We are a pack of wolves.

I am at first disconcerted, dizzy even, with my own weakness, and then with the feeling, almost unfamiliar, of all those brilliant bonds reaching up to greet me. Silly as it seems, it has been a long time, especially in raw hours spent awake, since I haven't been alone on one of these missions. If I need to lean into someone else, I can, and they'll catch me. If I need a second pair of arms for a task, I have one. Suddenly, everything seems so easy. It's strange to think I ever thought I could do this on my own, at all.

The first signal we got was near his old house, which looks exactly like we left it. The police haven't been around for a while, but there's still caution tape up everywhere. The air smells like rotting plants and mown grass, all the windows are still broken, and then I catch the scent of old smoke. I almost forgot that Shiloh-- no, the other one-- had them burn the whole place down.

"He's not here. I don't sense any Diosite," Adam announces, which I guess settles that that, too, is one more special talent which was also afforded to my twin, once again rendering me an inferior copy. Wonderful. To make things even more frustrating, his group is significantly more orderly than ours, so that even though there's less of them, I can't help but feel outnumbered. Half the glances I've gotten from Karen and Garrett tonight say the same thing.

"It's a house in the suburbs," Serena says, poking the soil with a pole. "You fought here? In a stranger's house?"

"Genius observation," Amanda mutters. "If we're going to go, let's just go. I'm not standing around so you guys can patronize us and our easy mission. Not everyone gets to fight to the death in a nuclear fallout shelter or whatever."
"No one is patronizing you," Harper casts a shadow into the house, a massive, fierce toothed thing which returns to her and looks at her with almost doglike eyes set within its face of nothing but teeth. She pets it on the head. "Chief's right, there's nothing here. We should move on."

"Chief?" Karen asks.

"We're going to need to exchange codenames too, aren't we?" asks Harper. "I'm Umbra."

"CMYK."

"Phantom Loop. Phantom for short."

"Tesla."

"Lady Generator. Just Gen."

"Chief," says my brother. It's good to know he wasn't hiding a secret creative side along with his superhero double life.

"Luna."

"Excuse me," my brother says, "What?"

"Moving on," I say. "We're not far from the river, so there's a chance he was gathering dormant forces before he moved on to the other side. I don't know what he's up to tonight, but if it's anything like the usual, he knows that he can't pull off any quick escapes if he's not properly armed against me, and poison or any special tricks have a high preparation time on their own. He must have been building up extra forces in his usual haunts, and now he's making a real break for it."

"Where?" asks Serena.

"Water treatment plant? Trying to poison us all?" I say, cheeks red.

"Why?" asks Adam.

"Something about ecoterrorism," I say, running fingers through my hair as I try to approximate what his motives were the last time I actually talked to him. In the last few weeks, I've become increasingly unsure he's even capable of speech. "You know, people suck, so, uh, get rid of them?"

"The Delegation has... a more consistent ideology than that," Adam says. "They have a firm belief, in essence, that life in our age is no longer worth living, and thusly have created a way of automating it so that people no longer have to suffer through their jobs--"

"We are seriously not flexing our villains' ideologies," Karen snaps. "Both of you are morons. Let's go."

Adam doesn't contest that, even though the leer he's giving Karen informs me he doesn't think much of the insult. I'm beginning to believe the cherubs were right about us being legitimately incapable of cooperation. We traverse the forest together, at last coming to the river, where Garrett portals us over to the other side. At first, the "Alpha Team" seems a little hesitant about mysterious portals, which is weird, because the cherubs pull the same thing, but as soon as my brother is through the others follow.

"Thank you, Phantom," I say, distinguished, on the other side.

Garrett nods. He's feigning humility, but I see him leer their way through his glasses. We're still a team. We don't need to prove anything to anybody. Everything is going to work out, but it'll work out because we were all here, not because Adam showed up with his elite half-a-team and proceeded to trounce Ignatius for us. We actually would have been fine on our own, even, potentially, given the right prompting, and this is just... it's just a good push.

The building looms heavy on the horizon. My brother cuts the gates between us and the water treatment plant before I have a chance to suggest alternatives to breaking and entering. He closes his eyes, sensing the air, and then points straight ahead. "He's not far off. We still have time. Gen, your left."
A flamethrower materializes in Gen's hands and proceeds to mow down one of Ignatius's largest beasts. Harper's shadow runs through the flaming corpse, choking the fire, and it falls to the ground, little more than charred wood. "Right, Chief."

My brother swings his flaming sword around. My own group jumps into action, but we can barely get hits in before things are 'handled'.

Serena loosens the grip on the flamethrower. Karen extends a hand to us, like can you believe these guys, and I nod.

"Not bad." Light seems to emanate from Adam. He's beautiful. He's terrifying. I want to die inside my own costume.

We really were a big joke this whole time.

"Can you imagine what Onyx's fire powers would do here?" Serena asks.

"Don't mention Onyx." Adam growls, striding forwards.

"Who's Onyx?" I ask.

"Take a wild guess," Adam says, his sword lighting the way as he leads us forwards. His sword lights the way, shining bright over pools of tepid water. I'm used to the stench. I'm not entirely convinced my brother can smell at all in this form, any more than he can feel pain. For someone I saw crying an hour ago, he's somehow managed to become invincible again, without my consent. "Better hope he came in from the other side. These look like they're the rudimentary treatment pools. Umbra, I want you to move ahead to where the water ends and shut it off. There are probably still some employees around. Knock them out if you need to. Do you think you can figure out how to turn everything off, just in case?"

"On it, Chief," Umbra says, jumping atop a shadow and disappearing.

"Are you always so competent?" I ask.

"The alternative was dying." I think I even hate the tone of his voice, the royal flourish that makes him sound like some kind of noble. I hate that the best version of him is, of course, just a bit better than the best version of me.

"Don't be glum. You still have a chance," says a half-human something lit only the lights shining over the treatment plant, so bundled in his own creations that the little bits of red hair and human flesh sticking out of him give the appearance of being slowly digested by whatever else has him. A whole botanical gardens' worth of exotic plants bloom out of his body, giving him the semblance of extra legs and monstrous shape. His intact eyes wild with desperation, he scuttles forwards, surrounded by beasts. There are smaller versions of the monsters we gutted in the woods, back when we were working as a team before this, a new host of succulents, and a few new, half-formed beings he must have been working on in little bits and pieces before I found him the nights I was trying to save us all. The Alpha and Omega team begin blasting left and right. I lift my shield, which is now lacking CMYK's powers, and thankfully she covers for me long enough to realize I can't set anything on fire.

Tesla, CMYK, and Phantom are fighting back-to-back, right back into the thick of things. I smile, sensing the bond between us, facilitated through Shiloh. I missed them so much. Ignatius dips in and out of my vicinity, weaving around my brother and I as he summons around his beings in a language that sounds like a branch being stepped on.

A fly-trap snaps at me, its mouth full of poisons. I manage to cleave its mouth open with the shield, but this leaves me defenseless. Adam-- Chief-- whatever is sparring with Ignatius's main cluster, which has so many smaller parts to it that it's practically a hydra. We could be out here all night, just trying to kill every single plant on Ignatius, and we'd get caught first. Maybe that's the intention. Maybe Ignatius just doesn't care.

My shield freezes up, ice shards breaking the fly trap's tender interior, and I snag it back. I swing my shield through the foliage and manage to cut another, then yell, "Portal!" just in time for the ground to fall under me and drop me back in time to catch my own projectile, which has been lodged into the deep green heart of something.

"Luna," yells CMYK. "We've almost got him! Full focus on Ignatius?"

"We need to find his Diosite," I yell back, trying not to turn my attention from a rain of needles that my shield can only deflect so much of.

"On his chest!" Serena gives us the place, we've got to clear an entry. We'd never be holding off this much raw firepower with four teammates, so yes, begrudgingly, I'm glad to have the others here for our final battle. I imagine him, freed of Diosite, the regular plan restored, heck, we could turn him into a hospital and the man might get some help--

Old nightmares bind me around the neck.

"One move," Ignatius warns, the Diosite exposed just as Serena had warned, "and he dies."
All of the others, scattered around the battlefield, freeze up. Tesla's fingers stop cracking. CMYK drops her brush, hatred beaming in her eyes. I can see a glint of hope hidden in those fires, even after all of that-- after everything, I know she trusts me to find away. I reach deep within myself, summoning ice to my shield, and as I prepare to break the vines, they go limp around me.

A burning sword withdraws itself from the back of Ignatius's body. The wound, which is cauterized such that it barely bleeds, burns instead, and a smell more rancid than the sewage stains the air as Adam Rosenbloom stands over a dead man with a dull, lifeless expression in his eyes.

I stare at my brother, mortified, as vines slide off my shoulders.

"He was going to kill you." Adam says, voice shaking.

Amanda stoops down to pick up the shard. The plants begin to wither away around us, leaving the plant around us, dark, menacing shapes rising in all directions. We look like children, playing a particularly engaging live-action roleplay afterhours in a facility we're not supposed to enter... or we would, if not for the dead man lying in front of us, and the weapons in our hands.

---

Our parents are furious. I'm the one who ends up talking them (by them I mean my mom) down, while Adam stands like a shadow over me. "We were just walking," I assure her. "I'm sorry we didn't say anything. We didn't even think about it, and we hadn't talked in so longer, not really, that time totally got away from us. I'm just... I'm just trying to take care of him."

Adam's gaze is menacing. He doesn't need protection.

I just watched him kill a man.

"Mom," I promise. "It won't happen again."

"It shouldn't," she says. "I have half a mind to ground you both. Where do you even go?"

"Ground me after the weekend," Adam says.

"What do you have tomorrow?" she asks, her voice rising in pitch. She's distressed. We're almost as tall as her. I never realized. I want to comfort her, to tell her everything's fine, but I don't exactly believe that. "What could be so important..."

"Just something with friends," I chip in. "We're, uh, getting over things together now."
Lights flicker on the back of my vision. Have I mentioned I haven't slept in weeks? I haven't slept in weeks. Shiloh is the only thing holding me up, like a building which supports all the metal pillars above the foundation with string instead of concrete. I can feel his energy like a ringing bell, giving me everything but the right thing to say.

Adam walks upstairs without me.

"Mom," I beg. "Please."
She puts her head in her hands. "I just don't want you two to get hurt."

It's way too late for that. "We won't. Adam's just taking this hard, and I'm, um, adjusting," I say. I'm going to have to adjust all over again after all of this is over, but for her sake, I fake a smile. For a moment, everything is fine, and then I hustle up the stairs.

Adam is sitting on his side of his bed, facing the wall where the portal was.

"You handled that well." The bedsprings whine as I pull myself over to his bed. "The whole team did. With Harper coming back, Serena putting the Diosite on and, uh, confirming he never got the poison in, all... that? You looked really qualified."

He folds his arms.

"Please don't shut me out again."

I expect him to say something like 'no fear, people will be safe now', or 'yes, we were better than you, thanks for noticing', or even, 'I hate your cherub', which would be great, but instead, he just says, spreading his hands apart as if to emphasize it, "Luna?"
"Yeah?" I ask, feeling the strangeness of being called by name.

"Not going to lie. Kind of effeminate."

"Do you have... do you have a problem with that?" Asshole, I add, but in my head, because I'm still terrified of him. "Is that really, after everything we just went through, what upsets you the most? Are you kidding me?"

"You're right. I wasn't going to ask about that. I was going to ask about everything else." His canines look like cherub fangs when he rounds on me. "You were working along for weeks. Your team was barely qualified to handle one man even after months of training. From what I can tell, there was barely any planning involved, ever. You guys couldn't kill one man--"

"And you did?!" I ask. "Are you-- are you proud of that?"

"We're child soldiers, Will. We do what we have to do." As my voice peaks, his is at its calmest. When he locks eyes with me, they're flecked with cherub gold. "She died because we didn't. When she walked towards Evan, fresh out of the echo chamber--that possession machine that's being used to control the people in the Delegation-- I was so close to being able to do something, and I didn't. If I had been a little ruthless, if we had done just a little better... you weren't going to die like her. I couldn't allow it. No one is ever going to get hurt because of my incompetence ever again."

"Thank you for saving my life."

Adam looks towards the ceiling. "I hurt you, didn't I?"

"Yeah," I say. "I mean, yeah, a lot, when we were younger, but I guess boys will be boys and all that, and I was just used to getting roughed up and beaten down."
"Shit," Adam mutters.

"It's okay," I say. "Things are going to be okay now."
"No they aren't," he says.

"They'll get better."

"They won't."

"Everything that can--"
"Get out of the way, Will," Adam gets to his feet before I can so much as put a fraternal hand around his shoulder. "Get out of the way, and let me-- let me make the tough decisions, let me kill people, and just, just-- stay as far out of the way as you can. One of us has to come out of this unscathed, and it's too late for me. I've fucked us in a thousand different timelines, according to Anthem. This time around, I'm not messing it up."

I stare up at him. His face is red again, on the verge of tears, teeth bared. If I move the wrong way, I don't know what he'll do. I want to go back downstairs. I want to fix things. I want to cover my head, but I'm tired of flinching. Every time I do it, in that second, I miss my chance to fix things my way. "I shut my whole group out because I thought it would help them. It didn't. You can't put this all on your shoulders. No one can. It's meant to be survived in a group. I don't know what you think about yourself, or what Anthem said to get in your head... probably a lot like what Shiloh put in mine, to manipulate me..."

"She's always right, Will," Adam says.

"And Shiloh always lies, and I believe it," I whisper.

"She knows I'm empty. She chose me because she knew I was, deep inside, where no one could see it." Adam, bringing his head up to his hands, collapses back onto the bed.

"You're not empty," I say, but he's all in his head now.

"I hurt you," he says. "I hurt everyone around me and I can't feel bad about it. I just do whatever I feel like I have to do to get what I want."
Adam Rosenbloom is the sun, but where the sun is, out in space, there's nothing around for millions of miles but cosmic dark. He can barely see the things pulled around in his orbit. I don't want to feel sorry for him. He doesn't deserve my pity. In some ways, though, I'm a lot like him, and between the two of us, I think we have enough material for two good people, and we might be the only people who can help us get there. I pull him into a hug, trembling, and he leans in, still so much taller and broad-shouldered than I am, but somehow, miraculously, it kind of fits.

"Sorry." he whispers, falling against my side. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay."

It's not, yet, but it could be.