Chapter Text
The hero sat heaving in the chair, hands tied around the back of the chair. His body was littered with bruises and cuts, clearly having taken a serious beating. The camera was in front of him, actively live streaming to all news stations as one of the city’s biggest villains walked around him gloating.
“Look at your precious hero! So weak, so pitiful. This is who you rely on? You don’t even know who it is! Yet you put all your trust in this guy,” the villain growled at the camera. He placed his hand on Siren’s mask. “Why don’t we see who your hero is?” The villain said as he ripped off the mask, revealing Siren’s identity to the world.
This was all really confusing for Siren though, considering he was on his couch at home watching the news as a stranger was unmasked. He’d never seen the dude before, and it was definitely not him.
“Techno,” he called. “Get over here.”
“That sounds like your work voice and we’re on vacation. I’m staying right here,” Techno responded from the other room.
“Get in here! This is important.” There was grumbling and Techno got himself up and shuffled into the room with a scowl, freezing as he saw the TV.
“I think that’s identity theft,” Techno deadpanned. Wilbur rolled his eyes.
“We need to find him, somebody decided to protect me, who knows why, but they did, we might as well return the favor,” Wilbur said, getting up and hurriedly going to get his outfit to find this person. He paused, his hand hovering over his usual costume. It would look really weird if he showed up as himself when he is supposedly the one that is captured. He grabbed his old outfit, the one he was given as a temporary thing before his custom getup was designed and ready. He got to choose it out from what they had, but it still wasn’t great. It would work just fine for this though. It had a different color scheme, with green and white instead of his normal blue and gold. Wilbur quickly threw on the outfit and walked out to see Techno already ready in his and his powers activated in preparation.
Siren began tapping away at his watch, trying to pinpoint the imposter’s location. Within a few minutes, he had it. One of the tech guys back at HQ already had the location after seeing the TV so that he could be rescued, so he was a little surprised to see a message from Siren himself asking for the location of what the guy assumed was Siren. Either way, he gave the location. This was going to be fun to explain to the other heroes. What was he supposed to do about the mask though? This poor dude is going to be targeted on behalf of Siren all because he took the fall for him. He’ll have to protect the guy, his life just got very complicated.
Soon they were at the place. It was a warehouse outside of town, which wasn’t surprising considering villains don’t have easy access to many locations. He assumed the inside was more than it appeared, surely they wouldn’t capture ‘him’ if it was easy to escape, but who knows. Well, they were about to know anyway.
He tested a back door just in case this could be easy, but to no avail. He sighed, lifting a foot up as Protesilaus folded his hands and formed a step for Siren. Protesilaus promptly launched him into the air. Once he reached the peak height, a decent way above the building, he unlatched his glider, which was just flaps that extended out from his sides and attached at his wrist to his ankle on each side, which had been added after the first time they did this and realized too late that he didn’t a way to land. Fun way to break a leg. Now, this time, they realized too late that he was in the wrong outfit and didn’t have a glider. Luckily Protesilaus was much better at launching him, so he wasn’t too high. He aimed for a tree, grabbing a branch as he fell and using the force to swing himself onto the roof. Siren took a second to think about how utterly epic he is before looking for a trapdoor or a vent to get in through. The trapdoor was locked though, so he waited for Protesilaus to get up. Protesilaus simply stomped the door, denting it inward enough that the lock busted. These guys really needed to get better locks, seriously. Good for the heroes though.
They pulled the trapdoor out and hopped quietly down into what appeared to be a storage room. It was deserted, so they just continued on as silently as possible. That wasn’t very easy for Protesilaus though, since activating his powers gave him immense size and strength, which didn’t exactly help with sneaking.
Siren peaked around every corner before having Protesilaus follow. After they got out of the storage room, they began to hear voices. No words could be made out, but it was definitely the villains. With the element of surprise, they managed to drop from the ceiling right behind the fake and Siren's eyes immediately went to slits and his eye whites turned black, his ears fans flared out and a humming sound vibrated through the air, not coming from his mouth, but deep in his chest. Protesilaus snapped the ropes and grabbed the person, leaping towards the door behind the villains. Once he was clear of the room for a moment, Siren released the villains and bolted after Protesilaus.
Protesilaus was running straight towards the woods when Siren got out of the warehouse. He groaned and ran after him. After some time of running, Siren was about to collapse, and Protesilaus finally stopped. They hadn’t heard voices for some time. Protesilaus at least thought far enough ahead to run towards their house, just around the city through the woods. They were still far from the house, but closer than if they ran any other direction, and they were easier to pick up if they called someone to get them. Either way, they were now out in the woods with some dude that pretended to be Siren and get beat up. Why would someone purposely do that? And a random person at that.
Siren and Protesilaus sat down on the leaf debris, breathing heavily. The person had been nearly passed out for a while, but when they set him on the ground, he was fully out after a moment, when his body gave up on staying awake for danger. When he did though, he began.. changing. Siren and Protesilaus jumped slightly in shock as ‘siren’ appeared to melt off the person and a young boy was left in his place. They still had no clue who it was.
“What..?” Siren said, leaning closer and poking the kid a few times to make sure he was real. Protesilaus looked at him mockingly, though he had himself positioned to shield him and Siren if the guy suddenly attacked them.
“I wonder how he got them to think it was you,” Protesilaus said sarcastically.
“Who is this though? Why did he pretend to be me?” Siren questioned, completely bewildered.
“Well how would I know? Wait ‘til he wakes up,” Protesilaus said, earning a glare from Siren.
“Just call a ride,” Siren said, pulling off his mask since the kid was asleep anyway.
“Bruuuhhhhh,” Protesilaus groaned in despair as he pulled off his mask as well.
After waiting a good 20 minutes sitting on a bench on the edge of town with an unconscious child, a car pulled up near them and a moment later, Techno’s phone let out a ding with a text notification.
“Techno.” Techno turned to look at Wilbur. “Did you seriously call us an Uber ?!”
“Uuuhhhh… Yeah..?” Techno said slowly. Wilbur sighed. “Techno, we’re literally heroes, and have a random child with us, and you called an Uber to take us home?”
“Well when you put it that way it sounds bad.”
“Because it is!”
“Well they’re already here so just get in, it’ll be fiiiine,” Techno said, getting up and scooping up the teen, throwing him over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes. Wilbur sighed and dragged his feet to the car, hopping in the back beside Techno with the teen between them.