to turn that mark into a weapon.

Archer closed the case.

“Guess I’m not done with you yet,” he muttered, not sure if he meant Ashfall or the Syndicate.

The mask hummed again—low, eager.

He stepped into the alley’s darkness, bow in hand.

The hunt wasn’t over.  

Voltstorm had seen a lot of weird things in her career — spontaneous lightning wolves, sentient traffic cones, Cinder‑Ella’s cooking — but nothing prepared her for the sound currently shaking the training hall.

It wasn’t an explosion. It wasn’t a villain attack. It was… music?

A deep, theatrical orchestral swell vibrated through the floor, followed by a thunderous THUD that rattled the ceiling tiles.

Frostbit clung to Voltstorm’s arm. “Is that… is that an earthquake?”

“No,” Voltstorm said. “Earthquakes don’t have rhythm.”

Cinder‑Ella burst through the door, hair smoking as usual. “Okay, who turned the bass up to ‘continental drift’?”

Another THUD. Then another. Then a rising crescendo like someone had hired a full orchestra to score their entrance.

The doors at the far end of the hall blew open — not from force, but from sheer dramatic timing — and in stepped a woman built like a sculpted statue and dressed like she was late for a ballet recital.

She landed on one foot in a perfect arabesque. The floor cracked beneath her pointe shoe.

“Darlings,” she said, breathless and radiant, “your fourth has arrived.”

Voltstorm blinked. “Our… what?”

The woman straightened, dusting a few pebbles off her tutu‑reinforced combat skirt. “Boulderina. Prima ballerina of bedrock. Duchess of density. Mistress of the mineral arts.” She paused, then added with a wink, “And your new teammate.”

Cinder‑Ella whispered, “Oh my god she’s me but with rocks.”

Frostbit whispered back, “She’s you if you had discipline.”

Boulderina strode forward, each step sending a polite tremor through the floor. “I sensed an imbalance in your elemental ensemble. Fire, ice, lightning — all lovely, all dramatic — but without earth, you’re a stool missing a leg. And I simply cannot abide wobbly furniture.”

A ceiling tile fell. Frostbit yelped.

Boulderina caught it mid‑air, sculpted it into a perfect cube with one hand, and set it gently on the floor.

“See? Already helping.”

Voltstorm sighed. “Okay. Fine. Show us what you can do.”

Boulderina smiled like she’d been waiting for that line all day.

She leapt — impossibly high, impossibly graceful — and came down in a grand jeté that split the floor in a perfect geometric pattern. Stone rose around her like an audience applauding her performance. She spun, and the pillars followed her like trained dancers.

When she landed, the room was silent.

Cinder‑Ella clapped first. “I love her.”

Frostbit nodded. “She scares me, but in a comforting way.”

Voltstorm rubbed her temples. “Alright. Boulderina. Welcome to the team.”

Boulderina bowed, sending a polite ripple through the ground. “Marvelous. Now — who do I speak to about getting a rehearsal space? Preferably one that won’t crumble under my artistic expression.”

The floor cracked again.

Voltstorm sighed. “We’ll… figure something out.”

Frostbit stood in the middle of the I.B.S. training room — a space that looked like a gym, a server farm, and a storage closet had all lost a custody battle. Voltstorm paced in front of her with a clipboard, sparks flicking off her hair like she was one bad moment away from rebooting the building.

Cinder‑Ella lounged on a stack of fireproof mats, eating a granola bar that was definitely not fireproof.

“Okay, Frostbit,” Voltstorm said. “Today is about control. Precision. Stability. No freezing anything that isn’t explicitly labeled ‘freeze‑safe.’”

Frostbit raised a hand. “Are… any of these things freeze‑safe?”

Voltstorm looked around the room. “No.”

Cinder‑Ella shrugged. “We believe in you anyway.”

Frostbit took a deep breath. The temperature dropped three degrees.

Voltstorm sighed. “We’re off to a strong start.”

Exercise 1: The Target Test

Voltstorm pointed to a row of holographic targets. “Just freeze the blue ones. Only the blue ones.”

Frostbit nodded, lifted her hand, and released a controlled pulse of data‑ice.

Every target froze.

Including the projector.

Including the wall behind it.

Including a potted plant no one remembered bringing into the room.

Cinder‑Ella clapped. “Hey, at least you’re consistent.”

Voltstorm pinched the bridge of her nose. “Okay. New plan.”

Exercise 2: Temperature Regulation

Voltstorm set a thermometer on a table. “Keep the room at exactly 68 degrees. No more, no less.”

Frostbit focused. The air shimmered. The thermometer dropped to 40.

She panicked. It shot up to 85.

She panicked harder. It dropped to 20.

Cinder‑Ella put on a jacket. “This is like living inside a broken smart fridge.”

Voltstorm’s hair frizzed from the humidity spike. “We’re moving on.”

Exercise 3: Controlled Frost Constructs

“Try making something simple,” Voltstorm said. “A cube. A ball. A little ice sculpture. Whatever feels natural.”

Frostbit concentrated. Frost swirled around her hands, forming a delicate, shimmering shape.

It was… a cat.

A very glitchy, pixel‑flickering cat.

It meowed in dial‑up tones.

Cinder‑Ella gasped. “You made a pet!”

The cat exploded into snow.

Cinder‑Ella: “You made a seasonal pet!”

Voltstorm: “I’m adding ‘no animals’ to the list.”

Exercise 4: Field Simulation

The training room lights dimmed. A holographic villain appeared — a generic, non‑copyright‑infringing robot.

“Your goal,” Voltstorm said, “is to immobilize it without freezing the entire room.”

Frostbit nodded, stepped forward, and fired a precise beam of frost.

It hit the robot.

It froze the robot.

It also froze:

- the floor

- the ceiling

- the simulation controls

- Voltstorm’s clipboard

- and Cinder‑Ella’s granola bar

Cinder‑Ella stared at the frozen snack. “Okay, now it’s personal.”

Voltstorm tapped the ice‑covered control panel. “We’re done. We’re so done.”

Aftermath

Frostbit slumped onto a bench, cheeks red with embarrassment. “I’m terrible at this.”

Voltstorm sat beside her. “You’re not terrible. You’re new. And your powers are complicated.”

Cinder‑Ella sat on her other side. “Also, you froze my granola bar. That means you owe me a new one. Preferably chocolate chip.”

Frostbit laughed weakly. “I’ll try.”

Voltstorm nudged her shoulder. “You did better than you think. You didn’t freeze the entire building.”

Cinder‑Ella added, “And you made a cat. A glitch‑cat. That’s hero material.”

Frostbit smiled — small, but real.

“Okay,” she said. “Tomorrow… we try again.”

Voltstorm groaned. “Tomorrow I’m bringing insulated equipment.”

Cinder‑Ella grinned. “Tomorrow I’m bringing popcorn.”

Frostbit stood, frost crunching under her boots.

Tomorrow, she’d be better.

Today, she survived I.BS. training.

The night it began, Alexander Riven was alone in his laboratory.

The room was a cathedral of diagrams — blueprints pinned to walls, equations scrawled across glass boards, holographic models rotating in slow, deliberate arcs. The air hummed with the quiet electricity of machines running simulations he had written himself. Outside, the industrial town slept under a sky of dim stars.

Alexander stood over a drafting table, studying a map of the city.

Not a normal map — a structural one.

Lines of tension.

Angles that didn’t match their surroundings.

Curvatures that contradicted Euclidean geometry.

He traced one of the lines with a fingertip.

“This shouldn’t exist,” he murmured.

The anomaly had appeared earlier that day — a street corner whose angles shifted when he returned to it. Most people would have dismissed it as déjà vu or fatigue. Alexander knew better. He had spent his life training his mind to see patterns others ignored.

And this pattern was wrong.

He leaned closer, adjusting the hologram’s resolution. The line flickered — not visually, but conceptually. A subtle shift in the underlying geometry. A ripple in the structure of space.

Alexander’s breath caught.

He wasn’t imagining it.

The anomaly was real.

He reached for a stylus to annotate the distortion.

The lights in the lab dimmed.

Alexander froze.

The hologram brightened on its own, lines rearranging themselves into new configurations — not random, not chaotic, but purposeful. The diagrams on the walls began to glow faintly, their angles shifting, aligning, converging toward a single point.

The air thickened.

The hum of the machines deepened.

A pressure formed behind Alexander’s eyes — not pain, but presence.

Something was here.

Not a being.

Not a consciousness.

A principle.

A structure.

The Originator.

It did not speak.

It did not think.

It expressed — through geometry, through tension, through the rearrangement of the diagrams around him.

Alexander staggered back, gripping the edge of the table.

“What are you?” he whispered.

The answer unfolded inside his mind like a blueprint opening across a drafting board.

Not words.

Not images.

Design.

He saw the city as a lattice of forces.

He saw the world as a network of structural equations.

He saw reality as a blueprint — and the blueprint was leaking.

The Originator was not alive.

It was not malevolent.

It was simply misplaced.

A cosmic design principle forced into a human mind.

The pressure intensified.

Alexander gasped as his thoughts stretched, reorganized, sharpened.

He felt the Originator’s logic integrating with his own — not overriding, but overlaying.

His intellect remained his.

His perception changed.

And then the floor shook.

A crack split the air in the center of the lab — a thin, shimmering line of impossible geometry. The first rift. The first fracture. The first structural contradiction made visible.

Alexander stared at it, heart pounding.

The Originator had not created it intentionally.

It had created it because it was not where it belonged.

The rift pulsed, expanding.

Alexander moved before he could think.

His mind began calculating angles, tensions, vectors.

He grabbed a stylus and sketched a lattice of glowing lines into the air, projecting a structural overlay he had theorized but never tested.

The rift resisted.

It twisted the lattice, bending it into spirals.

Alexander recalculated.

Adjusted.

Reinforced.

The Originator’s presence allowed him to see the rift’s underlying geometry — but the solution was his.

Slowly, the rift collapsed, folding into itself with a soft, resonant crack.

Silence returned.

Alexander stood in the center of the lab, chest heaving, sweat dripping down his brow.

The Originator pulsed inside him — not demanding, not commanding, simply existing.

A burden.

A blueprint.

A contradiction.

He looked at the scorched floor where the rift had been.

He understood.

He was now the stabilizer of a problem he had not chosen.

The cause and the cure.

The architect of a structure that was never meant to be carried by a human mind.

He walked to the window, staring out at the sleeping city.

He could see the fractures now — faint lines of tension running through the skyline.

He could see where reality was weakening.

He could see how to fix it.

He placed a hand against the glass.

“I’ll hold it together,” he whispered.

The Originator pulsed — quiet, neutral, inevitable.

Alexander Riven turned away from the window and returned to his drafting table.

He had work to do.

Rosa Fuego had survived collapsing stages, jealous dancers, and one extremely drunk tourist who tried to tip her mid‑air. But nothing — nothing — prepared her for the I.B.S. Hero HQ’s Mandatory Annual Safety Inspection.

She’d been warned.

She ignored the warnings.

How bad could it be?

She was Flameingo — the Neon Blaze.

She could fly, ignite, and land with the grace of a flamingo dipped in fireworks.

She was wrong.

The inspector arrived at 8:00 a.m. sharp: a stiff‑backed man in a beige vest, holding a clipboard like it was a sacred relic. His badge read:

GORDON P. HAWTHORNE

I.B.S. SAFETY DIVISION

“NO FUN, JUST COMPLIANCE.”

Rosa smiled warmly. “Buenos días.”

He did not smile back. “Ms. Fuego, today I will be evaluating your mutation for workplace safety hazards.”

“My mutation is fire,” she said. “It is inherently a hazard.”

He clicked his pen. “Then this will be productive.”

“First test,” Hawthorne said. “Controlled ignition.”

Rosa lifted her hand. A soft pink flame blossomed from her palm, feather‑shaped and elegant.

Hawthorne scribbled. “Color is non‑standard. Please state the chemical basis for the pigmentation.”

“It is… pink.”

“Not sufficient.”

“It is mutant pink.”

He frowned. “That is less sufficient.”

The flame flickered in annoyance.

“Second test,” he said. “Demonstrate aerial mobility.”

Rosa stepped back, rolled her shoulders, and let the heat rise through her spine. Flames unfurled behind her like wings, lifting her gently off the ground.

Hawthorne circled her, jotting notes.

“Your flight pattern is asymmetrical.”

“It is artistic.”

“It is inefficient.”

“It is flamenco.”

He paused. “Is that OSHA‑compliant?”

She blinked. “Is anything in this building OSHA‑compliant?”

He ignored the question.

“Third test,” he said. “Emergency extinguish.”

Rosa landed. “I can extinguish at will.”

“Demonstrate.”

She snapped her fingers. The flames vanished.

Hawthorne stared at her hand. “There is residual glow.”

“That is aesthetic.”

“That is a violation.”

Rosa exhaled through her nose. “Señor Hawthorne, my mutation is not a machine. It is part of me.”

“That is precisely why it must be regulated.”

She felt her temperature rising — emotionally and literally.

“Fourth test,” he said. “Spontaneous ignition under stress.”

“I do not ignite under stress.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.”

He flipped a page. “According to your file, you ignited during a disagreement with the coffee machine.”

“It insulted me.”

“It is a machine.”

“It beeped sarcastically.”

Hawthorne wrote something that looked suspiciously like ‘unstable’.

Rosa’s flames twitched.

“Final test,” he said. “You will stand still while I simulate a workplace hazard.”

“Simulate how?”

He pulled out a small device with a red button.

“What does that do?” she asked.

“It triggers a randomized hazard scenario.”

“Randomized how?”

He pressed the button.

A ceiling vent opened and dumped fifty rubber chickens onto her head.

Rosa froze.

One chicken bounced off her shoulder.

Another landed in her hair.

A third honked on impact.

Hawthorne observed. “Your reaction time was slow.”

“I was… surprised.”

“Surprise is not an excuse.”

Rosa’s eye twitched. “Señor Hawthorne.”

“Yes?”

She ignited.

Not explosively — but with the slow, rising heat of a dancer preparing a finale. Pink flames curled around her, lifting the rubber chickens into a swirling neon vortex.

Hawthorne backed up. “Ms. Fuego, this is highly irregular—”

The flames spun faster. The chickens rose higher. And with a final elegant flourish, Rosa released a burst of heat that launched all fifty rubber chickens neatly into the recycling bin.

Perfect arc.

Perfect landing.

Perfect form.

She touched down lightly.

Hawthorne stared at the bin. “That was… surprisingly efficient.”

Rosa dusted off her hands. “Flamenco is always efficient.”

He cleared his throat. “Well. Despite several concerns, your mutation appears… manageable.”

“That is the nicest thing anyone has said to me today.”

He handed her a form. “Sign here.”

She signed.

He left.

Rosa stood alone in the hallway, surrounded by faint pink embers and the lingering scent of melted rubber.

She smiled.

Another day at I.B.S. HQ.

Another crisis survived.

DeciBelle clutched her tea, adjusted her glasses, and whispered affirmations to herself like a nervous librarian preparing for war.

“You can do this,” she murmured. “Just… don’t explode.”

The I.B.S. Hero HQ alarm blared.

“ATTENTION: CITY IN PERIL. AGAIN.”

Talia winced. “Oh no.”

Then Bob Toxsick shuffled into the hallway like a man who had been woken from a nap he didn’t remember taking.

He held a half-eaten granola bar. He wore mismatched socks. His hair looked like it had given up halfway through existing.

“Belle,” he said flatly. “We got assigned a mission.”

Talia blinked. “We… what? Together?”

“Yeah. Something about a villain downtown. I wasn’t listening.”

“You never listen.”

Bob shrugged. “And yet I’m still alive. Coincidence? Probably.”

Talia sighed, scarf fluttering. “Okay. Let’s just… try to be professional.”

Bob stared at her. “Belle, I’m the Apathy King. Professionalism is my kryptonite.”

They arrived downtown to find chaos. Cars overturned. Streetlights sparking. A giant inflatable duck drifting ominously across the skyline.

And in the center of it all stood today’s villain: **The Mood Swinger**.

He wore a sequined jumpsuit, a cape made of mood rings, and a headset that glowed with shifting colors.

“BEHOLD!” he shouted. “I SHALL CONTROL THE EMOTIONS OF THE CITY!”

Bob yawned. “Hard pass.”

The Mood Swinger pointed dramatically. “You! The slouching one! FEEL INTENSE JOY!”

Bob blinked. “No.”

The Mood Swinger frowned. “What do you mean ‘no’?”

“I’m not doing that.”

“You can’t refuse an emotion beam!”

“Watch me.”

The Mood Swinger fired again. “FEEL RAGE!”

Bob scratched his ear. “Nah.”

“FEEL DESPAIR!”

“Already do. Try harder.”

The Mood Swinger sputtered. “Why isn’t this working?!”

Talia stepped forward, hands raised. “Um… excuse me… sir? Could you please stop yelling? It’s making my—”

Her glasses fogged.

Her scarf lifted.

The pavement trembled.

Bob glanced at her. “Belle’s gonna blow.”

“I’m not— I’m fine— I’m calm— I’m—”

The Mood Swinger pointed at her. “YOU! FEEL… EXTREME EMBARRASSMENT!”

Talia squeaked.

The air compressed.

Bob took a step back. “Yep. That did it.”

Talia whispered, “Please stand back.”

The Mood Swinger laughed. “What are you going to do? Cry at me?”

Talia inhaled.

The world held its breath.

“NO.”

The sonic blast rippled through the street like a polite apocalypse. Windows shattered. The inflatable duck exploded into confetti. The Mood Swinger was launched into a hot dog cart, which rolled three blocks before gently tipping over.

Silence.

Dust settled.

A pigeon fell out of the sky.

Bob took a sip of his soda. “Nice.”

Talia covered her mouth. “Oh no. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to— I tried to stay calm— I really did—”

Bob patted her shoulder with the enthusiasm of a man tapping a vending machine. “Belle, relax. You only destroyed, like… half the block.”

“That’s not comforting!”

“Wasn’t trying to be.”

Before she could respond, the Mood Swinger crawled out of the hot dog cart, dazed and covered in relish.

“I… I don’t understand…” he groaned. “My powers… your apathy… her screaming… what even ARE you two?”

Bob shrugged. “We’re the Tuesday shift.”

Talia helped the villain sit up. “Are you okay? Do you need water? A blanket? Emotional support?”

The Mood Swinger stared at her. “You just launched me into a weiner cart.”

“I know,” she whispered, mortified. “I’m so sorry.”

Bob nudged the villain with his foot. “She means it. She’s very polite about the destruction.”

The Mood Swinger whimpered. “I’m retiring.”

“Good call,” Bob said.

HQ drones arrived to collect the villain. Talia dusted off her cardigan, cheeks pink.

“I really need to work on my control,” she said.

Bob shrugged. “Why? It works.”

“It doesn’t work. It’s dangerous.”

“Yeah,” Bob said, sipping his soda. “Dangerously effective.”

Talia sighed. “You’re impossible.”

“And you’re a walking WMD,” Bob replied. “We all have our thing.”

She smiled despite herself. “Thanks… I think.”

Bob started walking away. “C’mon, Belle. Let’s go file paperwork.”

Talia groaned. “I hate paperwork.”

Bob smirked. “Finally. Something we agree on.”

Talia Venn had one goal today: survive the staff meeting without raising her voice.

She adjusted her glasses, clutched her notebook, and tiptoed into the I.B.S. Hero HQ conference room. The chairs squeaked. The coffee vibrated. Someone had left a half-eaten burrito on the projector.

“Morning,” she whispered.

No one heard her. Perfect.

She took her usual seat — far corner, near the emergency earplug dispenser. Her scarf was snug, her cardigan freshly lint-rolled, and her voice? Calm. Controlled. Contained.

Then Bob Toxsick walked in.

“YO, DECIBELLE!” he shouted, slamming a stack of papers onto the table. “You ready to SCREAM SOME JUSTICE today or what?”

Talia flinched. Her glasses fogged. The air around her throat shimmered.

“Um,” she said, voice barely audible. “Please don’t—”

“OH RIGHT,” Bob said, grinning. “You’re in quiet mode. Got it. I’ll whisper.”

He leaned in and whispered at full volume: “WHISPERING NOW.”

Talia’s scarf fluttered. A nearby pen rolled off the table.

She scribbled in her notebook: *Please stop vibrating the room.*

Bob gave her a thumbs-up and sat down. The burrito slid off the projector.

The meeting began. Root Cause was presenting a new mission briefing, something about a villain called The Feedback Loop who had weaponized bad Yelp reviews. Talia tried to focus, but her pressure sensors were tingling.

Something was wrong.

The air was too still. The walls too echoey. And the copy room door — just behind her — was rattling.

She turned slowly.

From the copy room emerged a figure. Tall. Pale. Wearing a headset and a trench coat made of shredded printer paper.

“Hello,” he said, voice modulated and awful. “I am The Feedback Loop. I have hacked your copier. It now prints only passive-aggressive insults.”

He held up a sheet:  

> “Your heroics are adequate, but the font choice is deeply upsetting.”

Bob stood up. “Buddy, you picked the wrong day to mess with our office equipment.”

The Feedback Loop raised a remote. “I have also rerouted your sound system. Any loud noise will now trigger a motivational speech from a failed podcast host.”

He pressed a button. The speakers crackled.

> “You know what’s wrong with society? Not enough hustle. Not enough grind. Not enough—”

Talia’s glasses fogged again.

She stood up. Quietly.

“Um,” she said. “Excuse me.”

The Feedback Loop turned. “Who are you?”

She adjusted her scarf. “I’m… DeciBelle.”

He squinted. “Never heard of you.”

Bob whispered loudly: “SHE’S GONNA BLOW.”

Talia took a deep breath.

Her cardigan fluttered. Her hair lifted. The burrito levitated.

She whispered again: “Please stand back.”

The Feedback Loop laughed. “What are you gonna do, sing me into submission?”

Talia inhaled.

The room dimmed.

The air compressed.

And then—

“NO.”

Her voice hit like a sonic freight train.

The windows cracked. The copier exploded. The motivational podcast host screamed “GRIND HARDER” and then imploded.

The Feedback Loop was launched backward into a wall of filing cabinets, which collapsed like dominoes. His headset landing on the burrito.

Bob cheered. “THAT’S MY GIRL!”

Talia blinked. Her glasses were crooked. Her scarf was smoldering.

“Oh,” she said softly. “Sorry.”

Later, in the break room, Root Cause handed her a mug that said *World’s Loudest Whisperer*.

“You saved the day,” he said. “And also destroyed three printers.”

Talia sipped her tea. “I’ll fix them.”

Bob leaned in. “You know what this means, right?”

She raised an eyebrow.

“You’re officially on the I.B.S. Hero Roster,” he said. “Right between Frostbit and The Human Traffic Cone.”

Talia smiled. Just a little.

Dumpsterfire Dan wasn’t born a hero. He was chosen — or maybe cursed — by the Cosmic Dumpster, a swirling, eternal inferno that burns with the discarded emotions, failures, and forgotten hopes of a thousand universes. It didn’t give him power gently. It swallowed him whole and spat him back out glowing.

To the world, Dan is a walking miracle. A man who can turn chaos into fuel. A hero who laughs in the face of disaster because disaster is literally his element.

But the truth? The truth is that the fire never stops.

Every day, Dan wakes up with that same low roar in his chest — the cosmic burn that never cools, never quiets, never lets him forget what he carries. He jokes about it. He shrugs it off. He calls himself “fine” so often it’s practically a catchphrase.

But he’s lying, and he knows it.

The Cosmic Dumpster doesn’t just burn trash. It burns memories. It burns doubt. It burns fear. And every time Dan uses his powers, it tries to burn him too.

He hides it well. He cracks jokes while his hands tremble. He grins while cosmic embers leak from the corners of his eyes. He saves people while quietly wondering how much of himself he’s losing each time he taps into the flames.

The city cheers for him. The I.B.S. heroes trust him. They see the swagger, the smirk, the guy who can turn a collapsing building into a controlled burn with a flick of his wrist.

They don’t see the moments after the battle — when he ducks into an alley, leans against a wall, and tries to breathe through the firestorm inside his ribs. When he wonders if he’s still Dan… or just the Dumpster wearing his skin.

He tells himself he has to keep going. Heroes don’t get to fall apart. Heroes don’t get to admit they’re scared.

But the cosmic fire doesn’t care about heroism. It only cares about consuming.

And Dan knows that one day, if he doesn’t face what’s happening inside him, the Dumpster won’t just burn through him — it’ll burn through everything he’s trying to protect.

That’s the real struggle. Not the villains. Not the disasters. Not the cosmic anomalies that keep leaking into the I.B.S. Universe.

The real battle is pretending he’s okay long enough to figure out how to save the world without losing himself.