Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The young Hero in the blue and silver costume approached the intersection and halted, waiting for the walk sign and turning his head about, looking down both cross streets for anything that jumped out at him. He held his right hand to his ear and spoke.

“Hey, Dispatch,” the young man said, trying his best to sound as if he knew what he was doing. “You wouldn’t happen to have any new messages from Jeremiah for me, would you?” 

He was still trying to get a handle on how to speak to Dispatch. They had covered the basics in their HCP training, of course, but that didn’t make him feel any less awkward standing on the side of the road with his hand pressed to his face, talking to thin air. The hand gesture wasn’t strictly necessary, but it was a courtesy in the field, and he wanted to build the habit early.

“Good morning, Jack-of-All,” Dispatch’s lightly accented voice said in his earpiece. “You have no new messages to report, and one undeleted message from Jeremiah earlier this morning. Would you like me to play it again for you?”

The traffic light turned from yellow to red as Jack-of-All gave his response.

“Sure. I guess it can’t really hurt, at this point. Thanks, Dispatch.” Should he call her Dispatch even when responding? Was that her name, or was that like calling her by her job title? He thought to himself. Was she even a she? Or was she an A.I.?  Her voice was definitively female, and she sounded human, but after hearing about the realism of Alice’s Subtlety training in the BLONC, he wouldn’t put it past the tech Supers to have created a technology convincing enough to fool him.

His thoughts were interrupted by the sound of Jeremiah’s voice in his ear, repeating the same message that Vince had already listened to several times since that morning.

Sure enough, it was exactly as he recalled.

“In case you’ve missed the obvious at this point, it’s moving time. This time, however, you’ll be finding the base’s new location on your own—let’s see what you’ve got, Jack-of-All.” 

Vince could practically hear Jeremiah’s smarmy grin through his earpiece.

“Now, I don’t want you wandering around town like an idiot—” 

He nervously pulled at his collar, all too aware that that was exactly what he was currently doing.

“—as fun as that would be for me, I’m afraid it would be frowned upon. So lucky for you, you get one hint.”

The walk sign flashed, and the young Hero dashed across the street, doubling back to assist an elderly woman who was struggling to traverse the cracked asphalt with her cane. He barely made it back to the far side of the road before the walk sign changed back to a stubborn red hand. He probably would have been fine even if he had been struck by a car, provided he absorbed its kinetic energy, but it wasn’t in his nature to needlessly break the law—even one as inconsequential as jaywalking. The last thing he needed was for some kid to see Jack-of-All crossing against the light and thinking it was okay.

Jeremiah’s voice continued in his ear:

“The location is simple. You can find me where it’s smokey, rich, and rare.”

When Jeremiah had first told him that Modus Operandi didn’t have one set base, but instead moved locations every so often, he’d assumed he’d be given some sort of heads up for when and where the base would move. Instead, he’d awoken this morning to an unoccupied base and a cryptic message on his communicator. 

He’d graduated only about a month prior, and after a week of paperwork, DVA clearances, and costume fittings, Jack-of-All had officially been an intern for nearly three weeks now. In that time, Modus Operandi had moved their base only once before, Vince simply accompanying Jeremiah to the new location. This made it all the more unexpected when he was left high and dry that morning. Evidently, Jeremiah had decided it was time to throw him into the deep end and have him figure things out for himself.

He wasn’t even sure if it was accurate to say it was Modus Operandi that was moving, seeing as the only member of the team Vince had yet to meet was Jeremiah. He wouldn’t have been all that surprised to find out that they didn’t actually exist, and that Jeremiah had just created the ruse in order to requisition more resources from the DVA and create an air of mystery. From Vince’s experience with Subtlety specialists, this didn’t seem like an impossibility. He just had to trust that Jeremiah knew what he was doing and had everyone’s best interest in mind.

The late-morning sun shone directly in Vince’s eyes, which were crinkled with concern and barely visible behind his silver mask. He had to find the base, and soon. Interns weren’t supposed to be patrolling the streets without their mentors—they weren’t meant to do much of anything hero-related without their mentors, really. It opened the door to liabilities and mistakes. Although he wasn’t currently registered with Dispatch as active, the longer Jack-of-All spent wandering alone around Brewster, the likelier it became that he would get tangled up in some undesirable situation—he had a knack for getting into trouble he didn’t cause.

Smokey, rich, and rare? 

This “hint” meant nothing to him. He had already checked the wealthier neighborhoods of Brewster, focusing on the “rich” aspect of the clue. It seemed the most straightforward, but had turned up nothing. He couldn’t even begin to make sense of what “smokey” or “rare” were supposed to mean. Brewster was a good-sized city, and there wasn’t much about it that could be considered “rare.” And unless something was on fire, there was no reason to call it “smokey,” either. 

After several false starts and one unfortunate incident involving a surreptitiously-placed recycling bin, Vince was running out of ideas of where Jeremiah could be holed up. Once it became obvious that he had no idea where to even start, rather than darting around Brewster at random, Vince had opted for a more sweeping approach in order to avoid having to double back. He was systematically making his way downtown, walking fast—faces passed, and he’s homebound. Unfortunately for him, he had no idea where “home” was.

He needed a new strategy—at this rate, it would take him several days to find the base. Jeremiah had taken a risk accepting a cross-disciplinary Intern at all, much less one of his background. He couldn’t afford to let him down.

Vince took a moment to take a breath and clear his mind. He had overcome dang near every obstacle to get here, and he wasn’t about to let getting lost be the reason he failed in his duty as a Hero, even if it seemed like every idea he had turned out to be a bust. 

If he’d learned one thing during his time at Lander, it was that he wasn’t in this alone. He had people in his life he could lean on for support. Well, he did need help—and he had friends right here in the city…  

If he couldn’t find a solution himself, he’d just have to find somebody who could. Time to make some calls.

“Dispatch, put me through to Legacy.”

Chapter Text

“Legacy is currently unavailable,” Dispatch said in Vince’s ear, “Elemental Fury has been dispatched to take care of a threat on the eastern edge of the city. Do you wish to leave her a message?”

Well, drat.

“No, that’s fine,” Jack-of-All responded, “Thanks, Dispatch.”

If Elemental Fury was occupied, it not only meant Alice was unavailable to assist Vince with his navigational issues, but that Will would be too. He figured that when trying to decipher the musings of a Subtlety Hero, it would be best to ask someone with a subtlety background. He briefly considered calling Nick but quickly threw that idea out the window.

Nick wasn’t a Hero, and without knowing more about the nature of Jeremiah’s message, he couldn’t be sure it didn’t somehow contain any information that Nick wasn’t supposed to know—like the specific location of a Subtlety team’s secret base. Okay then, back to square one . 

He considered his options. His current method of wandering the city obviously wasn’t working, and his two best chances at making sense of the message were unavailable to him. Looking around at his surroundings, he noticed that the stretch of buildings before him looked vaguely familiar. He rounded a corner, an eye out for any telltale landmarks. The more Vince looked around, the surer he was—he was just a few blocks down from the Gentle Hammer’s base.

Well, it wouldn’t have been his first choice to help decode a message, but Vince was out of options. Maybe Titan could be of help—he probably knew Jeremiah better than just about anyone, and he had been in the city longer than any of Vince’s former classmates. He might even know where the base was without the clue. Then again, Titan might report it back to Jeremiah… 

Ultimately, Vince decided to take that risk. I wasn’t like he had much of a choice at the moment.

* * *

Five minutes and several city blocks later, Jack-of-All rapped his knuckles on the front door of the Gentle Hammers’ base. Several moments passed with no indication that anyone was home. He would have called ahead, but he didn’t really think it would help much. Either Titan was available or he wasn’t—calling ahead wouldn’t change that, given how close he had been when the desire for help had struck him.

Vince had just raised his knuckles to knock once more when the door swung open, causing his fist to sail uninhibited through the now-open doorway and into a brick wall of a torso.

“Woah!” he said frantically, quickly snatching his hand back to his side. “Sorry about that!” 

Before him stood a familiar face behind a less familiar red and black mask. “Hey, R- Ettin,” Vince hastily corrected. It was common courtesy to call a Hero by their codename when in costume, even if both knew each other’s civilian names.

“No problem, V- Jack of All,” Ettin said, an amused smile curling at the corner of his lips. “I don’t think your over-enthusiastic knocking will be what finally brings me down.”

The two young men stared at each other silently for a few moments, each waiting for the other to speak.

“Not that I don’t like seein' you,” Roy started, his accent as thick as ever, “but what the hell are you doin’ here?”

He looked over Vince’s shoulder and poked his head out the door, peering both ways down the block. “And where’s Jeremiah?”

“Oh! Right,” Vince replied. “That’s actually why I’m here. Please tell me Titan is around.”

“No can do, Silver,” Roy said, pulling his head back and gently leaning against the side of the extra-tall door frame. “He’s out with his former PEERS team—he doesn’t work as their Hero Liaison anymore, but he still tries to help out when he can.”

“You didn’t want to go with him?”

“Someone had to stay here and man the base. We’re not marked as active right now, but the Gentle Hammers have been tapped as backup, in case things with Elemental Fury get a little too interestin’.” An eager gleam glimmered in Roy’s eyes at the word interesting. Something told Vince that that was exactly what Roy was hoping for. “Dispatch can get a hold of everyone individually, but it helps to have someone where we’re expected to be.

“Plus, I’ve met his former team before—they’re too goody-goody for my tastes. When Hexcellent was around, things were a little more exciting, but now that she’s left, their operation is a little too by-the-books to be much fun. Besides, with Titan there, I doubt they’d have much need for a second strongman, given what they do.”

“I guess that makes sense,” Vince responded somewhat absentmindedly. If Titan was unavailable, that left him with exactly zero leads for who to turn to for help deciphering Jeremiah’s message. It would be awfully disappointing, not to mention embarrassing, to completely fail his first test as Jeremiah’s intern. 

“So why exactly do you need to see Titan anyway?” 

Roy ushered him in, so he wouldn’t be standing out in the open while he explained. The world didn’t need to know the details of why Jack-of-All had ended up at the Gentle Hammers’ base sans mentor. While modest compared to the facilities of legacy teams like Elemental Fury, the building still provided the basic protection of four walls and a roof to keep away prying eyes.

Vince told his fellow former-Powered about his predicament; how he had awoken that morning to nothing but a short and cryptic message that he was expected to decode in order to find his new base.

“I see,” the taller boy said. “And you think Titan can help you figure out Jeremiah’s message.”

“That’s the hope.”

“Well I have some bad news for you, then. Titan has enough trouble figuring out what Jeremiah means even when he’s not going out of his way to speak in code. I seriously doubt he’d be able to help you, even if he was here.”

“Darn. I knew it was a longshot, but I was still hoping it’d pan out. Maybe I should have brought Nick along for some luck.”

“Something tells me that if you had Nick around, you wouldn’t have had to come here in the first place.” Roy paused for a moment, absently cracking his knuckles. “Why don’t you just hit up Legacy? Seems like the kind of thing she’d be able to help with.”

“Already tried. She’s with the rest of Elemental Fury on their mission.”

“Right, of course,” Roy said, taking a moment to think through his next words before speaking them aloud. “Here’s an idea—why don’t you tell me exactly what it was that Jeremiah said.”

“You think you can decode it? No offense, Ettin, but you’re like me. Subtlety isn’t really our strong suit.”

“You’re right, it’s not. I probably wouldn’t be able to make heads or tails of it. Hershel, on the other hand, might be able to help. The nerd’s spent entirely too much time researching the city before we accepted our internship here. If anyone’s got the brains to decode a message from Jeremiah and the knowledge to make sense of it, it’s my brother.”

“Yeah, okay,” Vince said. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t thought of that himself. Even after the events of their senior year, he still sometimes forgot how involved the smaller Daniels brother was in the hero side of their shared existence. “His exact words were...”

* * *

The door slammed open, a little more force in the motion than was strictly necessary, and a hurried Jack-of-All poured through. Visible even through his mask was the sudden joy and relief at finally finding the base. There was always the chance that he was wrong; one could never be absolutely sure with Jeremiah, but the biometric security protocols he had had to endure to get in had been a pretty big tip off that he was where he was supposed to be.

“Oh thank goodness,” Vince breathed in relief, pulling off his mask and cowl.

He had been half-surprised when he first noticed the finger scanner, seeing as it was in a rickety loft above a small shop selling an assortment of whiskey and smoked meats. 

In the end, Roy hadn’t even needed Hershel’s help. The second Vince had told him the clue, the whiskey-loving Hero had let loose a whooping bark of laughter and known exactly where to go. As it turned out, Rich and Rare was a brand of whiskey, and being the aficionado he was, Roy had taken the time to familiarize himself with all the best places to buy the stuff in Brewster. Once Roy had realized that Jeremiah’s hint was referring to the good stuff, it was a short hop to connect “smokey”  with the smoked meats.

Vince looked around the surprisingly spacious room, searching for any sign of Jeremiah. “Hello?” he called out, letting his voice carry to any adjoining rooms that might be tucked away out of sight.

No response.

The space was relatively barren, a screen against one wall and several mismatched chairs scattered throughout the room. Nothing really jumped out at him as belonging to Jeremiah, but nothing stood out as belonging to a random civilian either. The walls were completely devoid of any decoration or personal mementos. In fact, the only indication at all that anyone had been there recently was a not-so-surreptitiously placed duffle bag perched atop one of the chairs, framed perfectly in the direct line-of-sight from the doorway. 

The bag was plain black, but Vince would bet dollars to donuts that that was his bag—the one that he had lying at the foot of his bed last night—and that Jeremiah had taken it from their previous base that morning.

Despite dramatically increasing his number of belongings during his days at Lander, Vince had rapidly reverted back to his old habit of traveling light, at least for the time being. Since he was going to be constantly moving around with Jeremiah for the next couple of years anyway, it made the most sense for him. He found it strangely comforting, living such a mobile lifestyle again.

So this was obviously where he was supposed to be. So where was Jeremiah?

Vince was just getting ready to try contacting him through Dispatch again when he heard the door open behind him and a hearty voice ring out. 

“Well, well. Looks like somebody finally figured it out.”

Chapter Text

“Well, well. Looks like somebody finally figured it out.”

Vince whirled around to face the voice, unsure whether to feel relief or annoyance at the sight of his Mentor. Jeremiah, for his part, appeared unaffected by Vince’s arrival.

“I don’t know that I’d go that far,” Vince admitted, cheeks burning and hand reaching up to rub the back of his neck. “I didn’t really figure anything out myself.”

“Oh, I’m aware that you enlisted the help of Ettin,” Jeremiah said, walking over to Vince and placing a hand on his shoulder. “Nice going, by the way. I thought for sure you’d waste at least another couple of hours, honor-bound to wander around Brewster on your own.”

“Thanks?” Vince said. “Wait, how did you know I asked Ettin?” 

“You’re not all that difficult to predict, my boy. Plus,” Jeremiah paused, moving his hand from Vince’s shoulder and plucking something from the underside of Vince’s collar, “this helped.”

“You bugged me?”

“Of course I bugged you,” Jeremiah responded, twirling the listening device between his fingers. “I wasn’t going to send my intern on a wild goose chase with no way of keeping tabs on the situation.” He flicked the bug again, tucking it away into one of his plethora of pockets. “That would be irresponsible of me.”

Jeremiah’s hands kept moving after tucking away the listening device, emptying several of his other pockets. He plucked what looked like a small glass vial from one pocket, sliding it into a handheld device that Vince’s didn’t recognize. His other hand continued to move, pulling off his mask, unloading gadgets from various pockets, and unbuckling the utility belt from around his waist. 

“Wait a minute—did you just get back from a call?” Vince asked.

“Wow, nothing gets past you, kid,” Jeremiah replied. “Yes, we were checking out some suspicious activity from the Super trafficking ring we’ve been tracking.  

It didn’t escape Vince’s notice that Jeremiah had said “we.” Maybe he’d finally get the chance to meet the rest of the Modus Operandi. 

“Everyone else is still there, actually. I came back when I got wind that you’d finally found the base,” Jeremiah continued.

Or not. 

“Wait, you went on a mission without me?” Vince asked, trying not to let his disappointment show in his voice. “Aren’t I supposed to come with you to these things? You know, gain some real world experience?”

“Oh, but you were gaining real world experience.”

“I’m solving riddles.”

“As I said, gaining real world experience.”

“I’m confused,” Vince groaned. “How is solving riddles gaining experience?” It seemed more like the kind of thing Nick and Alice used to do in their Subtlety classes at Lander. 

“Use that head of yours, kid. I know you’ve got it in you,” Jeremiah lectured.

So Vince thought, really thought, not just about the riddle itself, but—for the first time since he had woken up to nothing but a voicemail and a fresh costume—about why . Obviously it was Jeremiah’s way of getting Vince to use his head, but to what end? It was apparently important enough that Jeremiah had him missing actual field work for it. What was understanding wordplay supposed to teach him about being a Hero?

“You wanted me to learn to think less straightforwardly?” Vince ventured. “Think outside-the-box?” It was what Nick had spent the larger part of Vince’s HCP years telling him, so it seemed like a fair guess.

Jeremiah tutted in response, a brief expression conveying amusement, more than annoyance. “I mean, yes—that would be great,” Jeremiah conceded, “but I highly doubt a single surprise brain-teaser has the power to override a couple decades of linear thinking. I mean, I’m good, but not that good.”

“So what was the point, then, if it’s not to help me become a better Hero?” Vince asked.

“Well hold up right there—I said no single riddle would solve your predictability problem. If you think that’s the last where that came from, then you’re in for one hell of an internship,” Jeremiah defended. “The point , young grasshopper, is self-reflection.”

“Self-reflection?” Vince repeated warily. He wasn’t sure where Jeremiah was going with this, nor what it had to do with grasshoppers, but he trusted Jeremiah had his reasons. “But I’m not even the one who solved it.”

“Weren’t you though?” Jeremiah posited, making all but zero sense. “Sure, Ettin figured out the location, but the riddle wasn’t meant to test your mastery of whiskey trivia—”

“—it was meant to make me think,” Vince finished, finally catching on to Jeremiah’s drift.

“Riddles make you think outside the box, yes,” Jeremiah said, borrowing Vince’s own phrasing. “The immediate answer is never the right one—the base’s location had nothing to do with smoke, wealth, or rarity.” 

Vince settled in, pulling his black bag from the chair and taking a seat. He knew from two years of cohabitation and four years of friendship with Nick that when schemers started monologuing on their schemes, that it was best to get comfortable. They might be here a while.

“It’s retraining your brain to think differently; to problem solve differently. To bypass the obvious solution in order to find the correct one,” Jeremiah sermonized. “This is exactly what you signed on for when you asked me to be your Mentor.”

Vince seemed to recall Jeremiah being the one to extend him an internship offer, but he kept as much to himself. Now wasn’t the time to ego-check his sole arbiter to the Hero world, especially when he had a point.

Vince had become so preoccupied in the process of locating the base that he had forgotten why it was he had taken the internship with Jeremiah in the first place—to train to think smarter, not harder. The point of the riddle wasn’t to navigate, but to learn. Finding the base was only the means, not the end. Vince had thought that sort of mind training would come with a little more field experience, but who was he to doubt the ways of an esteemed Subtlety Hero like Jeremiah?

“So you knew I wouldn’t figure it out myself?” Vince asked.

“Of course I did,” Jeremiah responded. “Asking for help is a perfectly legitimate way to get answers when you’re not equipped to handle a situation on your own. You kept your goal in mind and found a way to accomplish it. That was the real objective,” he said. “Problem-solving can take many forms—there’s no such thing as cheating when finding solutions. The next time you go about trying to—” 

“ Jeremiah, please come in,” Dispatch’s accented voice rang out in Vince’s ear. He was usually patched into most of Jeremiah’s official communications from Dispatch when he was on duty. As an intern was meant to serve as a Hero, but couldn’t yet receive his own assignments, so he had to share in Jeremiah’s. 

“Here, Dispatch,” Jeremiah responded, dropping whatever it was he had been gearing up to say to Vince, “as is Jack-of-All. What’s the situation?”

“There are reports of suspicious activity in an abandoned warehouse in the industrial district,” Dispatch reported. “Modus Operandi’s facial-tracking software suggests involvement from a Super you flagged for a potential connection to trafficking.”

“That explains the earlier mission,” Jeremiah mumbled under his breath. “I knew our guy was up to something. He’s not there every time, but something felt… off,” he continued. “Need me to check it out?” Jeremiah asked. 

“That would be advisable, yes,” Dispatch confirmed. “Little is known about the threat. We need you to find out what is going on so we can decide how best to proceed. And Jeremiah?” 

“Yes, Dispatch?”

“The rest of Modus Operandi is still tracking the earlier threat across town. You and Jack-of-All will be on your own for this, unless and until you call for backup.”

“Got it.” Jeremiah pulled a device from yet another pocket, checking Modus Operandi’s network for the location. “Be there in ten.”

Chapter Text

The two men pulled up to the scene in a nondescript silver sedan, Jeremiah behind the wheel and Vince ram-rod straight in the passenger seat. The young Hero swiveled his head from side to side, on high alert for danger to pop out from any direction.

“Chill out, Jack,” Jeremiah piped up from beside him. Easier said than done. Vince had assisted Jeremiah in a number of calls since becoming his intern, but this was his first subtlety mission, and he didn’t want to be the reason things went sideways. 

He kept a keen eye on his surroundings as Jeremiah parked the car, parallel parking with a skill level Vince knew he was unlikely to ever achieve. The industrial district of Brewster had been largely neglected for decades, and only in the last year or so had started to see some livelihood breathed into the area as the city started to gain notoriety. As a result, the street was mostly empty, lined only with a ramshackled warehouse beside a small park overrun with weeds. Across the street was only a small coffee shop, with quaint, if shabby, decor. A brunette woman sat at a table outside, sipping her coffee and scrolling through her phone, the cafe’s lone late-afternoon patron. A young man walked a large dog down the block, headphones covering his ears and head bopping to an unheard beat. Neither paid the silver sedan’s arrival any attention.

“Okay, so here’s the deal,” Jeremiah began, startling Vince out of his fixation on his surroundings. “The team’s been monitoring our suspect, Edmund Roposia, for some time now—we suspect him to be the trafficking ring’s leader. We’re not sure what his power is, but we have reason to believe he’s a Super—probably one with a physical-based ability, given the fear his brutish subordinates show when dealing with him. Maybe a strong man or super-speeder.” Jeremiah engaged the parking brake and flexed his knuckles, shaking out his hands in preparation for the mission. “It’s my job to determine what Edmund’s up to, and potentially put a stop to it.”

“So what’s the plan?” Vince asked. As the close combat specialist between the two, Vince knew any hand-to-hand combat would most likely fall to him. Jeremiah had enhanced endurance, but a formidable defense alone wouldn’t bring down a physical Super hell-bent on beating the crap out of them. Jack-of-All’s versatile offense was a safer bet to neutralize their target. “You distract him while I take him down?”

“First of all,” Jeremiah inserted, raising a finger to correct his intern. “There will be no ‘taking him down,’ as you so artfully put it. This might be a false alarm, and if shit’s not actively going down, the team thinks it would be better to pull back until we have a better picture of what he’s after. This is first and foremost a recon mission.”

Vince bit his lips, uncomfortable with the idea of letting a dangerous criminal go free just for information. As much as he disliked it, he held his tongue—Jeremiah was an experienced Subtlety Hero, and if he said it was for the best, then Vince wasn’t going to protest.

“Secondly,” his mentor resumed, “obviously you’d be the distraction in that scenario. You bring the flash, kid.” Jeremiah threw a teasing wink in Vince’s direction before continuing. “And that’s exactly why I need you to wait here.”

“Wait, what?” He whipped his head back in Jeremiah’s direction, unsure he had heard him correctly. This was a more textbook subtlety mission than the other calls he had responded to with Jeremiah thus far in his internship, sure, but it still felt like he was being sidelined. 

In a way, Vince understood why. An entire Super-trafficking operation hung in the balance—it was a big threat to thrust on a new Intern without any subtlety training. Jeremiah had skills that lugging him around would compromise. Still, having him sit it out felt like overkill. “You want me to wait in the car ?”

“Sure. Make sure we don’t get towed,” Jeremiah said, tossing the keys to Vince. “I didn’t bring any change to feed the meter.”

“Why did you even bring me along if you were going to have me stay here?”

“Opportunity is everywhere,” Jeremiah reasoned. “Besides, we’re both still active for Hero duty. As my intern, you go where I go. This way if we get called somewhere else, I don’t have to double back for you.”

Jeremiah pushed the car door open and climbed out, spinning around to impart some final words of wisdom upon his intern before leaving. “Stay sharp, Jack. Just because you’re out here doesn’t mean there isn’t anything to learn.” He tapped his right ear. “I’ll be on comm if you need me.”

He pushed the door closed, and Vince was surprised at how quiet the sound was. The car looked like a typical sedan, but the unnaturally muted door reminded Vince that this car was a product of tech geniuses. It made Vince wonder what other surprises the car might be concealing.

Vince was fiddling with his seat back, trying to see any unexpected tech lay there too, when Jeremiah’s voice rang in his ear.

“I’m entering through the building’s east door now.” Vince sprang to attention like a kid caught with a hand in the cookie jar, dropping the seat lever and looking out the car window just in time to see Jeremiah’s pocketed form disappearing through an unmarked doorway.

“Stay sharp,” he whispered to himself. He swept his eyes over his surroundings, café-lady still scrolling on her phone and the dog walker long-since disappeared around a corner. The warehouse itself looked no different than it had before. 

It looked.. well, abandoned. The roof sagged, half of its windows were boarded or broken, dingy leaves even overflowed from its gutters from an autumn long-since passed. If Vince didn’t know any better, he would have never thought anyone was inside.

Despite the warehouse’s decrepit state, the sheer size of the place was impressive. Whatever it used to house, it sure housed a lot. Vince didn’t see how Jeremiah could possibly search the entire place alone in a timely manner. 

Vince wasn’t entirely sure whether Jeremiah had been kidding about making sure the car didn’t get towed, but he mentally went over the steps of how he would move the car anyway, just in case the police showed up and started checking parking meters. While he technically had his driver’s license—he had been taught to drive during his time recovering from the procedure that turned him into a Super—he hadn’t actually used the skill since then. 

Can the police ask for a Hero’s driver’s license? Jack-of-All thought. It has my real name on it. Surely they couldn't…

He was still pondering the logistics of Hero-related traffic citations when a flicker of movement from the warehouse caught his eye. A side door had been flung open, and a shadowy figure skulked out from the far side of the warehouse. Jack-of-All sat unmoving for a couple of seconds, taking stock of the situation.

Considering he had no reason to believe anybody else had been in the warehouse besides their suspect and Jeremiah, this was either Edmund, or a complete unknown. The figure, possibly Edmund, emerged from the west side of the building, much too far from where Jeremiah had entered to possibly have made contact so soon.

“Jeremiah?” Jack-of-All whispered into his communicator. No response.

He kept his voice down as he spoke, lest he grow too loud and draw the attention of the skulker.  “I don’t know if you can hear me,” Jack-of-All tried again, “but I think Edmund might have just left the building.” … Nothing. Something must have gone awry with the connection. Jeremiah wouldn’t ignore him. Not if he was physically able to respond, at least.

Jack-of-All couldn’t shake the feeling that something was wrong. Edmund was working his way through the overgrown park now, maybe a hundred feet from the building. If he waited much longer Jack-of-All might lose track of him in the trees. 

He should stay put. Jeremiah had told him to stay where he was for a reason—his Mentor always had a plan and was more than capable of handling a developing situation on his own. As a momentarily unsupervised Intern with approximately three weeks of experience, Jack-of-All would probably end up doing more harm than good if he intervened…

Vince pushed open the door.