Chapter Text
The vigilante is around here. Somewhere.
They weren’t before. Now they are. He knows, because he could feel them arrive on the scene: a very different sound to the rest of the too-curious civilians that are doing everything in their power to not listen to them. Somewhere, because the vigilante has yet to show their face. However, a wannabe vigilante might just be the least of their problems at the moment.
The most of their problems make themselves known with a low, earthy rumble.
The inhuman at the epicenter is unstable. Evidently.
It’s understating it, he thinks, and the rest of the agents on the scene would probably agree. The last time they’d gotten just a little too close, they were met with a tremor deliberately much stronger than the ones that came before it. It shook all of them off their footing, the strongest of them tumbling down the same as the weakest.
At the very most, it only served to be annoying, and at the very least, it put in frustrating perspective how far the gap was between the most experienced agents versus one, civilian inhuman.
They don’t gamble another excursion that close again, because it’d be unwise to risk allowing the inhuman get any funny ideas about their own newfound strength.
Worse case scenario, someone with less than pure intentions has gone through terrigenesis, and realizes the heroes aren’t coming in time.
Field tech agents scatter around the most precarious structures, marking the ones closest to possible collapse. The rest of them pointedly steer clear of the marked sites that make themselves known with a steady beeping that grows more prominent the closer they happen to be. It’s just another thing to look out for added to the growing amount of priorities on their plate. The inhuman being the epicenter of both the earthquake and all their subsequent problems.
Said inhuman had been hiding, understandably. Figures that they’d realize IUVO would come for them eventually. The inhumans little faux earthquake might’ve slid past the radar of your average civilian, but never one of them. When no alert showed up on their devices, not a few minutes after, not hours after, even the least experienced agent in the building was jumping up at the realization.
It was a no-brainer for the people who had already begun to accept “supernatural” as the misnomer it was.
And, unfortunately, it was only to be expected. Especially with that breach in security the other day.
But ultimately, the inhuman was unremarkably easy to track down. During that small grace period where they weren’t trying to level the city, small micro-tremors imperceptible to any human would slough off their inhuman in waves, an invisible homing signal. He suspected it was an unconscious thing, because it ended up leading IUVO right to them. A tragic oversight, leaving your own breadcrumb trail behind you.
He himself hadn’t gotten a good look at the inhuman-of-the-hour just yet, but he’d managed a glimpse.
They were unassuming, someone you might see passing you in the street; but with his own brief glimpse, backed up by his coworkers who’d gotten arguably better looks, their appearance had been made unique by the fact that they were apparently a mess.
He can’t say he’s surprised. Emerging from the shell alive is a range, and the range is uneventful, to unnecessarily destructive. In most cases it’s around the middle to uneventful. In this case, it’s groundbreaking, if you will.
He has the discipline to not laugh at his own joke.
Would be bad timing, too.
A screaming little girl is being dragged, really putting up a fight, out of the danger zone. (Realistically, everywhere in like a two mile radius was a danger zone, but this particular zone was imminent danger danger.) She was yelling something fierce about a “Mr. Sparkles” she’d had to leave behind. Unfortunate.
A low rumbling manages to quiet the girl, and it’s turning his attention back to the matter at hand. Easy wasn’t in the job description, because if it was, that would be called deceit—but on the same hand, it was also usually never this problematic, so to speak.
The situation was loud, it was disruptive, and in all honesty it really could use one of their inhuman agents; a hero—But there’s no one close enough right now, and definitely no one close enough with the experience to not majorly screw up the entire operation. He doesn’t count himself at the moment—not with his current handicap.
Another tremble has the cops they’re working with splaying out their arms for balance, and has agents bracing their legs at the very most, too preoccupied to acknowledge being shaken. Most of them are either busy relaying the situation back to headquarters, or trying to corral straggling civilians back behind the border line. He makes it a point to intermittently catch a pedestrian's gaze to glare at them, even though it’s more like squinting. That usually works, and they end up slinking back further behind the sea of people.
“I said stay, behind, the line.” One of his agents says flatly into a megaphone, enunciating each syllable like he doesn’t have much faith in the intelligence of his audience. Not into the megaphone, the agent mutters a few choice words.
One guy in the crowd whoops a defiant no, and he has to begrudgingly understand where they’re coming from: because IUVO really doesn’t get out a lot, but he thinks one of these days they’d do well to make a public example, or something. The thought admittedly does have him backtracking after a moment, ruminating on the ethics of that sentiment.
Unfortunately, the more well-liked firefighters are stationed farther from the epicenter in order to instruct the evacuating civilians to safety, and do medical work from a safe distance. IUVO is stuck being bad cop.
If they weren’t as secretive as they were, the public might actually respect their authority a little more, but of course, there’s a reason they can’t.
“Stay, behind, the lin— mate,” The megaphone is briefly lowered in bewilderment. “You people, hear, that, earthquake, right?” The megaphones' tinny distortion still manages to capture the agent's incredulity.
The most he’s thankful for is that there isn’t a widespread protest at their presence, and that they’re at least more well liked than the local police. IUVO doesn’t do enough public field work to garner scandals, and they certainly don’t do enough irresponsible abuse of power to get a reputation for it. In fact, their collaboration with the police might be the sole thing bringing down their social score right now.
“Yeah — yeah. I saw that foot. Get behind the line.”
And probably the fact that that agent over there is giving them unprofessional amounts of sass.
They might as well have just dressed up as normal civilians and started taking charge, but in hindsight that’d only encourage actual civilians to join them. Where they aren’t supposed to be.
The agent near the border runs a hand that could either be stressed or annoyed over a cleanly buzzed head, looking unused to the sheer amount of unheeding civilians.
He strides purposefully over to another agent, the one closer to the rubble. The sky is bright with clouds, and bathes them in a stale, clinical light as the agent relays reports of what the base sees. Like it’s been for the past several minutes, there’s nothing new. Speaking with them doesn’t give him much helpful insight, and his thoughts ultimately drift back towards the vigilante with nothing else to take his mind off it.
The vigilante was a distant priority in the shadow of the rest of their issues, but he thinks they’d do well to stop their idle spectating and give them a hand. If the guy is serious about this vigilante work, it wouldn’t hurt to have another asset on the team, even though they really aren’t in the business of letting unmonitored crime-fighting-civilians go buck wild whenever they wanted.
A conversation would be in order, but at the moment, their focus is on keeping the chancier inhuman from getting themselves killed, and hoping to whatever higher power there is that they don’t ramp it up a notch and start forming actual cracks in the earth. (There’s no hoping that they aren’t powerful enough to do it, because inhumans always are. It’s just a matter of how long it takes for them to get there.)
He rests a gloved hand on the shoulder of the agent beside him, glancing down at them.
“Tell the rest of team A to regroup by me, and redistribute team B to fill in the spots they leave. Team C keeps doin’ what they’re doin’. We’re pushin’ inward.” He pauses, as if to think. “Oh. And tell the police to keep pushin’ the civilian line back. Sooner than later, would be ideal.”
Wordlessly, the agent gives him a thumbs up, drifting away to bring up a comm from where it’d been hidden behind their uniform collar.
Throwing his braid over his shoulder, Techno adjusts the helmet that’s over his head, flicking his visor down. The chatter of civilians grows quieter at the next rumble, that even though incidental, feels more like a warning.
*
There’s little grace to it. Running felt a lot like the movement of a loose saw blade, if he could ever know what that feels like. He leans into each turn, unable to afford being stiff lest he fancies himself a mouthful of concrete. It didn’t make him feel powerful. It just made him feel dangerous.
Every step he took brought him twenty times further than it would’ve if he still woke up only thinking about whether or not he turned in his homework the previous night. If he still only woke up thinking about whether or not he wanted to eat breakfast that morning.
He reels back, jarring when most of the time he’s leaned forwards. They don’t tell you there’ll still be traffic on foot when you get superspeed. Especially when no one is moving nearly fast enough anymore.
He gets his fair share of cars honking at him when he leaps over them, something he didn’t know he could do until he did it with ease. They don’t even have time to be needlessly annoyed, because he’s miles away by that point.
He knows his form must be artless, because at multiple points he’s accelerated too quickly for his mind to catch up, and he’s stumbled over his own legs. To avoid skidding into the ground face first, or into anyone else, he would jump and take that little time he has airborn to recuperate, and then he’d land still running. It was messy, and it was like taking your first driving lesson on an active highway. Jumping on superspeed is certainly not for the weak. He knows, not because he’s weak, but because he’s strong, and he still feels disorientingly windswept.
It feels more like a rollercoaster than a rollercoaster ever has, and it might’ve been fun, in another life where this wasn’t fucked up and unwanted and probably the worst thing to ever happen to him.
So, at even more points, Tommy would stop.
Of course, since this city is literally infested with people, there were the aforementioned people surrounding him at all times when he'd skid to a halt, the soles of his shoes surely bearing the evidence. He never stopped long enough for it to become anything more than a PR problem, just enough to allow his brain to catch up with the rest of him.
Stop. Assess. Reroute. Stop. Assess. Reroute. Continue en route. Assess. Lots of infrequent zipping, that had him feeling a lot like a fly in a maze. Flies didn’t cruise along leisurely. They’d always just gone full speed and knocked into walls and windows, as much as it didn’t hurt them. He doesn’t like that alikeness as much. A bullet might be a fine comparison, if it weren’t for the fact a bullet would be far more controlled than whatever he was doing. He was more like a marble in a hamster ball, being shaken and rolled around relentlessly.
There’s not enough room for him in this city, the conclusion Tommy comes to after stumbling indecisively around more narrow city corners, at one place just as he’s left the other.
“Ow— …fuck.” He hisses to himself, managing to whisper.
Tommy decides he hates concrete. Truthfully, it hadn’t even hurt that much, even with him running straight into it, if at all, but it pissed him off anyways. Using his arm to lessen the impact, it really only serves to bounce him off the wall clumsily.
He’d tried to stop when he saw it incoming, but alas, he’d careened into it anyways. He guesses it could've been worse if he’d hadn’t tried at all and just let himself run full speed into solid rock. Distantly, he wonders if it’s in his realm of possibility to break down the wall by running full throttle into it. He’d probably die. The thoughts are left to dust, because he has, arguably, bigger problems at the moment.
The arguably bigger problems chime in with their own contribution in the form of a particularly shaky rumble.
The quaking isn’t nearly enough to knock him over. It tries, but ultimately he stays standing. It’s like fighting for balance on a skateboard, and he’s winning. It’s even less noticeable when he isn’t standing still, strangely enough. It’s as if he moves too quickly for the instability of the ground to catch up.
He feels like those stubborn bugs that somehow cling to your hand no matter how hard you shake it, to the incredulity of everyone who tries. He doesn’t much like feeling like a bug.
Regardless, uncannily kindred with a bug, Tommy manages to scale the fire escape lining one of the walls in the alley he’d landed in.
He doesn’t dare going anything more than slow and steady, even though something beneath his skin itches to, because he doesn’t really fancy becoming a pancake on the ground. The height seemed precarious from his place down below, when he’d been staring uselessly up at the winding buildings, but he’d quickly forced himself to get over his trepidation to scale the fire escape. It was only, like, what? Three stories at most? That’s the height most people usually die from, and Tommy feels his heart spike when he looks down.
He wasn’t sure his newfound inhumanity would save him from becoming a stain on the ground if he were to meet it. He doesn’t feel like testing it out yet either. Or ever.
Casting his gaze downwards, he finds the reason no one had seen him scrambling unskillfully up the building.
They’re all unwisely huddled near the civilian line he’d seen on his phone, their own trepidation and the presence of the law acting in for the roadblock that isn’t there. When he said all, he’d meant it to the extent of its definition, because before he’d gotten the context he’d been missing from below, he’d ignorantly thought he had stopped somewhere in the danger zone, for how little people there were. Not just right outside of it.
There’s someone in uniform monotonously telling civilians with too many funny ideas to get back behind the line. “Yes, all the way”, he can hear at one point. Said civilians listen, though some seem a little more begrudging than others. Those are usually the ones with cameras, or the men. Dimly, he thinks he might be studying near the old ladies at the cafe too often, because their vocabulary is starting to show its face in his own.
A little girl takes his attention briefly, sniffling quietly off to the side about a “Mr. Sparkles” as her mother is seemingly trying to convince her Mr. Sparkles is better off without them, if the vaguely annoyed yet pleading expression is anything to go off of.
Faintly, he recognizes this is the zone he’d been seeing on all those videos.
Aside from the stray civilians that are way too eager for clout, IUVO and the police seem to be holding up in what could be defined as okay. He rubs a thumb against the scratchy concrete of the roof barrier. A voice that sounds like his whispers dimly. Why are you here?
He’d definitely been seen on the way here, and there’s definitely belated regret that’s subsequently being ignored in favor of the better option: not thinking at all. Hand-waved off with a flippant, internal whatever. Because the static in his chest had dissipated. Because he feels much less restless on top of this random building, leaning over the roofs edge to oversee the overconfident city folk that could probably do with less curiosity and more survival instincts.
Another whatever that’s suspiciously adjacent to the term yolo has him vaulting over the edge of the roof and onto a balcony that wasn’t nearly close enough to the rooftop to justify him no-brain leaping onto it.
He doesn’t know when he started doing that: moving before he could think about it. It’s like his instincts were betraying him, telling him a fall from this height wouldn’t hurt him—that his joints could take it. In a mild turn of events that barely manages to be less than disturbing, his instincts are right.
Besides nearly wobbling off the side of the overhang, he’s unharmed.
That’s fine. That’s normal. This is normal. There’s a deep set frown under the bandana he’s trying to pretend is neutrality when he makes the rest of the way down, garnering the eyes of several people that have begun to notice him for the racket he’s making, metal clanging noisily at his descent.
The presence of hundreds of eyes itch like pins and needles at the skin under his clothes, and he doesn’t need to turn around to know the eyes are now accompanied by cameras. Already having expected it, he tugs his hood further down in something that might be surrender to the life he’s trying to pretend he isn’t choosing.
The bandana is warm against his face, a reminder of his anonymity.
The civilians—something he’s supposed to be—are keeping their distance from him. Maybe so as to not be associated with him, or maybe so the people that will arrest him can easily distinguish him from the crowd as an other.
He’s still under phone flashes for the first time, and it’s making him antsy. He thinks there might be someone shouldering past the crowd to approach him, shadowed by someone with a camera.
He’s not here to talk to anyone. He’s here to do something with himself. Something stupid, he’s sure of, but something he feels inclined to do anyways. Something he’s not sure he’s here to do is piss off IUVO, but he’s also not sure their core values align right now. Tommy doesn’t want anything to do with IUVO, and he has an inkling they won’t agree. (In what way, Tommy doesn’t know, but he sees the way the IUVO agent at the civilian line keeps eye contact with him when bringing up a radio from beneath his collar.)
Thoughtlessly, Tommy is crossing the civilian line with a telling shock wave before anyone can think to stop him, stepping in line with the cracks in the asphalt he’s not sure were there before. His windswept hair settles back over his head just as a rising shout sounds from behind him. He’s not sure what comes over him in the moment, to slow to a stride— maybe it’s unfounded cockiness, or maybe it’s just because something in him knows they won’t be able to catch him.
*
The vigilante is a right bastard, he is. Or she. Or they.
Whichever one they are, they're a pompous prick and various other iterations of the same sentiment Jack won't say out loud.
The vigilante was a speedster, that much was easy to discern, but he hadn't seen it for himself until now. All witness reports said as much, but cameras couldn't pick him up. In person, it's more jarring than he expected it to be. It's not a quiet thing, either. It's almost like the rumbles of the earthquake they've been hearing all morning, but instead of the all encompassing thundering, it's distantly electric, resonating with a lingering humming.
Annoyingly gaudy is more like it. Especially when they stop just out of reach of where the agents are patrolling so no one can snatch them, just to strut needlessly for a few paces, centerpiece to the abandoned road as the rest of them are left to process what's just happened on the sidelines. Then, to Jack's further disaffection, the vigilante turns a heel to look at him. Like they're daring him to try and chase them. He doesn't, of course, because he's not a mindless cop who'd chase a carrot on a stick.
They're supposed to be on the same side after all. But, clearly, the vigilante isn't keen on teamwork. Or at the very least not too eager. That's fine, as long as they're working towards the same goal. He says as much to a coworker as he passes off the loudspeaker to his place-in at the civilian line. They try to disguise the high five during the shift change as professional.
He doesn't remember who told them they had to stop high fiving in public.
“You don't sound all too fine about it.” Is his co-workers teasing response.
Jack balks at that, stuttering for a moment before organizing his distaste for the sentiment. “I do sound fine, actually. You're just trying to instigate. That's unprofessional, Indie.” He says very seriously.
She just gives him a fish eyed look, puckering her lips. Jack shoos her away to join his replacement at the border while he goes to find wherever the captains gone.
The last birds in the district flee for greener pastures when the next rumble comes and goes.
Negotiations might be out of the picture, their captain says to them. The tech agents are already predicting total building collapse in at least eight in the district if the quakes don't stop in the next hour. Drones sent out to find the rogue inhuman have been subsequently destroyed from the inside out not long after release, vibrations coaxing them apart like they'd been flimsily made, and they're running out of options.
One or two times during the debrief, they wouldn’t see the vigilante, but they’d hear them. And feel them. An unnatural amount of breeze was enough to attest for it.
Their captain says to ignore the vigilante until they become a problem. They aren't one, not yet — just massively uncooperative. They help with evacuation, and just watching them zip back and forth from view, Jack doesn't know what their purpose is in the semi-well-oiled semi-kind-of-dysfunctional machine. Until, he realizes they're clearing each building more thoroughly than IUVO ever could without time on their side. The vigilante has no such weakness.
The vigilante never talks to them. They only interact with the civilians, and with IUVO they keep their distance. One agent tries to approach at one point, only to be artfully flipped off in a way that had Jack blinking disbelievingly from where he'd been watching several paces away. After the first initial encounter, none of them see the vigilante in full for more than a few seconds before they're hurtling off faster than anyone can blink. They're elusive that way.
The fateful hour is coming up, when buildings are supposed to start collapsing: one agent reminds them clinically, less nervous than they really should be. The vigilante hasn't turned up with any more civilians in the past ten minutes. The amount coming out had already been dwindling by the time the vigilante swooped in, but by now the danger zone must've been a ghost town. He realizes, after another ten minutes, that the vigilante isn't turning up at all.
He notes this silently, though otherwise indifferent. They must've figured that now with the remainder of civilians evacuated from the zone, that their work is done, which is fair. They don't need the vigilante thinking they can do everything on their own. That's how rogues are born, something very illegal, and something he's learnt the government really isn't fond of. Apparently it falls under some sort of impersonation, something he remembers reading about in college.
Vigilantes never last. It's a noble effort, it's just not really allowed. The longest alluded IUVO for a good two years before being shut down. They'd been tricky though, Jack will give them that.
“Ten minutes till possible destabilization.” Someone chirps. Their captain beckons them, and motions for them to wear their visors. He doesn’t need to say more for Jack to know they’re going against the grain and taking the risk.
Something Jack doesn't consider though, is that instead of leaving, the vigilante has gone somewhere they’d been chased out of: the center.
*
It’s getting louder, and louder, and at multiple points he’s thought, this is it. This is where the ground splits open and swallows us whole. It doesn’t. Even after the fifth time he thinks it. It just builds, and builds, and he feels the same as every other person still close enough to die. He doesn’t feel powerful. He feels driven by his heart that snags uncomfortably whenever he starts to think about concrete collapsing, someone watching their own undoing.
He never thinks about it long enough to see what happens to eyes that don't belong to anyone specific, but they’re filled with fear. So, he stays, and dust is rising.
There's static in his chest that's more of a stranger than anything, restless and searching. He doesn’t know what he’s looking for for a long time. Then, it’s like everything is finally slowing down.
Someone, a person, stands defiantly amidst the rubble. They don’t look like they belong there. They don’t look like they want to be there either, and the look in their eyes has Tommy feeling vaguely dizzy with a feeling of deja vu.
Their arms are bruised, splotched yellow and purple and sickeningly gray.
They must see him watching, because they roll down their sleeves self consciously. It doesn’t happen without a visible wince, a pinch in their eyebrows — pain. Their eyes are locked, and distantly Tommy is reminded of opaque, black crystal imprinted into sorrow for as long as they remain. These ones are alive, however, and instead of resignation, look more like fear.
Tommy can’t get in a word, because everything is loud, but when he thinks it, suddenly that descriptor doesn’t seem fitting anymore. Because everything is…a lot. It's so much, that he feels like there's no room left for him. It’s not loud like a concert, it’s loud like a ringing. A ringing that's trying to shut him up so it can stay the loudest thing in his ears.
He’s not sure he can even identify the sound — vibrations that vaguely remind him of the sound that comes from him, yet more metallic, instead of the earthy rumble he’d slowly begun to associate with speed.
It’s rhythmic, the sound. It could be hypnotizing, if it weren’t for everything else. As if he were holding metal that was desperately trying to get out, the vibrations wrang through his body, not enough to be real, but enough for it to feel like he could hear it. It’s in his throat, it’s in his chest, and it just manages not to strain his ears like how his own shock waves did with their painfully thundering rumbles. His aren’t anything like the soothing waves of sound that don’t fit the destruction around it.
It’s unfittingly pleasant, because concrete crumbles just to the left of him, a reminder. The resonating oscillations could lull him into some sort of trance if he let it, and distantly, he wants to — but he doesn’t.
Shining orange stares into his own, and briefly, Tommy mistakes the radiance for sunlight. He realizes only a moment later it’s not the sun reflecting off their eyes. It’s far too bright for that, and far too clear.
A beat passes between them, and he’s not sure what it is.
“What the fuck are you doing?” Tommy cups his hands around his mouth to yell, and his voice somehow feels like it doesn’t fit when it’s coming from behind the bandana.
The false tranquility is broken, and their face pinches into something like a pained frown. Their mouth moves, but Tommy doesn’t hear whatever's meant to come out. It moves again, and this time—
“I dont know!” They yell back, swallowing wetly. It's after a beat that he thinks he hears irritation alongside something like hysteria. Their arms are outstretched, and Tommy stares at where he can no longer see the bruises where they're hidden under clothing. He wonders where they came from. A hand comes to brace the other arm straighter, and he begins to guess.
Tommy, briefly, can’t think of anything to say after that. The vibrating in his chest nullifies any other feeling when it resonates through the rest of his limbs. He doesn’t get a chance to anyway, because when he does—
“Are-” A long, considering pause. “Are you, ah- a hero?”
Most heroes are well known, and Tommy certainly isn't dressed like one. Maybe he should lie.
“Because I didn’t- I didn’t mean to hurt anybody.” They say cautiously, desperately. Tommy looks around at the destruction.
“Are you sure?” He yells back, skeptical. It's not meant to be accusing, but maybe it's too sarcastic, too unfeeling. It gives way to a wince when they return his look like Tommys words had meant more than he thought they should.
Maybe he should’ve been nicer. He should be nicer. Fuck- He’s not good at this, he didn’t even- even know there was someone behind this. He didn’t even think about it as a possibility. He hadn't even thought as the words left his mouth. Too little too late to backtrack now, he can only grasp at the air in front of him uselessly, knowing he's said something wrong. Instead of trying to save face, he waits for their response.
They look close to doing something they won't regret, but something defiant still lingers in their figure.
“Yes, I’m fucking sure!”
Their voice travels across the distance more assuredly, angry. Tommy gets it. They look like they're dying, and Tommy feels like he gets it a little less. Tommy gambles when taking a step closer, the unstable ground nullified by something in him he’ll never figure out.
“Okay,” He shouts back, shrugging weirdly, and the exchange falls a little flat. Maybe he expected it to be a little more cartoonishly dramatic, but it just feels morbidly real. They look scared, like how he’d felt just the day before, but the difference between them are cracks in the earth. He probably looks awkward. He feels awkward—decidedly not holding himself like a hero.
A beat. “I’m, um. Not a hero.” That much must've been obvious.
He's no longer shouting, and their arms are lowering, just a little.
Tommy's face is shrouded, but theirs is so open. It makes him want to cover it up with his own bandana. There could be cameras. There's a knit in their brows, so small, but he notices anyway. He can't tell what they might be thinking.
The ringing is an afterthought, but he knows it's important. “Can you, uh, stop?” Earnest, but harsher than he meant. He always came off that way. Tommy hopes they understand he's not made for this.
“They’ll-” They swallow, “I did- I just-” They stumble, like they're trying to get everything they've seldom rehearsed out at once, like if they pause for a second, Tommy will interrupt and damn them before they can explain themselves. Tommy meets their eyes, that unbeknownst to both inhumans, mirror each other, and maybe in the moment they remember he's not one of them.
“It- wasn't—” It wasn't my fault.
“I just didn't- I couldn't stop? Because then they'd arrest me, and I didn't choose this—” It was too late to stop. I've buried myself too deep.
They're quiet for seconds that feel longer. Then, quieter than they’ve been the whole time;
“What will they do to me?” I'm ruined.
Tommy doesn't know what they'll do. That's the point. No one does, they just take IUVO’s word for it when they say they'll take care of them. What is he meant to say in this situation? You'll be okay. They'll help. That's what they said they'd do. He doesn't know that. But what else is he to do? Will IUVO really take care of them after all they've done? He knows what the police would do. He imagines the sound of gunshots, and stops thinking about it.
There’s static in his chest. He’d mistaken it for the anxiety that comes from guilt, obligation. It’s only now when he finds he feels none of that, that he recognizes it as something simpler.
“They try anything and I’ll knock them out.”
It’s just worry.
That startles a laugh from them that sounds like it hurts. “I don’t think— you can help me.” They don’t sound resigned at all: just scared. He doesn’t notice how the quaking has fallen to a dull thrum, weak.
Tommy doesn’t get a chance to disagree.
Someone, an agent, is being turned around at the shoulder harsh enough to make them stumble.
“What the hell did you do?”
The vigilante stares, shocked. The inhuman has fallen forward, and something is sticking out of their neck. It’s no longer the two of them, like the vigilante had thought. Voices rise in a cacophony on the scene, some organized, objective, some berating. None of them are directed at the vigilante. People in uniform are suddenly at the inhumans side, with instruments the vigilante doesn’t recognize as medical equipment at first.
He moves on instinct, stumbling forward and raising an arm just as quick as it’s hesitating when the situation dawns on him. The arm hesitates, and retracts back into the vigilante's figure, but it’s just enough for heads to begin to turn to him, like they’d finally noticed his presence.
He must seem dangerous, because something that looks like a gun is raised. It’s slapped down just as quickly as it’d flown up, what's wrong with you? The vigilante doesn’t hear. Radiant orange flashes brightly, and then it’s gone.
The city celebrates its mysterious agents that morning. A growing number of the city begins to celebrate an unnamed vigilante.