Chapter Text
“Have a seat, Solidarity. We need to talk…”
The president spoke with the authority. Solidarity saw an empty chair, close to the president’s chair… He walked down the room, feeling all eyes on him.
He pulled out the chair, sitting down. He looked over at the president. “If this is about Soul Fire-” Solidarity was cut off. The president put his hand up, interrupting the hero.
“This is about many things, Solidarity.” he spoke, scowling at Solidarity slightly. The canary hero quickly shut his mouth.
“Let’s start off with how you let Soul Fire get away, yeah?” Solidarity frowned at the sarcastic smile the president gave him.
“...I wasn’t prepared.” Solidarity replied, the president rolled his eyes. “That’s obvious…” He muttered.
“You’re a hero. Solidarity… So why on earth weren’t you prepared? You need to be ready on all times.” The president said sighing.
“I-I’ll catch him next time, sir!” Solidarity exclaimed, his wings fluttering slightly at this. The president raised his eyebrow. “Can you?” He asked, catching Solidarity off with that question.
“...Look, Solidarity, if this is too hard for you we can always assign a different hero to take down Soul Fire, maybe someone with water-”
“No!”
Everyone turned their heads to Solidarity as he shouted.
“I mean-” He coughed, clearly his throat. “No, I can do it, sir. I just need more time.” Solidarity said with a small nod. The president scanned him up and down, resting his elbows on the desk.
“You 100% sure you can?” he asked. Solidarity nodded. “I can do it.” He said with confidence in his tone. The other clicked his tongue before sighing leaning back in his chair.
“If you say so…” He muttered.
The last thing Solidarity wanted was to get assigned a different villain to arrest, he wanted to take out Soul Fire specifically himself, he didn't want another hero doing it.
He didn't care if it would bump him down a rank, he just wanted Soul Fire to be his villain. No one else's.
Solidarity even knew himself that there were probably a better villain with better suiting powers that could capture Soul Fire, but he didn't want that.
“The next topic. You’re climbing up the ranks, Solidarity. Meaning you have a new reputation to hold.” The president said, with a small shrug to his shoulders.
“There are things you can say, and things you have to keep secret, you know that right?” The president tilted his head. Solidarity nodded, having nothing say to that.
“Good, so we’ve arranged some interviews for you to do, something to just raise your popularity and reputation.” He smiled.
“Interviews?” The hero muttered, he wasn’t exactly the biggest fan of those… He liked having a bit of privacy, especially since everyone is always trying to figure out his identity.
“Mhm, we’re gonna do maybe 5 interviews on Sunday next week. We’re currently setting up a small room just for those.” One of the board members said. “You should clear your schedule on that day.” Another said, looking at their clipboard.
Solidarity knew he didn’t have a say in this, so he nodded along. “Got it.” He said.
“Reputation is important, Solidarity. We almost had to shut down the Hero Commission, do you remember that?” The president asked. Solidarity nodded. “Yes, sir.” Solidarity said.
“Good, the Hot Guy incident really damaged us, we were hoping that you could fix that since well you’re actually a hero. You know Cute Guy, right?” The president said.
‘I know him a little too well.’ Solidarity thought to himself, nodding along with the president.
“He was never really an ‘official hero’, he was more of vigilante who took out villains while trying to prove that the Hero Commission was bad and corrupted..” The president explained.
“That was until the Hot Guy incident… I won’t get into the details, but after that he was seen as the new number 1. Since we were getting a lot of backlash from the public… They saw him even more as a hero after the final battle against Hot Guy.” He sighed.
Solidarity listened to the president… He never knew much about the Hot Guy incident other than people died.
Grian never told him the details either, and everyone else refuses to talk about what happened.
They refuse to talk about it as if it never happened in the first place...
But what happened to Hot Guy after his final fight with Cute Guy is anyone’s guess. After all, Hot Guy never died.
“So try your best not to fuck up our reputation again, we might not ever recover.” The president said with a small snarl to the canary, and oh if looks could kill Solidarity would be dead.
Solidarity gulped nervously. “O-of course..”
The board members talked among each other, Solidarity would nod along listening to their points. He glanced around the room, and noticed a fire in the distance outside the window.
“I think there’s a fire going on…” Solidarity said, lifting his hand up pointing at the smoke he saw. The president turned around in his chair noticing the smoke.
“A hero will handle it, don’t worry.” He shrugged, turning back around. He simply just brushed off the problem like nothing.
What has this world come too…? It’s come to the point where people glance at a problem and brush it off now that heroes exist.
Solidarity looked at him, hesitantly. Before turning his head. “What else do we have to talk about?” He asked.
“Nothing that really concerns you, just financial business, and which heroes to send out to what villain.” The president told him, shrugging.
“Oh.” The hero hummed. “...Can I leave now then..?” He asked, glancing at the door. “Not yet, we’re assigning you with another villain to take care of.” The president said.
“It’s a small one, we would have assigned a different lower rank hero, but they’re all busy with their own villains.” He sighed.
“This one shouldn’t take more than a day.” The president said.
A weak villain to arrest… Shouldn’t be too hard. It’ll probably be a lot easier than Soul Fire, that’s for sure. “Yeah… Yeah I can handle that.” Solidarity said. “That’s what we thought.” The president gave Solidarity a fake smile.
“Now that’s all, any other news that comes up. We’ll contact you immediately.” The president said. Solidarity nodded, getting up from his seat, pushing it out.
“Thank you for giving me another chance with Soul Fire…” Solidarity said with a small bow. “Of course, of course..”
Solidarity could tell they still wanted to assign another hero to take out Soul Fire and Solidarity is currently their number 1 hero. If Solidarity can’t take out Soul Fire then it says a lot about Solidarity himself, and the Hero Commission.
“We’ll send you the information on the villain.” One of the board members exclaimed across the table, tapping something onto their tablet.
The hero nodded, keeping his eyes on the doors.
Well that meeting was surprisingly short.
Solidarity exited the room, and went back up to the landing line. He opened his wings and flew out of there. Within seconds, he got a message from the Hero Commission.
He checked his watch, looking at the villain information. He read the description of the villain. The villain sounded harmless, they were a witch with basic powers.
“Ah, I could handle that.” Solidarity said under his breath. He flew around the city looking for the villain.
As Solidarity flew around the city, the conversation about Hot Guy played in his mind again… He remembered the many years ago when Hot Guy used to be the number 1 hero in all of Hermitopia.
But something happened causing Hot Guy to betray the company, which costed the Hero Commission everything. That should’ve been his first sign not to join the Hero Commission...
After a bit of flying around, he spotted them and flew down pulling out his gun. He shot a few shots at the villain’s legs.
“Stop right there in the name of the law!” Solidarity exclaimed flying in the air, the villain winced, quickly running off, summoning zombies from the ground to slow down the hero. Solidarity flew higher into the air.
He shot at the zombies right in the brains, and chased the villain down the alleyway.
Soul Fire watched this fight happen from the one of the rooftops, for once he decided to help. He pulled out his new custom made gun. “Let me help you out, shall I birdie?” Soul Fire spoke to himself aiming directly at the witch villain running.
He closed one day before shooting it down, watching the fire bullet move at the speed light and hit the villain right in the back.
The villain caught fire almost instantly, and began panicking trying to put out the fire.
Solidarity stopped mid flight, watching this confused. He turned his head around to see where the gunshot came from and he saw Soul Fire on the rooftop a few buildings away. Soul Fire smirked, and winked at the confused hero.
“That little-” Solidarity snapped out of it, turning back to the villain, helping him put the fire out. Afterwards before the villain could get away, he snapped the handcuffs onto the witch’s wrist.
“Looks like you stopped him, birdie. By the way, you like my new gun?” Someone said behind him… Solidarity knew that voice anywhere.
“Why’d you help me?” He asked, holding the witch making sure he didn’t run away. “Because I wanted to show off my gun, you like?” Soul Fire spun his fire based gun in his hands.
“Besides, you still got the job done, right?” Soul Fire smirked. “”And I wanted to see the progress you made with “understanding me”, remember?” Soul Fire said, leaning against a fire cloud he made.
“Oh that, yes! Yes, I’ve been a ton of research on blazeborns these past couple days.” Solidarity gasped.
“Can’t wait to here about it…” Soul Fire rolled his eyes.
“if anything’s bothering you… You can just tell me, I won’t judge you.” The canary said to the blazeborn.
“Pft-” Soul Fire scoffed. How dumb could Solidarity be? “Why would I tell you shit?” He looked the hero up and down like he was crazy.
“I-I just read that blazeborns have a really hard time fitting in, and I just thought…”
“You thought what? That I was venting my anger?” Soul Fire said, cocking his head to the side.
“Well… I suppose to you aren’t wrong, but that’s not the only reason.” Soul Fire said, if it that actually true or not… Uh not sure.
Solidarity perked up, lifting his head up. He felt like he managed to get the blazeborn to open up a little. “But I’d never tell you in a million years, Birdie.” The villain smiled. As the two chatted, the witch villain that controlled the zombies noticed how distracted Solidarity is.
He took this chance to step on his foot, and kick him in the shins. Solidarity yelped, shortly letting go of the witch. The witch laughed and ran. Soul Fire quickly ran over to the witch and knocked him out.
He caught the unconscious body, then looked up at Solidarity with a dead pan stare.
“...And they call you the number one hero…” He muttered. “I could’ve caught him again.” Solidarity said in defense.
“Oh I’m sure.” Soul Fire rolled his eyes. He put the witch against the wall. “Now to do what I came here to do.” Soul Fire said, he created a ring of fire around him and the hero.
“What the-” Solidarity gasped, he pulled out his gun and aimed it at Soul Fire. “Stop this right now!” Solidarity tightened his grip on his gun.
“Why? We barely just barely started!” Soul Fire cackled, increasing the bright blue fire around them. Soul Fire watched Solidarity’s body movement.
He watched how Solidarity’s wings opening up, how he kept his stance. Soul Fire smirked, loving this. “C’mon, shoot me!” Soul Fire encouraged.
This caught Solidarity off guard by a lot. “...Huh, what?” Solidarity said, lowering his gun by a bit. He was so confused by what Soul Fire said… Shoot him? Why would he want that…?
“I dare you to shoot me, birdie! Didn’t you want to arrest me?” Soul Fire lifting his arms up. “Y-Yes, but I never wanted to kill you!” Solidarity proclaimed.
“Eh, what’s the difference?” Soul Fire shrugged. “if you won’t kill me then…” The blazeborn suddenly moved at the speed of light, suddenly being behind Solidarity, moving insanely fast!
Soul Fire punched him in the back, making the other stumble. The hero immediately turned around, punching back. Soul Fire backed up, avoiding Solidarity’s punches.
Soul Fire shot at Solidarity, aiming at his wings. He purposely missed, he only wanted to freak out the hero. Solidarity dodged the fire, and he was suddenly shoved against the wall.
“I love how I manage to capture you so easily… Weird, isn’t this supposed to be the other way around?” Soul Fire said, pinning the hero’s wrists.
Solidarity scoffed, looking at the fire villain with a slight glare. “If you’re gonna pin me down, at least ask me out to dinner first!” A wing suddenly hit Soul Fire smack in the face.
Soul Fire’s head recoiled to the side, Solidarity’s wings swung in front of him pushing Soul Fire off him. The canary flew up, quickly flying down again pushing the villain to the ground.
“You piss me off, you know that?” Solidarity glared, holding him down. Soul Fire looked up at Solidarity dead pan staring at him. “I know, that’s why I love messing you, birdie.” He winked.
Solidarity felt his cheeks heating up. He shook his head, pushing the villain’s wrist down. “You know, you make it really hard for me to like you…” Solidarity said.
Soul Fire raised an eyebrow. “Huh?” He sang.
“Didn’t you want to understand me? Become my new best friend?” He mocked. “Oh shut up,” he retorted, exasperated. “Just because I want to understand you, doesn’t mean I have to like you…” He scowled.
“Whatever.” Soul Fire’s tail slapped Solidarity’s leg, but due his new fire resistant suit. He didn’t feel anything. He kept staring daggers at the villain below him.
“You got a new suit, hm? Impressive, only took you a full year!” He taunted. “Can you just shut up!?” The hero exclaimed.
“No, I don’t feel like it.” Soul Fire shrugged. “But you have me now, so why don’t you just go ahead and arrest me!” He teased. The canary hero knew better than to actually arrest him, Soul Fire wouldn’t just make it easy like that.
“No, this is too easy.” Solidarity said.
Soul Fire hummed. “I’m giving you a chance to arrest my ass, and you won’t do it?” He asked. “You made it too easy, knowing you. You have something planned.” Solidarity said. “Aw, how cute. We’ve fought so much that you know I wouldn’t make it easy for you.” Soul Fire winked, his fire hair scorching.
“Speaking of which,” The blazeborn kicked Solidarity right off him. Solidarity flew up into the air, pulling his gun out, pointing it at Soul Fire.
“You wanna do a gun fight? Sure, I’m up for that.” Soul Fire pulling out the gun of his own. He aimed at Solidarity, shooting the bullets at him.
Solidarity flew higher into the air, avoiding the fire bullets.
“Are those bullets made out of fire?” Solidarity asked confused. “Glad you noticed.” Soul Fire created a fire cloud jumping on it. He shot at Solidarity again, aiming for his wings.
Solidarity kept soaring through the air, shooting bullets at Soul Fire, not trying to kill him, just injury him.
Solidarity swiftly flew behind Soul Fire, hastily shooting him the back. The gunshot hit Soul Fire on the side, near the lower back, injuring him.
Soul Fire yelped at this, moving his hand to his side. He glanced down at his hand seeing the blood. “Ah, shit…” Soul Fire muttered, he turned his head and saw Solidarity flying above him.
“I don’t want to kill you…” Solidarity muttered, carrying the gun in his hands. “But you have no problems crippling me, yeah makes total sense.” he said, sniping at the hero.
Solidarity dodged the shots, and flew in front of Soul Fire. “...I still mean it when I said I want to be your friend…” He mumbled, pitifully.
“Well friends don’t fight each other trying to turn the other in to the police, now do they?” Soul Fire stared daggers at Solidarity, lowering his head.
The villain’s bright blue eyes glared against the sunlight. “We can be friends! We can work together as heroes together!” Solidarity exclaimed. “I can convince the hero commission, and then-”
Another gunshot flew right passed Solidarity’s head. “God, can you just shut up!? Is this your way of making fun of me?” Soul Fire yelled. “I bet you think I’m doing this because I’m lonely, right? That if you just became my friend, everything would be fun and dandy!” Soul Fire snapped at the Hero.
“You’re just a fake, you don’t actually care about anyone but yourselves.” He snarled as his tail snapped like a whip. His hair flared up, as he got more and more enraged.
“What do you mean..?” Solidarity asked under his breath confused. “You don’t know? You really do have shit for a brain.” Soul Fire rolled his eyes.
“I know you don’t actually want to be my friend, you only want to lower my guard.” Soul Fire said shooting at the hero.
Solidarity dodged just barely avoiding the gunshots. “No, I do! I really do want to be your friend!” He exclaimed, he didn’t attack back. He wanted to show Soul Fire he really did mean no harm.
Soul Fire scoffed bitterly, he grumbled in pain, holding his side feeling it bleed out. He looked at the hero, softly panting. “This isn’t over, next time I see you. I will try to kill you.” Soul Fire said, using his fire cloud to swiftly get away from the hero.
Solidarity simply watched Soul Fire get away again… He knew he could so easily knock him down and arrest him, but he didn’t want too. He genuinely did want to understand Soul Fire and be his friend…
Even though he hated him. But he felt that maybe he could come to like Soul Fire the more he understood him…
Soul Fire hid around the back of some random building. He removed his belt from his waist, and took off one side of his jacket. He lifted his shirt, looking at the wound on his side.
“Fuck…” Soul Fire muttered, it didn’t pierce through anything, thank god. But it still went through his side pretty deeply… He used special magic to summon some alcohol, a small towel, and some bandages.
He exhaled, as he slumped down the side of the wall, he bit down on his sleeve to muffle his screams,then begun cleaning his wound.
He dampened the towel in rubbing alcohol, before lightly pressing it against his wound. He hissed, and grumbled at the pain.
He held the damp cloth against his wound, letting out shaky gasps. “Holy fucking shit…” He huffed, painfully.
He panted, pulling the cloth away. He grabbed both ends of the cloth, squeezing it tightly, forcing out the excess liquid. After squeezing out the extra liquid he lightly pressed the cloth against his wound again.
He held it down with his elbow as he unrolled the bandages, and wrapped it around his wounds. He knew he could definitely do this better, but he just needed to temporary stop the bleeding at least until he got to Zed…
Tango huffed, he wasn’t sure how exactly he was gonna get to Zed’s house since he had fly on a fire cloud, not to mention the goat’s house was far away as hell. “Fuck it,” he bit his tongue, tying the bandages, making they were secure.
He pulled his shirt back down, and put his jacket back on. He put his belt back on, except he kept it a bit loose. So it wasn’t compress the injury.
He created another fire cloud and hopped on it. He flew up, looking around for any heroes. Once the coast was clear, he flew up into the sky, hurrying off to Zed’s house before he fucking bled out.
Upon arriving and banged on the door, and rang the doorbell for what felt like a hundred times before Zed answered. “Tango?”
Tango panted heavily, leaning against the door frame, gently holding his side. Zed rushed the injured one in, shutting the door with the foot. He wrapped his arm under the blazeborn.
Zed lead him to the hospital looking room in his house. He sat Tango down, helping him take off his belt, coat, and shirt. Once he saw the injury, and softly winced.
“Oh, that is pretty bad…” The doctor mumbled, he put on gloves and a mask, quickly grabbing some scissors cutting off the bandages Tango had wrapped around himself.
Zed grabbed some proper medical supplies, and removed the towel from the wound, and began cleaning the wound.
Thankfully the bleeding had somewhat stopped for now, which made things easier.
He cleaned the wound with a warm wet towel, removing the blood, he gently applied pressure to the wound. While using his free hand to get the antibiotic cream, he removed the warm towel, drying the surrounding area with a clean tissue.
He applied the antibiotic cream, earning a pain hiss from Tango. “Ggh! Fuck!” Tango yelped out, painfully instinctively leaning down to hold his stomach. He quickly stopped himself, moving his arms out of the way for Zed.
Zed said nothing to that, grabbing a thread and needle. Zed quickly glanced around shoving a clean towel into Tango’s mouth. “Bite down on this, this is gonna hurt,” he warned.
Tango bit down on the towel taking a deep breath, moments later he was shutting his eyes yelling in pain as he bit down hard on the towel.
“Arghh!!!” Screaming out in pain while biting down on the cloth. He gripped the table tightly, clutching his fingers.
Zed stitched up the wound, being heavily focused.
Tango tried his best not to move, he felt like he was going to pass out, he felt his nose bleeding, he panting heavily, hissing his pain every few seconds.
Zed wrapped bandages around the wound, tying the bandage at the end. He then looked up at the exhausted villain. “You there, Tango?” Zed asked, twisting the end of a tissue, shoving it in Tango’s nose.
“Hah…. Hah…” Tango huffed heavily sweat dripping down his face. He tiredly took out the cloth from his mouth.
“I might actually kill that fuck face…” He spoke out of anger.
Zed clicked his tongue, moving Tango’s hair out of the way. “Oh Tango…” He muttered with pity.
“Stay here for tonight. I need to keep an eye on you.” Zed said as he put everything away.
“Yeah, sure thing…” Tango said staring at the floor being in a daze.
All he heard was buzzing in his ear, and the room felt like it was spinning… He felt nauseous… Zed grabbed some medicine, spilling some onto a spoon.
Tango saw only shapes, barely making out what was what… He opened his mouth by a little being spoon fed whatever medicine Zed gave him.
He saw and heard muffled noises… That must’ve been Zed speaking… But he couldn’t hear anything. Tango said something, but even didn’t know what he said.
Zed went back to him, helping him up.
Everything was so blurry, the bright lights in his face, didn’t help. Seconds later, Tango felt himself lying down, with a cold cloth on his head. “Get some rest, I’ll check up on you in a few hours.” He understood that…
Tango watched Zed from the bed exit out the room, only leaving the door a few inches open.
Tango stared at the door for a few seconds, soon shutting his eyes, seeing nothing, but black.
Solidarity saw the blood on the wall, he panicked and wondered if he really injured the villain… This was all so much. He got a message from Joel asking Jimmy if he wanted to meet up at the Bread Bridge Bakery, honestly…
He didn’t want to go at all. He thought about what he wanted to do. Go home and sleep is what his brain came up with. He preferred doing that over anything else...
He declined Joel’s request, opening his wings, flying out of the main city.
Today was exhausting for both the hero and the villain…
Jimmy opened the doors to his penthouse. He changed out of his hero suit, and went over to his bed, flopping down exhausted. He looked at his pin board in the corner of his room.
He stored his Soul Fire research there, he got up again glancing at his research. So far, it meant nothing… He was still no closer to finding out who Soul Fire is, what his motivations are, or what even his goal is…
“...I’ll try again tomorrow.” He said to himself, going back to his bed, and lying down.
“I should get some rest…” He sighed.