Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The chopper blades made way too much noise for this early. Like if someone was trying to grind up the sky and didn't know when to quit. Not that any of the Boys flinched—they heard everything anyway.

Always did.

You couldn't not when you were built like them.

Brick kept his eyes on the tablet in his lap, fingers flicking through the mission brief like he was bored of it already. Mostly because he was. They'd been over it twice already and he was skimming out of habit more than anything, catching details he already knew or had already memorized out of spite. He wasn't reading it to learn anything—he was reading it so no one could say he wasn't paying attention.

Butch was lying across the seat like it was his, one leg kicked over the armrest and the other hanging off the side, boot heel rhythmically thudding against the wall with no real beat to it. "Why are we even awake right now? It's still dark, practically. This is messed up. I'm gonna start breaking stuff if I fall asleep on my feet."

Brick didn't bother looking up. "Then don't fall asleep."

"But why though," Butch whined, dragging out the vowels like he was trying to summon a nap by force. "Ain't nobody gonna be doing evil science at six in the morning. This is dumb."

"You're dumb," Brick shot back, monotone, eyes still on the screen.

"Bad guys like us don't even get up this early," Butch muttered louder, mostly to himself as he started peeling a scab off his elbow with his thumbnail. He watched it start to bleed. Then watched it stop bleeding like it always did. Barely even a mark left behind.

Boomer was nose-pressed to the window beside them, eyes huge, fogging the glass up every time he exhaled. "Yo—guys—hey! Cows! There's cows down there! Like, for real, cows!"

Brick ignored him.

"They're all teeny! Like, bug-size! Wait—wait—what if they are bugs. Like, cow-bugs. Bug-cows."

"Those are ants, genius," Butch said, not looking. Then kicked Donald's chair hard enough to make the poor guy jolt and fumble his tablet.

Donald coughed into his hand, trying not to look annoyed as he turned in his seat. "Boys, I just want to go over—"

"We got it," Brick said, finally blinking up, face flat and voice flatter. "Don't break stuff. Look at stuff. Call you if we find stuff. Yeah?"

Donald opened his mouth like he wanted to protest, then shut it and sighed like grownups always did when they didn't wanna admit you were right.

"It's not a video game," he said anyway, because he had to. "This is real-world surveillance protocol—"

"We're two minutes out," the pilot called back, and Brick exhaled through his nose. Best thing he'd heard all morning.

The building underneath didn't look like anything worth raiding. It was flat and ugly and gray, and the trees around it were already losing their leaves even though it wasn't that cold yet. Looked like someone buried a school and gave up halfway. Chain-link fence, a gate, no real cameras they could see—though Brick figured if he could see the cameras, they were already bad at their job.

Donald pointed anyway. "Secondary lab used by the Maulers. Not a primary facility. The main one's gone—we did a sweep a few days ago after the President declared them threats to National Security, but they cleared out first. Intel says they had satellite sites. This is an older one, one they haven't touched in a while." The cyborg clicked his tongue. "We're not sure why."

Brick leaned forward slightly, eyes narrowing. The layout made no sense. One door. Two power lines. Four heat outlets, none of them warm. No cars. No movement. "And you want us to go poke around and see what jumps out."

Donald nodded slowly, like he hadn't expected them to follow. "Exactly. Recon only. No activating systems, no pressing buttons, no engaging threats if there are any. Just observe. Report. Got it?"

Boomer raised his hand, like this was a real class or something. "What's a Mauler Twin?"

Donald turned. Blinked. "The… the blue supervillains? Super smart? Super strong? One clone, one original? They've been on every newschannel for weeks, after trying to flood San Diego."

Boomer tilted his head, glanced at Brick. Then Butch.

Both shrugged.

"We've been watching Duck Dodgers," Brick said.

"And WWE," Butch chimed in.

"And Shark Week," Boomer added.

Donald closed his eyes like that physically hurt him. "Just… don't touch anything."

The chopper door screeched open before anyone could say more, and the wind slammed into them like a punch—but none of them even flinched.

Donald pointed at the rope ladder dropping down toward the trees. "We'll maintain hover while you—"

Red, green, and blue flashes of light filled his vision, but before he could say anything else, they were already gone.

Down below, the boys landed on the concrete with only the usual, lined up like they'd practiced it, though they never really had.

Donald's voice crackled over the comms, already defeated. "Was Donny ever that bad?"

Brick didn't answer. He didn't even blink.

He scanned the building again, focusing his eyes until the walls turned see-through, not literally but close. The whole place was empty. "No heat sigs. Nothing moving. Dead."

Butch cracked his knuckles loud enough to echo off the trees. "Can I punch a wall now? Way cooler entrance."

Brick tilted his head, eyes not leaving the structure. "We're supposed to be subtle, remember?"

Butch snorted. "I am subtle."

"If we smash through and there's nothing inside," Brick muttered, already walking toward the building, "we're just the idiots who broke a wall for no reason."

"Breaking stuff ain't ever for nothing," Butch muttered under his breath, but his boots still hit the ground behind Brick's like he hadn't just complained the whole walk over. He was already stretching his arms like he was warming up for a fight that hadn't started yet.

Brick didn't answer. He didn't have to. The whole setup already looked like a problem. A thick slab of a door, metal reinforced and locked up with some kind of keypad glowing faint green like it was waiting for someone smarter than it to try something stupid. If they were back in Townsville, he would've just torched the hinges and been done in five seconds. But then he remembered the lecture Cecil had dropped on them back at HQ about "restraint" and "discipline" and not turning infrastructure into craters every time you feel itchy.

He wasn't about to ask permission.

Before he could think of something clever to do with heat vision and plausible deniability, Boomer practically skipped up to the panel with a grin already cocked on his face like he was about to do a magic trick.

"I got it! I got it, I got it," Boomer said, both hands splayed on the panel like it was a birthday present, tongue poking out the corner of his mouth. The keypad buzzed once, flickered, then caught a thin trail of blue lightning like it had sneezed wrong.

Lights flashed, clicked twice, and then the door hissed open all dramatic.

Boomer spun around, already grinning too wide. "Ta-da."

Brick gave him a nod. Just the one. It was enough to make Boomer light up like Christmas.

Inside, the place was dark, well, less dark and more dim, with that kind of fake-red emergency lighting that made everything look like a horror movie on mute. The floor was concrete. The walls were concrete. Everything was concrete and it all stank.

Like copper and chemicals and something that hadn't been cleaned in way too long.

"Wow, this place… smells like death," Butch snorted, already making a face as he stared around the place. "Like the lamest version of death. Not even cool villain death. Just... janitor death."

What does that even me- The oldest Rowdyruff shook his head and glanced over at his brother with narrowed eyes. "Stop talking," Brick said, quiet but sharp, stepping in and scanning the hallways with quick flicks of his eyes. "Let's split up. We'll cover this whole place faster."

He hadn't even finished the sentence before Butch blurred past him, gone down a hall like a streak of bad decisions. Boomer was already zooming in blue, shooting out toward a room glowing with screen light.

Their comms sparked to life with Donald's voice, full freak-out mode already online. "No no no! You are to stay together! That is a clear protocol breach! I repeat—"

Brick popped the earpiece out and pocketed it. If he had to hear the word "protocol" one more time, he was going to burn it into the walls just to be spiteful.

He took the center path.

The main hall was wide and quiet and too long. Every door he passed was either open and full of nothing or locked and screaming to be opened. Half the stuff in the rooms looked like it hadn't been touched since whoever ran this place bailed. Broken monitors, stacked-up trays of unused syringes, one desk with what looked like blood still dried under the corner.

He wasn't a scientist. He didn't need to be.

Biggest lab was at the end. Rows of tubes. Not the glass kind with frogs. These were… different. Cylinders full of green liquid, glowing faint, and filled with things. Not just bits. Bodies. Half-built bodies. All of them wrong. Some had extra joints, some had too many eyes, some had no skin. Some were blue, others purpled over like bruises on meat.

"Gross," Brick muttered. Not like scared-gross. Just... why would anyone build this kind of gross.

He leaned in without stepping closer, eyes narrowing. They were shaped like people, but only in the vaguest sense. All muscle and no sense. Like someone remembered what a guy looked like but couldn't draw one without cheating.

A buzz came out from his pocket, Brick groaning as he fished the earpiece back out just in time to catch Donald yelling.

"—completely unacceptable, boys! You cannot just disregard orders! This is an absolute breach! Director, they've gone totally off-script!"

"Let's wait and see," Cecil's voice slid through after, lower, calmer, like he wasn't surprised at all.

Then Boomer chimed in, way too loud. "GUYS! You gotta come see this!"

Brick blinked once. That tone only meant one of two things—something cool, or something disastrously cool.

"Don't touch anything!" Brick barked, already moving, feet a blur against the floor as he zipped through the hallway, sensors and lights reacting too slow to track the motion.

He skidded to a stop outside one of the heavy sealed doors just as it finished hissing open. Boomer stood there with his head tilted, glowing light painting his hair blue, wide-eyed like he'd walked into a candy store that might also be haunted.

"Whoa…" Boomer whispered, staring into the massive chamber beyond.

Tubes. Dozens of them. Taller than the others. Bigger. Inside each one floated a massive body—blue skin, bald heads, cartoon-muscle big and like seven feet tall with every single one of their faces all the same. Empty looking.

But alive.

Brick stepped closer, eyes narrowed. "So these are the Maulers, huh," he said, mostly to himself. Not the real ones, clearly. Just copies, all grown from scratch.

Boomer had drifted to the console by then, eyes wide and hands hovering way too close to the one glowing button that obviously meant don't touch me in every language ever.

"I think this opens 'em," Boomer said, curious like he was picking out candy.

"Boomer. Don't," Brick warned, hand half-raised—

Too late. A green streak smashed through the doorway, Butch skidding to a stop behind them as with his grin halfway carved into his face just as Boomer's finger tapped the control.

Click.

For a beat, the world held its breath.

Then it broke it.

Alarms screamed with a sound like a hundred screams at once as lights as reds as Brick's shirt flared all around. Green liquid rushed out of the tubes so fast it splashed across the floor like a dam gave out. The glass hissed and cracked and slid back into itself.

From the comms: Donald, already full-volume panic mode.

"WHAT DID YOU DO? BOYS?!"

Brick let out a slow, exasperated breath, rubbing at the bridge of his nose like it physically hurt to be right all the time. "You're such an idiot," he muttered, mostly at Boomer but also at the universe. Then again—finally. Something real.

The first one came out heavy, slumped and twitching, green fluid dripping off it like the tank had spat it out halfway finished. The head was too small, neck crooked, chest ballooned out in one spot and sunken in the other. Its arms didn't match—one longer than the other, muscles twitching like they weren't attached right. More started dropping out behind it, wet and slow and wrong. One pulled itself out sideways like it hadn't figured out what legs were. Another had four arms and used all of them wrong.

"Oops," Boomer blurted, edging backward, hands up like the clones could see him and might care. "Didn't mean to—uh—sorry?"

Brick didn't even look at him. "Talk later. Smash now."

Butch cracked every joint in both hands, already bouncing like a kid who saw cake at the wrong part of the party. "Been waitin' all morning for this."

They didn't talk about how they fought. Never needed to. It was just how they were built. They moved.

Butch hit first—because of course he did. His whole body blurred green as he launched himself into the biggest cluster of the freaks, fists swinging fast enough to bend the air around them. Bones snapped. Skin folded. One clone's whole upper torso folded in half like a box getting stomped.

Boomer launched straight up, midair already crackling with blue, and threw out a net of lightning in a wide arc across the far wall. It slammed into the exits and stuck there, a living fence. Any clone that stumbled too close jolted, spasmed, dropped twitching in a smoking heap.

Brick stayed grounded. Heat vision came first—tight, surgical bursts that cut through two coming at him slow. He ducked under another's swipe, spun, and drove his heel into its back so hard it cratered into the floor. His knuckles caught one in the jaw, caved it in. They weren't fast. They weren't smart. Just bodies. Heavy and dumb and gross.

Somewhere in their comms, Donald started panicking like a smoke alarm that couldn't find the fire. "They're destroying scientific assets! Those were specimens!"

"No, Donald," Cecil's voice cut in, low and calm and unmoved, like he was already watching it happen. "They're cleaning up a mistake."

Brick didn't say it, but yeah. Agreed. These weren't anything. Not animals. Not people. Just meat that moved.

They should've been done fast. Would've been, too, if the dead ones had stayed dead.

It started with one puddle. Then two. Then four. The blue-green goop from the downed clones didn't sit still. It slithered. Crawled. Found other puddles and stuck to 'em like they belonged together.

"Uh," Brick said, frowning as the liquid swirled in circles across the floor, "that's not good."

"Hey guys?" Butch called, not grinning anymore. "Think we made it mad."

The puddles formed a body. Then more of one. Bigger, heavier, shifting as it pulled more clone-mess into itself. Heads sprouted from shoulders, arms knotted together, some flailing, others twitching. Legs didn't even form the same way twice. The whole thing rose like a bloated tide, sucking in everything that had been broken and screaming as it grew.

It hit the ceiling like it hated roofs and blew clean through, smashing into the next level up with a bellow that made half the remaining glass shatter. Debris rained down in clumps.

Brick lifted his comm again, jaw clenched. "Yeah, we've got a problem. Thing's mutating. Big."

"Contain it!" Donald's voice cracked like a bad radio. "Do not let it leave the facility!"

Cecil, still ice-calm: "Do whatever it takes."

The Boys didn't wait.

They launched.

Brick went first, a red blur trailing static heat as he fired upward through the rubble tunnel. Boomer and Butch followed half a second behind, walls vibrating from the force of their exit. Every light in the hallway shorted out as they passed.

Above, the thing was bigger now. Bulkier. Still growing. It crashed through a wall and dragged its limbs down a corridor like it hadn't figured out how many legs it needed. Butch shot toward it like a missile.

"This is the coolest freakin' thing I've ever seen!" he yelled, slamming shoulder-first into its middle with a force that made the abomination bend.

He carved through the torso, a streak of green gore behind him. For a second it looked like he might've cut it in half.

Then it swallowed him.

Literally. The flesh closed around his trail mid-flight and snapped shut like he'd never been there.

"IT ATE BUTCH!" Boomer shrieked, panic yanking his voice up an octave. "IT ATE OUR BROTHER!"

Brick didn't flinch, rolling his eyes. "Three. Two. One."

The creature jolted and twitched, spasming as its veins pulsed grotesquely. Then… it eased up, suddenly calm. Brick took this moment to blink. Huh… Before he could finish that thought, the thing ballooned outward with a wet, horrible sound, and Butch exploded out of the center screaming.

"THAT. WAS. AWEEEEEESOME!"

He was dripping in sludge, eyes wide, hair matted in neon gunk, grinning like it was Christmas and someone gave him a nuke.

"Boomer!" Brick barked, already flying high above it. "Go loud."

Boomer nodded, blue light building from the tips of his fingers to his whole body. He hovered midair, electricity lashing around his arms until he glowed like a blue sun on the fritz. Then he threw it. Hard. All of it.

The lightning hit the creature like a wave. It convulsed, screeching, limbs jerking in all directions.

Brick dove. Sliced through the air faster than a breath, heat vision tearing across three of the upper heads before he landed fists-first into its chest. He kept going. Ripping. Punching. Breaking everything that looked like a weak point and half the ones that didn't.

Butch barreled back in, spinning midair before slamming his whole body through whatever counted as its heart, tearing it out like he was pulling a prize from a cereal box, cackling at the top of his lungs like a maniac.

The thing screamed one more time, then collapsed. Nothing fancy, no more fight in it. Just hit the ground and turned into sludge.

They hovered above it in the aftermath, breathing hard and not tired at all, just juiced up on adrenaline as the wreckage below stretched out in every direction. The roof was gone, walls caved in, tech busted, and everything soaked in blue-green slop.

Sunlight poured in like someone forgot it was supposed to be a secret mission.

"...our bad," Boomer said, voice real small for once.

The air above the wreck still shimmered from the heat. Brick could feel it against the back of his neck as he dropped to the gravel, boots skidding a little from the sludge. Blue-green gunk clung to his sleeves like slime from a vending machine capsule. Not the worst thing he'd been covered in.

Rotors thundered overhead, a whole swarm of GDA choppers circling like flies already late to the corpse. Trucks hit the fence line in convoys, doors popping open before tires had fully stopped rolling. Suits and gear. Scramblers, retrieval techs, medbots—everything except someone saying you did good, kid. Because they didn't say that. Not to them.

Brick didn't look at any of them. Didn't need to. He knew who mattered. And sure enough, Cecil stepped out of the lead truck, long coat trailing just enough to remind everyone who paid for the gas.

The boys landed right in front of the crater like they were supposed to. Like they hadn't just turned a science facility into a pit full of broken walls and soup-thick goo. Brick kept his chin level, stance neutral. Trying for not embarrassed, which was harder than it should've been when Butch was still vibrating from head to toe.

"DID YOU SEE ME PUNCH THAT THING'S RIBS OUT?" Butch shouted, pointing back toward the hole like it was a trophy he forgot to bring. "I WAS LIKE BOOM—THWAK—AND THEN BRICK DID THE LASER THING WITH THE THREE HEADS AT THE SAME TIME AND—"

"We contained the threat," Brick interrupted, louder than he meant to be, voice clipped and stiff and nothing like confident.

Cecil didn't nod as the old man turned in a slow circle and took in the damage. The roof was gone, the support beams bent into weird spaghetti shapes and every surface slick with clone juice. The concrete lot looked like a giant stepped on it, then slipped, then decided to nap.

"Sure," Cecil said finally, flat as cardboard. "You neutralized the threat. And the facility. And any evidence we might've extracted from the site."

The silence that followed was long enough to notice how cold the wind had gotten.

Boomer kicked at a piece of rubble with the toe of his boot. His mouth pulled sideways like he wanted to say something and also not exist at the same time. He squinted at the ground.

"Are we like… in trouble?" he asked, voice low and trying to sound casual. It didn't.

Butch huffed. "Nah."

They didn't get yelled at. Not at first. The yelling came later, back at GDA HQ, where they'd been shuffled into a debrief room that looked like someone had taken a classroom, removed all the personality, and replaced the walls with judgment.

Boomer couldn't stop messing with the edge of his shirt, picking off dried bits of whatever monster goop had crusted there. His chair creaked every time he moved. Which was a lot.

Butch slumped like he was trying to merge with the furniture, legs kicked out, flicking something sticky off his fingernail and aiming for the ceiling tiles. Brick kept his arms folded tight, spine straight, not because it was comfy but because he didn't trust anyone else in the room to not mess this up even more.

Cecil stood at the far end of the table, tablet in hand. It reflected flashes of the footage—frames of carnage, flashes of heat signatures, streaks of light moving too fast for the camera to follow. One clip caught Boomer lighting up the creature like a Christmas explosion. Another showed Butch getting swallowed and then exploding back out.

"Let's be very clear," Cecil said, still staring down at the tablet like it personally insulted him. "You ignored protocol. You activated systems that were not yours to touch. You released unstable genetic specimens into an unsecured space. And you destroyed a building that cost more than all of you combined."

The boys exchanged a quick look.

Boomer winced.

Butch snorted.

Brick didn't move.

Cecil swiped to the next clip. "But," he said, and that word carried way too much weight for being three letters long, "you also prevented a developing Class-A threat from breaching containment and reaching a populated area."

They waited.

He didn't elaborate.

Then: "You are—destructive. Loud. Uncontrolled."

Boomer swallowed. Butch grinned.

Cecil looked up, just barely. "But you're effective."

Brick felt the shift. Not in what was said. But how it landed.

"So… we passed?" he asked carefully.

"You finished the job," Cecil replied. "And made cleanup harder."

Butch scratched the back of his neck, brushing dried gunk off his collar. "Well, yeah, but we smashed the right guys. That's the part that counts, right?"

Cecil blinked. Once. Brick watched the muscles around his jaw tighten, the flex that came just before a man changed how he thought about something. It was small. But it was there.

He saw it.

Cecil wasn't looking at kids. Not anymore.

He was looking at tools.

Later, in their quarters, Boomer and Butch wouldn't shut up.

Boomer bounced from one end of the room to the other, still talking about the big zap he threw and how next time he was gonna make a lightning spear or a lightning lasso or maybe a lightning bazooka.

Butch kept shadowboxing at the wall, half narrating his own moves like a wrestling commentator. "THEN I TURNED AROUND AND—WHAAM—RIGHT THROUGH ITS UGLY FACE!"

Brick sat on the edge of his bed, elbows on knees, listening without really listening. His eyes tracked the same spot on the floor they'd scuffed yesterday. He wasn't tired. Just… thinking.

Brick stood, slow and quiet, eyes still on the door. "Next time we do it my way," he said, and the noise dipped just enough for him to cut through it. "No splitting off. No pushing random buttons. No surprises."

Boomer saluted. "Aye aye, Captain Buzzkill."

Butch rolled his eyes. "What's next, curfew?"

Brick didn't look at them. Just walked toward the gear shelf, gloves already halfway on.

"...shut the hell up."