open to: anyone!
When Jon quit the Freedom Coalition, he didn’t think he would ever want to get back into the superhero game. It’s done, he thought. There’s no future for me as Torque anymore. But when he tried to go back to his job in construction like nothing had changed, it was impossible. Jon needed to be Torque. He was Torque.
He didn’t think the Advocates would last this long. Three years! When he was ousted from the Coalition, it seemed like nobody else could identify with him as a gay superhero. Everybody else on the scene was “traditional,” as their PR team put it. Torque knew that was code for “straight.” But when he opened up the floodgates for any marginalized super to fight with him, they returned his message of acceptance in droves. Torque isn’t ashamed to admit he cried to himself after their mission as a team — as a family. With his dream finally realized, he knew he had the sustenance to soldier on, never letting anybody fall behind.
Planning a celebration like the third anniversary of the Advocates, however? That was a real pain in the ass to coordinate. Even with the team he put in place to organize the festivities, Jon wanted to have a say in their plans. The Advocate Project was his baby, and he knew the surest hands were his own. Nothing went past Torque around Advocate HQ... but even a secure, responsible leader like himself forgot to close his front door every so often.
Freshly showered and shaved, Torque was changing in his walk-in closet when he heard footsteps approaching him from outside the tight space. “Hello?” he asks, hoping for the best and assuming it was one of his many colleagues looking for him and not, say, a supervillain with an axe to grind... hopefully a figurative one if anything. He already took a literal axe to the back once and would rather not do that again.
