#novred

holy hannah the 1920′s??? when even was that

one quick google search later

in all honesty, like, 90% of my characters would’ve been soldiers during the first world war, so i’m just gonna nab november red since they’re… also soldiers!!!

- milt parker, palamo, and dixon, as the oldest, would’ve definitely been in the army before the war started. dixon would’ve been a nurse, until a government agency found out “oh what some people have superpowers” and then started collecting them.

- rhiot and hunt were drafted for wwi, and then inducted into the newly-formed MUGD; mercado, i think, prolly tried to pretend to be a guy to get into the army, and then the MUGD picked her up as well, since she was so insistent on fighting anyway.

- they decide to stay in after the war. or rather, the decision to stay in was made for them.

- they do get lots of downtime, tho, and spend most of it pretending not to have superpowers or that they now spend about 87% of the time mentally linked up to each other and rhiot’s dog loula.

- parker is devastated by prohibition and has to be dragged out of underground bars and speakeasies on the regular. he makes lots of bootlegger friends. dixon does not discourage this, because she drinks almost as much as him. the only difference between them is that she knows how to stop drinking.

- hunt and rhiot get crazy into baseball. palamo plays with them sometimes, but it almost always devolves just into him playing fetch with loula.

- during this time, november red does get called into facing threats from other superpowered people on the sly; there starts to be actual caped superheroes, with uniforms and everything, and novred starts keeping tabs on if they’re actually Good People or not.

- mercado goes full suffragette, and bullies the rest of novred into helping her. their handlers have to regularly curb her activism. she probably almost gets chucked out entirely, except parker tells them that the entire group would leave with her. 

"ARCHER!"

The door slams open and Rhiot nearly rolls off the couch; equally startled, Loula jumps to her feet in a panic and plants one paw solidly in a very sensitive spot. Mercy storms in to see Rhiot and Loula both whimpering on the floor for very different reasons, and Hunt pulls off his gaming headseat with a scowl.

"I was winning," he snapped at Mercado, "this better be important."

"Ow," Rhiot groans in agreement. Loula whines and nuzzles him apologetically.

"Mormons don't cuss!" Mercy says, very loudly, as Dixon and Parker poke their heads in from the kitchen.

Rhiot rubs the rest of his nap from his eyes. "What?"

Palamo sidles in through the front door next, opening and closing it far more gently than Mercy. He shoots Parker an apologetic look and a wry smile.

"Mormons don't cuss!" Mercy repeats, clearly working herself up over this very simple statement. Loula starts following her circuit around the living room, trying to get her attention. "Why didn't you say something!"

"About swearing?" Rhiot clarifies, looking up at her helplessly. He's only synced up with Loula, but the edges of Mercy's brown skin glint a faint purple, showing her apparent distress. "I mean, uh, I guess we don't, not really?"

Palamo sighs and leans towards Parker and Dixon to explain, "We met some Mormon missionaries at the store."

Loula gives up on Mercy as the woman paces frenetic circles around the room and trots back to Rhiot, still on the floor. He ruffles her ears. "What's - What's the big deal?"

"We cuss all the damn time!" Mercy says, throwing her hands up. Hunt sighs and starts to put his headphones back on, but she leans down and tears them off his head. "That bothers you, right? We gotta fucking stop!"

"You're doing so well already," Hunt says dryly.

Rhiot finally sits up. "I mean, you - you don't-"

"No, it's not respectful," Mercado huffs. "We can't cuss around Archer anymore, guys, you got it?"

Rhiot looks more dismayed than relieved. "You - You really don't need to -"

Parker looks like he's about to cry from not laughing. Dixon, perfectly straight-faced, crosses her arms over her chest. "Mercado's right," she said gravely. "We gotta fucking stop cussing."

"Thank you!" Mercy exclaims.

"That means we can't say shit, either," Dixon goes on. "Or fuck."

"Damn," Parker puts in helpfully.

"You don't say God or anything, either, right?" Dixon asks Rhiot, who sighs and shakes his head.

"Hell is right out," Parker says gravely. Rhiot buries his face in Loula's fur. "We shouldn't talk about things like sex, Mercy, either."

Mercy blinks and looks down at Rhiot. "What, really?"

"It doesn't matter, guys," Rhiot complains into Loula's fur. "I don't care."

"It does too matter," Mercy huffed, "you're part of the team. You should feel comfortable."

Parker brings a mug to his lips. Dixon glances at him, then with a wicked grin, adds in a stage whisper to Palamo, "When do we mention Mormons don't drink coffee, either?"

Mercado whips around. "They don't?"

Rhiot falls onto his back and says, very loudly, "You're allowed to drink coffee, Mercado."

"Well, not when we're synced up!"

Rhiot puts his hands on his face and groans, "Are you freakin' kidding me."

“Done,” Parker said instantly, so quickly that the villainess nearly dropped her hostage.

“What?”

“Yeah, we heard you’re a fan of this whole sacrifice thing,” Hunt said, “so we talked it out last night. We got everyone sorted into priority and willingness.”

“Dixon would like you to know that she’s first on the list,” Parker added, relaxing his grip on his rifle. His single eye didn’t leave the hostage child for an instant, however. “She can be over here in just a second.”

The villainess was so thrown off that she could only manage, “You sorted yourselves?”

“Yeah, uh, see, Dixon’s first because she doesn’t really have any family -”

“Well, she has her dad,” Hunt volunteered, his eyes on the villainess, “but he’s got real bad Alzheimer’s and doesn’t remember who she is, and the nursing home’s taking real good care of him.”

Parker cut in next. “Mercado and Hunt are tied for next, since they’re both single and don’t have any kids or anything.”

“I still think I should go before Hunt,” Mercy put in, from halfway across town, lying belly-down on a rooftop next to Rhiot. The villainess, of course, didn’t hear anything from her. “He’s way more useful to the team.”

“Oh, shut up, Mercy,” Hunt drawled, much to the villainess’ confusion. “We’re tied because we’re both equally useless.”

Out of a morbid curiosity, the villainess prompted, “Who’s next?”

“Rhiot -” Hunt started, but Parker immediately cut him off, rounding on him.

“No, I was -”

“Sorry, sir, you were overruled after you went to bed,” Hunt said, shuffling a step to the side so that Parker couldn’t hit him. “You just found out you had a kid, we ain’t throwing you to the wolves after that. Anyways, so, it’s Dixon, me, Mercy, Rhiot, Parker here, and then Palamo, but like, only if it’s an end-of-the-world sitch. You can’t have him.”

The villainess arched her eyebrows. “And why not?”

“Because his wife just had a baby, man,” Hunt huffed. “What kind of monster are you?”

“The kind that holds a baby hostage,” Parker said dryly. Hunt opened his mouth, shut it, then shrugged and nodded.

“A’ight. Fair enough. Dixie chicks, you in range yet?”

The villainess blinked. “I’m sorry?”

“Yup,” Dixon said, and materialized out of thin air next to the villainess. Dixon punched her in the kidneys, grabbed the child, and disappeared.

Normally, Rhiot would cut the connection as soon as their objective was complete. Normally, they wouldn’t stay synced up for so long. Normally, they’d only be seeing and hearing what the others did.

Normally, they wouldn’t be fighting on American soil. Normally, they wouldn’t be fighting to kill an American citizen.

Of course, they couldn’t really expect the police to handle a superhero-gone-villain.